Summary: Thrive The Power of Resilience by Richard Sutton

Discover the transformative power of resilience in “Thrive: The Power of Resilience” by renowned author Richard Sutton. This captivating book delves into the essential elements that empower individuals to navigate life’s challenges and emerge stronger than ever before.

Intrigued? Brace yourself for an insightful journey that will equip you with the tools to thrive in the face of adversity.

Genres

Self-Help, Personal Development, Inspirational, Motivational, Psychology, Resilience, Mental Health, Leadership, Lifestyle, Entrepreneurship.

“Thrive: The Power of Resilience” by Richard Sutton is a masterful exploration of the concept of resilience and its profound impact on our lives. Sutton skillfully weaves together real-life stories, scientific research, and practical strategies to provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of how to develop and maintain the resilience necessary to navigate life’s ups and downs.

The book delves into the key components of resilience, including emotional intelligence, stress management, and the ability to adapt to change. Sutton’s engaging writing style and relatable examples make complex psychological concepts accessible to a wide audience, empowering readers to cultivate the mindset and habits needed to thrive in the face of adversity.

Throughout the book, Sutton emphasizes the importance of developing a growth mindset, fostering meaningful relationships, and embracing the lessons learned from failures and setbacks. He encourages readers to embrace a holistic approach to well-being, integrating physical, mental, and emotional self-care practices into their daily lives.

Review

“Thrive: The Power of Resilience” is a must-read for anyone seeking to unlock their full potential and build the resilience needed to conquer life’s challenges. Sutton’s comprehensive approach, coupled with his extensive research and personal insights, make this book a valuable resource for individuals of all backgrounds and experiences.

The book’s focus on practical, actionable strategies sets it apart from other self-help literature, providing readers with a clear roadmap to cultivating resilience. From effective stress management techniques to fostering meaningful connections, Sutton leaves no stone unturned in his quest to empower readers to thrive.

One of the book’s standout features is its emphasis on the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Sutton’s exploration of these concepts not only enhances the reader’s understanding of resilience but also encourages personal growth and introspection.

Overall, “Thrive: The Power of Resilience” is a transformative read that will inspire and equip readers to navigate life’s obstacles with grace, strength, and an unwavering determination to succeed. Sutton’s masterful storytelling and expertise make this book a must-have addition to any personal development library.

Recommendation

Many companies name “resilience” as a core value, but their leaders and workers lack the traits associated with resilience. With anxiety disorders sharply on the rise, explains best-selling author Richard Sutton, leaders must work to create psychologically safe workplaces, building cultures rooted in values such as trust, dignity and respect to bolster resilience among team members. Gain insights from the latest neuroscience research about practical steps you can take to support brain health and boost your resilience as a leader, while helping others in doing the same.

Take-Aways

• Resilience requires more than “grit.” Develop adaptability and a “growth mindset.”
• Resilience is associated with five personality traits: extroversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability.
• Create supportive environments, prioritizing care, dignity and respect.
• Become your “2.0 self” by committing to building traits associated with resilience.
• Support your brain health to increase resilience.
• Maintain a healthy weight with foods that improve immune regulation and lower inflammation.
• Reduce chronic neuroinflammation by remembering your agency and embracing positivity.
• Constructively reframe challenges and cultivate emotional distance from challenging situations.

Summary

Resilience requires more than “grit.” Develop adaptability and a “growth mindset.”

People began using the word “resilience” a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic. But what does being resilient actually entail? The Oxford English Dictionary defines resilience as the “capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.” While straightforward, this definition doesn’t fully encapsulate the resilience teams and individuals need to thrive today. “Recovering” from challenges is important, but it’s backward-looking. You must also feel prepared to weather any future storms life throws your way. Viewing resilience as mental toughness, or “grit,” is also shortsighted. Developing long-term resilience requires adaptability. You can’t succeed by holding fast to behaviors that may have helped in past times but no longer work in your new context.

“Fixed behaviors, no matter how effective they are, cannot defend against the major changes we are experiencing within the world today.”

Thus, a better definition of resilience is the capacity to embrace change and navigate stressful or challenging situations in “real time.” Take inspiration from professional athletes: Olympic champions view pressure as “a privilege” and a catalyst for personal growth, professional mastery and self-development. Work to develop a “growth mindset,” a term coined by Stanford professor Carol S. Dweck. When you have a growth mindset, you demonstrate an openness to change and learning; those with “fixed mindsets” lack this openness. People with a growth mindset believe they can develop and improve their skills and abilities with effort and practice. In contrast, people with fixed mindsets view their abilities as predetermined and don’t believe they can improve their skills.

Resilience is associated with five personality traits: extroversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability.

Resilient people tend to share the following personality traits, known as the “Big Five”: extroversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability. Whether you have these traits hinges, in part, on your brain chemistry. You’ll be more likely to have the self-discipline to pursue your curiosity and take goal-driven action if you have a healthy balance of the brain chemicals dopamine and norepinephrine.

“Regardless of one’s genetic set or the challenges we face, if we are able to create a home that is encouraging, positive, caring, compassionate and supportive, we will be resilient.”

Fortunately, there are action steps you can take to modify your brain chemistry if you tend more toward neuroticism – which is associated with self-doubt, negativity and anxiety – than the Big Five. Be mindful of your physical environment. Reduce unhealthy exposure to pesticides, herbicides, harsh cleaning products, cigarette smoke and plastics. When you regularly expose yourself to xenoestrogens and other harmful substances, you can adversely affect your metabolism and stress hormones, increasing your emotional vulnerability. Taking B vitamins also helps your brain produce the enzyme catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT), which balances dopamine and norepinephrine.

Create supportive environments, prioritizing care, dignity and respect.

Genetics do play a role in your personality and resilience levels, but genes aren’t deterministic. Other factors, such as early childhood experiences and adult behaviors and mindsets, influence gene expression and resilience. For example, children with DRD4, the ADHD gene, may develop less emotional regulation and become less resilient if they experience childhood neglect or maltreatment. But when these children grow up in supportive, nurturing environments, they can achieve exceptional cognitive and behavioral outcomes.

Thirty percent of mental health problems today stem from adverse childhood experiences. These adverse experiences come with a physiological cost, or “allostatic load,” that can lead to poor overall physical, mental and emotional health, premature aging, and early mortality. Childhood trauma can stem from many sources, including disrupted caregiving, unpredictable environmental conditions, physical threats, emotional abuse and neglect.

“The environment we create for ourselves, our family and our teams ultimately determines resilience.”

How childhood trauma affects people depends in large part on the type of trauma: People who experienced physical abuse tend to have disproportional stress responses, chronic fatigue and chronic inflammation; those who suffered emotional abuse or neglect struggle to self-calm after stressful events and have difficulty regulating stress responses; and those who experienced “uncertainty” or “constant threat” display heightened reactions to stress and hypervigilance.

If you experienced childhood trauma, build resilience by ensuring you spend time in healthy environments. You deserve to feel psychologically safe in both your home and workplace. Leaders can build team resiliency by modeling emotional regulation and consistency, creating supportive, inclusive team cultures, encouraging autonomy and accountability, treating team members with dignity and respect, and supporting team members’ creativity, individuality and personal growth.

Become your “2.0 self” by committing to building traits associated with resilience.

Build resilience by “tempering” – building upon your current coping mechanisms – and developing new, unfamiliar skills, if needed. Assess how well you embody the following core traits of resilience, then identify action steps to help you develop any areas in need of growth: cognitive flexibility and adaptability; hope and optimism; conscientiousness; agreeableness; drive and motivation; rationality and logic; personal values alignment; emotional regulation; goal-driven behavior; self-worth and confidence; persistence and determination; commitment to personal health; access to a healthy support system; the presence of positive coping strategies; and openness to new experiences.

“Openness is a highly complex trait that brings imagination, feelings, ideas, values and aesthetics together with quickness, resourcefulness, competence, introspection and reflection.”

When you cultivate openness, in particular, you don’t just increase resilience; you also boost creativity. According to researchers from the University of Amsterdam, creativity and openness stem from “cognitive flexibility” – your ability to change your perspective or approach when needed – and “cognitive persistence” – the degree of focused and sustained effort you can apply to challenges. Creativity suffers when people have high levels of anxiety. Given that the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a sharp 25.6% increase in global anxiety disorders, taking steps to reduce and manage stress in the workplace and your personal life is crucial if you hope to support creativity and drive innovation.

Support your brain health to increase resilience.

In 2018, the University of Zurich conducted a meta-analysis of neuroimaging to understand the brains of resilient people: Resilient individuals showed increased brain mass and better performance in the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex – brain regions associated with attention, decision-making, focus, memory, learning, impulse control, planning and your moral compass. Resilience also correlated with reduced connectivity in the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain that controls stress and fear responses.

“On a purely foundational level, resilience is about the human brain and its ability to successfully adapt both structurally and functionally.”

Take these steps to support your brain health and promote resilience:

• Consume omega-3 fatty acids – A daily intake of omega-3 fatty acids can reduce your perceived stress levels in three weeks or fewer while improving cognition and brain health.
• Meditate – Meditating a cumulative total of five hours within two weeks is associated with increased neuroplasticity and improved awareness, attention, and emotional and cognitive processing. Try committing to 12-13 minutes of meditation per day if you’re just starting.
• Practice mindfulness – Mindfulness, which involves focusing your attention on the present moment and cultivating deeper awareness, reduces reactivity in the regions of your brain that process stress: your amygdala, hypothalamus and anterior cingulate cortex.
• Seek connection and support – Neuroimaging research shows that being around a supportive and close friend, partner or family member can reduce activity in the region of your brain associated with fear, pain, stress and threat.
• Move your body – When you get aerobic exercise (aim for three 35-50 minute sessions per week), you increase the effects of the feel-good chemical dopamine in your brain.

Maintain a healthy weight with foods that improve immune regulation and lower inflammation.

Your diet can have a direct, positive effect on resilience. To improve your immune regulation and reduce inflammation, consider the following healthy diets:

• Mediterranean diet – There’s a research-backed connection between following this popular diet – which centers around consuming vegetables, low-fat dairy products, nuts, fruit, olive oil, fish and poultry, and a moderate intake of red wine – and lower levels of inflammation.
• Anti-inflammatory diet – Researchers from the University of California and the University of Barcelona developed the anti-inflammatory diet (ITIS). The diet is similar to the Mediterranean diet but with some crucial differences. For example, those following this diet avoid eating nightshade vegetables, such as eggplant and prioritize fermented foods and high-enzyme fruits. This diet is designed to help people reduce the symptoms of the inflammatory disease rheumatoid arthritis.
• Plant-based or vegan diet – Eliminating animal proteins (or lowering them) boosts levels of the molecule NPY in your brain, which promotes resilience. Plant-based diets that feature a high fiber content also support immune regulation.

Reduce chronic neuroinflammation by remembering your agency and embracing positivity.

When you’ve faced early childhood adversity and experienced chronic stress as an adult due to low resiliency levels, this can trigger higher levels of cytokines. This protein can cause inflammation when out of balance. Neuroinflammation is linked with disrupted serotonin synthesis, which generates many negative symptoms: dysregulated immune activity; disrupted sleep; and reduced motivation, focus, attention, learning, cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation. When you experience long-term and chronic neuroinflammation, your stress reactivity will increase, reducing cognitive performance and long-term adaptability and resilience.

“Feelings of love, gratitude, joy, serenity, inspiration, enthusiasm, humor, accomplishment and so on have been shown to promote a significant degree of immune regulation and overall resilience.”

University of Rochester researchers found that people who perceived themselves as having higher levels of agency and control over their life path had lower inflammatory markers. When you feel powerless and lacking in agency, you’ll experience more negative emotions, such as resentment, anger and bitterness. The following “hacks” may help you shift to a more positive mindset during periods of stress: Opt for more light-hearted or funny television shows if you watch TV to unwind; smile more when you’re in stressful situations to regulate stress better; and make time for activities you enjoy during stressful periods.

Constructively reframe challenges and cultivate emotional distance from challenging situations.

Boost resilience by learning “cognitive reappraisal,” a vital skill that helps you reframe adverse events in a more positive light. Reappraise challenging situations by asking yourself the following questions:

• “Is there anything I can gain or learn from this obstacle?”
• “Will this challenging situation bring me any future positive outcomes?”
• “How have I grown from this challenge?”
• “Can I find a deeper meaning in this challenge?”
• “Am I reactively or proactively dealing with this challenge?”
• “How open am I to experiencing something new?”
• “What steps can I take tomorrow to help me progress in a positive direction?”

“How we perceive the world around us tends to create that very reality. This is because our biological, neurochemical and behavioral responses follow our perspective at that specific point in time.”

Resist the temptation to navigate life’s challenges with unhealthy coping mechanisms such as avoidance, rumination and repression. Try “psychological distancing” instead, cultivating emotional distance from stressful circumstances. Focus on constructive steps forward and resist using first-person language when thinking or speaking about the situation. For example, if you unsuccessfully pitched a client, don’t say, “I messed this up. I rambled too much.” Instead, try something like, “This wasn’t the best pitch. Three things to improve going forward are listening skills, stress management and greater simplicity in the messaging.”

Don’t mistake an optimistic outlook for “toxic positivity,” though. Toxic positivity refuses to acknowledge painful experiences. You can acknowledge challenges while recognizing their power to change your life for the better.

About the Author

Richard Sutton is the CEO of The Performance Code and the founder of Sutton Health – a global consultancy focusing on business health and performance.He is the best-selling author of The Stress Code: From Surviving to Thriving.