Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life

If you want a book to help you thrive in the uncertainty of life, and be true to your beliefs and values, then this is a book you must read. The book provides great insight and practical guidance to help you grow in life. To allow you to acknowledge and understand emotions without being hijacked by them; and to act with purpose and make better decisions based on what you hold true to achieve your goals. The content offers a number of layers - at the top level, it provides a great structure and concepts that are relatively easy to grasp. The second read provides greater insight and understanding. And subsequent reference tends to unearth even further underneath. Considerable research has clearly gone into this book - and it has an impressive list of references. But much thought has evidently also gone into the writing - making the authors understanding and insight very accessible to the reader. Your personal values and the use of them provide a cornerstone of this approach - and they are covered very well in chapter 6. If you are struggling, a practical suggestion I was given that may also help you get started: search on the internet for a list of around 3-400+ values, run down the list quickly as a prompt and write down the ones that personally resonate (say around 50). Lay this starter list out on a table and move them around to identify the top 10 (or more) that appear core. You should definitely revisit and re-order them as you become more familiar with their use, using Susan David's guidance, but this seems a helpful practical way to get started. Emotional Ability is one of my "go-to" books - personally and professionally - and I thoroughly recommend it.

I've just finished this book. What an incredible piece of work. Incredible. I'm a Conference Producer and a Business Coach by trade so psychology is very much part of my everyday job. What is so unique about this book is that it literally applies to every single human being in the world. Susan has written a masterpiece here. It is so easy to read, the tone is friendly, her writing style is clear and concise but it's the journey it takes you through that is so impressive. In the book you learn all about how to unhook yourself from the impulses that can cause us to make the wrong decisions, act in the wrong way or say the wrong things. The book is full of references to behavioural research to prove that what Susan is writing is very much based on fact and not fiction. There are also lots and lots of simple, pragmatic, everyday techniques that you can apply to yourself (or to your team if you are a leader in business). I personally don't see this book as a self-help book. It goes way, way beyond that. The applications are immense and profound. I have already started using what I have learned from it in my job as a business coach. Very happy to leave a positive review for this brilliant book. Well done Susan.

I actually ordered this book a while ago, but just completed my second read-through and felt compelled to leave a review. After listening to Susan David on a podcast, I became interested in her stance on how we deal with our feelings and decided to buy this book. It is all about our relationship with our feelings and how we need to change how we respond to our feelings so that we are able to make the choices that benefit us. The main message is that we should treat our feelings as a compass that guides us, informing us of our core values which we need to adhere to. I'm always sceptical when it comes to self-help books, but this one doesn't paint an unrealistically positive picture of what it's like to be in control of our emotions. The fact that it acknowledges difficult emotions playing just as important a role as positive emotions is a welcoming (and, to me, accurate) message. It really is a incredibly well-written book with a good balance of anecdotal evidence combined with peer-reviewed studies. The writing is clear and extremely well-structured, and has some much appreciated references and humour to go alongside with important lessons. Susan goes into a decent amount of detail about the studies without it becoming too academic, but it is reassuring to know that there is evidence beyond the anecdotal. The only reason I gave it four stars is because, although the messages all capture the truth, I felt there weren't enough suggestions of practical exercises to help consolidate some of the messages. In the middle of the book, were some great recommendations about the benefits of journalling and meditating. However, I felt that towards the end it began falling into the trap of simply saying how you should be thinking without telling you how you can move towards the goal. Perhaps she wants to leave it to the reader to figure out, but I would have appreciated a few more clear recommendations of what we could do. Overall, extremely insightful and relevant book that anyone struggling with their anxiety/identity should read. It's a book that has definitely influenced me in a positive way. Over time, I hope to really take emotional agility to heart and more fully embrace all the struggles and successes of life.

There is so much about this book that I love, it is one I will re-read and highlight as there is so much to learn from it. I’m so grateful to have been introduced to ‘emotional agility’ and the wonderful work of Susan’s. It is such a helpful, interesting and enlightening book on so many levels. In the work I do and personally , I’m so committed to helping myself, other parents and children to process and work through their emotions. I feel ‘emotional agility ‘ is a must read for all as it is so helpful in finding ways to navigate through emotions and thus putting individuals and parents in a better place to support themselves through challenging emotional experiences and children too. Through outlining fundamental concepts around our human experience and perceptions of emotions Susan helps to throw fresh light and ideas on how to embrace the whole range of emotions ,however uncomfortable and utilise them for promoting self growth and positive direction . In her wonderful style of writing she manages to create a safe foundation to show how in doing so we can learn to make peace with our emotional experiences and triggers. The techniques offered in the book are so useful and manageable to incorporate and I’m finding I’m feeling successful in gradually adopting them into every day life . I really like the way Susan has written and created the concept of emotional agility to be a gradual evolutionary process we can observe in ourselves unique to the individual and I can keep ‘tweaking’. I could write so much more but I feel this book has had, and will continue to have, a huge impact on me. I am finding ways to face and be at peace with hugely uncomfortable emotions that have overwhelmed me at times in my life . It’s also helping me find new and long lasting ways to effect changes to live in line with my core values.

This book is a simply outstanding manual for daily life. Susan David has explained in jargon-free, plain English on how we can all improve both our personal and working lives - and of those around us. By learning how to respond to our emotions and those of others we can deal with our fears and other emotions and live more meaningful lives. What makes the book especially real, accessible and approachable is the way in which Susan has personalised it. The book is full of snippets of her personal experiences that really bring everything to life in a way that makes you feel that Susan is talking to you one-to-one. For example, her delightful anecdote about "running away from home" at the age of five provides a wonderful backdrop to her chapter on raising emotionally agile children. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I was so captured by it that I initially read it in one sitting. Now it is literally my working manual that I have on my office desk and dip into on a regular basis. You will not regret reading this book. If you do, you will find yourself referring to it again and again. Without doubt my favourite book of the year.

This book is a mixture of mindfulness, positive thinking (even if the author stresses that it is not) and other ideas that have been around for thousand of years. That, in itself, is not bad. Who, nowadays, reads the life of Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)? Or what Epicurus and his scholars wrote, well before Christ times? Hence, we need texts that translate into modern language ancient messages. However, at least with me, this book does not hit the target as I have found it neither interesting nor helpful. It is one of the many self-help manuals that you can find in any library or bookshop shelf. I also find it annoying that it constantly refers to executives, ceos, careers and high achievers (but for one example, if I remember well). I wonder how - say - the postman, the carer, the woman at the supermarket check out etc feel, should they read it. There is also a lot about raising emotional agile children, which, depending on your circumstances, can be irrelevant to you. However, according to the reviews, many people find it useful. Hence I do not want to discourage anybody from reading it. What I am saying is: whether you find it useful or not, depends on your background.

I came across Susan David's work while I was studying for a Master, having already read a lot on Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman among others). Having gone myself through a very tough time in terms of stress and, some work on emotional intelligence and dealing with Stress (Kelly McGonigal) had already opened a all new world to me. I was first suspicious learning about the concept about "Emotional Agility", but then I remember the exercise I was doing about dealing with stress and building an "habit" of creating a small space between my Emotion and my Reactions to it........ it was all stating to make sense to me. but I got so much more reading Susan's book, it was like going into the next step in my live and experience in well-being. It would be hard to say which part of the book had retain most of my attention, only to say this is a lesson for life. Having completed my master, I now study executive and Life coaching, this books brings so much to my practice and my live as an husband, parent, IT professional and just a friend to others. Basically you want to be a better you ? You want to feel good (not positive thinking) and move forward in your life without looking back ? In Susan's own words, "Choose courage over comfort" .......

Very readable and a slightly different take on things. Very helpful and gets you thinking along different lines. Enjoyed it.