Beyond Resilience … the Phoenix Rises
Unlocking the Legacy of Historical Heroes for Today’s Challenges
(including a transformative interactive workbook)
What’s the problem, my friend? Have you just had a major “crash landing” in your life? You’re not alone. But what now? What did some of our super-heroes”—from Ludwig van Beethoven to Marie Curie, from Nelson Mandela to Maya Angelou—do to pick themselves up and become even better after a life’s calamity? What can we learn from them and apply to our own current lives, whether young or old?
Living = challenges! Amazingly, this diverse selection of historical and contemporary figures all share a certain trajectory—a “resilience curve”—something that Austrian psychoanalyst Viktor Frankl called the “defiance of the human spirit” even against great odds—that you can trace if you scan their life’s stories. Let them serve as role models.
Even if we have just plummeted off some symbolic precipice that would be enough to do most people in, NO—we can survive this fall and more—experiencing some elusive “inner pivot” that catalyzes new growth. We’ll stop seeing ourselves as victims; start seeing the special strengths and talents within ourselves; find emerging meaning that will nourish this new vision. We’ll leave our old world behind and rise like a phoenix to something new.
Each of the resilience profiles in this book concludes with some workbook questions for us to ponder. Answering them can open an entirely new chapter in our own “book of life”. The answers are hiding inside you!
Dare to play detective and find them?