What a time we are in right now with the COVID-19 outbreak sucking up our life energy. I want to shout to the world: “Let’s stomp it out, together!” Instead, although I am happy to do that with anyone who reaches out to me, I decided to assemble some of the best advice – golden nuggets – from books I have read over the years (as pictured). I hope these insights bring you solace in a time of distress and practical advice on how to move forward with courage.
1.The Power of Resilience: Achieving Balance, Confidence, and Personal Strength in Your Life
By Robert Brooks, Ph.D., and Sam Goldstein, Ph.D.
In this breakthrough guide, Drs. Robert Brooks and Sam Goldstein show you how to nurture the power of resilience in yourself. They explain how “negative scripts” – repetitive, self-defeating ways of thinking and behaving – can lead to hopelessness, depression, and anxiety. Using real-life, moving from their work, they tell you how to rewrite those scripts and cultivate inner strength and optimism in yourself and in those around you.
2. The Courageous Leader: How to Face Any Challenge and Lead Your Team to Success
By Angela Sebaly
Angela says, “Courage is the willingness to do something in the face of adversity, fear, and pain. As a result, courage is what separates those of us who want something and those of us who actually achieve it. Courageous leadership is a choice.” Her book helps people become a better leader at work and a better person as a whole, especially during times of enormous uncertainty.
3. The Magic of Thinking Big
By David J. Schwartz, Ph.D.
Long regarded as one of the foremost experts on motivation, this book will help you work better, manage better, earn more money, and – most important of all – live better, finding greater happiness and peace of mind. Now is the time to be thinking big when the COVID-19 is making us feel really small.
4. Have a Little Faith
By Mitch Albom
We all remember the book, “Tuesdays with Morrie,” but with “Have a Little Faith,” Albom teaches us that belief can come upon us in unsuspecting ways – and mentors, for example, might be hiding in plain sight. Look for mentors right now. They are only an email, Skype, Zoom or telephone call away.
5. Ready, Fire, Aim
By John Fennell
Character and values make the company. That’s what this book is all about. With the belief that ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things, Harry V. Quadracci built a legendary printing company and changed an industry. During a time of crisis, see the possibilities in your people right now and get the most out of them.
6. You Already Know How to Be Great: A Simple Way to Remove Interference and Unlock Your Greatest Potential
By Alan Fine with Rebecca R. Merrill
This is a book about helping yourself and others journey to greatness, even during difficult times. Let this be a lightning bolt to your brain right now! Dissolve the crippling effects of fear, doubt, and criticism and focus attention on breakthrough results.
7. True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership
By Bill George with Peter Sims
I actively follow Bill George on LinkedIn and he believes “when you follow your internal compass, your leadership will be authentic, and people will naturally want to associate with you.” That’s why I am writing this piece and that’s why I follow Bill.
8. Crisis Management: Planning for the Inevitable
By Steven Fink
An oldie but goodie here – originally published 1986 – yet still very relevant to our times. Fink says, “when your crisis occurs, how well prepared are you – or your company – to manage it effectively?” The answers to these questions can spell the difference between prosperity and catastrophe. Fink’s book gives us strategies for anticipating and controlling crises.
9. Thinking in the Future Tense: Leadership Skills for a New Age
By Jennifer James
Thinking in the Future Tense helps you learn to operate in a new way, providing you with missing ingredients in the formula for tomorrow’s survival skills.
10. Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
By Eric Greitens
Greitens helps us see the potential in all of us and compels us to reach it. He provides a brave course of action for navigating life’s roughest waters, like we are in now.
11. Thriving on Chaos
By Tom Peters
Another great book from 1987 yet still relevant to our times. Peters challenges everything we thought we knew about managing. He says, “Most fundamentally, the times demand that flexibility and love of change replace our longstanding penchant for mass production and mass markets, based as it is upon a relatively predictable environment now vanished.” So true. Even for today. He goes on to say, “To thrive amidst chaos means to cope or come to grips with it, to succeed in spite of it.”
Remember, the more you do now quickly to get your ducks in a row, the less you will need to do later.