Fortitude: The Myth of Resilience, and the Secrets of Inner Strength: A Sunday Times Bestseller

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Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Sarah Ellis: So, Bruce, thank you. It's been a fascinating conversation today, as I knew it would be, and a challenging one, as we also knew it would be. But we always finish these conversations with the same question, which we're really interested to know, what's the most useful piece of career advice that you would like to share with our listeners and leave our listeners with? This could be a useful piece of career advice that you've been given and that you want to pass on and share what you know, so that we can all succeed; or perhaps just some words of wisdom for you. The two of these guys didn't know each other, but they encountered each other at a sort of learning lunch effectively, and they realised the adjacency of their work, and they created this list, which is called The Adverse Childhood Experiences list. So, it's a list of ten things. Some of them look remarkably gentle, which might be like, "Were you subject to emotional abuse? Were you subject to physical abuse? Was there parental divorce? Was there someone at home who went to jail? Did you live with addiction?" There's some other things there, some other things that you might go, "Is parental divorce that big an issue?" but actually, it very strongly correlates with adult obesity. I was doing some walk-and-talks with our team this week, and I always ask everything, "What are you enjoying most at the moment; what gives you the most energy?" and it was interesting that the first thing everyone in the team talked about was how they work, rather than what they work on; so, this sense of, "I feel like I have choice and control over how I work, and if that means I want to volunteer for my kid's swimming, I just make that happen", and how much they appreciated almost not feeling like they had to tell us, or hopefully not having that micromanagement. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

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The event was hosted by a brilliant organisation called Radix Big Tent. Radix Big Trent gives a platform for non-partisan conversations about big policy issues, giving a voice to people and places. It provokes and promotes new conversations about the regeneration and renewal of our society in a non-partisan way, inspiring practical actions which demonstrate the value of political intervention and delivering real change in left behind areas. Helen Tupper: So, on those three foundations of fortitude, we've covered control, we've talked about identity, and the third one is community; and I think this is the biggest " A-ha!" moment for me in the book, because to your point about resilience and individualism and all that kind of stuff, "Go focus on this alone and put your mindset right, and you'll be fine with resilience"; actually a lot of what you cover in the book is the importance of the relationships you have around you, the role of community in that. Bruce Daisley: Yeah, and I think we can see how identity is definitely a conflicted part of this, because for some of the people concerned, channelling everything into accomplishment for identity can prove enriching, but also incredibly endangering. From quotations that we see, Simone Biles, the American Gymnast, during the course of the Olympics, she was probably expected to win at least four gold medals, she end up winning, I think, one silver medal and maybe a bronze as well; she said, during the course of what was effectively quite a public breakdown, she said she was very grateful for the praise she received by coming clean on mental health issues, because until now, she'd seen herself merely in the fact that she was an accomplished athlete.

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But such is the easy appeal of resilience, it has become our hopeful expectation for victims of misfortune. Resilience is the buzzword of the moment. We're told that if we have it, our lives will be happy and successful ones. If we don't, we need to acquire it. But what if the version of resilience we've been peddled is a myth?

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He continued: “Jurgen Klopp seems to know that resilience is the strength that we draw from each other. It’s the strength that other people embolden in us, and so, he was like, ‘We need to arrange more team events.’ The first thing he did when he became Liverpool’s manager, is he learnt everyone’s name at their training ground. A hundred people. The kit man, the dinner lady, he learnt all their names, brought them all into the press conference room, all the players were sitting in the press seats, and he introduced them one-by-one by name. He said, ‘From now on, this is Beryl. From now on, this is Glenn.’" Then you're like, "Okay, what are the little steps along the way doing that that aren't that?" and that's why these people who do the illustrations in their book, or they're often simple things. And the moment you see it, you go, "Oh yeah, of course, that's obvious". None of these things feel like someone's invented the iPhone, they're not genius flashes of inspiration. So, all I would think is, are there little things that you could do that probably are your strength, or something that's a bit more you, that might enable you to show you as a real person. We sort of recognise this, you can feel part of your family or you can feel part of a friendship group, or you might have friends from university, where you've stayed together. And if you feel like the relationship's been respected, if you feel like, "Actually, I feel like this relationship still exists and I'm participating in it", it doesn't necessarily matter how often you see people, but more the sense that everyone's servicing the relationships. I think we've lost sight of that, to some extent. By calling for a resilient response we both gloss over the hardships that we hope individuals will recover from but also save ourselves having to ask if some of us are affected disproportionately by these injustices.If you mention resilience round here you’ll get thumped,’ a doctor at a busy NHS hospital in north London told me.

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An absolute revelation . . . It's with collective support that you can develop resilience. Your own resilience or individual fortitude is not something you do or don't have, it comes from the extent to which you are supported by others. The extent to which people face these issues of resilience is massively divined by the structural inequalities we face. Ed Miliband However, you really challenge some, what I think could even be described as conventional wisdom now, that lots of people refer to and understand, around growth mindset and positive psychology, and you don't just say you're not sure, you quite proactively challenge some of those concepts. So, I wonder if you could just talk a bit about that research, so almost your understanding there of resilience and fortitude you've just described to us; and, how does that marry up, or not, with growth mindset and grit in particular, because loads of our listeners will be really familiar with both of those ideas, and we talk about those ideas a lot. So, I'm really interested to get into that debate a bit, about the relationship between the two. Naomi Osaka, tennis player, has said she's asked herself, "What am I if I'm not a tennis player?" Through that, you can really see the dangers of enmeshment, because we see ourselves thinking, "I'm a provider for my family [or] I'm someone who's going to work hard and make my mum proud of what I accomplish at work [or] I'm going to be able to get the money for a deposit on a flat because I'm striving so hard". We see all of these things as a way to paint this redemptive image of ourselves. So, I always used to think, "If I was a kid now applying for a job, I would put my CV on a balloon and send it to someone's office, I would send a polaroid of me making a cup of tea". Most people, at work now, they receive no physical mail. So, you've got basically a whole lane of the motorway that if you want to communicate with someone, you've got a whole lane of the motorway that is completely uncrowded. If you create something that is beautiful, memorable, thoughtful, personal that lands on that, you've got a way of communicating that no one is using whatsoever.The concept of growth mindset and resilience programmes centre around a shared belief that resilience relies on the individual’s ability to mentally frame challenges – and that this is a skill which can be taught and learned. Bruce Daisley views these concepts collectively as a ‘Resilience Orthodoxy’. Although there is still some value in some of these teachings, Bruce Daisley suggests resilience should not be viewed as a personal trait. Instead, it needs to bring community into the focus. Three pillars that define his approach to resilience are Control, Identity and Community. There is a long-held assumption that in groups we lose our sense of self. This misgiving has led many to believe that standing alone is the best route for optimal outcomes and personal success. Bruce Daisley argues that while groups can be capable of acts of cruelty, they can also aid happiness, identity and fortitude. On the reverse, loneliness has remarkable negative consequences on our psyches; our minds interpret isolation as being rejected by our tribe which can become mentally debilitating. In this light an expectation of resilience is no longer the spellbinding final act of a story, it is something akin to victim blaming. Injuries caused by shattered glass and collapsing construction left many with injuries that will transform the remainder of their lives. The inference is that resilience is something individual, that some of us are blessed with and that others need to be schooled in.

Fortitude: Unlocking the Secrets of Inner Strength (Audio

Bruce Daisley: Well, a perfect example to add to precisely what you're saying is, there was an article in Harvard Business Review a couple of months ago, and I know you get a couple of free articles a month, so they could go and read your latest piece and then read this one! This is a truly refreshing, captivating and important book that shifted my perception on a topic I thought I knew! A must read.' Steven Bartlett, entrepreneur and host of 'The Diary of a CEO' This is a truly refreshing, captivating and important book that shifted my perception on a topic I thought I knew! A must read. Steven Bartlett, entrepreneur and host of 'The Diary of a CEO' He has been rated as the top leader in the UK tech sector by Campaign Magazine. In a prestigious survey of CEOs and MDs, in 2020 Bruce was again named the “ Fantasy Hire” that most leaders would like to make – his fourth time of winning the accolade (other names placed included Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Martin Sorrell). He regularly ranks as the top-rated speaker at conferences in the US and the UK. So, people seek to fill that void that trauma's created, by the actions they take. And I think through all of that, we can see, to your point there, that identity can be this really powerful motivating factor, but it also can be this incredible tinderbox that can really be an explosive combination inside of us.Sarah Ellis: So, it's interesting, as somebody who is a 0, so Helen and I, I think, read Fortitude through a very different lens and had a very different response and reaction to it, and I think partly because of that. It was like, we connected with different parts of the book, which also shows I think it's useful for everyone in different ways; because one of the things, one of the assumptions I was making as I read the early part of the book is, "Okay, some of these people who've got high ACE scores, crikey, they're going to have a lot of grit. They will have really grown their grit through no choice of their own, because of their very difficult life circumstances. Maybe that meant they've got a load of grit and a real growth mindset, and had to learn to be positive, and maybe that's helped them to be successful". Surprising and challenging. Fortitude encouraged me to re-think not only my work but how I live my life. Sarah Ellis, co-author of 'The Squiggly Career' I think sometimes we have the freedom, hopefully, to be able to do that, because we're a small company, but I do think there are levels of that. And even in really big companies, you have that ability as a manager to make a real difference in that area of choice and control.