Book Review: The Resilience Factor: 7 Essential Skills for Overcoming Life's Inevitable Obstacles

Amazon.com Review nnIn the capable hands of psychologists Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté, resilience is not a Band-Aid or a buzzword. It is a habit of mind. The Resilience Factor is a practical roadmap for navigating unexpected challenges, surprises, and setbacks at work and home. Their premise--that your thinking style determines your resilience--underlies the books promise: you can boost resilience by changing the way you think about adversity. nnThe authors synthesize decades of research in cognitive psychology, particularly the work of Aaron Beck and Martin Seligman, to create seven practical strategies for bouncing back. Each strategy demonstrates how "thinking styles" affect emotions and behavior. "The secret is accurate thinking, not positive thinking," they explain. After completing a "Resilience Questionnaire," readers learn to turn off negative thoughts, avoid thinking traps, detect "icebergs"--the basic beliefs that cause us to overreact--and restore perspective. Each strategy is illustrated with vivid examples, including acting-out teenagers, battle-torn marriages, downsized workplaces, and the loss of loved ones. This insightful book offers clear descriptions of resilient thinking and workable tools for changing our minds. --Barbara Mackoff nnProduct InformationnnResilience is a crucial ingredient–perhaps the crucial ingredient–to a happy, healthy life. More than anything else, it's what determines how high we rise above what threatens to wear us down, from battling an illness, to bolstering a marriage, to carrying on after a national crisis. Everyone needs resilience, and now two expert psychologists share seven proven techniques for enhancing our capacity to weather even the cruelest setbacks. nnThe science in The Resilience Factor takes an extraordinary leap from the research introduced in the bestselling Learned Optimism a decade ago. Just as hundreds of thousands of people were transformed by "flexible optimism," readers of this book will flourish, thanks to their enhanced ability to overcome obstacles of any kind. Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté are seasoned resilience coaches and, through practical methods and vivid anecdotes, they prove that resilience is not just an ability that we're born with and need to survive, but a skill that anyone can learn and improve in order to thrive. nnReaders will first complete the Resilience Questionnaire to determine their own innate levels of resilience. Then, the system at the heart of The Resilience Factor will teach them to:nn• Cast off harsh self-criticisms and negative self-imagesn• Navigate through the fallout of any kind of crisisn• Cope with grief and anxietyn• Overcome obstacles in relationships, parenting, or on the job n• Achieve greater physical healthn• Bolster optimism, take chances, and embrace life nnIn light of the unprecedented challenges we've recently faced, there’s never been a greater need to boost our resilience. Without resorting to feel-good pap or quick-fix clichés, The Resilience Factor is self-help at its best, destined to become a classic in the genre. nnTo view this book on Amazon.com, click here.