Scott Hamilton

Awaken to a hope you can always rely on and a strength you never knew you had by incorporating these five rules of resilience into your life. With compassionate wisdom and powerful testimony, Rebekah Lyons (bestselling author of Rhythms of Renewal) will come alongside you as a friend in these difficult times—helping you face your fears, pains, and anxieties and learn how they drive us closer to God. Life is hard for so many reasons. Many of us have dealt with loss, discouragement, trauma, intense hardship. In all this, it can be tempting to try to dodge trials and move past the pain as quickly as possible. Building a Resilient Life is a roadmap not only to overcome adversity but to incorporate it into your healing process. Though Rebekah's unique blend of story, psychology, theology, and biblical teaching, you will: Embrace your struggles and develop a resilience and joy that isn’t dependent on circumstances.Recognize your triggers for feeling overwhelmed so that you can reset.Cultivate a strong community to rally around you in stressful seasons.Overcome setbacks without giving up.As you use these five rules to build your own resilient life, you'll encounter the God who offers you a peace beyond understanding, a hope beyond today, and a strength and joy you never even knew you had

Year after year, readers pulled me aside at events and said, “I’ve never had a problem starting. I’ve started a million things, but I never finish them. Why can’t I finish? According to studies, 92 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail. You’ve practically got a better shot at getting into Juilliard to become a ballerina than you do at finishing your goals. For years, I thought my problem was that I didn’t try hard enough. So I started getting up earlier. I drank enough energy drinks to kill a horse. I hired a life coach and ate more superfoods. Nothing worked, although I did develop a pretty nice eyelid tremor from all the caffeine. It was like my eye was waving at you, very, very quickly. Then, while leading a thirty-day online course to help people work on their goals, I learned something surprising: The most effective exercises were not those that pushed people to work harder. The ones that got people to the finish line did just the opposite— they took the pressure off. Why? Because the sneakiest obstacle to meeting your goals is not laziness, but perfectionism. We’re our own worst critics, and if it looks like we’re not going to do something right, we prefer not to do it at all. That’s why we’re most likely to quit on day two, “the day after perfect”—when our results almost always underper­form our aspirations. The strategies in this book are counterintuitive and might feel like cheating. But they’re based on studies conducted by a university researcher with hundreds of participants. You might not guess that having more fun, eliminating your secret rules, and choosing something to bomb intentionally works. But the data says otherwise. People who have fun are 43 percent more successful! Imagine if your diet, guitar playing, or small business was 43 percent more suc­cessful just by following a few simple principles. If you’re tired of being a chronic starter and want to become a consistent finisher, you have two options: You can continue to beat yourself up and try harder, since this time that will work. Or you can give yourself the gift of done.