DNF. I got the ick when she quoted a paedophile then proceeded to valorise the Fight response while denigrating the Freeze response. Trauma responses are essentially out of one's control, and don't reflect anything about the victim/survivor's moral worth or strength, so.

A practical, compassionate guide

One of the better "self- help" guides I've read in quite some time. Contains many useful strategies for work, parenting & every stressful situation in between.

I was expecting more depth, but this felt incredibly surface level to me. This book is good for people who are new to the self-help genre and want a basic intro to emotional intelligence.

If you're open to adjusting the way you behave in a human world, this book is extremely helpful. It not only teaches ways to deal with external factors negatively contributing to our life, but also to deal with internal factors. It helps create a mindfulness road map using common experiences to help you become more agile and less reactive.

I have so many favorite sections to track here. I found this book very helpful at this point in my life.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts:
Emotions, from blinding rage to wide-eyed love, are the body's immediate physical responses to important signals from the outside world.

Our suffering, our disengagement, our relationship challenges, and out other life difficulties are almost never solved by thinking int he same old, automatic way.

The 4 most common hooks:
1) Thought-blaming: "I thought I would sound stupid, so I didn't say it." The speaker blames his or her thoughts for his or her actions - or in-actions. Thoughts in isolation do not cause behavior. Old stories don't cause behavior. We cause our behavior.
2) Monkey-mindedness: Monkey mind is obsessed with the push of the past ("I just can't forgive what he did") and the pull of the future ("I can't wait to quit and give my manager a piece of my mind"). It's also often filled with bossy, judgmental inner language, words like "must" and "can't" and "should". Monkey mind takes you out of the moment and out of what is best for your life.
3) Old, outgrown ideas: This is trying to live out an expired story.
4) Wrongheaded righteousness: The need to have the rightness of your cause validated. This can steal years of your life.

The paradox of happiness is that deliberately striving for it is fundamentally incompatible with the nature of happiness itself. Real happiness comes through activities you engage in for their won sake rather than for some extrinsic reason, even when the reason is something as seemingly benevolent as the desire to be happy.

Striving for happiness establishes an expectation, which confirms the saying that expectations are resentments waiting to happen. That's why holidays and family events are often disappointing, if not downright depressing. Our expectations are so high that it's almost inevitable we'll be let down.

Our raw feelings can be the messengers we need to teach us things about ourselves and can prompt insights into important life directions.

According to folklore - when a member of a certain tribe acts badly or does something wrong, he must take his place alone at the center of the village, Every member of the tribe gathers around him. Then, one at a time, each person- man, woman, and child - lets him have it. But they aren't describing what a jerk he is. Instead, the villagers carefully catalog all his good qualities. Whether true or not, the legend illustrates the power of a kind word (or two, or two thousand).

You can't rebuild a city when it's still under bombardment, but only when the attacks stop and peace prevails. The same goes with our internal world: When we stop fighting what is, e can move on to efforts that will be more constructive and more rewarding.

Self-compassion is the antidote to shame.

People who are more accepting of their own failures may actually be more motivated to improve. Self-compassionate people aim just as high as self-critical people do. The difference is that self-compassionate people don't fall apart when, as sometimes happens, they don't meet their goals.

One of advertising's basic jobs is to make us feel discontented so we crave stuff whether we need it or not, and whether or not it's good for us. Self-acceptance and self-compassion do not move the merchandise. So what we're confronted with instead are relentless invitations to compare ourselves with others - and, inevitably, to come out lacking.

Previous societies offered the encouragement and support of extended families, and the stable social structure of small villages. We citizens of the industrialized world, however, often live hundreds or thousands of miles away from our nearest relative, in anonymous and isolating cities, where we're bombarded by images not just of all the cool gadgets and other gleaming goodies we do not possess, but also of gorgeous men and women who set a standard of photo-shopped perfection that is impossible to meet. This leads to the 'contrast effect'.

Self-acceptance usually takes a big hit anytime we start making comparisons.

Once you start comparing yourself with others, even if you believe yourself the winner, you get hooked on one-upmanship and external validation to buoy your own sense of value. That's a losing game.

Keep your eyes on your own work. You'll stop second-guessing yourself.

One of the greatest human triumphs is to choose to make room in our hearts for both the joy and the pain, and to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. This means seeing feelings not as being 'goo' or 'bad' but as just 'being.' Yes, there is this relentless assumption in our culture that we need to do something when we have inner turmoil. We must struggle with it, fix it, control it, and remain positive. What we really need to do, though, is also what is most simple and obvious: nothing. That is, to just welcome these inner experiences, breathe into them, and learn their contours without racing for the exits.

You can't choose or control your desires. You can choose whether you light that cigarette, eat a second helping of dessert, or go home with somebody you just met at a bar.

Words have enormous power. The wrong word has led to wards, not to mention the end of countless marriages. There's a world of difference between stress and anger, or stress and disappointment, or stress and anxiety. If we can't accurately label what we're feeling, it becomes difficult to communicate well enough to get the support we need. What does 'I'm stressed' really mean to you?

We don't feel guilty about the things we don't care about.

Once we stop struggling to eliminate distressing feelings or to smother them with positive affirmations or rationalizations, they can teach us valuable lessons. Self-doubt and self-criticism, even anger and regret, shine light into those dark, murky, sometimes demon-haunted places that you most want to ignore, which are places of vulnerability or weakness. Showing up to these feelings can help you anticipate the pitfalls and prepare more effective ways of coping during critical moments.

To live an intentional, meaningful life and to really thrive, one of the most critical skills to develop is this ability to take a meta-view, the view from above that broadens your perspective and makes you sensitive to context. This skill helps you gain new perspective on your own emotions and how others might be feeling, and is a key factor in our ability to self-reflect.

The opposite of mindfulness: mindlessness. It's the state of unawareness and autopilot. Your'e not really present. Instead you're relying too heavily on rigid rules or shopworn distinctions that haven't been thought through.

"All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone." - Blaise Pascal

Ways to become more mindful: Being with the breath; Mindfully observe; Rework a routine; Really listen

Walking your why is the art of living by your own personal set of values - the beliefs and behaviors that you hold dear that give you meaning and satisfaction.

To make decisions that match up with the way you hope to live going forward, you have to be in touch with the things that matter to you so you can use them as signposts.

If you know your own personal values and generally live by them, you are also likely to be comfortable with who you are.

Characteristics of values: Freely chosen, not goals, guide you, active not static, bring freedom from social comparisons, foster self-acceptance. A value is something you can use.

Questions to help identify your values:
Deep down, what matters to me?
What relationships do I want to build?
What do I want my life to be about?
How do I feel most of the time? What kinds of situations make me feel most vital?
If a miracle occurred and all the anxiety and stress in my life were suddenly gone, what would my life look like, and what new things would I pursue?

Values actually help us access greater levels of willpower and grit and safeguard us from negative social contagion.

Courage is not an absence of fear; courage is fear walking.

And while fear comes in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes it appears in disguise (as procrastination, perfection, shutting down, unassertiveness, or excuses), it speaks only one word: no, as in "no, I'll just screw it up." "Nah, I'll sit this one out."

To stay truly alive, we need to choose courage over comfort so that we keep growing, climbing, and challenging ourselves, that that means not getting stuck thinking we've found heaven when we're simply sitting on the nearest plateau.

The only people who never feel hurt, vulnerable, mad, anxious, depressed, stressed, or any other uncomfortable emotions that come with taking on challenges are those who are no longer with us. Sure, the dead do not annoy their families or coworkers, cause problems, or speak out of turn. But do you really want the dead to be your role models?

The right amount of stress - whelmed but not overwhelmed- can be a great motivator. As uncomfortable as it feels at times, its the stress that keeps us moving forward.

No one ever got anywhere that mattered without stress and discomfort.

The ultimate litmus test for any action should be this: Is it going to get me closer to being the person I want to be?

Ask yourself, "When was the last time I tried something and failed?" If you draw a blank, you're probably playing it too safe.

Do you truly know the people around you, or do you rely on small talk to limit anything deep and real?

If you're faced with a grit-or-quit decision, here are some things to ask yourself:
-Overall, do I find joy or satisfaction in what I'm doing?
-Does this reflect what is important to me - my values?
-Does this draw on my strengths?
-If I'm completely honest with myself, do I believe that I (or this situation) can really be a success?
-What opportunities will I give up if I persevere with this?
-Am I being gritty, or am I being stupid?

The bottom-line, take-home message brought to you by emotional agility is this: Denying stress, bottling it, or brooding about it is counterproductive. Avoiding stress is impossible, but what we can do is adjust our relationship to stress. It doesn't have to own us. We can own it.

Emotions pass. They are transient. There is nothing in mental experience that demands an action.

Emotions are not scary. No matter how big or bad any particular feeling seems in the moment, I am bigger than it is.

Here's how to encourage autonomy:
-Honor him for who he actually is rather than who you wish him to be.
-Give her a true choice whenever possible - which is not the same as not establishing expectations.
-Provide a rationale for the decisions you make when no choice is possible.
-Minimize external rewards.

Summary:
Appoint yourself the agent of your own life and take ownership of your own development, career, creative spirit, work, and connections.

Accept your full self- the whole package - with compassion, courage, and curiosity.

Welcome your inner experiences, breathe into them, and learn their contours without racing for the exit.

Embrace an evolving identity and release narratives that no longer serve you.

Let go of unrealistic dead people's goals by accepting that being alive means sometimes getting hurt, failing, being stressed, and making mistakes.

Free yourself from pursuing perfection so you can enjoy the process of loving and living.

Open yourself up to the love that will come with hurt and the hurt that will come with love; and to the success that will come with failure and the failure that will come with success.

Abandon the idea of being fearless, and instead walk directly into your fears, with your values as your guide, toward what matters to you. Courage is not an absence of fear; courage is fear walking.

Choose courage over comfort by vitally engaging with new opportunities to learn and grow, rather than passively resigning yourself to your circumstances.

Recognize that life's beauty is inseparable from its fragility. We're young, until we're not. We're healthy, until we're not. We're with those we love until we're not.

Learn how to hear the heartbeat of your own why.

Anytime you get hooked, identify that thought for what it is (a thought) and that emotion for what it is (an emotion).

Journal prompt at end of day: "As I look back on today, what did I do that was actually worth my time?" This isn't about what you liked or didn't like doing on a particular day; it's about what you found to be valuable.

Denying stress, bottling it, or brooding about it is counterproductive. Avoiding stress is impossible, but what we can do is adjust our relationship to stress. It doesn't have to own us. We can own it.

Pennebaker's Writing Rules!

Excellent. My initial impressions right after closing the back cover were that this was a good blend of personal reflection, useful stories, research examples, and case studies to illustrate a simple, evidence-based model for building emotional agility. Throughout the book the rationale for why emotional intelligence is important to build now, in the 21st century, was clearly articulated.

I think most readers could come away with something. The book concludes with practical recommendations and advice those at work, and in relationships as parents and partners. This is a strong ending, but by no means is this a 'self-help' book as there aren't activities to do.

It's a stronger read than 'Emotional Intelligence' and also, the research on emotions/emotional agility has moved on since then.

I also took the assessment offered on Susan David's website, which was a nice complement. I would recommend reading the book before taking the assessment, however, as some of the language and layout of the assessment becomes clearer if you have a better understanding of the concepts than what you get in the actual assessment.

Ok, update. I initially finished this book and thought “This Book was fine. Not life-changing, but good.” Didn’t give it a rating and moved on.

But since I have finished it, I have thought about it every. day. It shifted something in me and I have felt a lot of peace ever since. I have had a few breakthroughs.

I’ve read books that spoke of similar things, but this author is good at the application part. It has stuck with me and I am so grateful I read this.


Favorite quotes:

“Emotions are data, they are not directives”

“To truly "show up" means making room for labelling your thoughts and emotions and seeing them for what they are: information rather than facts or directives. This is what allows us to step out to create distance from and gain perspective on our mental processes, which then defangs their power over us.”

“Acceptance is a prerequisite for change.”

“We still don’t like the things we don’t like –we just cease to be at war with them. And once the war is over, change can begin.”

“Emotional agility means being aware and accepting of all your emotions, even learning from the most difficult ones.”