Don't Tell Me It Can't Be Done 'Cause I Finished It Yesterday

At the intersection of optimism and failure is resiliency - the ability to bounce back from failure or set backs. Resiliency is a major topic in positive psychology because it is the one trait that can mean the difference between success and failure. We engage resiliency because something did not work out, we failed - a process, a marriage, a trial, a child in school, a science experiment, a product design. Somewhere someone, or something, failed. Carefully crafted hopes are crushed, dreams broken, plans stopped. And then, we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again.

We have to. If we don't, we have unfinished goals, we find ourselves ruminating over the might have beens and what ifs. One of the biggest obstacles people have in learning to become resilient is learning to ignore other people around them who tell them, "Stop, you've tried hard enough" or "You are wasting your time" or "How many times are you going to try this until you see it won't work?"

I keep a saying on my desk: "....yes I said yes I will Yes." - Molly Bloom, Ulysses. It reminds me to keep on going, to start over, to realize that everyone who says it can't be done is in my way and I have to tune them out.

Martin Seligman, PhD is head of the Positive Psychology Center at The University of Pennsylvania and he explains why optimism is good. When asked how can people start shifting from pessimism to optimism, he replied:

Dr. SELIGMAN : I think the way most people start is to find out the costs of being a pessimist. As a pessimist, it's always wet weather in the soul, they don't do as well at work, and they get colds that will last all winter. They find themselves failing in crucial situations and their relationships go sour very easily. So when people have those kinds of hurts, if they can find that there is something useful in positive psychology, that's where people start.

Dr. Seligman is a pessimist he tells us, but as author of the book, Learned Optimism, he has discovered and written about the techniques that keep people resilient, reframing, optimistic and prolific. Dr. Seligman has said that the number of his failures is huge, too many to count. So he doesn't bother - he just starts a new project and on he goes. He is the author of many books, respected academic researcher and stands as testimony to those who said it can't be done. He overcame all the nay sayers who said academia will never accept positive psychology. It was the most popular class at Harvard last year and the research world is spilling over to the therapy arena with the many ways positive psychology works to increase people's optimism and happiness.