Our Journey, Our Process

The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life's Hurdles
by Karen Reivich, Ph.D., Andrew Shatté, Ph.D.

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We want to accompany you on a voyage of self-discovery. We want to share with you the process that has helped the thousands with whom we've worked — and helped us too, as you'll see from the examples we offer from our own lives. We will guide you to understand your thinking styles and provide insight into what those styles are buying and costing you in your life. We will equip you with seven skills of resilience that you can use to maximize your performance at work, improve your significant relationships, boost your health, and find the courage to embrace new experiences.

The first leg of our journey, Part One of the book, defines resilience. What is this potent quality that underlies all our problem-solving efforts? We share with you research that has revealed seven major factors that contribute to the development and strengthening of resilience. In Chapter 2 we give you the opportunity to measure your level of resilience with our RQ Test and to determine your relative strengths and weaknesses. Overcome your resilience weaknesses, build on your strengths, and you will be amazed at how much easier it will be for you to approach life — and all of its inevitable obstacles and conflicts — with flexibility, adaptability, and confidence. In Chapter 3 we describe the philosophy of our program and the foundations upon which it was based.

We'll give you a brief overview of the skills now, and in Part Two we will take you through each one, showing you why it's necessary and teaching you how to use it effectively.

1. Learning Your ABCs. When confronted with a problem or challenge, are you ever surprised by how you react or wish you could respond differently? Do you ever assume that you know the facts of a situation, only to find out later that you misinterpreted them? If the thoughts running through your head when you're faced with adversity are inaccurate, your ability to respond effectively to that adversity will be severely compromised. We'll teach you to "listen" to your thoughts, to identify what you say to yourself when faced with a challenge, and to understand how your thoughts affect your feelings and behavior.

2. Avoiding Thinking Traps. When things go wrong, do you automatically blame yourself? Do you blame others? Do you jump to conclusions? Do you assume that you know what another person is thinking? When faced with adversity, people regularly make eight mistakes that undermine resilience. We'll teach you to identify the ones you habitually make and how to correct them.

3. Detecting Icebergs. Everyone has deeply held beliefs about how people and the world should operate and who they are and want to be. We call these iceberg beliefs because they often "float" beneath the surface of our consciousness so we're not even aware of them. Often these beliefs guide us to behave in ways that are true to our values. Sometimes, however, these deep beliefs interfere with our ability to live the kind of life we want, and they explain why we overreact to seemingly minor issues or have a hard time making what seem like simple decisions. We'll teach you how to identify your deep beliefs and determine when they are working for you and when they are working against you.

4. Challenging Beliefs. A key component of resilience is problem solving. How effective are you at solving the problems that you encounter day to day? Do you waste time pursuing solutions that don't work? Do you feel helpless to change situations? Do you persist on one problem-solving path even when you see that it's not getting you where you want to be? It's your thinking style that often leads you to misinterpret the causes of a problem, which then leads you to pursue the wrong solutions. We'll teach you how to test the accuracy of your beliefs about problems and how to find solutions that work.

5. Putting It in Perspective. Do you get caught in what-if thinking in which you turn every failure or problem into a catastrophe? Do you waste valuable time and energy worrying yourself into a state of paralyzing anxiety about events that have not even occurred? We'll teach you how to stop the what-ifs so that you're better prepared to deal with problems that really do exist or are most likely to occur.

6. Calming and Focusing. Do you feel overwhelmed by stress? Do your emotions sometimes come on so quickly and fiercely that you can't seem to think straight? Do "off-task" thoughts make it hard for you to concentrate? We'll show you how to stay calm and focused when you're overwhelmed by emotion or stress so you can concentrate on the task at hand. This "fast skill" is often used with Skill 7.

7. Real-time Resilience. Are there times when counterproductive thoughts make it hard for you to stay engaged and in the moment? Do certain negative thoughts tend to recur over and over again? We'll teach you a powerful skill so that you can quickly change your counterproductive thoughts into more resilient ones — with immediate results.

You don't need to use every skill every day to see improvement in your resilience. In fact, many people find dramatic changes in their resilience after mastering and using just two or three of these skills. We will explain what your scores on the RQ Test say about your personality and point out which resilience factors each of the skills is designed to enhance so you can concentrate your energy on learning the skills that will most benefit you.

In Part Three we apply the resilience skills to the primary domains in life — relationships, parenting, work, and reaching out. You'll be able to develop more satisfying relationships with friends and family or with your intimate other. You'll benefit from the same training we've provided to thousands of employees, from senior executives to front-line salespeople and customer service representatives, so that you can maximize your productivity and have greater balance between work and home. You'll learn techniques to help you become a more effective and nurturing parent. We'll show you how you can use the skills of resilience to improve your physical and mental health. And together we'll explore how the skills can help us deal with the large existential issues that all humans must face — grief and bereavement, our own mortality, and creating meaning in our lives.

Copyright © 2002 by Karen Reivich, Ph.D. and Andrew Shatte, Ph.D.. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Karen Reivich, Ph.D. coauthored The Optimistic Child, for which she received extensive national media attention and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

Andrew Shatté, Ph.D., is the vice president for research and development with Adaptiv Learning Systems, which offers resilience training for corporate, education, health care, sports, and military markets.