How to Recover from Career Setbacks and Be More Resilient

How to Recover from Career Setbacks and Be More Resilient ShareShare1laid off, done poorly at a job interview, or been fired. How can you recover from a career setback and move on instead of sinking into despair? How can you make yourself more resilient? Psychologist Martin Seligman has deeply studied what makes one people become discouraged or depressed after experiencing a failure or trauma, while another recovers easily and moves on toward success. The deciding factor is not what kind of rotten stuff happened to thembut instead, how they explained it to themselves. Weve all come across this idea, right? Well, keep reading, because heres the part you may not have heard, and its useful. We each have an explanatory style, a way that we habitually interpret events.A persons explanatory style can either be pessimistic or optimistic, in three ways. Permanence: When bad stuff happens, the more pessimistic of us tend to see it as something that will always happen. We screw up an interview and then think, Yep, it always goes this way. Or someone says no and we hear it as never instead of just not now. Pervasiveness: We have one job that didnt work out and think weve failed in our whole career, or worse. Yeah, thats the story of my life. Personalization: We think we werent offered a job because were not good enough, when the fact is that the employer was extremely impressed (but someone else had an advantage, such as being internal). If youre like me, you may feel an urge to stick up for pessimists. Actually, researchers have found that pessimism does have some benefits. Pessimistic tendencies can help us identify problems and predicting whats going to happen in many situations. (Pessimists probably make good insurance actuaries.) But pessimism can lead to depression, which is not only painful but unhealthy and counterproductive. According to Seligman in his book Learned Optimism, optimists tend to be more resilient, successful and happy. Let me confess: I am a recovering pessimist. Reading this book and learning to stop seeing my troubles as permanent, pervasive and personal has really freed up a lot of energy and helped me enjoy life. And I havent turned into a brainless Pollyanna. I still know sh## happens. I just deal with it better. If youre struggling to recover from a setbackor even a disastertake a moment to experiment with the perspective that the problem may actually be temporary, not about you, and/or limited to one area of life. Getting out of the PPP (Permanent, Pervasive, Personal) habit is one of the best things we can do for ourselves and everyone around us. How to Recover from Career Setbacks and Be More Resilient ShareShare1laid off, done poorly at a job interview, or been fired. How can you recover from a career setback and move on instead of sinking into despair? How can you make yourself more resilient? Psychologist Martin Seligman has deeply studied what makes one people become discouraged or depressed after experiencing a failure or trauma, while another recovers easily and moves on toward success. The deciding factor is not what kind of rotten stuff happened to thembut instead, how they explained it to themselves. Weve all come across this idea, right? Well, keep reading, because heres the part you may not have heard, and its useful. We each have an explanatory style, a way that we habitually interpret events.A persons explanatory style can either be pessimistic or optimistic, in three ways. Permanence: When bad stuff happens, the more pessimistic of us tend to see it as something that will always happen. We screw up an interview and then think, Yep, it always goes this way. Or someone says no and we hear it as never instead of just not now. Pervasiveness: We have one job that didnt work out and think weve failed in our whole career, or worse. Yeah, thats the story of my life. Personalization: We think we werent offered a job because were not good enough, when the fact is that the employer was extremely impressed (but someone else had an advantage, such as being internal). If youre like me, you may feel an urge to stick up for pessimists. Actually, researchers have found that pessimism does have some benefits. Pessimistic tendencies can help us identify problems and predicting whats going to happen in many situations. (Pessimists probably make good insurance actuaries.) But pessimism can lead to depression, which is not only painful but unhealthy and counterproductive. According to Seligman in his book Learned Optimism, optimists tend to be more resilient, successful and happy. Let me confess: I am a recovering pessimist. Reading this book and learning to stop seeing my troubles as permanent, pervasive and personal has really freed up a lot of energy and helped me enjoy life. And I havent turned into a brainless Pollyanna. I still know sh## happens. I just deal with it better. If youre struggling to recover from a setbackor even a disastertake a moment to experiment with the perspective that the problem may actually be temporary, not about you, and/or limited to one area of life. Getting out of the PPP (Permanent, Pervasive, Personal) habit is one of the best things we can do for ourselves and everyone around us. How to Recover from Career Setbacks and Be More Resilient ShareShare1laid off, done poorly at a job interview, or been fired. How can you recover from a career setback and move on instead of sinking into despair? How can you make yourself more resilient? Psychologist Martin Seligman has deeply studied what makes one people become discouraged or depressed after experiencing a failure or trauma, while another recovers easily and moves on toward success. The deciding factor is not what kind of rotten stuff happened to thembut instead, how they explained it to themselves. Weve all come across this idea, right? Well, keep reading, because heres the part you may not have heard, and its useful. We each have an explanatory style, a way that we habitually interpret events.A persons explanatory style can either be pessimistic or optimistic, in three ways. Permanence: When bad stuff happens, the more pessimistic of us tend to see it as something that will always happen. We screw up an interview and then think, Yep, it always goes this way. Or someone says no and we hear it as never instead of just not now. Pervasiveness: We have one job that didnt work out and think weve failed in our whole career, or worse. Yeah, thats the story of my life. Personalization: We think we werent offered a job because were not good enough, when the fact is that the employer was extremely impressed (but someone else had an advantage, such as being internal). If youre like me, you may feel an urge to stick up for pessimists. Actually, researchers have found that pessimism does have some benefits. Pessimistic tendencies can help us identify problems and predicting whats going to happen in many situations. (Pessimists probably make good insurance actuaries.) But pessimism can lead to depression, which is not only painful but unhealthy and counterproductive. According to Seligman in his book Learned Optimism, optimists tend to be more resilient, successful and happy. Let me confess: I am a recovering pessimist. Reading this book and learning to stop seeing my troubles as permanent, pervasive and personal has really freed up a lot of energy and helped me enjoy life. And I havent turned into a brainless Pollyanna. I still know sh## happens. I just deal with it better. If youre struggling to recover from a setbackor even a disastertake a moment to experiment with the perspective that the problem may actually be temporary, not about you, and/or limited to one area of life. Getting out of the PPP (Permanent, Pervasive, Personal) habit is one of the best things we can do for ourselves and everyone around us.