London:

Clearly you are brilliant — the best a boss could ever hope for. But you know, sometimes the halo will slip. In a blink of an eye, you’ll go from star to dunce. Praise will turn to criticism, and work won’t seem half so jolly. And neither will you.

But if you’re in a huff, you won’t be alone. We are turning into a generation of sore losers — with the tiniest setback heralding a descent into abject misery. Time to pull yourself together: coping with criticism is a valuable skill, whether you are the most junior secretary in the office or secretary general of UN. And some of us need to learn how to do it better.

“If you are going to be successful, you need to have failed,” stresses Professor Ivan Robertson, an occupational psychologist.

Developing robust survival strategies is the smart response. “What makes a difference is how we deal with success and failure,” says Robertson. Enjoying and analysing success is a way of withstanding failure and putting it in perspective. But we have a tendency to dismiss our successes as accidental, while we pore over our failures as if they hold the key to our personality.

This is not the approach taken by Alan Sugar or Donald Trump. These ferocious Apprentice frontmen have survived career blips to dwarf the timid underachievements of the average office worker — at one point Trump had business debts of $3.5bn. Compared with that, a few harsh words from the boss or missing out on a second interview suddenly looks a little less catastrophic.

You don’t have to be a global entrepreneur to benefit from taking a bullish attitude either. “In one sense, there is no such thing as ‘failure’; there is only ‘feedback’ — everything that happens to you can be useful,” says Gladeana McMahon, codirector of the Centre for Coaching.

McMahon also counsels against procrastinating in the hope your problems will go away. “Whatever happens, take action. Don’t wait until the last minute because you can’t face up to what’s happening.”

Sometimes, falling from favour at work creeps up on us unawares. One minute we are the golden boy or girl, and the next minute we are invisible. And as hard as we try to move up the next level, we seem to be stuck — worse, we start believing those interview rejections are personal.

In these situations, it’s important to take the long view: even painful interviews can help you hone your professional skills. “You need to put things in perspective, be specific about what has happened and avoid leaping to the emotive conclusion,” advises chartered psychologist Dr Jeremy Adams, a course leader at London Metropolitan University. “Don’t think: ‘This has happened, so I am useless...”

Don’t feel bad about having a negative attitude either — that only makes it harder to shift. And whatever else, don’t take your lead from television — those hysterical contestants on The X Factor and Fame Academy have no place in the office.

Adams believes that we agonise over failures which are irrelevant. Not only do we need to get a grip on our emotions, we need to develop clarity about our true ambitions. “What you may see as failure may be different from how other people see it,” he says. “Whether you agree to see it as they see it, is up to you. Did you really want that promotion — or did you just think you wanted it?”