Title: Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness
Author: Rick Hanson is a long-practicing and well-known psychologist whose research has focused on the brain science behind happiness and resilience.
What is it? A book. This book is both a practical guide and a toolkit to help you increase resilience and build inner strength in your life.
Who should read it? Like most self-help books, Resilient has something to offer most people. But we think it may be especially useful to people who have struggled with recurring bouts of anxiety and/or depression, as this book can help you form new habits of thinking that may be useful in combating those feelings.
Two minute skinny: Dr. Hanson, after years of study and research, comes to readers with a practical, skills-based resource that can help you understand both what humans need to move from surviving to thriving as well as the skills you need to facilitate that transition. In Resilient, Hanson suggests there are four ways that humans go about meeting their needs. Those include: recognizing what is true, resourcing oneself, regulating thoughts, feelings, and actions, and relating to others in the world at large.
Taking these four ways in which people meet their needs – recognizing, resourcing, regulating, and relating – the book is divided into four sections, one for each skill. Under each skill, Dr. Hanson offers a chapter on an inner strength that you can work on to build a sense of safety, satisfaction, and connection. Working to build these inner strengths with consistency and intention will help you find a stronger sense of grounding in your life, allowing resilience and calm to move through you more easily.
Dr. Hanson offers different suggestions of how to use and move through this book. Our favorite was taking one chapter for each month of the year. This will give the content time to sink in and give you time to practice building each skill. By the end of the year, you can reflect back on what you have learned and how you have grown.
Rating? Worth the Investment? As self-help books go, we give it an 8/10. It’s helpful, and if you really take it to heart, real change in your life could occur.
Listen, I don’t have time for a whole book… What’s second best? Check out the author’s podcast – much of his research is contained within the episodes, and he discusses the topics of the book with other experts in the field.
And in case you wanted to go deeper: Dr. Rick Hanson has written several other books, and offers a wide array of other writings. Here he offers many simple daily practices to engage with to build and maintain happiness and resilience. You could also attend a summit he is hosting on resilience at the Greater Good Science Center. It’s free!
Blogpost by Hallie Moberg Brauer
