People often show an amazing ability to emotionally recover from difficult circumstances. I devoted my second book, You’re Stronger Than You Think, to this topic. Now comes some really cool research, showing that people’s ability to bounce back from adversity depends, not all that surprisingly, on their underlying personality traits.
Although this result is not unexpected, it is a powerful example of the uncontrollable psychological forces that shape our lives. Unfortunately, when bad things happen to people, not everybody is inherently resilient.