resilient people

''The main characteristic of resilient people is that they believe that bad events are temporary,'' said Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. ''People who believe that bad events are changeable and that they go away in time are exactly the people who try harder when bad things happen.'' Optimists have a big edge over pessimists. ''All of us sometimes say optimistic things and all of us sometimes say pessimistic things,'' Seligman said. ''The question is the frequency. How readily do we say optimistic things? That is not something we are geared to remember, so people are often all wet about whether they are optimists.'' Seligman has tested more than a million Americans and found that optimists are rarely depressed, have good immune systems and, in lab experiments, fail to be discouraged when others give up on difficult tasks. There are behaviors that make for resilience: Facing problems, keeping relationships with people you trust and finding ways to tolerate emotions long enough to understand them. For some, exercise can serve as an emotional release; for others, keeping a journal helps to put a traumatic incident in perspective. ''I don't believe we are at all prisoners of our pasts,'' Seligman said.