The Road to Resilience

Arm Yourself for Life's Challenges and Learn How to Bounce Back

Adam Przytula

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780730398677
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

An effective toolbox for facing timeless and uniquely modern struggles

Whatever you might be facing, know that you are not alone. From Adam Przytula, mental health advocate and founder of Armed for Life, The Road to Resilience is a down-to-earth guide for getting through the challenges that young people face daily. Nothing is off the table, from alcohol and drug use, to self-image in the age of social media, to bullying, depression and anxiety, pornography addiction, toxic masculinity, dating and relationships. If it happens in your life, you'll probably find it in this book.

Written in an honest and accessible style, The Road to Resilience is designed to help teens with struggles they encounter every day, including those being faced for the first time by this generation. Packed full of practical exercises, life-affirming lessons and relatable stories drawn from the author's own life, this book will help you to become the person you want to be.

Inside you will find:

• Effective techniques to reassess and improve mental health
• Powerful coping strategies and skills to deal with modern issues, including toxic masculinity, pornography, and unrealistic beauty standards set by influencers
• Tools to build self-awareness and tackle bullying in-person and online

The Road to Resilience is a guide to facing down the unique challenges of today and learning the skills you need to be a healthy well-adjusted person for life.

chapter #1
Self‐esteem

Congratulations on setting out on the road to resilience. In this chapter you will have the opportunity to learn about how you see yourself (your self‐image), how much worth you think you have (your self‐worth) and how you feel about who you are (your self‐esteem). The most important thing I want to tell you is you are valuable. All of us have just as much worth as anyone else in the world. No‐one ever has the right to make you feel as though you aren't worthy.

Having the internal belief that you are acceptable just the way you are is the foundation of healthy self‐esteem. If you feel good about yourself, you'll be able to cope with whatever challenges life throws your way.

Be like Thor

Have you seen the movie Avengers: Endgame? It's the direct sequel to Avengers: Infinity War and the 22nd film in the Marvel series. You might love it, hate it or not care either way (I love Avengers), but stay with me for a second.

We're used to seeing Thor as a demigod. He's ripped, powerful and strong. Thor is a superhero. Thor knows he's valuable. That is, until Avengers: Infinity War when Thanos defeats the Avengers by using the Infinity Gauntlet to snap away half of all life in the universe. Thor loses his dad, his brother, his home and half of his people. He feels like he's failed. After all, what's the point of being strong if he's not strong enough to defeat Thanos? Enter what many dubbed online as ‘Fat Thor’!

At the start of Avengers: Endgame we can see right away that Thor isn't feeling good about himself. He appears unwashed, unkempt and grossly overweight. Thor has turned to alcohol and gaming to try and cope with how low he's feeling. Thor's self‐esteem is about as low as it can get, until the Avengers convince him to race back in time and retrieve the Infinity Stones before Thanos can get to them. Thor undergoes a huge internal battle against his depression and self‐loathing. By letting go of his negative thoughts, Thor starts believing in himself again. I won't spoil the ending for you, but we see Thor's self‐esteem start to spiral upwards.

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Me

When I was a teenager, I hated myself. I thought I was worthless. My self‐esteem was about as low as it could get.

Nowadays, I generally like myself. I feel good about who I am. I think I have relatively healthy self‐esteem. The change is remarkable.

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You

Like me and Thor, you can do stuff to change your self‐esteem, but first you need to identify where you are at.

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Let's see where exactly it is that you're at by doing this quiz together.

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Try this

Personal self‐esteem quiz

First of all, we need to look at where your self‐esteem is currently sitting. Read through the following statements and tick those you agree with. If you're currently reading a hardcopy version of this book, I encourage you to use a pencil so that you can erase your answers and complete the quiz again once you've finished reading the book.

• I desperately want to change the way I look.
• I find it difficult to accept who I am.
• I have really high standards for myself and for others (I am a perfectionist).
• I feel uncomfortable around successful people.
• I have high levels of anxiety and fear.
• I never try new things — I might make a mistake.
• I focus on my mistakes and minimise what I achieve.
• I feel down all the time.
• I frequently think negative thoughts about myself.
• I feel worthless.

RESULTS

If you ticked one or more of the statements above, you may be experiencing low self‐esteem. If you ticked even one statement, you need this book.

If you didn't tick any of these statements, it means your self‐esteem is probably pretty healthy at the moment. That's great, but remember that self‐esteem isn't something that stays the same; it can change depending on how you're thinking, or what challenges or problems or victories you're facing in life.

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The self‐esteem spiral

When something happens to us (it doesn't have to be as major as failing to save the universe — we might get bullied or go through a challenge of some other sort), we either think positively about the situation, or we think negatively.

When we think positively about a situation, we are more likely to make positive choices about how to act or behave. When our actions reflect our positive thoughts, we feel good about ourselves. We feel valuable. This means that our self‐esteem spirals upwards.

If we experience negative thoughts, we tend to act on these thoughts by behaving in ways that aren't good for us or beneficial for those around us. It makes us feel bad about ourselves. We may start feeling like we aren't worthy or valuable. Our self‐esteem spirals downwards.

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My story

As a kid, I loved running. Standing on the track, feeli...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Important note to readers
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• chapter #1: Self‐esteem
• chapter #2: Resilience
• chapter #3: Bullying
• chapter #4: Stress management
• chapter #5: Positive mental health and wellbeing
• chapter #6: Self‐awareness and managing emotions
• chapter #7: Healthy friendships
• chapter #8: Real men
• chapter #9: Real beauty
• chapter #10: Dating and relationships
• chapter #11: Drugs, alcohol and other addictions
• Conclusion
• Index
• End User License Agreement