There are two parts to any failure: There is the event itself, with all its attendant disappointment, confusion, and shame, and then there is our reaction to it. It is this second part that we control. Do we become introspective, or do we bury our heads in the sand? Do we make it safe for others to acknowledge and learn from problems, or do we shut down discussion by looking for people to blame? We must remember that failure gives us chances to grow, and we ignore those chances at our own peril.

As a young scientist in the 1970s, he’d pioneered the concept of “learned helplessness.”...

Seligman’s work demonstrated that after extended experiences in which they were stripped of any control over their environment, some individuals just gave up. Even when conditions returned to normal, and they once again possessed the ability to seek gain or avoid pain, they didn’t act. They had learned to be helpless.

The more you explain bad events as temporary, specific, and external, the more likely you are to persist even in the face of adversity.

Second, resilient people make more positive attributions about events than those who become anxious or depressed. How they explain failures to themselves is balanced and realistic, rather than exaggerated and colored by shame.

If you pay attention to chronic victims, you’ll notice how fragile they are— how dependent their attitudes and feelings are on things they don’t control. When things go their way, they’re happy; when things don’t, they’re defensive, passive-aggressive, and occasionally aggressive-aggressive. If their spouse is in a bad mood, they’re in a bad mood too. If they hit traffic on the way to work, they bring their anger and frustration to work with them. If a project they’re leading isn’t on track, they blame someone on their team.