04/16

On My Reading List | 21 Days Of Resilience

As a busy mom and wife, things can get pretty hectic. Stress can quickly creep in and take over! Since stressors in our lives are inevitable, it’s more about dealing with them effectively—not trying to abolish them entirely. In other words, shit happens! According to the author, Dr. Zelana Montminy, the only path to true happiness requires seeing challenges as opportunities.

I’ve always made self-improvement a huge priority in my life–whether it’s meditation or reading. The problem with the typical “self-improvement” genre of books is that it all sounds great but the tools used to get there seem less than realistic. When I received a copy of Dr. Zelana Montminy’s book, 21 Days To Resilience, I couldn’t put it down.

Not only does Dr. Montminy give you the tools to deal with the tough stuff, she also gives you realistic exercises to discover your strongest self. Keyword: realistic. And that’s what I love about this book!

I recently met Zelana backstage at The Doctors where she was talking about the launch of her new book. Here’s a peek, from the author herself, into the pages of this season’s must-have book:

Everyone talks all the time about being happy.  Well, as a Doctor of Psychology and happiness researcher, it might come as a surprise to you that I’m saying – forget happiness.  It’s too stressful to try so hard all the time!  If you’re resilient, happiness will be a more lasting, lifelong experience.  Here’s an excerpt from my book on why:

We do so much of what we think will make us blissful but so many of us are unhappier than ever before. The code to unlocking happiness and success isn’t the quest for it after all. Groundbreaking research shows that happiness is in fact much easier to attain if we stop focusing on it so much.

Although this might sound counterintuitive, happiness shouldn’t be the end goal if you really want to be happy.  Research has actually exposed several negative side effects of happiness, particularly that too much of the wrong type of happiness, experienced at an improper time, pursued in the wrong way, can be damaging. The antidote: undertake resilience instead.

Our frantic search for happiness is leading us astray primarily because we are fixated on the wrong things. We desperately try to capture good feelings for ourselves, which alienates us from others. As contagious as happiness can be if we express it, the process of attaining it that we’ve primarily been taught can be a very lonesome pursuit which further decreases happiness.

Plus we overestimate how thrilled certain achievements are going to really make us. When we don’t feel those emotions we expected, we keep striving for more and more that similarly doesn’t produce the feelings we hope for, continuing a vicious cycle. In this way, a focus on happiness mostly serves to highlight our shortcomings. Lasting happiness requires building upon your strengths, persevering, and being gracious with yourself and others—it’s really not about personal achievements or experiencing fleeting positive thoughts and feelings.

For more on how to actually build resilience, make sure to order your copy of Dr. Zelana Montminy’s book, 21 Days to Resilience.