Stanford Department of Psychology professor Carol Dweck has done extensive research on what she calls "mindsets" and there are two primary types:

1. Fixed mindset: people who believe abilities are innate. You are just talented in an area or you're not.
2. Growth mindset: people who believe abilities are developed. You can learn and grow yourself.

People with a growth mindset are more resilient to challenges related to their abilities and performance than those with a fixed mindset.

As to what leads people to these different perspectives, a lot of media in recent years has cited Dweck's work on this with respect to parenting. In the American culture of positive reinforcement, praise is often the main socially acceptable way to encourage your kids. However, Dweck's studies have suggested that the type of praise you receive can strongly impact whether you end up with a fixed or growth mindset.

An excerpt where Dweck references one of her earlier papers on effects of praising innate qualities versus effort and process (http://www.stanford.edu/dept/psy...):

People can also learn these self-theories from the kind of praise they receive (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Ironically, when students are praised for their intelligence, they move toward a fixed theory. Far from raising their self-esteem, this praise makes them challenge-avoidant and vulnerable, such that when they hit obstacles their confidence, enjoyment, and performance decline. When students are praised for their effort or strategies (their process), they instead take on a more malleable theory— they are eager to learn and highly resilient in the face of difficulty.

Thus self-theories play an important (and causal role) in challenge seeking, self-regulation, and resilience, and changing self-theories appears to result in important real-world changes in how people function.

People who were praised more for their innate skills can end up focused on maintaining this "self-image," afraid to fail. These aren't those who value and become resilient.

Another excerpt from an article Dweck writes about mindsets and coping with setbacks (http://champions.stanford.edu/perspectives/the-mindset-of-a-champion/):

It will come as no surprise that the mindsets lead to different ways of coping with difficulty. Because in the fixed mindset, setbacks are seen as indicating a lack of ability, this mindset often leaves people few good ways of reacting to setbacks. In one study (Blackwell, et al, 2005), we found that those with a fixed mindset were more likely to say that if they did poorly on a test—even if it were in a new course and one they liked a lot—they would study less in the future and would seriously consider cheating. This is how people cope when they think setbacks mean they lack permanent ability. In contrast, those students with a growth mindset said they would study more or study differently. They planned to take charge of the situation and work to overcome the setback.

When the going gets rough, people in the growth framework not only take charge of improving their skills, they take charge of their motivation as well (cf. Grant, 2004). Despite setbacks—or even because of them—they find ways to keep themselves committed and interested. Instead, students with a fixed framework lose interest as they lose confidence. As the difficulty mounts, their commitment and enjoyment go down. Since all important endeavors involve setbacks sooner or later (more likely, sooner and later), it is a serious liability to lose interest and enjoyment just when you need greater effort.

Putting it all together, this means that a fixed mindset leads people to value looking good over learning, to disdain and to fear effort, and to abandon effective strategies just when they need them most. A growth mindset, on the other hand, leads people to seek challenges and learning, to value effort, and to persist effectively in the face of obstacles.

I fully agree with Sandra Liu Huang's answer.  I'd like to expand on it.  I've had the pleasure to work closely with Carol Dweck as her partner in Mindset Works (http://www.mindsetworks.com).

Research shows that there are two things that are critical to build resilience:

1.- Mindsets, or Beliefs:

The growth mindset: The most important belief/understanding is the growth mindset –the understanding of intelligence or abilities as qualities we develop over time– as Sandra Liu Huang described, because it is foundational to build other key beliefs, know-how and skills, and because it generates resilience.  A growth mindset leads to a positive view of effort (vs something only people with low ability need), the embracing of challenge (vs. staying in our comfort zone), and an understanding that growth or success involves setbacks or failure (which directly ties to resilience), as Sandra described.

Relevance:  Research also shows that people are more effective and resilient when they believe that the work they're doing is worthwhile, or valuable, or interesting.  i.e. they're not doing it because someone is ordering them to do so, but because they believe they have something to gain from it.

Belonging:  People are more effective and resilient when they see themselves as belonging to a community that is involved in the desired activity.  e.g. a student will persevere more if they see themselves as belonging to the school academic community, or an athlete will be more resilient if she sees herself as fully belonging to a team.

Success: Also very tied to the growth mindset is the belief that one can succeed.  If one doesn't believe that one can succeed, then one gives up more easily.

2.- Know-How, or Growth Strategies:

Also important for resilience is knowing strategies that help you grow, or overcome difficulties.  If some has great mindsets but doesn't know how to tackle a challenge, and after searching he doesn't find effective strategies, he starts developing a fixed mindset, or believing he can't succeed.  So mindsets and strategies reinforce one another.  We need to know how to effectively manage ourselves, what to do when we encounter a setback, how to go about learning, etc.  Knowing the 'how' - things like deliberate practice, self-management techniques, how to foster creativity, etc. - makes the person more resilient and reinforces mindsets.  (if you're interested in learning more about 'The How', a great book is Talent is Overrated, by Geoffrey Colvin.)

What doesn't work:

What doesn't work is:

Extrinsic rewards:  extrinsic rewards (like money, or "points"...) kills intrinsic motivation.  So, when you remove the rewards, the person does the activity LESS than before the extrinsic rewards were introduced.  Extrinsic rewards can be helpful initially to jump start a behavior, but they should be removed promptly to help the person build the internal resilience/motivation through mindsets and know-how.

Directly addressing behaviors: What we often do when we want to increase resilience is try to change the behaviors directly, without addressing mindsets or know-how (e.g. ordering the other person to try harder, or tracking the behaviors and focusing on them without any work on beliefs or strategies).  Research shows that this is not nearly as effective as focusing on mindsets and strategies (which lead to the behaviors).

A great research literature review that looked at a very broad set of research and concluded the above, in the context of student academic success, is the following:
http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publica...   

Here's a TEDx talk I did on the growth mindset:

More resources on how to build a growth mindset, a belief in success and effective learning strategies, at: http://www.mindsetworks.com/free...

I think the first place to look is our evolutionary frame. A hundred thousand years ago, people lived in small tribes. Rejection was uncommon but fatal. If you were dead to your tribe, you were probably dead. If you were perceived as physically weak or sexually unattractive at age 15, there was a serious risk that you'd never reproduce.

In the modern world, rejection is common (because the in-degree of "hubs" in social graphs is so large) and generally close to harmless. We have so much experience with it, and so much data that shows a pattern of even the most competent people getting rejected, that we know intellectually that it's impersonal and ubiquitous, and that the low success probability is counteracted by the large number of opportunities to succeed. We don't even call it rejection, but attribute it to forces like "bureaucratic friction" or "having the right idea in the wrong time".

Resiliency comes from an ability to realistically analyze setbacks, which often have complex causes. People who aren't resilient have a variety of unhealthy tendencies, listed from the most unhealthy to the least:

1. Internalize the rejection. ("It happened because I'm a loser.") This leads to depression and implosion.
2. Exaggerate the damage or long-lasting nature (perceived autocorrelation) of the rejection. ("Now that I got fired, I'll never get another job.") This leads to bitterness and "cold" anger, which is more dangerous than the "hot" kind because it's long-lasting and tends toward generalization.
3. Get angry about it. ("It happened because he is an asshole.") This leads to "hot" anger and, often, stupid behaviors (revenge).
4. Prematurely generalize about the environment. ("It happened because <industry X> is full of sharks.") This doesn't usually impair general psychological health, but it creates an inaccurate model of the world and leads to sub-optimal choices and lost opportunities in the future.

We're probably biologically hard-wired toward these traits, because simplistic and evocative but incorrect models of the world, in a more dangerous time, were "fit" and therefore favored if they kept people from doing things that got them killed. If premature generalization leads to people staying the fuck away from smilodons (saber-tooth cats) then it was a good thing.

What I've observed among resilient people is that they're good at taking apart the causes of failures and rejections, which usually involve a lot of things going wrong at once. Less resilient people tend to focus on one principal factor and try to assess fault, while the more resilient people treat it as a learning experience and look for ways to avoid the same mistakes in the future. You need a stopping point on this analysis, or else it becomes an obsession, but this seems to be the best way to handle it.

I've read a decent amount of the academic research in the area of positive psychology and resilience.  I would largely echo what Sandra Liu Huang and Hunter McCord point out.  Here is my list of the differences:

1. Positive mindset (ideally including an overall self-efficicacy about life or at least about particular areas of life)
2. Growth mindset/Flexible mindset
3. Ability to see beyond the present (i.e. the long view of success & failure)
4. Models/Heros/Inspirations (probably even specific role models of resiliance as well as achievement)
5. Self-reflection (ie the ability to step outside yourself or the moment)
6. Emotional support system (friends, family, mentors, etc...)
7. Probably those who understand their emotional reactions are better able to control them.
8. Kids who have encountered tough challenges and can draw on those successes in the future
9. Kids with a high level of gratitude or a practice of gratitude

Seligman even talks about the idea of people who experience post-traumatic growth.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pos...
• http://ptgi.uncc.edu/articles.htm

By the way, you can look at the literature on grit and positive psychology you might find more research.

I'm not sure this will yield any more insights....but here is the link for the Penn Resilience Program:

• http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/prp...
• http://www.authentichappiness.sa...

Two more links I thought I should throw in--one from presumably some research basis and one from a Practical Parenting blog:

• http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/re...
• http://www.ronitbaras.com/focus-...

I hope this helps answer the question.

A great book is Resilience by Andrew Zolli. There are two really interesting concepts that he brings to the table that go beyond the mindsets principles that have been mentioned here.

The first is the definition of resilience, which applies not only to people, but also systems. Resilience is the ability of a system to return to it's core purpose after significant disruption.

What's interesting about the definition is that it recognizes resilience is about adaptability and the ability to "reconfigure" to stay on purpose. He applies this to people (e.g. PTSD), electricity grids, communities and global threats like climate change.

The second interesting contribution is the differentiation of Robust vs Resilient. Many people/systems are robust yet fragile, and not resilient. Robust system can absorb enormous amounts of stress and pressure, but because of the interconnectedness and complexity of the parts, a single small failure can bring the entire system down very quickly, the most obvious example of a robust, but fragile system is the global financial system that went into crisis in 2008.

Everything that we do nowadays requires a ridiculous level of complexity to work, whether it's managing social relationships or developing a new product. Increasing complexity increases the fragility of any system and we seem to build for robustness (stress) rather than resilience (adaptability).

We also have a natural tendency to stress any system/person to the maximum, believing that if it coped with the previous stress, it can probably cope with a little more. An interesting example of this was when the law forced people to wear seatbelts, the mortality rate on the roads went up, but not not because more drivers were killed, but more pedestrians. Drivers felt safer, so drove faster.

The book goes on to suggest a number of ways to build resilience, in people and systems, that are very practical and useful.

Great question, one I am sure most of us have reflected upon in one time or another. According to an article I found, resilient people tend to engage in five specific emotional actions when experiencing a stressful event. They include:

• Maintaining a positive attitude
• Recognizing that the negative experience is temporary
• Staying flexible
• Maintaining one’s physical health
• Seeking out support