Emotional Agility Paperback – International Edition, January 1, 2017

The book offers deep inner strength for living (or learning to live) an emotionally agile personal, professional and parental life. The beauty of the book lies in the simplicity of its language, making it a fantastic read.The richness of the book ‘Emotional Agility’ comes from the author Dr Susan David’s own life experiences from as early as a five-year old. I found it easy to relate to several examples and scenarios as these are the things that happen in real life. Finally, I now understand my own emotions and this makes me want to dance!Dr David takes a friendly and convincing approach to add meaning to everyday life. She gracefully allows you the autonomy to work out your own values, encourages to walk your own why and lets you choose your own meaningful life.Talking about autonomy, the author mentions ‘screw you’ money advice that she got from her mother. I could not have found a better way of putting it to my own two daughters. This is life made easy for me.And from the Emotional Agility manifesto, my favourite ones are:“Courage is not an absence of fear; courage is fear walking.”and“Embrace an evolving identity and release narratives that no longer serve you”.I love the book for its completeness as the author sheds insight into a wide spectrum of life situations and presents the tools to live through them with choice, courage and compassion.I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book. I have ordered more copies as it will make a great gift.

Emotional Agility by Susan DavidI really enjoyed reading this book. I first discovered Susan David and the concept of Emotional Agility from her interview on Impact Theory. I feel that I have practiced Emotional Agility without really having a name for it.In this book, Susan David walks us through the downfalls of being emotional rigid and how to become agile. Its not just a simple – be agile – discussion. She does a wonderful job of including examples and research. As in all the books I like, there are plenty of science based evidence to back up the theories that are put forth from the author.Early on in the book she mentions Viktor Frankl and his book Man’s Search for Meaning (on my list of books to read next). Viktor talks about creating space between stimulus and response. She takes this concept and says emotions are data points but not decision points. They can tell us about our environment but they do not make us make decisions – unless we let them.In walking through the process, Susan David outlines many of the ‘hooks’ we get entangled with when it comes to emotions. Then she shows us how to get ‘un-hooked’ and create better outcomes. I believe this is one of the aspects that makes this a good book. She gives plenty of real world examples on how to make practical changes to improve our lives. Its not just listing theories on the ‘hooks’, its also lays out a plan and path to a better more fulfilled life.One of my favorite parts of the book is when Susan talks about dead men goals. It is when we want to have a stress-free life. We don’t want any problems to disrupt our happiness. Susan says these are dead men’s goals – because dead people are the only ones that do not have any stress in their lives.This book should be on everyone’s list to read.

I wanted to love this book, but I only just liked it. I got some good pieces of information out of it, but nothing too revolutionary. The biggest takeaway is something I knew already but something that was good to read in the way the author presented it, and that's the fact that negative emotions aren't bad to have. You can learn from them and use them to guide you to living a life that's more in tune with your values and soon you'll feel less negative emotions once you're operating all on the same frequency with yourself. I wanted this book to go deeper, though. I felt the explanations of how to do something, how to help yourself really get unstuck, stopped short.An issue I personally have is knowing what my values are...I just simply don't know them. It would have been nice if this book gave a bit more detail as to how one might be able to figure out their values, besides trial and error and listening to their emotional feedback. I value things but don't act on them, and I'm not sure if those are still things I actually value. Maybe they're just things I'd like to value, but it'd take a super big change in character for me to act on those values and I'm not sure how to do that (this book didn't help with that). Since I'm focused on those as my values, I'm ignoring whatever the hell my real values are. But without those values in place, I don't know what I'm left with. Maybe I'm a terrible person who doesn't value much? Who knows, I don't.Labeling emotions was a helpful exercise that I took away from this book; it's good to not place blame or judgment with how you feel and let things just *be* what they are without trying to force them into something else. That said, I read this book because I know changes need to happen in my life and while I'm not going to try to force those changes, I'm still not 100% sure how to solidly guide myself into those changes. I'm well-versed with mindfulness and I know that a big element of suffering is our human tendency to attach expectations to things, and letting go of those expectations is important. Emotional Agility touches upon this, but I felt the author could again go further in explaining how one can let go. There can be a lot of emotional trauma and history that leads one to hold onto something for dear life, even if it's hurting them to do so and they're aware of that (such as a past love that has no chance of being mended back into a relationship). But just being able to let go doesn't magically happen when you know that you should do it and why you should it (but oh, how I wish that were all it took).If a workbook based on this book was released, that would probably be extremely helpful for people, such as myself, who are still feeling stuck. I know the actions to take but I'm still weary on how to take those actions. Even if I know what step one is, I might not know how to get to step one or act upon my motivation to get myself there. There's a missing link, a disconnect, between where I'm currently at and how to start with what I want to change and embrace to ease my daily suffering with things. This is most likely my fault, not the author's fault, but if the author was willing to put together a workbook to expand on this book, I would surely purchase it. Something to get the ball rolling and help me build up the momentum of being able to get unstuck.This book has great ideas in it, it makes sense, it just didn't get me in a position where I could do something with that information. Still a good read, and I recommend it for anywhere looking for a place to start if they're feeling like the world is against them and they can't keep their head above water.

Fantastic readI truly enjoyed itvery thought provoking and stimulating, provides solutions on how to be more emotionally agile.