Fortitude: The Myth of Resilience, and the Secrets of Inner Strength: A Sunday Times Bestseller

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While asking for resilience feels like an honest invocation, the term has been heavily politicised. A correspondent for the New York Times concurred: ‘ Anyone who knows Lebanon has heard this: The Lebanese are resilient.’

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A book that confirms what I've always believed, that we can't be resilient on our own. In fact resilience is about all of us being stronger than any of us. Gary Lineker Together with the section on the importance of the feeling of belonging it’s not hard to see why the past few years as we’ve gone from crisis of trust in authority and ‘experts’ to health crisis to financial crisis have potentially left people feeling low on resilience. It also shows why teaching skills like how to embrace a growth mindset, reflective thinking and investing in wellbeing, while beneficial, may not substantially increase resilience in staff if they don’t also feel respected, listened to, and trusted to deliver or part of a shared effort to achieve a goal. Is "resilience" more than blaming victims and telling them they need to act stronger? This wonderful book is Bruce Daisley's personal quest - through his personal experiences and his appetite for digesting rigorous research - to learn about the overused concept of resilience. What Bruce learns is intriguing and important, and hopefully will help us become better parents, leaders, and friends. Professor Daniel Cable, author of 'Alive at Work'

Bruce speaks on dealing with hybrid working, work culture and building a culture of innovation.

Injuries caused by shattered glass and collapsing construction left many with injuries that will transform the remainder of their lives. So, if you're going to make one thing change, then you might say, "If I'm feeling no autonomy at work, is there something I could do to reduce the amount of time I'm spending in meetings? Is there something I could do to set some time aside to do something separate?" The illusion of modern work is we all feel like we've got infinite time, and we'll just answer this, then I'll answer this, and if I just need to work later, I'll work later; and we never make decisions of scarcity. But I guess one of the critical things you'd say is, if people are feeling an absence of control, if people are feeling no resilience, then thinking about how you can gift them some space, and there's a solution to it as well. This is a truly refreshing, captivating and important book that shifted my perception on a topic I thought I knew! A must read.' Steven Bartlett, entrepreneur and host of 'The Diary of a CEO'

Fortitude: The Myth of Resilience, and the Secrets of Inner Fortitude: The Myth of Resilience, and the Secrets of Inner

I got sent on my company’s resilience training and I don’t feel any better,’ one worker at a major technology company told me.I guess there are two parts to my question, as I was reading it and thinking it, I was like, "I'd love Bruce to tell us a little bit about that, so that other people can learn about it", because I think it is so fundamental to fortitude, and it's new knowledge for me. And the second thing that was in my mind whilst I was reading it was the idea of "we" in the workplace now. If community is so important, and the way that work is going, how do we keep community with the way that we're working now?

Fortitude by Bruce Daisley | Waterstones Fortitude by Bruce Daisley | Waterstones

Helen Tupper: It's actually really interesting listening to you saying that, because I had in my mind, "Is there a bit of a tension between control and community in the workplace?" So, control might mean I get to work in a way that works for me. But if you are doing that and Sarah's doing that, then when are we coming together as a community? But actually, your point is, you can still work in a way that works for you, but what we need is, community is not just being in the same room together, it's having a reason to be in the same room together that's worth it and better because of that. This is a truly refreshing, captivating and important book that shifted my perception on a topic I thought I knew! A must read.' Steven Bartlett, entrepreneur and host of The Diary of a CEO Surprising and challenging. Fortitude encouraged me to re-think not only my work but how I live my life.' Sarah Ellis, co-author of The Squiggly Career A fascinating analysis of resilience - what it is, what is isn't and why, when we develop it together, it becomes something better and more important, fortitude. It seems that resilience is a team game. Alastair CampbellThe two of these guys didn't know each other, but they encountered each other at a sort of learning lunch effectively, and they realised the adjacency of their work, and they created this list, which is called The Adverse Childhood Experiences list. So, it's a list of ten things. Some of them look remarkably gentle, which might be like, "Were you subject to emotional abuse? Were you subject to physical abuse? Was there parental divorce? Was there someone at home who went to jail? Did you live with addiction?" There's some other things there, some other things that you might go, "Is parental divorce that big an issue?" but actually, it very strongly correlates with adult obesity. Helen Tupper: I something think that you find the books that you need to read, you know, when you've got those insights and it really speaks to you, and the early bit of the book, you talk a lot about the relationship between adversity, particularly adversity earlier on in life, and its relationship with resilience and success in later life. And I was reading this through and reading about some things called ACE scores, and all kinds of things, and reflecting on my own life and thinking, "Oh gosh, there are definitely moments of adversity in my younger life", and thinking, "Is what I do now, and how much energy and commitment and relentless I do now, how much of that is related to early life adversity?" So, people seek to fill that void that trauma's created, by the actions they take. And I think through all of that, we can see, to your point there, that identity can be this really powerful motivating factor, but it also can be this incredible tinderbox that can really be an explosive combination inside of us.