Emotional Agility

#1 Wall Street Journal Best Seller USA Today Best Seller Amazon Best Book of the Year TED Talk sensation - over 3 million views! The counterintuitive approach to achieving your true potential, heralded by the Harvard Business Review as a groundbreaking idea of the year. The path to personal and professional fulfillment is rarely straight. Ask anyone who has achieved his or her biggest goals or whose relationships thrive and you’ll hear stories of many unexpected detours along the way. What separates those who master these challenges and those who get derailed? The answer is agility—emotional agility. Emotional agility is a revolutionary, science-based approach that allows us to navigate life’s twists and turns with self-acceptance, clear-sightedness, and an open mind. Renowned psychologist Susan David developed this concept after studying emotions, happiness, and achievement for more than twenty years. She found that no matter how intelligent or creative people are, or what type of personality they have, it is how they navigate their inner world—their thoughts, feelings, and self-talk—that ultimately determines how successful they will become. The way we respond to these internal experiences drives our actions, careers, relationships, happiness, health—everything that matters in our lives. As humans, we are all prone to common hooks—things like self-doubt, shame, sadness, fear, or anger—that can too easily steer us in the wrong direction. Emotionally agile people are not immune to stresses and setbacks. The key difference is that they know how to adapt, aligning their actions with their values and making small but powerful changes that lead to a lifetime of growth. Emotional agility is not about ignoring difficult emotions and thoughts; it’s about holding them loosely, facing them courageously and compassionately, and then moving past them to bring the best of yourself forward. Drawing on her deep research, decades of international consulting, and her own experience overcoming adversity after losing her father at a young age, David shows how anyone can thrive in an uncertain world by becoming more emotionally agile. To guide us, she shares four key concepts that allow us to acknowledge uncomfortable experiences while simultaneously detaching from them, thereby allowing us to embrace our core values and adjust our actions so they can move us where we truly want to go. Written with authority, wit, and empathy, Emotional Agility serves as a road map for real behavioral change—a new way of acting that will help you reach your full potential, whoever you are and whatever you face.

The Leader’s Guide to Emotional Agility takes a new approach to emotional intelligence in action and translates it into critical skills that every leader needs to get the most out of themselves and their people. It outlines 8 steps for achieving emotional agility and resilience: Step 1: Becoming authentic Step 2: Becoming self-aware Step 3: Becoming aware of others Step 4: Using the emotions Step 5: Understanding the emotions Step 6: Managing your own emotions Step 7: Managing the emotions of others Step 8: Mindfulness for leaders The chapters, underpinned with scientific research, offer real-life illustrations from leaders facing real challenges and triumphs, as well as exercises, case studies, tips and strategies to put these steps into action. It also includes a self-assessment at the start of the book to help you find out how emotionally agile you already are. This straight-talking guide is the ultimate guide for busy managers wanting hard advice on how to deal with the softer side of business life.

Wall Street Journal Bestseller! Next Big Idea Club selection―chosen by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Dan Pink, and Adam Grant as one of the "two most groundbreaking new nonfiction reads of the season!" "A must-read that topples the idea that emotions don't belong in the workplace." --Susan Cain, author of Quiet A hilarious guide to effectively expressing your emotions at the office, finding fulfillment, and defining work-life balance on your own terms. How do you stop the office grouch from ruining your day? How do you enjoy a vacation without obsessing about the unanswered emails in your inbox? If you're a boss, what should you do when your new, eager hire wants to follow you on Instagram? The modern workplace can be an emotional minefield, filled with confusing power structures and unwritten rules. We're expected to be authentic, but not too authentic. Professional, but not stiff. Friendly, but not an oversharer. Easier said than done! As both organizational consultants and regular people, we know what it's like to experience uncomfortable emotions at work - everything from mild jealousy and insecurity to panic and rage. Ignoring or suppressing what you feel hurts your health and productivity -- but so does letting your emotions run wild. Our goal in this book is to teach you how to figure out which emotions to toss, which to keep to yourself, and which to express in order to be both happier and more effective. We'll share some surprising new strategies, such as: * Be selectively vulnerable: Be honest about how you feel, but don't burden others with your deepest problems. * Remember that your feelings aren't facts: What we say isn't always what we mean. In times of conflict and miscommunication, try to talk about your emotions without getting emotional. * Be less passionate about your job: Taking a chill pill can actually make you healthier and more focused. Drawing on what we've learned from behavioral economics, psychology, and our own experiences at countless organizations, we'll show you how to bring your best self (and your whole self) to work every day.

These days it’s hard to count on the world outside. So it’s vital to grow strengths inside like grit, gratitude, and compassion—the key to resilience, and to lasting well-being in a changing world. True resilience is much more than enduring terrible conditions. We need resilience every day to raise a family, work at a job, cope with stress, deal with health problems, navigate issues with others, heal from old pain, and simply keep on going. With his trademark blend of neuroscience, mindfulness, and positive psychology, New York Times bestselling author Dr. Rick Hanson shows you how to develop twelve vital inner strengths hardwired into your own nervous system. Then no matter what life throws at you, you’ll be able to feel less stressed, pursue opportunities with confidence, and stay calm and centered in the face of adversity. This practical guide is full of concrete suggestions, experiential practices, personal examples, and insights into the brain. It includes effective ways to interact with others and to repair and deepen important relationships. Warm, encouraging, and down-to-earth, Dr. Hanson’s step-by-step approach is grounded in the science of positive neuroplasticity. He explains how to overcome the brain’s negativity bias, release painful thoughts and feelings, and replace them with self-compassion, self-worth, joy, and inner peace.

What is there in developmental relationships beyond setting and striving to achieve goals? The presence of goals in coaching and mentoring programs has gone largely unquestioned, yet evidence is growing that the standard prescription of SMART, challenging goals is not always appropriate - and even potentially dangerous - in the context of a complex and rapidly changing world. Beyond Goals advances standard goal-setting theory by bringing together cutting-edge perspectives from leaders in coaching and mentoring. From psychology to neuroscience, from chaos theory to social network theory, the contributors offer diverse and compelling insights into both the advantages and limitations of goal pursuit. The result is a more nuanced understanding of goals, with the possibility for practitioners to bring greater impact and sophistication to their client engagements. The implications of this reassessment are substantial for all those practicing as coaches and mentors, or managing coaching or mentoring initiatives in organizations.

This book is dedicated to helping you explore the various components of emotional intelligence and show you how you can improve at each of them.

Author's note -- Preface -- Dreaming, not doing -- The upside of dreaming -- Fooling our minds -- The wise pursuit of our dreams -- Engaging our nonconscious minds -- The magic of WOOP -- WOOP your life -- Your friend for life -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index

On the cover of Carol Courcys SAVE YOUR INNER TORTOISE! is a photo of a tortoise wearing a helmet, a large red rocket strapped to its back and wheels! Carol laughed when seeing it for the first time as it fit with how she felt in her own life-- a bit exhausted by lifes demands and in need of protection as the helmet suggests. It was the rocket strapped to its back that compelled her to use the image on the cover. Those of us who hectically push our way through life need boosters to get ourselves through our many tasks and responsibilities. (Boosters like caffeine, sugar, long workdays, working on weekends and vacations or fitness classes to build stamina.) Carol thought many of her readers would find the cover humorous and a reminder of Aesops fable about who won the race between the tortoise and the hare. If you recall, the story is about a hare who ridicules a slow-moving tortoise. Surprisingly, the tortoise challenges the hare to a race. When the race starts, the hare speeds off leaving the tortoise far behind. Confident of winning, the hare takes a nap midway through the race. However, when it awakes, the hare sees the tortoise crawling slowly but steadily across the finish line. Only then does the hare realize the error of its strategy. Like the hare, we exhausted self-sacrificing, never-enough overachievers assume that at our furious pace we can cross an ever-increasing number of finish lines. (We will get help or rest soon. And soon hasnt come yet.) As with the hare, we too sometimes find out too late we have used the wrong strategy. Is now the time to SAVE YOUR INNER TORTOISE? This is an ideal book if more of the same in your life is NOT an option. You will learn simple and effective ways to undermine undesirable patterns of self-doubt and second-guessing that fuel exhaustion and overwhelm. The aim is to make your journey across your finish lines satisfyingRIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING. If you bring genuine interest, leave the WHAT and HOW to Carol. Welcome!