1. What is your book about and why did you write it? 

Resilience: The Life Saving Skill of Story is about how to create change and build a world you want to live in right in the middle of this COVID Crisis. I wanted to write it because now is the time to start listing and telling our stories to support each other and to help each other survive, thrive,  learn and grow right now. While I was writing the book, I interviewed 30 people who are story practitioners around the world and as I was talking to them, I felt better: more empowered, connected, aware, and hopeful. We are going through an unprecedented crisis and there are huge and devastating implications and we need to learn from each other how to care for more people better – and story is how we do that. It is also how we manage our own internal world, and how we build resilience.

2. How would you define resilience? Many psychologists define resilience as an absence of depression or absence of struggle during difficult circumstances, do you agree or disagree? Why?

I define resilience as the capacity to prepare for, recover from, and adapt in the face of challenge, adversity, and stress. Resilience is an individual practice, but it is also a societal practice. We need systems that support people so that they have more capacity. We need communities built on the idea that everyone’s resilience matters. We need to look at the places where people have less resilience and know that we are all responsible for helping raise the baseline in every way we can. When we are individually resilient, that is more possible. When we are part of resilient inclusive communities we are a huge force for good.

3. How can people become more resilient, especially right now given everything people are going through?

People can become more resilient by using story to create capacity. There are dozens of how-to sections in my book where I get resilience story practices from a diverse group or practitioners from chefs to radio producers to activists to experts in healthcare and change. Just by growing our story and listening skills we grow our capabilities to be resilient. I felt it while writing the book – it was like stepping into a different world to conduct the interviews, and I want everyone to be able to step into that world too.

4. What advice would you have for people who do not feel resilient or just are not resilient. For example, they may get fired from a job and go into a state of deep depression or feel so overwhelmed with everything that is going on in their life that they can not function?

The advice I would give is this: There is a story out there that will lift you up. That will help you narrate a better future or a more adaptive present moment. And, it is not your fault in any way that you feel that way. We are in a time of massive change, massive harm, and massive displacement – and you are not alone. Read a little bit of the book and you will find someone who is speaking your story and your language

5. Why do you think some people are resilient during adversity and other people are not. What do you think distinguishes the two groups?

In the book there are several great conversations about who and why we are resilient. So here is a mini list of who and why people are resilient: 1) spirituality helps 2) having experience trauma in the past helps (yes I said it helps) 3) finding the stories that feed your sense of what the would could be helps 4) understanding how your brain works helps 5) understanding the greater context for your situation helps and finally 6) knowing you are not alone and that this is a systemic and global situation right now helps.

6. What is one experience you have gone through in life where you felt like you were not resilient and what is one experience in life where you felt like you were resilient. What were some differences in those two experiences and what did you learn from them.

In the book I tell a lot of stories about my resilience or lack thereof – so this is an easy question. I have been most resilient when I can create a context for what is happening. I feel better when I can narrate my life in a way that shows growth. I lost a job once that I loved, and thought was the only thing I was put on earth to do – it was my dream job and my life goal. And then I had to leave the job. At first I was not at all resilient. I was devastated. I could not talk to anyone with whom I had worked, I could not talk about it, think about it, or hear about it without feeling like an enormous failure. It took years – and learning a lot about story and how it works I was able to see the story differently. Leaving that job allowed me to open a consulting practice, to focus on working with groups and communities and individuals on change, on story, it allowed me to develop relationships around the world that have changed my life. I now see that job, and leaving it, as a training ground for everything I do. Now, It was not easy – and it hurt. The process took a while, but it increased my belief that I have a call in the world and I am called to meet the world where the most need is and to bring my gifts there and to accept that it will change over time as my gifts change and the world changes.

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Resilience: The Life Saving Skill of Story  is currently part of a Resilience Book Series. For more information about the Resilience Book Series please visit https://www.resilience-books.com.

1. What is The Secret of The Alchemist about and why did you write it?

I’ll answer with a short story. In 1993 I was part of the team at HarperCollins that published The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, with sales to date of over 86 million copies in 70 languages. When I met Paulo, however, he was an unknown Brazilian author, with his books only in Portuguese. At that time no one in the firm had predicted what a global bestseller he would be – until I read the manuscript.

I read his story of Santiago the shepherd boy, who follows his dream of finding treasure in the desert, and instantly knew – because of my own spiritual journey up to that moment I read the manuscript – it would be a global sensation. I persuaded my colleagues to give the book the highest level of marketing spend we could afford and the rest, as they say, is history!

When I met Paulo in person, in those early days soon after the book was released, he said he wanted to thank me with a gift, in gratitude for my passion and vision for his book. The gift was not what I expected and you can read a full account of our ‘magical’ encounter in the preface of my book. The gift he gave me was to change the course of the rest of my life and ultimately led to my writing The Secret of The Alchemist which is my account of the deep and life changing spiritual lessons I discovered – including ‘the secret’ – buried within Paulo’s novel.

2. What sort of effect did your meeting with Paulo Coelho and his book The Alchemist have on your life?

The immediate effect was amazing and was manifested through two distinct outcomes. On the one hand, Paulo challenged me to decide what I really wanted in life, and once I made that decision, he said it would happen! I learned very quickly to be careful what you wish for because the first obstacle to success is fear. I wanted to start my own business and yet to achieve that I had to face my fear of failure. 

As I began to dig for the secret buried in The Alchemist, I unearthed a new found courage to face my fear and follow my dream and within a short space of time I founded a successful advertising agency.

On the other hand, the effect was to restart an inner spiritual journey that I had put on pause for many years and led me to begin to value the uniqueness of what I had to offer the world – I found my inner treasure. 

3. You write that Alchemy is all about transformation and draws upon the greatest power of all to convert seemingly insurmountable obstacles into life changing experiences. Can you give an example of a seemingly insurmountable obstacle you faced in your life and how you converted it into a life changing experience?

Great question! I do talk about Alchemy a lot in my book because when I read The Alchemist I found a new mythic metaphor that gave shape and sense to most of my personal spiritual quest over the last 50 years. 

Yes, Alchemy is all about transformation – and that’s not about changing who we are into someone else or a perfect version of ourselves we think we should be. True personal transformation is about becoming our real self – the ‘self’ that is often hiding deep within our unconscious waiting for us to allow love, acceptance and nurturing to release the full potential of who we are – this is the meaning of the metaphor of the ancient alchemists who were striving to turn lead into gold.

My best example of overcoming an obstacle to my living life to the full – and believe me there are plenty to choose from – is when I discovered my inner child in the cupboard of my unconscious. When I was a toddler I had a real life Harry Potter experience of spending time locked in an understairs cupboard. The consequence was an angry and frustrated inner boy who was controlling my thoughts and emotions as an adult. His power was so great that he had my life set on a path of self destruction. 

By using the process outlined in the ancient wisdom of Alchemy, as interpreted by Carl Jung – a devoted alchemist – I found a way to give voice to the inner boy and give him the attention and love he had been denied. Slowly and gently I experienced a healing of the pain he had encountered and finally – instead of being an obstacle to my emotional progress he became my greatest asset. It’s that boy who became the writer I am today. My greatest weakness become my most treasured strength.

The power that made that happen, and what I refer to constantly in my book, is the power of unconditional Love.

4. In The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho writes about omens. What are your thoughts about omens or serendipity or synchronicity. Have you experienced any sort of synchronicity or omens in your life or with the publication of The Secret Of The Alchemist? If so, what happened?

Whenever I think about the many synchronistic omens throughout my life I burst out laughing, especially since I began writing The Secret of The Alchemist. What I love about omens is the fact they are usually so outlandish and unbelievably coincidental – you cannot make them up.

I have written about many of them on my blog: colmholland.com/blog – but here’s one I hold particularly dear. Soon after I finished writing The Secret of The Alchemist I was on a train to London, England, on the first leg of a long journey to Nashville. In my hand luggage I had an early proof copy of my book and a copy of Paulo’s latest book ‘Hippie’ that I started to read on the train. I was excited that my book would be published soon and was wondering how readers would react to my story. Would people want to buy it?

Just then a voice from the seat behind me said, ‘I’m on page 34 – what page are you up to?’ I turned to see a man holding up a copy of ‘Hippie’ and we both laughed.

I invited Peter, whom I had never met before, to sit next to me and straight away we joked about the coincidence and how Paulo would have laughed too that we are both reading his book on the same train, in the same carriage next to each other at the same time.

I call that an omen – not simply because it was an amazing coincidence – but because it held a special message of encouragement for me. Peter asked me what I did and I showed him my book, The Secret of The Alchemist and he instantly said he really wanted to read it and gave me his email address so he could buy a copy when it becomes available on August 1st 2020.

5. What advice do you have for someone who is trying to fulfill their dreams, but has become afraid to move forward in their life for fear they are wasting their time?

I can only share my own experiences and as far as fulfilling dreams and ambitions is concerned I learned a very important first lesson by reading the story of Santiago in The Alchemist: most of us have buried our dreams deep in our unconscious and for some reason have given up dreaming altogether. 

Anyone reading this may think they are alone in feeling it is better not to dream at all than to fail. You are not alone – that’s exactly what I thought too until I read this passage in The Alchemist:

” Everyone, when they are young, knows what their destiny is.They are not afraid to dream. But, as time passes a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible to realize their destiny. To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only real obligation. It’s your mission on earth. And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” Paulo Coelho.

This is the experience of my life through an encounter with power of unconditional Love – that surrounds me and is within me – leading me on to fulfill my dreams. This can be your experience too and to assist you in unearthing and believing again in your dreams I have made this blessing for everyone who reads my book:

“As you read The Secret of The Alchemist, I have asked the magical power of Love to give you everything you need to be the alchemist in your world.” Colm Holland.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 10 percent, or 6.1 million, women in the United States have difficulty getting pregnant or staying pregnant each year.

In The Ayurvedic Guide to Fertility: A Natural Approach to Getting Pregnant (New World Library, May 5, 2020), author and Ayurvedic practitioner Heather Grzych offers a gentle, holistic approach to understanding the physical, emotional, and psychological aspects of fertility based on Ayurveda, an ancient form of medicine that originated in India that means “the science of life.”

We hope you’ll enjoy this Q and A with Heather about the book.

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What is Ayurveda?

Ayurveda is a holistic lifestyle medicine and self-care system that seeks to cure the emotional, environmental, and behavioral aspects of health. Ayurveda is like learning how to garden – except you are the plant. It teaches a person how to live in line with cycles of nature, including changes in climate and season, and how to eat, live, work and love according to their very specific mind-body constitution. Ayurveda, meaning “the knowledge of life,” actually originated as a practice in India thousands of years ago and it’s often referred to as “the mother of all healing” because it’s influenced so many systems of medicine in the world.

What are the reasons that so many women are having difficulty with fertility today?

Once a woman decides she wants to have a child, it doesn’t always happen quickly, nor is it guaranteed, so women get frustrated, disappointed, sad, resentful, etc. While it’s certainly true that women are now starting much later in life to become a mother, and this is causing them to miss peak fertility windows and experience a lot of challenges, the fertility problem is at its root a deep neglect of the feminine on a cultural level. I don’t think women have fully come to grips with the unique challenges they are dealing with that their grandmothers and maybe even their mothers didn’t have to deal with. Just one example: Over 70 percent of mothers are working mothers, mostly full-time, and while it’s a norm that many women seem to have gotten used to, it’s a lot to ask a woman to work full time, commute two hours a day, take care of her own health, and to try raising a child well. There is a real lack of the space element in everyone’s lives, and space is one of the elements needed for creation. The stress levels, plus digestive, sleep, metabolic, and mood issues that are so common in our culture are key indicators that women and couples do not have the kind of clear, flowing, supported health that leads to optimum fertility, or what we call ojas in Ayurveda. People tend to focus so much on the goal of becoming pregnant that they forget to create the conditions for health and fertility.

Tell us about the Four Fertility Factors of Ayurveda.

This is an example of the real poetry of Ayurveda. There are four factors that influence optimum fertility: Seed, Season, Field and Water. They are the same principles that apply to planting a garden, and I think any creative endeavor, really. In this case, the seed represents the sperm and the ovum. The season represents the time of the month, as the body changes in its cycle; the time of year, because the body changes in response to the weather and climate; and the time of life, as the body changes in each of its stages. Field represents, at a basic level, the place where a new soul will take form in the physical realm – the most specific location of this is the uterus where the seed is implanted, which is impacted by the larger macrocosm – the whole body, the environment one lives in, the people around, the sensory input, and even what happens in the cosmos. Water represents the care of the seeds and the field, including the fluids that carry hormones and nutrients, and keep tissues juicy.

Tell us about the role that diet plays in Ayurveda and fertility.

Fertility in Ayurveda is considered the outcome of proper digestion and metabolism, and that depends on what, when and how you eat, as well as what, when and how you put out energy. Each food you take into your body has certain qualities to it that will drive how your tissues are made and the level of each dosha in your body. Imbalanced doshas will affect menstrual cycles and can impede conception. The way you metabolize your food – whether your digestive fire, or agni, is too weak, too strong or just right – will either allow your body to use the nutrients, release them through wastes, or get clogged up with improperly digested food, ama, which will redirect your doshas and cause disease patterns. Many people will blame their poor health on a diagnosis of a disease, but the opposite is actually true: a disease process leads to a disease state, and we have a hand in this process. It’s not just what you eat. The whole context matters – when you ate last, how much you are eating, how the was food prepared, and what it was combined with. Did you go running or do crunches or have sex right after you ate? Small dietary nuances matter too. For example, a lot of women don’t know that adding a certain spice to their food can have an impact on how they digest, thus impacting their health and fertility.

What is the most important thing that you would like someone who is over 35 to know about getting pregnant?

Drop your expectations and keep your curiosity. Some women have difficulty after 35 and some don’t, so it’s good to learn about your particular body. How you are living your life will impact your health and fertility. My own fertility journey is a testament to this. When I was 32, I unsuccessfully tried to get pregnant. Years later, I easily conceived naturally and had a healthy child just before turning 40.

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Heather Grzych is the author of The Ayurvedic Guide to Fertility. A board-certified Ayurvedic practitioner, she bridges the worlds of conventional and alternative medicine to help women and men heal their physical and emotional lives. Heather is on the board of directors for the National Ayurvedic Medical Association and has consulted with doctors, governments, and insurance companies. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit her online at http://heathergrzych.com.

1. What is your book about and why did you write it?

My book is about developing the mindset to meet a challenge and grow stronger so that you can feel optimistic even when the situation doesn’t support optimism. I wrote it because I believe that it’s important to transform good ideas about how people work into practices people can use to live better.

2. How would you define resilience? Many psychologists define resilience as an absence of depression or absence of struggle during difficult circumstances, do you agree or disagree? Why?

I disagree. I think resilience is making the choice, over and over, to learn and keep going. It’s a lot like grit: and it is also an act of self-possession. It’s a refusal to have one’s identity or experience determined by circumstances outside one’s control. It’s not an absence: it’s a creation of oneself that reaches beyond the current moment and toward a better moment.

3. How can people become more resilient, especially right now given everything people are going through?

Essentially, I think there are three ways people can support their natural resilience. The first is to use their memories to remind them that while this is the first pandemic they have experienced, it’s not the first time they have experienced uncertainty or loss or loneliness. Becoming really curious about what pulled them through in the past will give them good ideas about what is possible today.

The second is to recognize that other people are hugely important to human beings. The pain that is caused by social isolation is as real as physical pain and sometimes you have to be gentle with that. You also have to keep reaching for connection even when it is not perfect or not easy.

The final thing that people can do every day is to connect to whatever sense of purpose or direction requires them to keep acting in support of something outside themselves. Whether that something is faith or family or a long-term goal, they need a point on the horizon that helps them keep their bearings as they move through this time.

4. What advice would you have for people who do not feel resilient or just are not resilient. For example, they may get fired from a job and go into a state of deep depression or feel so overwhelmed with everything that is going on in their life that they can not function?

There are lots of resilient people who don’t feel resilient. The heart of resilience is the relationship between our conscious minds and the full strengths and resources contained in our bigger selves. Those bigger selves include our brains (which are super-processors), our bodies, and the network of social connections we have internalized. Some people would include a spiritual dimension to this. In any case, the whole self is much bigger than the voice in your head that is telling you that you are in pain and that there is no hope.

Hope is not something you discover outside; it’s something you glimpse when you realize that there are strengths and values and possibilities in you that you are not yet using. And it grows in tiny steps at the edges of awareness. If you are connecting to memories to find evidence that you will survive, and you are connecting to other people, and you have a sense of purpose or direction, then you will find your resilience one choice at a time.

But resilience does not feel good. It feels like getting hit by a bus and then getting back on your feet. Feeling terrible does not mean you are not resilient: it means you have been hit hard and you might need to give yourself some time and connect to some support to get back on your feet.

5. Why do you think some people are resilient during adversity and other people are not. What do you think distinguishes the two groups?

It takes a lot of willpower to keep making good choices in bad situations. Willpower is a function of different circumstances. Are you lucky enough to eat well and exercise and look after your physical energy? Do you have a history of surviving and succeeding to give you good models for getting through? Do you have people who are kind and challenging and believe you can be better tomorrow than you are today? We too often think of willpower as a virtue: it’s better to think of it as a fuel. If you have it, you are both making good choices and you are lucky. If you don’t have it, you will need to be kind to yourself and to find enough support and enough space to build it a little at a time.

6. What is one experience you have gone through in life where you felt like you were not resilient and what is one experience in life where you felt like you were resilient. What were some differences in those two experiences and what did you learn from them.

I don’t think that I accept the terms of this question. There are no times I have not been resilient but there have been some losses that slowed me down longer than others. My Ph.D. exam was a bit of a nightmare. My examiners passed my thesis, but hated what I had to say. In the context of academics at the time, that meant that finishing my doctorate was also the end of my academic career. Two things helped me keep moving: one was that I had babies at home and realized that meant I had the gift I wanted most. The other was that I didn’t like the values my examiners had shown and so I was not sorry to leave their politics behind me.

Fast forward ten years, and I was still looking for a new path forward.. I’d had four consecutive miscarriages before I went back to school to become a minister. That was not a good time. I was hitting walls everywhere: no babies, no funding for a very expensive degree, and no support from my church. I was desperately busy without moving forward. And that was when I went to an NLP course and decided to take a huge risk. I decided to become part of a flaky, unprofitable self-development business against the best advice of pretty much everyone. And it was the choice that gave me traction and self-knowledge and resilience. I’ve spent the past 17 years building an amazing learning community and teaching things I always believed were unteachable.

So in many ways, my worst moments led to my best moments. It makes it very hard for me ever to be sure that things are not going to turn around. I learned that uncertainty can be a necessary precursor to resilience.

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For more information about Linda Ferguson and Resilience: Grow Stronger in a Time of Crisis please click here.  Her book is currently part of a Resilience Book Series. For more information about the Resilience Book Series please visit https://www.resilience-books.com.

Energy healing is based on the premise that energy is our essence and that while our bodies appear to be solid, they are in fact a constantly swirling set of energetic exchanges.

In The Language Your Body Speaks: Self-Healing with Energy Medicine (New World Library, May 5, 2020), author Ellen Meredith, an energy medicine practitioner with over 35 years of experience, teaches readers how to speak the energetic language of the body, mind, and spirit through simple experiments, exercises, and practices.  We hope you’ll enjoy this interview with her about the book. 

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Your book is called The Language Your Body Speaks. Please tell us a little bit about what this language consists of and how we can learn to speak it.  

In a word, the language your body speaks is Energy.  Subtle Energies form your body, fuel the operations of your body, and organize the functioning of your body. Subtle energies are not neutral. They are extremely intelligent!  They carry and express meaning.  

Our equipment for learning to perceive this language is not some special psychic ability – it is our senses: whatever we use to bring in information and process it.  This includes not only sight, sound, feel, smell, and taste, but also our direct knowing, instinct, radar, and recognition of pattern.  And when we speak “energy”, we can use all of these to communicate with the body.

Your book’s subtitle is “Self-healing with Energy Medicine.”   Can you say a few words about what Energy Medicine is?  

Your body communicates using chemical messaging and energetic messaging.  Energy Medicine uses energetic messaging to assess and influence your well-being.  You may be familiar with practices such as yoga, acupuncture, MRIs, Eden Energy Medicine, or Qi Gong. These all use energy to assess what is happening and to promote well-being.  

A good story, an evocative image, a dance, a spiritual ritual, a nutritious meal, and other experiences that influence your body can act as energy medicine. They can fuel and influence the subtle energies that run your body, helping them to work better.

Can anyone work with energy or do you need to be extremely intuitive or psychic to do so? 

The ability to “speak energy” is built into us, just as is the ability to learn English or French or Chinese.  You do not have to be intuitive or psychic – we each have some or several forms of perception that work well for us – our senses, our thinking brains, our physical ability to express ourselves.  Learning to work with energy starts with recognizing and building on what you already know that enables you to understand and communicate meaning.  

You talk in the book about shifting the conversation from, “What’s wrong?” to “What is needed to bring well-being to my body, mind, and spirit?” Please tell us more about that. 

Usually, when something has gone wrong, it also means that what might be “right” is not happening adequately.  But when we are focused too intensely on the problems, the body tries to fulfill your expectation, showing you more and more about what is wrong.

When we shift the focus to cultivate what is needed, our energies move to support that.  This, in turn, activates the body’s in-built healing capacity, while focusing on what’s wrong will not.

I have friends and family who have been to doctors and either been told nothing is medically wrong with them, or that there is no treatment for what they have.  What does your book offer to people who want help with these complaints?

In some ways, being liberated from the medical model is a blessing!  Our bodies don’t tend to go out of balance because they crave medical intervention.  They mostly want us to show up and listen and respond appropriately.  They want us to really address the issues, not just “treat” them.  And my book helps you learn better ways to do that.  

If someone wants to use energy medicine to heal something, how do they start?  

Start Simple.  Rub your hands together, then ask each hand, in turn, where it wants to land on your body.  Hold there, until one or the other feels called to move.  I call this exercise “Healing Hands”.  There is so much intelligence in our hands that we can learn from following their inclination for a time.

In the book I offer lots of exercises and explorations that can serve as entry points into using energy medicine to heal.

What is the main message you hope that readers will take away from The Language Your Body Speaks?  

Energy is our first language.  We already have some ability to speak it, but the more fluent we become the more we can participate in our own healing and our own miraculous creation of self.  

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Ellen Meredith, DA, EEMAP, is the author of The Language Your Body Speaks. An intuitive and energy medicine practitioner with over 35 years of experience, she has served on the faculty of energy medicine pioneer Donna Eden since 2010 and teaches energy healing techniques all over the world. Ellen lives in Marin County in California. Visit her online at www.ellenmeredith.com. 

1. As publisher of Changemakers Books, you took charge of an effort to publish a series of ten books by experts on resilience in many dimensions. Tell us a little more about that.

While some people are stitching masks for health workers, donating to food pantries, or shopping for elderly neighbours, we at John Hunt Publishing asked what we could possibly do to help. We came up with a unique idea: what if we could bring out a series of books to help people through the pandemic? Not simple stuff like how to do social distancing, but the tough stuff: practical, and emotional skills – like handling anxiety, or loss. But also the spiritual skills we need to build courage, inner strength, empathy and collaboration in a crisis.

I jumped at the opportunity. Because my imprint, Changemakers Books, focuses on books about personal transformation, I already had a great network of authors and experts. I invited twelve of them to draw from their expertise and each write a 20,000 word book in twenty days on one aspect of resilience. To my astonishment, ten of them said yes to this audacious request. I worked with them all through the first half of April, helping keep their focus on practical exercises. Then our production team worked at warp speed to get the finished manuscripts through production. Normally this takes three months. They did it in less than three weeks. By early May, ebooks were available. By mid -May – right now, in fact – the print books are arriving at on online retailers. So, ten books, seven weeks from commission to books available. I don’t think anything like this has ever happened before in publishing.

Here are the topics of the completed books: Adapting and Planning • Aging with Courage • Connecting with Nature • Developing Inner Strength • Handling Anxiety • The Inner Spiritual Journey • Navigating Loss • The Life-Saving Skill of Story • Virtual Communication • Virtual Teams. Here’s the website where they can all be found: www.resilience-books.com, and they can be ordered directly here: https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/changemakers-books/our-books/jhp-books/

2. How did you get interested in resilience?

Living in under lockdown in the US this March, I realised that this pandemic was going to last years, not months. It was going to disrupt our lives, devastate our health systems, and likely decimate our economies. I felt personally inadequate, unable to come to grips with the chaos heading towards us. But,I realised we have no choice. We are going to have to deal with these disruptions. So, what do we need, I asked myself? It was right then that John Hunt posed this fateful question about what our authors could do to help. Taking on this assignment gave me a renewed sense of purpose – something each of my authors have also told me they felt too, while writing their books. You see by nature every species is resilient. Every life form has survived countless threats of extinction. But, uniquely, we humans can learn survival skills from each other. So, spreading the skills in these books has the potential to rapidly increase our ability not just to be resilient individuals, but resilient communities and societies.

3. How would you define resilience? Many psychologists define resilience as an absence of depression or absence of struggle during difficult circumstances, do you agree or disagree? Why?

Technically, resilience means the ability to “bounce back.” Ecologists define it as the ability of living systems to recover from severe damage. So, to me resilience is not the absence of something (depression), but the presence of something: a sense of vision and purpose. Look, we can’t avoid this pandemic. But we can choose whether or not we will be able to get up each day and be there for our children, find the strength to do our jobs – especially in healthcare, or even working in grocery stores. We can determine whether we will be empathetic to our neighbours, compassionate towards those in need. Or will we sink into our most fearful, hostile selves? We do have a say in determining who we will be in the pandemic, and we can start now, building the skills to become our best future selves.

4. How can people become more resilient, especially right now given everything people are going through?

Each of the ten books charts a different skills-set. For some, connecting with nature will be key. For some finding one’s spiritual depths. For those struggling with anxiety, most important may be learning to stay in tune with your physical being so that you can stabilise your mood and keep calm. Because each of these books are written by masters in their fields – most with 30 years or more expertise – they are like a miniature master-class for building resilience. Look, in our regular life, lots of people are too busy to meditate or begin a new daily practice. But now each of us know we need something. We know we are not up to the task. People are looking for this kind of practical wisdom. What they won’t expect is to find so much of it here, at their fingertips, in these books. Heck, I am learning from the series, practicing the techniques, dedicating myself to becoming a more resilient person.

5. What advice would you have for people who do not feel resilient or just are not resilient.

I would say, of course you don’t feel resilient! Every one of us is up against a massive wall of uncertainly. As viruses evolve along unpredictable pathways, we can’t possibly know what the next year will look like. So we all feel desperately unprepared. I can’t plan my career path for the year to come, but I can plan on becoming a more adaptable person. I can learn how to be aware of the thinking mistakes I might make that could lead me to make disastrous decisions. These are some of the skills outlined in Resilience: Adapt and Plan for the New Abnormal – which to me is the cornerstone book of the series that everyone should read. Do I feel anxious about my future? Of course! I can’t banish those feelings, but my following the advice in Resilience: Handling Anxiety, I can learn to recognise if I’m starting to spin downwards and out of control, and take corrective measures to stabilise myself.

6. What is one experience you have gone through in life where you felt like you were not resilient and what is one experience in life where you felt like you were resilient.

I can give you one experience with both sides of the resilience coin. I also run a communications training business. My partner and I teach courses to environment and development groups to be better communicators. For the past ten years, we have resisted moving any of our courses on line. This cost us some big business opportunities. But, we were ready to accept that. But, we were clear that people learned better in face-to-face workshops, and we did not want to adapt. So, that’s a lack of responsiveness to change. Then, wham, this March in the space of three weeks every one of our clients canceled their courses on us. We had zero business on our books. Our business model was basically destroyed. Who was going to come to a training program for the next year or so? We toyed with simply shutting down the company for good. Instead, we realised that our clients, too, were in crisis. All their conferences were cancelled, all their important meetings were postponed. We know they would have to move online to fulfill their mandates. And they were really bad at virtual communications. So, we stepped up. We took our deep expertise in communications and began figuring out how to apply it to on-line communications. We wrote a book, putting this new knowledge all in one place, and it has become our personal contribution to the series: Resilience: Virtually Speaking – Communicating at a Distance. We are set up now to deliver the teachings of this book in virtual workshops, and our clients are coming back to us – because we are now set up to help them become more resilient. This to me is key: finding ways to contribute to other people, on their journey to becoming more resilient.

1.What is your book about and why did you write it?

My book is about anxiety: how it is a productive emotion that can turn against us at a time like this. We each feel it, but for some of us it disrupts our lives so badly that we can no longer function. I’ve been there. In the book I present a method of practices to handle, and manage, our anxiety. When things are as bad as they are today, we’re never going to get rid of it, but we can train ourselves to align the emotions that turn against us with the reality of what we face. We can draw on resilience to live well and place anxiety back into its natural, beneficial place.

2. How would you define resilience? Many psychologists define resilience as an absence of depression or absence of struggle during difficult circumstances, do you agree or disagree? Why?

The word resilience comes from a Latin root meaning “to spring back” or “the act of rebounding.” It implies that we’re vulnerable, we’ve been knocked down. We draw on inner strength, or faith, or both to manage what troubles us and return to a position of fortitude. I don’t see it as an absence of struggle, because the very word describes the struggle and our ability to overcome it.

3. How can people become more resilient, especially right now given everything people are going through?

I write that anxiety resides at the intersection of uncertainty and belief. Belief can offer us a font of resilience, but belief, especially erroneous beliefs we hold about ourselves, can inhibit any ability we may have to draw on resilience that exists deep inside of us, Somewhere within us we all share this capability. A practice like mediation can help us ferret out those negative beliefs and reassess our situation and our ability to deal with it. From that place we can become less anxious and discover resilience we fear we’re incapable of.

4. What advice would you have for people who do not feel resilient or just are not resilient. For example, they may get fired from a job and go into a state of deep depression or feel so overwhelmed with everything that is going on in their life that they can not function?

It’s OK to feel distressed, or anxious. We’re not machines, and in a situation like the current crisis, with ill health and job loss all around us, we’re all going to face the terror that we cannot function. We’ve never been through anything like this before. But each of us has faced failure, trouble and anxiety, and we can draw on what we’ve learned and combine that with some simple tactics to break down this overwhelming panic into parts we can work with and regain some control over our emotions. From that place of assurance we persevere.

5. Why do you think some people are resilient during adversity and other people are not. What do you think distinguishes the two groups?

Faith is of tremendous benefit here, as is a dedication to others. I think resilient people are able to set themselves aside when they lose their will to overcome and just live for others. There’s a tremendous energy that comes from empathy and charity, and if we can’t spring back from a dark place for ourselves, we can certainly do it for those we love and those in desperate situations who can benefit from our help. People who are not resilient get stuck in their heads and lose the ability to truly encounter difficulties free of perseveration about what holds them down. It takes surrender to discover a source of strength to rebound from crisis. People who are not resilient are too rigid in their attachment to the inner thoughts that defeat them.

6. What is one experience you have gone through in life where you felt like you were not resilient and what is one experience in life where you felt like you were resilient. What were some differences in those two experiences and what did you learn from them.

I’ve struggled with bipolar disorder most of my life, and I’ve faced situations where I found no strength within me to draw on at all. I lost all faith and believed life was not worth living, my world was so dark. I’ve attempted suicide, which is an act completely devoid of resilience. But such an act is an act without discipline as well, and I think some discipline of will is necessary to be resilient. After I failed at suicide, thank God, I clawed back to the point that I was able to work. I discovered and developed the methods I describe in my book. In that work I found that I, too, could rebound from despair and thrive. Today I work with others to help them find the same will to overcome the troubles that plague them.

In the current crisis we all find ourselves in an unfamiliar place and that is exceptionally uncomfortable. We can lean on people who care for us and people who care for others as examples to emulate. We can find some sense of faith even when we feel meaning has abandoned us. We can handle our anxiety and discover that we, too, are resilient enough to spring back from whatever fills us with dis-ease. Resilience is something within each of us, we just need to discover ways to unleash it. I hope that in the book I’ve presented some ways to help people realize that promise.

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For more information about George Hofmann and Resilience: Handling Anxiety in a Time of Crisis please click here. His book is currently a book. His book is currently part of a Resilience Book Series. For more information about the Resilience Book Series please visit https://www.resilience-books.com.

What is your book about and why did you write it?

I’m a 74-year-old clinical psychologist, with a second doctorate in ministry, an ordained interfaith minister, and a writer. I’m also a husband, father, grandfather, friend, and lifelong mystic. I’ve been writing and lecturing on conscious aging as a spiritual and mystical experience for over twenty-five years. Then, more recently, I came to see that a spiritual and mystical awareness of life is also critical to our survival in the rapidly escalating climate crisis, so I wrote, Mystical Activism: Transforming a World in Crisis in support of climate activism with a forward by Matthew Fox.

But now there’s even more. As the coronavirus burst upon the scene, I realized that climate change was only one of a new and terrifying “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” joining the coronavirus pandemic, uncontrolled population growth, and the collapse of civilization as we know it. We are heading into a sustained global crisis and I fear for the future of my family, friends, and humanity itself. This is not academic to me, it’s in my awareness every day, triggered by each news report, email, telephone conversation, webinar and article I do.

Arising from the aforementioned concerns, my offering to the Resilience series is a blend of psychology, self-help, spirituality and mysticism specifically intended for my own demographic – men and women 65 and older wrestling with fear, despair, insecurity and loneliness in this accelerating global crisis. To meet their needs, my book, Aging with Vision, Hope and Courage in a Time of Crisis, provides practical guidance, survival tools, personal growth exercises, and an understanding of the transformational possibilities of this new time. It also addresses the larger spiritual and mystical context of the global crisis and the revelation of a new humanity that will come as we fall back in love with Creation again.

How would you define resilience? Many psychologists define resilience as an absence of depression or absence of struggle during difficult circumstances, do you agree or disagree? Why?

Depression and struggle are indications of one’s resilient capacity not its underlying nature. I believe that personal resilience is based on the tools, resources, life experiences and confidence we bring to a problem.

For example, psychology, spirituality and mysticism offer powerful tools and resources for surviving and thriving. Psychology provides skills and strategies for enhancing emotional stability and coping, spirituality taps into our ultimate beliefs that renew trust, hope and engagement, and mystical awareness restores our deep and fundamental concern for Creation – we take care of what we love and hold sacred. These tools and resources create the building blocks of our resilience.

Accumulated life experience also matters. As older men and women in the 21st century, we have witnessed and lived through extraordinary times. I made a partial list of major events over the last eight decades and was astounded with number, range and magnitude of developments we’ve experienced in science, technology, politics, economics, social and cultural evolution too numerous recite. And we are still here, still growing, and share a new kind of maturity with each other and the world. Our generation’s unprecedented longevity and accumulated life experience have contributed powerfully to the hard-won resilience we bring to this time of crisis. 

How can people become more resilient, especially right now given everything people are going through?

I describe five dimensions of resilient responding to the global crisis in my book: practical, psychological, spiritual, mystical, and, for those in their later years, the wisdom of the sage. In brief, we need to make realistic plans for survival and strengthen local community; confront our denial, cynicism and despair, work through our emotional distress, and redirect our psychological energies from defensive to proactive; renew our sacred beliefs, practices, rituals and community to reframe our struggles in profoundly meaningful ways; access the right-hemisphere’s universal mystical consciousness to awaken perception of an infinitely holy world; and integrate all this with a lifetime of experience to nourish the wisdom of the sage – one who can stand in the fire, speak with an inclusive and moral voice, and build loving community.

What advice would you have for people who do not feel resilient or just are not resilient. For example, they may get fired from a job and go into a state of deep depression or feel so overwhelmed with everything that is going on in their life that they cannot function?

We are entering an enormously challenging time, a time of discouragement, loss, despair and hardship. At one point or another, we will each struggle with depression, post-traumatic stress, anxiety and emotional collapse. There is no shame in this completely human response. Our work is to stay together, ask for help, hold each other’s pain with tenderness and acceptance, bring all the dimensions of resilience to bear, and be patient. Our greatest enemy is defensive retreat and isolation that breed depression, disordered thinking, and progressive decline.

Why do you think some people are resilient during adversity and other people are not. What do you think distinguishes the two groups?

While there is much research on the importance of early childhood support and resource-rich learning environments, at times like this, this research changes little. Our work is to take care of each other in the moment, create adaptive communities, turn suffering into meaningful activity, and move ever deeper into a mystical appreciation of a living divine universe. Ironically, all that we do in this time will be producing more resilient humans.

What is one experience you have gone through in life where you felt like you were not resilient and what is one experience in life where you felt like you were resilient. What were some differences in those two experiences and what did you learn from them?

Malidoma Somé, an initiated West African shaman with a western Ph.D., talked about soul-work one day in a Mendocino Men’s Gathering years ago. He explained that in his culture’s cosmology, spiritual elders in the pre-life realm meet with each soul planning a return to Earth to help them choose their specific purpose in coming back. Once an appropriate task is identified and approved, the individual is sent forth to be reborn but soon forgets the plan. Nonetheless, each person carries the seed of that sacred mission within. At some point along the road of life, an inner clock starts ticking and restlessness ensues because the individual unconsciously knows that their soul’s work is still undone.

This disquiet arises in each of us. Spiritually speaking, such agitation is meant to draw attention to the unfinished work of the soul. Finding our purpose in life and its crises, therefore, is about remembering why we came and discerning what this soul-work is right now. Whatever our particular religious or spiritual beliefs, Malidoma’s explanation represents an archetypal description of the soul’s calling.

Here’s my example.

At the callow age of 14, I underwent open-heart surgery for the correction of a congenital atrial-septal defect. The operation saved my life but nearly obliterated my soul, for during surgery, I woke up feeling hands working inside my heart. It’s called anesthesia awareness and happens when anesthesia levels fall too low to maintain unconsciousness while paralyzing neuromuscular blocking agents prevent the patient from communicating this horror to medical staff. I repressed this horrific trauma for decades until a defibrillating shock administered to convert a heart arrhythmia shattered my defenses and I was forced to relive every devastating second of the surgery. I broke. Unable to hold the emotional pain of others, I gave up my work as a clinical psychologist and, needing some kind of new direction, returned to school for a doctorate in interfaith spirituality. Yet all the while, I kept wondering – and asking! – why must I suffer this immense anguish only to lose my professional identity, career, income, and psychological community. At the culmination of my studies, however, I began writing and seven books poured forth over the next decade articulating surprising spiritual realizations that I now realize were part of my reason for coming.

Anyone can break. For many of us, the events of our undoing represent the secret work of the soul dismantling the wrong life project. Moreover, when our lives are torn apart, what is revealed is the deep self, its nature, energies, and reasons for being. My first book was titled, Death of a Hero, Birth of the Soul: Answering the Call of Midlife, and described the second half of live as soul work. It accurately predicted what lay in store for me. But we have to turn despair into meaning by recognizing that whatever is happening may also be the most important transformative event in our life. I have heard so many people, reflecting on past mistakes, failures, or trauma, describe them in later years as deeply valuable. My heart was opened in ways it took years to discern, and now I am so grateful for the transformation from tired psychotherapist to an awakened mystic.

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For more information about John, please visit his website at www.johnrobinson.org. For more information about the Resilience Book Series please visit https://www.resilience-books.com.