Читать книгу Making Happy People: The nature of happiness and its origins in childhood - Paul Martin - Страница 27

To remain happy, we must be able to cope with a certain amount of upset and stress. Even the most fortunate individuals experience some setbacks, disappointments and problems, no matter how comfortable their circumstances. And of course stress is not something that affects only adults: children and young people also encounter potential sources of stress in their lives, including relationship problems with friends or family, high-stakes exams, and anxieties about their own attractiveness. Like adults, they need to have effective methods for coping.

The capacity to maintain or restore well-being in the face of adversity is referred to by psychologists as resilience, or hardiness. The evidence confirms, unsurprisingly, that resilient individuals are usually happier than those who are more easily cast down by life’s inevitable upsets. Individuals who display high levels of resilience are typically found to have supportive personal relationships, persistence, motivation, an ability to plan ahead, and practical knowledge. Resilience is actually a common characteristic of children, prompting one developmental psychologist to call it ‘ordinary magic’. Even for children growing up in deprived or difficult circumstances, there is nothing inevitable about future problems. Many of them will cope.