It's perhaps a reflection on the times we are living through that the Harvard Business Review dedicated its April issue to Failure! A common theme in many of the articles is finding ways to reframe failure and develop resilience. We all recognise variations on the refrain 'there's no such thing as failure - only feedback' or 'what can you learn from what went wrong?'. But this can feel rather superficial and for many of us remains hard to translate theory into genuine personal experience.

Seligman has spent his career investigating what differentiates those who respond to failure by bouncing back after an initial period of malaise and grow from the experience as against those at the other end of the continuum who go from sadness to depression to a paralysing fear of the future. The good news is that he's found it is possible for people in the latter category to learn resilience and bounce back more easily.

What makes the difference?

During many years of research Seligman and others discovered that some people demonstrate 'learned helplessness' - having experienced a setback once, this population then generalise the belief that they have no control and become passive, not even trying to succeed in future situations that remind them of the first failure.

Curiously, though, about a third of the trial populations never experience helplessness. Seligman found that what makes the difference is optimism. People who don't give up have a habit of interpreting setbacks as temporary, local, and changeable. Based on this, Seligman suggests that it's possible to immunise people against learned helplessness by teaching them to think like optimists.

The building blocks of resilience and growth

Seligman says that wellbeing is underpinned by five pillars: positive emotion, engagement, meaning, accomplishment, and positive relationships. Flourishing adds to these at least three of five other qualities: positive self-esteem, optimism, resilience, vitality and self-determination.

Flourishing businesses - the Losada principle

Psychologists Marcial Losada and Barbara Fredrickson report that in a widespread study of large organisations, those that flourished had a better than 2.9:1 ratio of positive to negative statements in business meetings. Those with a lower 'Losada ratio' failed.

In a nice demonstration that just knowing the benefit of positive psychology is not enough, Seligman tells that when he first heard of this research in a lecture by Fredrickson, he obsessed over the implications of the new theory at dinner. Later that evening, when his young daughter wouldn't go to sleep, he snapped at her to go back to bed. "Daddy," she said, "you have a terrible Losada ratio"!

"Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf"