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7 Things Resilient People Do Differently and How They Can Help You Succeed in Business and Life

Comparing what it means to be resilient to what it means to be antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb defines the resilient as someone who “resists shocks and stays the same.”

Akash Karia thinks that shocks are an inevitable part of our lives today. And that we need to be resilient if we don’t want to fail.

So, in “Emotional Habits” he goes over the 7 habits of the emotionally resilient people.

And we have them all!

Who Should Read “Emotional Habits”? And Why?

Nowadays, we have to deal with negative emotions almost on a daily basis. Society has a strange way of adding salt to our injuries, so no matter how bad we’re feeling, our bosses still expect from us our peak performance.

“Emotional Habits” is a book written specifically for those people who can’t find the balance between negative emotions and success.

Whether you’re dealing with sadness or frustration (or any other bad feeling), this book will help you learn how you can overcome your negative self to maximize what the positive you can give to the world.

Because, when it all comes down to dust, the most successful people are the grittiest, the most emotionally resilient.

About Akash Karia

Akash Karia is a peak performance coach, a celebrated NLP Trainer, and a bestselling author on topics such as communication, psychology, and productivity.

Lauded as “phenomenal” by many of his students and peers, Karia has a dedicated fanbase and has so far authored numerous books which have achieved enormous successes.

Possibly the most celebrated among them are “Small Talk Hacks” and “Habits for Life.”

Karia is currently the Chief Commercial Officer of a multi-million-dollar company in Tanzania, where he resides when he is not training or holding speeches.

“Emotional Habits PDF Summary”

Many experts,” writes Akash Karia at the very beginning of his book, “believe that emotional resilience is the #1 key to success—not education and not conventional intelligence.

However, that doesn’t help you a bit because, once something negative happens to you, you are all but emotionally broken and unable to go on.

Before you know it,” – as Karia says, “you’re canceling social engagements, pulling on sweatpants, stocking up on pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and even subjecting your closest friends and family to shoulder shrugs and one-word answers.

Ah, the shoulder shrugs and one-word answers!

We can relate to that!

Are you saying that Karia’s book can help me leave those behind?

Possibly.

Because, the main point of “Emotional Habits,” though simple, is one of exceptional importance.

Namely: some people do have a way to power through negative emotions, as opposed to others who don’t.

If you are one of the latter, then it’s quite important that you learn the seven habits which the former group makes the more successful and better-adapted one.

Because, ultimately, as Karia says, it’s all about minding the gap:

There’s a gap between a stimulus (what happens to us) and our emotional response and subsequent behavior.

In this book, I explain that gap in more detail and show you how you can use it to decide for yourself what the best emotional response is in any given situation.

Once you’ve mastered this skill—controlling your emotions and using them to steer you in the direction you desire—you will be able to do more, gain more, achieve more, and be more!

So, without further ado, let’s have a look at the 7 habits Karia thinks you need to master – if you want to become a master.

In the game of life.

Key Lessons from “Emotional Habits

1.      Habit #1: Resilient People Acknowledge Their Emotions
2.      Habit #2: Resilient People Master Their Emotions Through Their Physiology
3.      Habit #3: Resilient People Consciously Control Meaning Through Focus
4.      Habit #4: Resilient People Mold Their Belief System
5.      Habit #5: Resilient People Understand the Power of Questions
6.      Habit #6: Resilient People Manage Their Self-Talk and Inner Movies
7.      Habit #7: Resilient People Use Future Pacing to Control the ABC Loop

Habit #1: Resilient People Acknowledge Their Emotions

In 2007, Richard Bryant and Fiona Taylor published a paper in the British journal “Behaviour Research and Therapy” titled “The Tendency to Suppress, Inhibiting Thoughts, and Dream Rebound.”

It was the result of a simple study:

Bryant and Taylor asked a group of 100 participants to think about a traumatic event from their pasts. Then, they asked half of them to suppress the thought for 5 minutes before going to sleep, and a half to go about their daily business.

The result?

The first group dreamt much more often and much more vividly things related to the negative experience.

So, in other words, suppressing a negative experience leads nowhere. The key is to “accept that for the moment, the emotion you are feeling is your reality.”

And then find the positive side of it, the core purpose.

Case in point: Viktor Frankl.

He survived the Holocaust because he realized that there are some things he can’t change, and some which he can.

In his case, the former was the concentration camp.

The latter – his response to it.

Habit #2: Resilient People Master Their Emotions Through Their Physiology

Your sadness, your confidence, your happiness – these are all controlled by your hormones.

But, what can you do about that?

After all, it’s your biology – and you can’t do anything about it, right?

Well, it turns out you can!

Amy Cuddy has shown – in one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time – that just by adopting a power posture, you’re instantly increasing your testosterone levels by 20% and decreasing your cortisol levels by 25%!

The moment you change your physiology—let’s say you’re feeling unhappy because you’re focusing on sad memories—you break the emotional pattern of unhappiness.

Habit #3: Resilient People Consciously Control Meaning Through Focus

If you’re wearing glasses or lenses, you know that if they are not the right focus, the world looks a bit smudgy and hazy.

Consider that a nice metaphor for your life as well!

You can focus on the good stuff, or you can focus on the bad stuff.

True, both images will be a distorted version of reality, but in only one of them, you are the winner.

So, what will it be?

Will you moan and groan after being fired, or will you simply see the event as a blessing in disguise and start trying out new things?

Simply the awareness that you have the option to assign a variety of different meanings to any given stimuli will be tremendously helpful in analyzing and shaping your emotions.

Habit #4: Resilient People Mold Their Belief System

We all have our beliefs and belief systems.

Some of them make us feel bad, and some of them include the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The point is – most of the time, you can choose what you’re going to believe in. Then, why do you torture yourself by choosing things which put you in a bad emotional state?

If you believe that the world is bad and is against you – even if it isn’t, you’ll still ache.

On the other hand, if you believe that it is good and it supports you – you’ll be happy even if that is not the case.

Don’t believe us?

Think about a little something they call the placebo effect!

Habit #5: Resilient People Understand the Power of Questions

Well, I do this already, you say! I constantly ask myself questions.

Let us guess some of them:

Why does my boss never respect me?
Why is that person never on time?
What did I do to deserve this?
Why is life so unfair?

These, Karia says, are loaded questions, or, in other words, questions that contain untrue assumptions about yourself and the world.

It’s only normal that the answer you’ll get will be unsatisfying.

The alternative questions:

What can I learn from this?

What goals in my life have I been successful in meeting? And how can I use those lessons to be successful at my new goals?

Now, that’s more like it!

These questions contain positive presuppositions, guide your mental energy into a positive direction, and make you more self-aware of your personal existence.

And that’s the whole point!

Habit #6: Resilient People Manage Their Self-Talk and Inner Movies

There’s the reality of our lives – the things that have actually happened to us – and the movie versions of it – the things which are going on inside our heads afterward.

And when we said movie versions – we meant it!

Because we don’t remember things necessarily in the way they happened, and before long, we remember even less.

So, we create a movie version, packed with a narrator, actors, soundtrack, deleted scenes…

Don’t let your negative emotions be the director of that movie!

Take control and edit it the way you’d want to look like.

Because, in time, that’s the only thing you’ll remember about the reality behind it.

Habit #7: Resilient People Use Future Pacing to Control the ABC Loop

OK, we agree: habit #7 is not that straightforward as the previous six!

Or, maybe it is – once you learn what ABC stands for.

A is for antecedent or stimulus; B is for behavior, and C is for consequence.

In practice that means:

A, antecedent: Karia is angered by a boy making fun of his nose;
B, behavior: Karia hits the boy so hard now he has a problem with his nose; and
C, consequence: Karia is punished by his professors and scolded by his parents.

Since it is the C we’re looking to evade in this case, we need to find a way to make some changes in A or B. Because, our brain creates a neural pathway which links anger to a fight – and we must break that loop!

A good tactic is future pacing, which Karia defines as creating neural pathways to a liked outcome in advance, by visualizing an ABC pattern we’d be happy with.

In fact, that’s what many athletes do: they imagine themselves victorious before even entering the ring or starting the race.

Do the same – and you’ll teach your brain to find the ways to make this happen for you.

Like this summary? We’d like to invite you to download our free 12 min app, for more amazing summaries and audiobooks.

“Emotional Habits Quotes”

The goal of building emotional strength is not to somehow make every situation in life happy and rosy. Click To Tweet

It is entirely natural to feel negative emotions when life’s challenges and disappointments get you down. The ultimate objective of learning to master your emotions is to prevent those negative emotions from acting as a driving force in… Click To Tweet

Resilience is the virtue that enables people to move through hardship and become better. No one escapes pain, fear and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffering can come strength - if we have the… Click To Tweet

Rather than living on autopilot and allowing your emotional responses to define your behavior and your life, climb back into the driver’s seat and put some of these strategies and habits to the test—you won’t be disappointed. Click To Tweet

Most importantly, be kind, patient and honest with yourself throughout this learning process. Allow yourself to see and accept your emotional responses as they are. Click To Tweet

Our Critical Review

Brian Tracy has described Karia as “…a wonderful professional speaker who has a great message, is motivating, inspiring and interactive at the same time!”

And you can see why Tracy would think that even by browsing through “Emotional Habits.”

True, it is not exactly Karia at his best, and most of these habits are not exactly new – but, the fact that he has compiled them in such an easy-to-follow manual for resilience is a success in itself.

And we recommend that you try it out!

Emir Zecovic

Emir is the Head of Marketing at 12min. In his spare time, he loves to meditate and play soccer.