p.13 As you will see throughout this book, hardiness is a particular pattern of attitudes and skills that
helps you to be resilient by surviving and thriving under stress. The attitudes are the 3Cs of commitment, control, and challenge.
If you are strong in the 3Cs, you believe that, as times get tough, it is best for you to stay involved with the people and
events around you (commitment) rather than pull out, to keep trying to influence the outcomes in which you are involved (control)
rather than give up, and to try to discover how you and others can grow through the stress (challenge) rather than to bemoan
your fate. These 3Cs amount to the courage and motivation to do the hard but important work of using stressful circumstances
to your advantage.
p.14 resilience is not just an ability one is born with, but something anyone can learn and improve. [JLJ
- perhaps even a machine playing a game]
p.27 As we've seen, resilience is the capacity to survive and thrive despite stressful circumstances...
we need to look for pathways to resilience.
p.32 The more resilient people are, the more likely they are to complete tasks in creative ways rather than
in routine ways.
p.38 Where does resilience come from? A massive body of research supports the importance of hardiness to
performance and health under stressful, changing circumstances.
p.52 The attitude of control enables you to take direct, hands-on action to transform changes and the problems
they may cause... You are likely to say, "Let me find, or develop, the resources to solve this problem." ... Of course, how
much and in which direction you can influence changes varies from one situation to the next.
The strength and direction of your coping efforts depend upon your estimation of the likelihood of
bringing about positive change.
p.66 Do you know someone who is high in resilience and hardy attitudes? ... Use the following five key questions
to analyze what this person has actually done to turn stress to advantage. 1. What stressful circumstances did he or
she encounter? ... 2. What problem-solving actions did the person take to decrease the circumstances' stressfulness? ... 3.
Did the person's coping efforts include getting supportive assistance and encouragement from other people? ... 4. How did
this person talk about the experience? ... 5. How did his or her coping efforts express hardy attitudes?
p.87-88 let's look at the three key steps in transformational coping: 1. Broadening your perspective...
2. Deepening your understanding... 3. Taking decisive action.
p.110-113 Finding Alternatives...
Question 1: What is your best description of the stressful circumstance you wish to solve? ...
Question 2: Think of a way in which the stressful circumstance could be worse than it is...
Question 3: Think of a way in which the stressful circumstance could be better than it is...
Question 4: Make up a story about how the worse version of the stressful circumstance you identified
in Question 2 would actually take place...
Question 5: Make up a story about how the better version of the stressful circumstance would actually
take place...
Question 6: What specifically can you personally do to bring about the better version of your problem and
prevent the worse version from happening? ...
Question 7: Based on what you learned by answering the previous questions, can you find a way to place this
stressful circumstance into perspective?
p.189 Resilience in the face of change is built on all the attributes we've discussed in this book - the
hardy attitudes of commitment, control, and challenge, transformational coping skills, and developing a two-way social support
system. Underlying all of this, however, is the concept of finding meaning in what you do each day... You must find it in
yourself... This is the very basis of resiliency.
p.195-196 What, then, is the answer for a company attempting to thrive successfully in a period of challenging
economic, social, and technical transition? In brief, whether the company is undergoing a reorganization of some kind or not,
it needs to be comprehensively resilient. There are two key strategies that companies use to become and remain resilient:
1. Resilient companies develop the vision to discern changes that could undermine existing business emphases
and turn them into directions for opportunity.
2. They also maintain the flexibility and strategy to act quickly in response to changes, but remain focused
enough on today's needs to be competitively effective.
