Here's Why You Should Read "Resilience"

These “I was a Navy SEAL, hear me roar” types of books are in vogue right now, and I almost didn’t read Resilience because I expected more of the same: cliches, platitudes, and macho hand-waving. You know, “young adult” philosophy and self-help material.
I was delightfully surprised, though, because this book turned out to be one of the deeper and more thought-provoking self-development books that I read last year. As Eric says in the book, a truly new and original book would be one which made people love old truths, and I think Resilience does that admirably.
I didn’t know anything about Eric’s background going into it, but now that I do, I’m not surprised he exceeded my expectations. He’s an Oxford-educated Rhodes scholar, and this shines through in his thinking and ability to communicate his ideas.
The book is about developing and embodying resilience, of course, which the dictionary defines as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. In other words, toughness.
The central tenet of the book is what you’d expect--that no trait is more useful or essential for surviving and flourishing than the ability to transform adversity into enjoyable challenges--and Eric does a fantastic job delivering something interesting and insightful on such a well-worn topic. I came away with dozens of pages of highlights and notes, and several of his ideas and worldviews have really stuck in my brain and influenced some of thinking and behavior.
Most notable of my takeaways was an increased willingness to experience pain and adversity. This is a virtue that I think we can really never have enough of, and something that is particularly hard to preserve when things are going well. You know how the old saying goes: soft times make soft people, soft people make hard times, hard times make hard people, hard people make soft times.
I agree with Eric that the people who do tend to do the best in life are usually the people who can--or at least at some point in their lives, could--endure the most suffering, who can just keep humping until things are the way they want them to be. If there’s one trait that I personally value most, it’s probably that. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Want to be notified when my next book recommendation goes live? Hop on my email list and you’ll get each new installment delivered directly to your inbox. Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/