The Resiliency Advantage: Master Change, Thrive Under Pressure, and Bounce Back from Setbacks (Paperback)

by Al Siebert PhD (Author)
Key Phrases: optimize your health, optimal health plan, resiliency advantage, The Resiliency Advantage, Level Four, Level Five (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Resiliency — the ability to adapt to life's changes and crises — is the key to a healthy, productive life. Unfortunately, it's all too easy to get bogged down by feelings of anger and helplessness. The Resiliency Advantage helps readers banish negative, self-defeating thoughts and break free from the roles of "victim" and "good child" while improving problem-solving skills, maintaining humor and optimism during rough times, and becoming both self-reliant and socially responsible. By mastering the five stages of development — sustaining health, energy, and positive feelings; handling challenges; achieving positive self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-concept; honing the skills and attributes of highly resilient people; and developing a talent for serendipity — readers learn to stand up to adversity, overcome obstacles, and meet life head on.

From the Publisher
Berrett-Koehler is pleased to announce that The Resiliency Advantage by Al Siebert was named winner of the 2006 Independent Publisher Book Award in the "Self Help" category at BookExpo America. This year 1,327 publishers from all 50 U.S. states, Canada, and many foreign countries participated in the Award competition, entering over 3,000 titles. The self-help category is the largest of many book categories judged. For The Resiliency Advantage to come out on top of such a vast array of competing books attests to the exceptionally high quality of both the writing and the content.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 225 pages
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 1 edition (May 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576753298
• ISBN-13: 978-1576753293
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #16,198 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pioneering the Art of Helping People Master Their Challenges, September 11, 2005

By	Gloria R. Nash "Human Energy Educator" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Dr. Al Siebert has been a pioneer in helping people move through difficult life circumstances to master adversity and grow stronger from their challenges. In alignment with the great Abraham Maslow, he has taken the road less traveled in psychology by studying what makes people strong rather than focusing on their weaknesses.

I was blessed to find Dr. Siebert's earlier book, "The Survivor Personality" at a time when I felt very victimized by the circumstances of my life. This was one of the most inspiring books I read. It helped open my eyes to perceive my challenges in a new way, so that I could move forward in my life journey emerging from my problems with greater well-being.

Dr. Siebert's new book, "The Resiliency Advantage," contains down to earth, practical information that can help anyone overcome setbacks and sudden changes that a person experiences as threatening to their well-being. Without the usual jargon of "psychobabble" or "feel-good" superficial advice that I find impractical or unsustainable, this book will help you see your world through a new lens of resilience, one of the primary concepts in emotional intelligence.

Dr. Siebert uses wonderful stories to illustrate these ideas and guaranteed to open anyone's heart.

My favorite parts of the book are the practical exercises that encourage viewing our challenges from a place of strength and as a path of growth. Investing in this book is worth gold if you would like to move your life out of a suvival mode and into one of thriving and getting better every day. I highly reccommend this book to everyone seeking to make sense of any challenge, both personal and the challenges we face in our world today.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Our Life is Not Determined By What Happens But How We React, October 28, 2005

By	Norman Goldman "Editor of Bookpleasures.com" (Montreal) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

After reading Dr. Al Siebert's enlightening book, The Resiliency Advantage, I was reminded of the old adage that was often drummed into me by my parents, that our life is not determined by what happens to us but how we react to what happens, not by what life brings to us, but by the attitudes we bring to life. Thinking positively creates a chain reaction pertaining to our thoughts, events and outcomes-a kind of catalyst that can create extraordinary results.

Siebert begins his book by telling his readers how he came to the conclusion that clinical psychology and psychiatry are not mental health professions but rather mental illness professions. There does not seem to be any focus on what makes individuals mentally healthy, but rather on what causes mental illnesses and how do we go about treating these illnesses.

This prompted Siebert to do extensive research as to why some people survive many of life's ordeals while others seem to continually flounder. As a result of his thirst for knowledge of the subject matter he developed a good understanding of what he calls "the survivor personality."
In 1996 he published his first book on the topic, "The Survivor Personality," and we now have the follow up, The Resiliency Advantage, that reflects the tremendous amount of knowledge Siebert accumulated in his search for the causes and effects of the survivor personality.

According to Siebert there exist several levels of resiliency that he deals with in depth in his book: optimizing your health, emotions and well-being; developing good problem solving skills; strengthening your inner selfs; unleashing your curiosity and enjoy learning from the school of life; power of positive expectations; integrating paradoxical abilities; allowing everything to work well or the synergy talent; the talent for serendipity.
In order to reinforce the learning of these principles, Siebert provides many exercises, as well as brief case histories showing just how they work out in practice.

There is some excellent material in this book, particularly the sections dealing with learning from failures, benefits of curious and playful questioning, the power of positive expectations, hope, optimism, and self-reliance. It is also heartening to learn, as the author points out, that resiliency psychology, a relatively new discipline, is making good progress and is now recognized as quite vital in understanding how it can help people fare better during adversity and recover more quickly from life's ordeals.

Writing about new disciplines is always a challenge, given the negative feedback one often receives from the traditionalists. However, Siebert has risen to the occasion with his breezy style of writing, and he admirably presents an accessible work that could have easily strayed, leaving his readers with a sense of boredom.

Norm Goldman Editor of Bookpleasures

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Review from PMH Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.), November 10, 2006

By	Cinemind - See all my reviews

This book is all that it says it is, a veritable how-to in handling today's pressure and challenges, and doing it in a way that enhances your life while enabling you to dissolve much of the stress that tends to cripple. It is a book for the "right now" of life, specific suggestions for specific situations, lots of stories, ideas, even "resiliency development activites"at the close of each chapter. What peaked my attention, though, were the chapters from nine on, covering things like "Integrating Your Paradoxical Abilities," "Allowing Everything to Work Well - The Synergy Talent," "Strengthening Your Talent for Serendipity," "Mastering Extreme Resiliency Challenges," and "Our Transformational Breakthrough." Here Dr. Siebert is addressing, among others, those people who have had a near-death experience or a similar type of impactual transformation of consciousness. And what he has to offer is most incredible, real help for those who may need it or who can use a friendly nudge in the process of integrating such experiences. Recommended reading. --From Dr PMH Atwater [...]