Book Review: Resilience by Liggy Webb

A sound basic guide to personal resilience

If you do a web search for books on personal resilience, this one comes up as well rated. It is a clear, common-sense self-help guide to the basics of the topic.

The book is easy to use, with a mix of checklists, exercises, anecdotes, and resources guides at the back. It handles such issues as dealing with strong emotions in a sensible style which avoids New Age jargon.

Resilience has useful brief sections on the valuable deeper approaches, such as Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, and the Kubler Ross Grief Cycle model.

I agree with Liggy that handling conflicts well is a key part of personal resilience, and she has a good chapter on this, including understanding your own ‘conflict style’, core skills for handling conflict, and the Cool Down Model.

There are also chapters on such topics as looking after yourself, improving relationships with others, and creating and achieving a positive vision. I liked the appendix with top 20 Survival Songs – an intriguing mix, ranging from Monty Python through Sugababes to Vera Lynn. There are also some useful website listings.

For me, the main limitation of this book is that it does not go deep enough in its guidance or self-help processes on some key issues, such as facing, clearing and reframing negative emotions. However, I would happily recommend it as a sound basic starter to the subject.

How to enjoy a wet May: Finding your inner fire when the sun won't shine

This is an update on a blog I wrote two years ago: I am very aware of the wet bits of May 2014, having spent a week on an off-grid camp where it rained almost continually. I was leading groups on resilience at this camp, and it was touching to see how the community dug deep to find reserves of kindness and tolerance as the mud got deeper too.

Living in mud for a week is a great model for modern life in general. You could see the mud as yukky and dismal, or choose to change the story, remember the playful child in you, and see it all as an adventure... Now back to the 2012 blog:

I am writing this at Hazel Hill Wood, sitting at the foot of my favourite beech tree, with a struggling campfire.  It has been raining heavily for days, now it’s merely a light drizzle pushed along by a strong South-Westerly wind.  This seems to be the shape of May 2012.

Early May is my favourite time of the year, especially at Hazel Hill: the bluebells are usually abundant, the birdsong is intense, and there is new growth everywhere.  As you may guess, this year it’s all pretty subdued.  Many bluebells haven’t even flowered.  The wood is damp and chilly like early March, and yet the Spring growth is here.  The green of young beech leaves is brilliant, almost electric, even in this weather.  But the lack of sun has shown me how much I, and probably most people, depend on Spring sunshine for our own sense of growth and renewal.

I know many organic farmers and gardeners who say that it’s best not to water and fertilise your plants too much.  Their approach forces the plants to root deeper in order to find water and nutrients.  There’s a useful parallel here for humans in a wet Spring.

The silver lining in these clouds is the chance to strengthen your will and intent, and dig deeper in yourself, in order to find the inner fire to fuel your Spring growth.  It’s like cycling instead of driving a car: not so easy and convenient, but it makes you fitter, stronger, less dependent on outside support.

How to do this?  Robert Osborn, who co-leads some Men Beyond 50 groups, offers this method: Find a quiet place outdoors, and sit comfortably on the earth.  Now imagine you are like a tree, and that your spine extends into roots below the ground, and branches with leaves above your head.  Visualise drawing deep red fire, the physical vitality of the earth, up through your roots.  Then combine this with drawing white fire down through your leaves from the sky, the inspiration of spirit in whatever form you conceive it.

Nature remains one of our greatest teachers.  Even in a dismally damp May, the trees’ roots are reaching into the warmer earth below ground, their leaves are finding whatever light there is, and they are growing with the season.  To quote from a song by James Burgess:

 By the fire that is under the earth,
 By the fire that is over the earth,
 By the fire in the heart of heroes… 

Spiritual Roots for Personal Resilience

A valuable deeper dimension... at least for some

My own resilience benefits from spiritual roots, but it’s a topic I rarely speak about.  It seems that many people are averse to the idea of a spiritual dimension in life, so this blog feels like a risky experiment in describing what spiritual resilience means to me.

To give some context, my spiritual path has been evolving for over 40 years, and feels like a personal tapestry, woven from many traditions, especially the Christian, Sufi and Buddhist.  Only in 2001 did I start leading retreats and workshops with an explicitly spiritual flavour.  Since 2011, I have facilitated a dozen groups on spiritual resilience, with such titles as ‘Inner Peace in a Changing World’: it is on these recent groups that this blog is based.  It’s impractical to convey the rich delights of a group journey through this material in a short blog, so I will simply focus on ways that a spiritual dimension can add to regular personal resilience approaches:

Divine Unity: Many Middle Eastern traditions use variants of the same word, Alaha, to describe sacred unity.  In the desert, it is easier to see humanity as just one part of a universe which is all divine.

Creation spirituality: this is the idea that creation is not a historical event, but an ongoing process, and our role as humans is to embody divine qualities and contribute to the ongoing process.  For more on this, see the Thomas Berry book review.

Changing the Story: The need for a new story to realign humanity’s relation with the planet is much discussed currently, and links to the need for each individual to find a new story which takes us beyond material hedonism.  This can be helped by sensing our personal link with divine unity, a personal role in creation, and seeing the whole natural world, including humanity, as a single divine entity which needs re-creating.  Again, see Thomas Berry for more.

The Three Jewels: this is the Buddhist concept of three key parts to a spiritual path: the Buddha (all the enlightened teachers), the Dharma (the teachings, and how we embody them in daily life and work), and the Sangha (the community of mutual support for this journey).  All three elements reinforce each other.

Gratitude and celebration:  what the spiritual dimension can add to these qualities is the sense of expressing them to divine unity, to the creating power in all life, including ourselves.  The groups I lead draw on teachings from several spiritual positions, and are offered for people to use or not as they wish, so there is no evangelistic edge.  Given a safe space to experience these approaches, people taking part in these groups get a lot from them. 

How to bring these qualities into more mainstream groups remains an open question, which I would welcome your views and experience.

Book Brief: Active Hope by Macy and Johnstone

An excellent guide to personal resilience

I have taken part in workshops led by both Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, and regard them as two of the best teachers on personal resilience in a full sense of the phrase.  This book is a clear, concise guide to their approach, and has the authority and richness that comes from their many years of teaching.

Their work is known by various names, including Deep Ecology, and the Work That Reconnects.  It draws from a range of sources, including Buddhist teachings and general systems theory. 

One of their key ideas is that there are three ‘stories of our time’, and it is empowering to name them, and choose the one we live by:

-          Business as Usual: this is the story that governments and business would like us to trust in them.  There’s nothing basically wrong, and a bit more economic growth and technology will sort things out soon.

-          The Great Unravelling: worsening climate change is only one of several huge problems which show that the world is falling apart and it’s too late to save it.

-          The Great Turning: whilst this story is less visible in mass media it is already happening in many ways across the globe.

To some extent, all three stories are happening, but only the third one encourages us to act and believe we can make a difference.  The book highlights three Dimensions of the Great Turning:

·         1. Holding actions: this means actions to reduce or stop the damage caused by Business as Usual to the climate, ecosystems and lots more. Whilst some of the big changes need to come from government and business, we can change our own lifestyle, and participate in campaigns, boycotts and more.

·         2. Life-sustaining systems and practices: in every sector, including banking, food and transport, sustainable approaches are already available.  Individuals can choose to make such changes now.  But it requires big changes to spending priorities and to the patterns of Business as Usual, which will require much wider popular pressure on governments.

·         3. Shift in Consciousness: this is a sense of belonging and connectedness with all life on Earth.  As we deepen this, it brings a sense of urgency, and a passion for positive change. 

Much of the book is about how to achieve this change in consciousness, and act upon it. Central to this is a four-stage process which Joanna and Chris have evolved over years: I have led it with several groups, and found it very effective. This process, the Work that Reconnects, recognises that many people feel pain and distress at the state of the world and the way things are going, but don’t know how to handle it, so deny it, stuff it down, which keeps them in tension and inertia.

Their four-stage process offers a safe, supportive way to help people face their pain, move through it, and find ways to engage actively with positive change. The process is described in the book, but is best done in facilitated groups, since witnessing and support from others is a key element.

 

The book has a whole chapter on each of the four steps in this process, plus valuable chapters on such topics as Catching an Inspiring Vision, Building Support around you, and Maintaining energy and enthusiasm. Unlike some books in this sector, this one is well written, and pretty concise at 238 pages. The passion, wisdom and huge experience of both authors shines through, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. It gracefully interweaves large perspectives, wisdom from great teachers, real-life examples, and self-help exercises.

Living our future out : brilliant insights

This is a situation where I’m delighted to admit to bias: I have loved The Who and their music since they exploded into my life in the Sixties. I have regarded Pete Townshend as a genius since Tommy, and his book, Who I am provides ample support for my view.

One of my favourite verses in Quadrophenia runs:

I have to be careful not to preach,

I can’t pretend that I can teach,

And yet I’ve lived your future out

By pounding stages like a clown.

Peter Townshend really has lived out many of the major issues around resilience, and this book is a superb description of his shipwrecks and re-inventions, embodying many of the insights and approaches offered in my book, Out of the Woods: A Guide to Life for Men Beyond 50.

I’ve recently become intrigued by the extreme pressures which hit successful pop musicians, as a result of seeing the brilliant film about the Congolese group Benda Bellili – but that’s for another blog. Pop stars need even more resilience than the rest of us: we may not want them as role models, but we can learn from them.

Pete describes these pressures vividly: the abundant booze and drugs, and the gorgeous women throwing themselves at him. Plus the pressure on him, as the songwriter in the group, to keep creating fresh hits. And the chaos in a quartet of half-crazy personalities, on tour for weeks on end.

He writes very honestly of his heavy drinking, of his underlying ongoing anger, and his work addiction “I was a workaholic, running away from the present, and probably the past ... I was myself a really desperate man”. These shipwrecks forced him to dig deep to find his own resilience: “To mature properly, I needed to reach back to my lost youth, the eight-year-old I still carried within me”.

Some people suggest that the underlying crisis of resilience is a spiritual one, and this is echoed by Pete describing his own “deep, nauseating spiritual desperation”. He describes the profound benefits he has found through the teachings of Meher Baba. Overall, I’d rate Pete as  pretty resilient, mature operator in a context that sends many pop musicians crazy. Another fascinating aspect of Who I am is the range of Pete’s musical influences: For example, he writes about Purcell’s use of elongated suspensions, which he used himself in ‘The Kids are Alright’, and how one of my Sufi inspirations, Inayat Kahn, gave him ideas for Lifehouse.

The stories of Pete Townshend and The Who are interwoven with many other great groups and musicians, including The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. This book has plenty of vivid scenes, involving all these and more. I rate it as a must-buy!

The New Road: Charting Scotland’s Inspirational Communities

This book does what it says on the cover!

by Alf Young and Ewan Young, Argyll Publishing

This is a truly encouraging book, delightfully written, in the form of a one-week rail and road trip around Scotland, seeing what’s new and working well in raising community resilience. It has just the right amount of practical detail and atmospheric colour.

I also appreciated the way this book has a light touch on editorial, and mostly lets the people and their projects do the talking. The overall picture that emerges has been an important part of my conclusions about how the community resilience sector works in the UK currently. Here are some of my key conclusions, which this book supports:

Transition Town, Forres

·      - There are good working examples of raising resilience in most key aspects (e.g. food, energy, employment), but… these are rarely replicated.

·      - They usually involve an innovative, practical initiative in a physical local community, with a lot of human interaction, and they have deepened the quality of community in that locality.

·      - They were led by and for local people, but mostly initiated and driven along by one or a few superhuman people, pioneers who persisted despite huge obstacles.

·      They often depended on unusual funding sources - for example, raising funds from the community itself, even poor ones, or a brief window when grant funds were available.

·      They managed to engage the hearts, fire up the motivation, overcome the scepticism, of many people in their local community, and gain fairly widespread support and active involvement.

Here are a few of the authors’ perspectives:

Gal Gael, Govan

“For communities to take more responsibility for their own destinies requires an unbelievable amount of hard work...Not just ...the small numbers of people trusts can afford to employ.  Especially from the countless volunteers...”.

“it often feels as if each community setting foot on this new road has to redraw, from scratch, the map that will shape its journey.”

“to prosper in the long-term, we believe all trusts may have to turn themselves into social enterprises of genuine scale”.

Here are some of the specific projects featured in the book:

Dunbar: Artisan bakery, community owned and funded.  The umbrella organisation is a Community Development Trust, which grew out of a local consultation.

Twechar: A rundown former mining village took over the leisure centre from the local authority when it was due for closure, and has made it a real community hub.

Burntisland: Mike Small and the Fife Diet.  It started with communal meals of local produced in the village hall.  Funded by the Climate Challenge Fund.

Fintry, nr Stirling: Development Trust raised funds (from 50% of all local adults) to invest in part of a local commercial wind farm: after 2022 when capital repaid should generate £0.5m annual income.  Also car club and many other community facilities.

Govan, Gal Gael: Centred on a workshop teaching physical skills, eg building traditional boats.  Pioneered a 12 week programme for local young people, ‘Navigate Life’: craft skills and field trips into nature. Thursday evenings open house: music, food, company.

Neilston, south of Glasgow: Development Trust led by a dynamicc local woman: created a Town Charter with 44 project aims by 2030.  Funding a key issue - the 44 would cost £15m or more.  Raised money to buy a share of a local windfarm, will bring in £0.5m per annum from 2018.

Renton, West Dumbartonshire: locals created a Community Housing Association: has refurbished rundown social housing, built mixed tenure new homes, and created a new, 40-apartment, extra care facility for local older people.  It has also created, rented, then sold a successful 3000 square feet retail unit, and has built a new Healthy Living Centre, and a community centre (cafe, sports, meeting rooms).

Comrie, Perthshire: Set up a development trust, bought a redundant military camp with 96 acres - now includes food growing by local people, small business spaces, sports etc.

Forres: Transition Town Forres: Carin Schwartz, ex-Findhorn, a prime mover.  Innovative community allotment.

Sleat, Skye: Sleat Community Trust: took over the petrol station after it shut down, it’s now also the local post office and visitor info centre.  SCT has also bought the 1000 acre Tormore Forest nearby: provides a long-term revenue flow.  The purchase was backed by Highlands & Islands Enterprise Trust, and Triodos Bank.

Eigg: The islanders bought the island.  Have set up their own energy supply company, 90% renewable sources.  It also has a forest business, and a 24-bed luxury hostel and outdoor centre.