My daughter Circe often asks me what I’m writing about when I’m sitting at my computer typing away. When I told her recently that I was writing about older workers who lose their jobs, she seemed perplexed.

I explained to her how hard it is for people to lose their jobs from a financial and a self-esteem perspective. I didn’t use those exact words, but she seemed to get what I was talking about.

She ended up writing a list for me on what workers can do to help their spirits when they face the loss of a job.

Here are her suggestions:
1. Eat candy.
2. Play video games.
3. Sing the happy song. (You know, the one by Bobby Mcferrin, “Don’t Worry Be Happy”)

There is something about resiliency. If you don’t have it you’re screwed.

“If you choose to, you can morph the worst of times into the best of times if you consciously make the effort to learn lessons from every setback,” says a colleague of mine Karen Salmansohn recently wrote a book about this very topic and she called it “The Bounce Back Book”.

“If you’ve been fired from a job or laid off,” she advises, “use this time as an opportunity to explore a whole new and different career? Or consider starting your own company. Or moving to another city. View ‘change’ as ‘chance.’ You now have a chance to learn something new about yourself - and do something new for yourself.”

I know, she sounds like a crunchy, wide-eyed flower child. But Karen is actually a cynical New Yorker who also tries hard to look at the bright side of life. She wrote a best-selling book called “Be Happy, Dammit” and that’s sort of her mantra.

I asked my intern Katherine to read her latest book and offer her thoughts.

Here’s her short review:

The phrase “you’re fired” is not exactly something an employee wants to hear. But, let’s face it, these words do get spoken. So, what do you do when you’re on the receiving end of that phrase?

Karen Salmansohn, a self-help book writer, dishes out some advice in The Bounce Back Book that may help the suddenly unemployed answer this question.

Bounce Back offers 75 tips that are based on everything from Eastern medicine to Greek philosophy and happiness research. Each tip condenses and simplifies a viewpoint into an easy-to-understand concept, so you don’t have to read an entire narrative to get to the point.

Because Bounce Back applies to anyone who has experienced setbacks and adversity, not every tip applies to the loss of a job, but a few hit the nail on the head.

Tip #15: Find your bounceable people
Salmansohn notes that after any kind of loss or setback it’s common to want to hide away, but it’s much more healthful to seek support. Spend time with people who want you to succeed and believe you can.

Tip #21: When life throws you curveballs, hit them out of the park.
Life has thrown you a curveball and there really isn’t anything you can do about it, except make it work positively for you. So, “if you’ve been fired,” says the author, “consider starting your own company.”

Tip #42: See work failure as “fullure”-full of lessons.
Many successful people have been fired, says Salmansohn. The only difference is that successful people learn from their mistakes and apply those lessons to future endeavors. According to Salmansohn, the Fortune 500 club could easily be called “the Misfortune 500 Club.”

Let’s not join!