Bounce: Living the Resilient Life

by Robert J. Wicks

Book Overview

Stress is a fact of modern life. And as more and more people face greater financial insecurity, longer work hours, and the increasingly complex personal and social demands of our fast-paced, multi-tasking, high-tech lifestyle, finding healthy ways to handle stress is more important than ever.

In Bounce: Living the Resilient Life, Robert Wicks shows you not just how to manage stress, but how to transform stressful situations into opportunities...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195367685
• ISBN13: 9780195367683
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A Good Toolbox for Cultivating Mindful Awareness of One's Life

This short book is a very concise, densely-packed manual for identifying one's stressors and discontent in life, assessing contributing factors, developing a self-care plan including regular debriefing of daily experiences, and cultivating meditative mindful awareness. All these elements are part of forming an overall lifestyle of "resilience," which is the capacity to thrive in a world filled with challenges and potential stressors by realigning one's outlook and taking intentional steps to care for one's psyche. The book is filled with lists and self-diagnostic tools which, if one takes the time and effort to reflectively work through, provide extensive insight into one's situation, needs, and strengths. Included are two appendices which also provide one with an in-depth self-analysis. An extensive bibliography provides fertile material for further study and resources. I found the discussion of "vicarious PTSD" particularly helpful, as well as the characterization of PTSD as a situation where normal crisis-coping mechanisms have become "stuck" beyond normal time frames. Most importantly, the book emphasizes that in the helping professions it is normal for people to experience vicarious stress and that it is important and healthful not to deny these effects but to consciously accept their existence and work through them in a preventative way, before a pathological internal state (such as depression) develops. This book is a particularly good resource for clinicians, doctors, clergy, emergency services, or other professionals whose work entails a continuous contact with stressful, negative situations or individuals. Highly recommended!

helpful, educational and ultimately useful

This books helps one understand tactics and tools to alleviate, eliminate and ultimately grow from stressful situations in life.

I read it every other day

I keep this book on my desk, because I'm always going back to it. Not only does he offer cutting edge research on the study of resilience, he sprinkles poignant stories throughout that really illuminate the material. Wicks is one of my favorite authors, and this is my favorite book of his.

A Well-Organized Wealth of Wisdom for Climbing out of the Spiral of Stress

I got hooked on the work of Dr. Robert J. Wicks, the renowned pastoral counselor and expert on overcoming stress, with the release of his earlier book, Prayerfulness: Awakening to the Fullness of Life. As a journalist, I was so impressed by "Prayerfulness" that I published an in-depth interview with Wicks and came to a deeper appreciation of his work. This is a scholar who works regularly with at-risk professional groups particularly prone to stress, including clergy, medical personnel and men and women serving in the armed forces. In "Bounce," Wicks boils down his wisdom on springing back from stress into 200 very well-organized pages. Depending on where you find yourself in the spiral of stress, you may wind up dwelling more on one chapter than another. Wherever you turn in this book, though, Wicks offers helpful inventories to assess your own situation and tools to begin grappling with your daily challenges. I like his eclectic approach to explaining these general principles. You'll find references here to psychologist Carl Jung and folk singer Joan Baez, to the Catholic monk Thomas Merton and the Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh. This is a great gift idea for someone you care about--especially if that someone is you.