Resilience: Facing Down Rejection and Criticism on the Road to Success [Kindle Edition]

Anyone who has every produced a piece of creative work, embarked on a venture very personal to them or reached for a meaningful vision needs to read this book.

That is quite a big statement, but people who are creative in any field will at some point be faced with rejection and criticism. In fact, one of the very first things to take away from this book is, "thank goodness, it's not just me". However, at the moment of the criticism, knowing that you are not alone in having your great idea thrown back in your face is not always a comfort. This is when `Resilience` will be the perfect tool to get you back on track.

Mark McGuinness has worked for 16 years as a coach helping creative people to overcome the obstacles they face in their work. In addition to working with his clients, he is a writer and public speaker. He is also a poet, so understands exactly how devastating it can be to have a piece of work created from the soul crushed by one critical comment.

Mark brings his considerable professional and personal experience together in this book, creating a rich resource of insights, advice and very practical tips. He suggests that the best way to work with the book is to read it all the way through and then go back to the chapters which feel most relevant to you and work through the questions and exercises at the end of each. I would agree with this as your first read through gives a great overview of issues such as The Inner Voice, your harshest critic, different types of criticism and how to deal with them, and how to get the odds on your side. As you read, you will know instinctively which areas you want to work on straightaway and you can go back and work on them in more depth. Because Mark covers so much ground, I can also see how you could go back to the book time after time. (I certainly will be!)

The book is both an easy and challenging read. The easy bit is that it is written in a very straightforward, approachable and often humorous style. (My favourite quote from the whole book, because I can identify with it, is about how we often exaggerate the negative things which happen and how we can flip that thinking around with humour: "The end of the world eh? Who'd have guessed it would be a Tuesday?".) There are great stories to illustrate key points and heartening examples of people who were rejected only to bounce back. (We all know about J K Rowling's struggle to get into print and how her persistence eventually paid off big time, but it is delightful to read the list of other authors who are now millionaires and/or regarded as high priests of English literature who were persistently kicked into the long grass by publishers.) The challenging part is that it makes you question just how committed you are to your idea/vision/craft, which is always a powerful exercise at any point in one's career.

This book is for anyone who feels they are on a journey to create something worthwhile and release it to the world, not just once, but again and again.

This is for anyone who wants to really master a skill, or has a desire to succeed with a business or project.

Whether you are creating art, literature or trying to sell your services, you are going to face obstacles in the form of rejection and criticism. Sometimes it only takes a few knocks to shatter your confidence, derail your progress and have you putting your dreams back on the shelf as something you tried but "wasn't meant to be."

This book picks you, dusts you down and gets you ready for the next round. It's like having a mentor in your pocket. The style of writing is accessible, easy to read and fun, but the advice is practical and straight forward. Mark has managed to take a 1:1 coaching style and put it in book form so that when you read it, you really feel you have someone rooting for you.

I get tired of books with arbitrary exercises to pad out the value, and love that Mark's suggestions are carefully thought out to provide value. For me, one of my favourites was a mini-assessment to see if, after a knock you still had the opportunities, resources and desire to still go for your dream, and if so, what you should do next.

Highly recommend this book and am still dipping in and out of it and have written the exercises out into a separate working notebook as I go on my own business journey.

As a creative in a busy market, putting out deeply personal material, I know it is easy to get derailed, loose confience and crawl under a proverbial rock. Too easy. This book, short and readable in odd moments during the day (I read it in the mornings before I got up) lets you know that you are not alone and gives great advice on how to deal with any situations that you will face or have faced. It made me smile and gave me a great boost. If you are a creative I would recommend you get it so that you can face down that nagging critic in your head.