The Rules of Success

7  Mastering what life throws at you

On the basis of the survivors of 9/11, the New York psychologist George Bonanno demonstrated how differently people process strokes of fate. Over a span of two years, Bonanno studied people who had experienced the fall of the Twin Towers first-hand. Some of them had been under such shock that they developed permanent psychoses, became depressed, had anxiety psychoses and other chronic disorders. Others showed either only slight symptoms or none at all. A total of 35% of those who had survived the terror attacks actually showed themselves to be resilient, i.e. they displayed no symptoms or recovered very quickly. This is a remarkable value considering the singularity and gravity of this trauma, but this also ...