We look at this timely, and well illustrated book by Ian Snape and Mike Weeks. Resilience By Design: How to Survive and Thrive in a Complex and Turbulent World reviewed is available from Wiley here.

Resilience By Design: How to Survive and Thrive in a Complex and Turbulent World reviewed

This book is written in an accessible and engaging way. With a reference to being a professor of the dark arts (Harry Potter reference, as perhaps anyone with the name Snape must come to accept), you get the sense that these guys have a sense of perspective and even humour at times. These are good attributes to have in association with the topics they tackle in this book in particular.

We loved the illustrations, we are not fans of landscape books, hard to hold, flop across your lap, tend to fall off too, but, the drawings and images are excellent. They are humorous, illustrate the concepts, and generally just worked very well and were a pleasure to see and pop up every few pages.

This book could be read by variety of ages, and people at different stages in their working life. The authors neither talk down nor go too deep into jargon, which enables this book to remain accessible to a wide audience. We definitely do live in a complex and turbulent world, so this book could do very well.

See more about the book

Discover how to transform stress and other unwanted states into resilience, clarity, and improved wellbeing with this insightful new book 

Resilience By Design: How to Survive and Thrive in a Complex and Turbulent World delivers the world’s most detailed and research-backed how-to manual to integrate advances from neuroscience and complexity theory with real world expertise, providing practical techniques that you’ll want to use every day. Alongside well explained scientific theory, each chapter contains dramatic, real-life stories of people from frontline services, elite sports, and everyday survivors who learned to thrive in high pressure, demanding, and often deadly situations.

You’ll discover how resilience isn’t just the ability to tough it out; it’s dependent upon an interconnected set of skills, techniques, creative processes, and new understandings of how we think, act, and interact with our environments and each other.

If you or someone you care about experiences unwanted stress, anxiety, decision fatigue, overwhelm, or burnout, by applying the step-by-step techniques in this book, you’ll learn to develop resilience, clarity, improved energy, wellbeing, and overall performance.

You’ll also learn:

There’s no such thing as an inherently stressful situation, workplace, or event.

How to appreciate and benefit from the hidden information in your unconscious signals and intuitions

How to adapt your decision making to meet the challenges of uncertainty, from the complicated and complex, to the outright chaotic

When to define your limits and ‘line in the sand’ so that you never expose yourself to unmanageable risk or potential burnout

What is it to, ‘Know Thyself’, through techniques that change perspective and bring clarity even in uncertain, turbulent times

Techniques that can be easily taught to people you care about

Lifelong resilience and being at your best is available to each of us, no matter what life throws at you.

Resilience By Design was derived from the experiences of hundreds of people on the frontline of emergency services, defense, Olympic level sports, business, art, science, and many other areas of expertise—from firefighters and paramedics to social workers and athletes. This book is written for students and teachers, parents and children, caregivers and patients, athletes and coaches, managers and employees, entrepreneurs, and fortune 500 CEOs, and anyone who wishes to know how to survive and thrive in an ever more complex and turbulent world.

More about the authors

DR. IAN SNAPE is a former research leader and executive at the Australian Antarctic Division. He has led 14 polar expeditions and has Black Belts in Taekwondo and Hapkido, is an accomplished ski mountaineer, and author of more than 100 academic papers. He coaches and trains CEOs, Olympic athletes, and frontline professionals using the techniques outlined in this book.

MIKE WEEKS is a free climber, adventurer, entrepreneur, and coach to elite athletes, military special forces, business executives, and high performers in many fields. He currently advises governments on eco defense and resilience, which is a far cry from famously coaching Jack Osbourne to climb a 1000m wall in the globally broadcast Jack Osbourne: Adrenaline Junkie.

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