If you're invested in the stock market, you've likely lost a lot of money in the last year. I've spoken to people who've lost 20, 30, even 40 percent of their portfolio. My own has taken quite a hit.

However, it all seems to pale in comparison with the toll taken by Bernard Madoff and his Ponzi scheme, which robbed investors out of a total of $65 billion. I've read a number of reports sympathetic to these victims as well as a few that pointed fingers of blame in their direction.

You'd certainly expect the Madoff victims to be angry, and they are. You'd expect them to feel sorry for themselves, and to a certain extent, they do. However, out of this crisis, a silver lining has emerged. Support groups for victims are forming left and right, bringing people together so they don't have to go through this alone.

"These people have connected with each other in their grief, in their fear, and they've found a community of compassion and of sharing that has really transformed their situation. People who still have some liquidity are helping others pay their rent. A teacher who lost everything is now tutoring some of the children of wealthier families who have had to pull their kids out of private school. They have found wealth in their relationships with each other," says Lynne Twist, founder of the Soul of Money Institute. Twist is working with one such group, who've named themselves the Madoff Survivors Group.

What these people are exhibiting, whether they know it or not, is resilience. It's something I've become very interested in since writing my new book, "The Difference: How Anyone Can Prosper in Even the Toughest Times." Resilience is one of the factors that my research found to be imperative to finding lasting success. It's what keeps you moving forward, what keeps you out of the slough of negativity, and what keeps you believing that you can effect change if you just try. It doesn't mean that you ignore the bad things that happen in life, but instead by tapping into your resources of resilience, you will focus on what you can control instead of dwelling on what you can't. If you want financial comfort, it is necessary have to have resilience.

Luckily, it's not necessarily a trait you're born with. It's something you can develop. How? Take these lessons from the Madoff victims:

-- Take action. Renee Bunnell, a Madoff investor who lives in New York City, started the Madoff Survivors Group a few days after the news of his scam came out. When I asked her why, she said it was instinct. "I knew that we had to all find each other and find a way to help each other. It was clear that this was a catastrophic event, and I don't think anyone understood it -- I certainly didn't." At a time when many people would have holed up in their home for days, weeks, even months, she launched this effort to bring people together. When you're faced with a problem, whether it's as big as Bunnell's or whether it's something much less earth shattering, you simply need to take action. Even the smallest step can effect a positive change. Ignoring trouble because you don't know what to do or where to start only lets the problems increase. Instead, brainstorm a few solutions and then put one to work. This at least gets you moving at a time when you might otherwise feel paralyzed.

-- Target your strengths. Ronnie Sue Ambrosino, another Madoff investor who, along with her husband, lost $1.66 million, is serving as the makeshift spokesperson of another support group, the Bernard Madoff Fraud Victims Support Group. She says they've tapped into the skills of each member to make progress in their fight against the SEC and SIPC. "We have people working on the legal end, the financial end, the congressional end, and we're getting word out to the public so they understand that this is a government failure. We're all finding our niches and coming together with our strengths to build a picture of what we need to do to move forward," Ambrosino explains.

-- Emphasize the positive. This, admittedly, is very difficult for someone who has just lost their life's savings. But it's not impossible if you simply learn to change the topics of your conversations, says Twist. "We don't live in our circumstances as much as we live in the conversation we have about our circumstances," says Twist. "When you shift the conversation to all the positive things you're doing, you shift the conversation you're living in." For the Madoff investors who have joined a support group, the silver lining there may be the support groups themselves, Twist adds. "One guy lost $285 million dollars. He's had to sell houses, he's sold boats, and he's finding that there is a real richness in being thrown in almost by chance with people who he never would have connected with otherwise."

-- Be realistic. Where your money is concerned, you are not always going to come out on top. That doesn't mean you should have to swallow the fact that you lost it all to a criminal, but it does mean that the average investor is going to have to accept the ups and downs of the market. "One thing that always helps when we have a personal crisis is to see it in the larger context. Here, that is that what is unraveling and falling apart is that which was unsustainable and rotten in the first place," says Twist. If the market is on a roll for a while, history tells us that eventually it will sink -- just as this low period we're in now will eventually pick up.