Stepping Stones to Emotional Resilience: A Guide to Embracing Your Inner Strength
by Marquita Herald
Kindle Edition, 157 pages
by Marquita Herald
Kindle Edition, 157 pages
Published
February 2014
You don't need to be facing a crisis to decide you want to become stronger and more resilient.
You don't need to be facing a crisis to decide you want to become stronger and more resilient.
Trials will always be a part of life … a lost set of keys, financial
stressors, overloaded schedules, relationship or health crisis. Even the most longed for changes such as
marriage and the birth of a child require adaptability and emotional
resilience.
Consider this … how it is that two people can be
faced with the same obstacle and while one becomes mired in a web of negativity
and feelings of helplessness, the other is able to overcome the challenge and
bounce back stronger than ever?
Emotional
Resilience is the Key
When we make the choice to look at all experiences as stepping stones
for growth and greater long-term resilience, we are able to approach life on a
whole new level, and in the process realign ourselves with what is truly
important in our lives.
Stepping Stones answers the questions …
* What
emotional resilience is and why it matters.
* Is resilience
a gene reserved for the lucky few or can it ever be developed?
* Is the value
of emotional resilience limited to crisis management or can it improve the
quality of everyday living in any meaningful way?
* Is it ever
too late to begin cultivating the habits of emotional resilience?
* How does one
go about changing behaviors and strengthening the capacity for resilience?
Q & A with author Marquita Herald
Q: What
made you decide to write Stepping Stones to Emotional Resilience?
I grew up in pretty dysfunctional family so I was
introduced to the benefits of emotional resilience at a very young age. But at
the time there wasn’t much reading material available outside of studies about
childhood trauma and crisis recovery, and nothing that related to the benefits
of resilience on a day-to-day basis. I consumed everything I could find on the
subject but it wasn’t until I began working as a life and small business coach
that I found a way to share what I’d learned over the years.
Most of my clients were first time entrepreneurs, many of them single mothers trying to earn enough so they could stay home with their children. Managing stress and minimizing the effects of adversity and unexpected change were ongoing concerns so I started offering resilience workshops and eventually a newsletter.
Most of my clients were first time entrepreneurs, many of them single mothers trying to earn enough so they could stay home with their children. Managing stress and minimizing the effects of adversity and unexpected change were ongoing concerns so I started offering resilience workshops and eventually a newsletter.
Later when I decided to try my hand at self-publishing,
there really was no question that the first book would be about the benefits of
emotional resilience.
Q: How
long have you been writing and when did you first consider yourself an author?
Like many others I’ve written as long as I can remember,
even when it wasn’t necessarily my choice. Every company I ever worked for
quickly identified and found use for my writing ability so over the years I’ve
written everything from corporate newsletters, marketing and public relations
materials to promotional film scripts and training courses. The first thing I
wrote under my own name was a booklet for a fundraiser for a local Hawaiian non-profit
group, and it wasn’t until I’d published my third book that I began thinking of
myself as an author.
Q: What
is the best advice you have ever been given?
The best advice I ever received was from author, Sam
Horn. Sam was a favorite speaker at the Maui Writer’s Conference and I’d had
the opportunity to get to know her through various business associations.
We were having coffee before one of her presentations and
I uttered those infamous words, “Someday I’d like to be a writer.” I will never
forget the look Sam gave me as she slowly shook her head and said, “Marty,
you’ve been a writer as long as I’ve known you. You just need to find your audience and decide what you want
to say to them!” Simple as that may sound, that advice and bit of validation
served as the impetus for me to launch my first blog and begin writing and
publishing books.
Q: As a
child what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be an artist and I’m told I was considered
something of a young prodigy. But the role of starving artist didn’t seem
particularly attractive to me at a teen, especially since there were issues of
substance abuse at home. So at the very first opportunity I moved out and took
a job in a bank.
I’ve only recently returned to art and I’m in the process
of fulfilling one of my BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) by writing and illustrating
a book that will be published early summer.
Q: Hard/paperbacks
or ebooks?
As a reader I have 3 large bookshelves at home overflowing
with favorite books, but as an author I’ve fallen in love with eBooks.
Certainly the flexibility and independence factor is part of the attraction,
but more than that I love that the digital format makes it so much easier to
get books into the hands of readers in other countries. I sell a lot of books
in Canada, the UK and Australia, and have recently begun seeing sales increases
in Germany and Italy.
Q: What
book are you reading now?
I’m a voracious reader, in fact I haven’t turned my TV on
in over 2 years, and now that I think about it I’m not even sure it still
works. Normally I read a couple of books at a time - one fiction, one
non-fiction so I pick up whatever I’m in the mood for at the end of the day. At
the moment I’m reading Walking the Trail - One Man's Journey Along the Cherokee
Trail of Tears by Jerry Ellis and Stone Cold by C.J. Box.
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