38. Positive Psychology’s Hidden Flaw

Why emotional endurance falls short of resilience.

In the onslaught of erratic limbs, it was the stricken facial expression that stood out most. Not because it was out of place; it and others like it were to be expected.

My mom and I’d surveyed the half-full ski lodge while trying to distance ourselves from the blustery doorway behind us. The defeated facial expression belonged to a nearby dad, corralling his young kids through whichever side of the doorway fate would allow.

Mom dared a glance at me over her shoulder. She’d raised her eyebrows knowingly before they’d pulled into an expression of slight sympathy and gratitude that it wasn’t her dealing with chilly kiddos. I’d swallowed a snort, grateful we’d decided to meet up, despite the temperamental snow conditions.

In a bit of a role reversal, mom skis far more than I do now.

She’s completely reinvented herself since retiring.

There’s a significant crisis in the U.S. being misattributed to learned helplessness.

We’d shuffled our way to an open table, boots clicking and clunking with each heel-toed step. While shedding our gear, I looked around at the sea of faces ranging from overjoyed to distressed.

I was reminded of a topic gaining traction across the social feeds: learned helplessness.

The data links learned helplessness with a severe mental health crisis, connecting suicidal ideation with lower levels of resilience¹.

The repercussions are especially damaging among children in the U.S.

• 40% of students have persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.

• 20% of students seriously consider attempting suicide.

• 9% of students² and 20% of bullied LGBTQ+ students attempt suicide³.

For many, concern quickly shifts to assigning blame.

“Conversations like these are important” they’ll say, without having said anything.

They’ll glance around for nods of affirmation before finger-wagging at things like hustle culture and the digitization of social life. Kathleen Ethier, PhD, Director of the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, notes more of the same:

[social] factors likely include stigma, discrimination, online bullying, negative messages, and unrealistic standards around physical appearance…

structural factors include poverty, food insecurity, homelessness, lack of access to health care, and restricted educational opportunities.⁴

But this is where things congregate around learned helplessness—the idea that a perceived lack of control reduces motivation to change one’s situation⁵.

And so, their focus falls to resilience.

Or, you know, wanting kids to “toughen up”. Caricatures of a fragile, oversensitive, and superficial generation circulate. “Practice positive self-talk” some will encourage, while others will be quick to assert “stop waiting for handouts”. It’s about motivation, they’ll say. Or, well, lack of motivation.

Let’s cut the shit.

We have a significant mental health crisis, yes, and while an awareness of learned helplessness is a good start, it falls short of solving the problem: a mismanaged relationship with failure that conflates resilience with emotional endurance.

Buckle up. We’re going for a ride.

It’s not about admonishing learned helplessness so much as understanding why it’s become the default.

Mom’s the one who taught me to ski when I was two.

But it was actually when I’d started snowboarding at seven that I’d learned a seemingly simple, but monumental, life lesson: there are an infinite number of ways to get from point A to point B. Every skier and rider takes a different path down the mountain.

And yet, earning enough skill for that to be true is a hard barrier to entry.

47% of today’s youth say if they don’t understand something right away, they stop trying to understand⁶

That’s alarming—these are foundational mental frameworks that carry over into adulthood. The bigger problem is that we’ve turned a blind-eye to what’s changed.

Learning how to fail is a necessary life skill.

But here’s the paradox: to learn how to fail, you need the skill of learning how to fail.

And that’s where we’ve dropped the ball…umm…ski pole.

The limiting beliefs embedded in learned helplessness are caused by of a lack of resilience.

“Can you believe that?”, mom had asked me, leaning forward on her forearms in surprise. I sat back, slurping my too-hot-to-sip cup of coffee, mulling it over.

At a recent dinner party, she’d been introduced to a few folks who’d just moved to town. Mom had been dubbed the connector worth knowing in the local community.

Slipping my left boot off of the barstool’s footrest and extending my leg, I’d thought about the many changes she’d made. A career spent as a software engineer had kept her largely desk-bound. Now, on the days she’s not hiking, she’s biking. And in the winter, she spends those days skiing instead.

“Yeah”, I’d told her, “I can believe it”. After chancing another sip of scalding coffee, I’d tried to make sense of what really keeps us from learning how to fail, from taking chances. That’s when I’d realized it comes from equating failure with rejection.

For example, I used to shy away from sharing my thoughts during meetings because I was afraid that:

1. I wasn’t “qualified enough”

2. What I had to say wasn’t “smart enough”.

3. The info I’d contribute was “common knowledge”.

4. If I’d been wrong, I’d be excluded from new opportunities.

5. I’d waste everybody’s time.

But if I’m being honest with myself, those were justifications for the real reason I wouldn’t speak up: I was afraid of rejection.

Embedded within my fear was a want to blend in with the woodwork—to go unnoticed. It’s a trauma response in the same family as people-pleasing, a defense mechanism rooted in emotional neglect or abuse as a form of punishment

It’d been a mentor who finally told me, "you need to speak up in meetings and share your ideas”. Naturally, I’d spluttered a response that sounded something like, “me…? But.. bu..why?”.

It was what she’d said next that’d changed my entire perspective: “it hurts the team when you fail to share information. It creates more meetings, wasted time, and preventable mistakes.”

Holy shit. Here I was thinking I’d been avoiding failure and rejection, but I’d actually been orchestrating it?!?! Valuable feedback like that can be tough to hear. Harder, still, to harness and use for meaningful change.

Failure is designed to help us figure out the best way to try again. But associating failure with rejection creates limiting beliefs. These are the false assumptions and negative stories that keep us from trying at all.

Here are the ingredients for limiting beliefs as I see them:

• Fear of failure

• Rejection avoidance

• Emotional dysregulation

• Heightened inaction

• Increased stress

• Surrendering

The heat radiating from my cardboard coffee cup yanked my attention back to the hightop where I’d promptly set it down. It was fear of rejection and limiting beliefs, I’d reasoned, that keep us from learning how to fail.

We’re taught emotional endurance but then expected to be resilient instead. Whoops.

As mom and I continued to chat, only a few crumbs from my grilled cheese had dashed away from my plate. Across the hightop, she looked amused while sipping her mocha. In telling me more about her recent adventures, my appreciation for our coffee break had increased. Skiing was really an excuse to spend time together, anyway.

I’d thought about what it’d taken for her to put herself out there, past her comfort zone, to build the life she has now. My admiration was quickly accompanied by a growing frustration with the mismanagement of learned helplessness.

We humans rely on social norms to exist harmoniously. This is why those norms differ between generations. Where I’m from—where Mom and I are both from—accomplishments buy status and failures demote status. People can’t wait to show off their successes but are also ready with an excuse in case they fail or others do well.

Northshore Massachusetts can be like a sports bar where everyone is actually three kids in a trench coat, without realizing everyone else is also three kids in a trench coat.

In other words, the culture creates a focus on looking the part rather than becoming the part. The unfortunate byproduct is reinforced insecurity and fear of rejection rather than encouraged accountability.

It also creates a cutting social experience that promotes hiding our blemishes.

Playing not to lose is different than playing to win.

Successes are assumed to be at the expense of another’s loss (they’re not). I wish I’d known then that this stems from a mindset of scarcity, compared to one of abundance.

That’s why people step on those who’re succeeding—they do it in the hopes that they can get ahead. It’s a survival mechanism called Tall Poppy Syndrome⁷. It’s also what made humiliation such a widely used teardown tactic. People would even say “do as I say, not as I do” to acknowledge their shitty behavior while doing it anyway.

This perpetuates a fear of failure associated with rejection.

70% of youth say when something important goes wrong in their life, they can’t stop worrying about it.⁸

Without the act of trying and failing, we can’t develop resilience.

The ability to be resilient doesn’t come from withstanding hardship.

We teach people to fear rejection; designing and installing in them an operating system of limiting beliefs. This becomes an aversion to anything that might make us struggle. Teaching people to endure circumstance, not improve it, is the reason we get frustrated by stagnation when we expect to see progress.

Creating resilience requires shifted thinking, not braced thinking.

But more importantly it also requires a shift in our actions. Without acceptance of feedback and actionable steps that utilize it, we develop emotional endurance but not resilience.

• our tolerance for stress increases.

• our behavior causing stress remains unchanged.

Limiting beliefs only lead to emotional endurance, not resilience.

We can endure limits, but it’s resilience that helps us resolve them.

Dr. Carol Dweck attributes this to neuroplasticity, explaining “growth mindset theory” as the adaptability of our brains.

When we learn new things or face challenges, the cells in our brains form new connections. These connections strengthen with more practice and use.

This shows we can continually improve our skills if we keep learning and trying.⁹

This is huge because it also means we can quite literally outgrow our mistakes! Building on this premise, Dr. Angela Duckworth points to Grit as the combination of passion and perseverance in her bestselling book of the same name.

In her equation for measuring grit, Dr. Duckworth highlights how our effort counts twice:

1. Talent × Effort = Skill

2. Skill × Effort = Achievement

The takeaway?

Sure, talent plays a role, but it’s the refinement of failure and feedback (effort) that transform us and create results. It’s those limiting beliefs that lead to a practice of emotional endurance instead of resilience.

How we handle failure determines how we build resilience.

While society has preserved the definition of accountability, we’ve warped its application. The amount of accountability required to exist harmoniously has dramatically down-shifted as our resistance to failure and rejection has skyrocketed.

We’ve muddled our understanding of emotional regulation as a result.

Chatter, or internal rumination amplified by fear of the unknown, keeps us stuck in familiar situations and from new opportunities, says Dr. Ethan Kross, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan¹⁰.

It’s focusing on what we can control that creates choice for ourselves in any situation. We start to see possible actions and the different outcomes they could create. Choice creates ownership. This is what leads to accountability, and enables action.

Acknowledging a lack of control is still a choice.

So is the decision to be ok with it.

In this way, we can create control through an ever-present ability to choose for ourselves, no matter how big or small the decisions.

That’s resilience at work.

This is the Recipe for Resilience as I see it:

1. Failure

2. Vulnerability

3. Radical Acceptance

4. Accountability

5. Adaptability

6. Empathy

7. Desire

Taking action and collecting feedback are the keys to strengthening resilience. It’s how we use evidence beyond positive self-talk to disprove our negative assumptions and limiting stories. It gives us actions to take, steering us away from surrendering.

Spotting the problem is not enough—working to solve it is what builds resilience (rather than enduring the weight of the problem we’ve discovered).

Solving through action looks like this:

→ Learn what problems to look for.

→ Learn what causes them.

→ Learn about solutions.

→ Test the best option.

→ Repeat until solved.

This is what builds accountability. First, it will be uncomfortable. It might even add anxiety. Until feedback and action create visible results.

Then, we feel motivation, capability, and accomplishment—not immobilizing fear.

When we fail, sidestepping accountability is what prevents resilience.

I’d broached the topic I’d been pondering and asked Mom for her thoughts. She reflected on watching me learn to ski, play youth sports, navigate depression and anxiety, and ultimately muck my way through learning how to fail.

I sifted through my own memories, stumbling across one from the summer between 5th and 6th grades. My jaw had been clenched. Sweat dripped from my forehead. Standing on the side of the field, I’d been playing tug of war with the inside of my cheek trying to keep my terror hidden. Until my name had been called.

Wide eyed, I’d squeezed past the others to take my turn on the scale.

My town didn’t have football a team, but a friend had convinced me to join the program in the neighboring one. I still don’t know if I’d signed up because I’d thought it’d be fun or if I’d hoped people would stop calling me a f*g if I was a football player.

At the time, they grouped kids by weight as a means of safety and fairness. I’d been self conscious about being “big boned” for years. And here, on full display, I’d just learned I needed to lose 15 pounds—in less than a month—if I wanted to stay on the team. I’d felt my insecurities had been right.

The series of zips and snaps drew my focus to slightly less defeated dad and his recharged battalion of puffy-limbed mitten-droppers as they prepared to battle the weather outside.

Positive psychology without resilient action falls short.

That first year of football was a foundational shift for me. The weigh-in had been humiliating, sure. And, yet, if I’d wanted to play on the team with my friend, there was only one path forward. No amount of complaining or stewing would’ve helped.

So, I’d needed to shift into a mindset of “how can I accomplish this thing?”. Since I was working at a summer camp at the time, I’d started running before work and after, between work and football practice. And I’d completely changed my diet.

It’d worked. I’d ended up losing 20 pounds (five more than I had to). My insecurity had subsided and something else had taken its place—confidence. Despite questionable health and fitness practices for an 11 year old, my mindset had permanently shifted.

It reinforced something I still believe: anything is customizable.

Positive psychology and its mascot “Tragic Optimism” insist that belief and manifestation are the gateways to shrinking the gap between the happysmilies and the miserablites.

But tragic optimism promotes emotional endurance, not resilience. If we want something, but didn’t do anything about it today, yesterday, or last week, it’s unlikely we’ll have it tomorrow, next week, or next month.

“I’ve been meaning to” is code for “it’s not a priority right now”.

We either need to be ok with that, or do something about it.

How we handle obstacles is what determines our growth. And trend lines, created by consistency not intensity, are how we get meaningful results.

Small steps go far distances. Focus on: 1 goal, 2 milestones, 3 asks to start with.

• Be specific with how you spend your time.

• Be realistic about what you can do with it.

Engaging with failure as a puzzle rather than a punishment is how we can create resilience that endures.

Effort that makes visible progress becomes motivation, and then momentum. Limiting beliefs only lead to emotional endurance and learned helplessness. It’s combatting chatter with positive self-talk and accountability that develop grit—that help us to accept failure and feedback as encouragement for trying again.

Without the trying and failing part, we can’t build resilience.

My mom and I have each faced fear of the unknown. And we will again.

I like that we reference each other as examples and proof of what’s possible. It serves as a great reminder: you can hold an umbrella and be dry now; but your arm will get tired later. Or, you can get wet while you build a roof—you’ll be dry later and won’t need an umbrella, but you’ll be tired from building.

Either way, you’ll be wet and tired.

The rest is up to you.

onward.

-dmac

P.S. thank you for reading Unobstructed! Have thoughts or questions? Leave a comment—I’d love to hear from you. And if this post resonated, pass it to someone who’d enjoy it!

1. Graziani, Grant; Kunkle, Sarah; Shih, Emily. “Resilience in 2021—Descriptive Analysis of Individuals Accessing Virtual Mental Health Services: Retrospective Observational Study”, National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, PubMed Central (March 31, 2022)

2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Data Show Improvements in Youth Mental Health but Need for Safer and More Supportive Schools.” CDC Newsroom (August 6, 2024)

3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Mental Health: Poor Mental Health Effects Adolescent Well-being.” Adolescent and School Health, Adolescent mental health continues to worsen (November 29, 2024)

4. Abrams, Zara. “Kids’ mental health is in crisis. Here’s what psychologists are doing to help.” American Psychological Association 2023 Trends Report, (January 1, 2023)

5. American Psychological Association, “learned helplessness.” APA Dictionary of Psychology, (April 19, 2018)

6. Boys & Girls Clubs of America. “A Growth Mindset Matters: Helping Youth Be Resilient.” Parent Resources, Partner News (July 12, 2024)

7. Travers, Mark. “3 Signs That You’re Battling ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’—By A Psychologist.” Forbes, Innovation, Science (Jan 2, 2025)

8. Boys & Girls Clubs of America. “A Growth Mindset Matters: Helping Youth Be Resilient.” Parent Resources, Partner News (July 12, 2024)

9. ibid

10. Huberman, Andrew. “Dr. Ethan Kross: How to Control Your Inner Voice & Increase Your Resilience.” The Huberman Lab Podcast (Nov 25, 2024)