Was George Washington a failure?

“Poverty around the world is plummeting; half the world is now middle class; and illiteracy, disease and deadly violence are receding.” So reports the Wall Street Journal, probably to the surprise of many.

We might wonder if optimists are reading the same news as the rest of us. The stock market plunged yesterday after Apple warned it would miss its quarterly sales forecast due to weakening growth in China. The standoff over the partial government shutdown continues, with few predicting that today’s talks will make significant progress.

It even turns out that, according to The Smithsonian, the world’s oldest woman might have been her daughter masquerading as her mother.

Was George Washington a failure?

But, as Rick Newman points out in his book, Rebounders, the key to success is not a lack of failure but our response to it. Examples:

• George Washington “lost more battles than he won during the Revolutionary War.”
• Norman Vincent Peale’s wife rescued the manuscript of The Power of Positive Thinking from the trash after it had been rejected repeatedly by New York publishers; it became an all-time bestseller.
• A 1914 fire destroyed Thomas Edison’s manufacturing operations, but the sixty-seven-year-old rebuilt and modernized factories that revolutionized technology.

According to Newman, “A whole body of scientific research has shown that overcoming setbacks can make people stronger, smarter, and more durable.”

If you’re like most of us, you’re facing significant challenges today. So, let’s ask a practical question: What’s the key to becoming a “rebounder”?

The value of a positive attitude

In a recent Daily Briefing, Dr. Nick Pitts cited a Yale University study of people carrying a gene linked to dementia. Those with positive attitudes about aging were 50 percent less likely to develop the disorder than less positive people.

Dr. Pitts also reported that positive thinking has been shown to reduce anxiety and improve overall…