#1 Wall Street Journal Best Seller
USA Today Best Seller
Amazon Best Book of the Year
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.
