Of course this is only what I wanted at the end, probably not what the auhtor intended to be included at the end. Having a strong sense of identity is a powerfully enabling quality which allows us to cope in situations which may seem intimidating or impossible to others. As with personal control, a sense of identity can have implications for physical and psychological health. Our individual identity is inextricably entwined with our social identity. Finding fortitude There was a widespread expectation that this would be the moment that inspired a programme of international support. ‘The world has to help us now,’ more than one person said to me. A book that confirms what I've always believed, that we can't be resilient on our own. In fact resilience is about all of us being stronger than any of us. Gary Lineker

Bruce Daisley - Eat Sleep Work Repeat Bruce Daisley - Eat Sleep Work Repeat

This interesting book lifts the cover on the resilience myth that we've all been sold, and shines a light on how and why resilience is not what we think it is, and not what we should aspire towards. Fortitude explores and validates what most of us who work with people feel in our gut when it comes to debunking doctrine about resilience and singular toughness. A fantastic contribution. Dr Pippa Grange, author of 'Fearless', former Head of People & Team Development at The Football AssociationSo, if you're going to make one thing change, then you might say, "If I'm feeling no autonomy at work, is there something I could do to reduce the amount of time I'm spending in meetings? Is there something I could do to set some time aside to do something separate?" The illusion of modern work is we all feel like we've got infinite time, and we'll just answer this, then I'll answer this, and if I just need to work later, I'll work later; and we never make decisions of scarcity. But I guess one of the critical things you'd say is, if people are feeling an absence of control, if people are feeling no resilience, then thinking about how you can gift them some space, and there's a solution to it as well. Bruce Daisley: It might make our skin feel better and look better, but there is nothing whatsoever that reverses the impact of aging. In a very similar way, marketing as an industry has responded to a need, and tried to synthesise a product that answers the need, and you can see it very clearly. Martin Seligman, who's probably the most eminent psychologist in the world, he's the Robert De Niro of psychology, in the sense that he did some really good work at the start of his career, and he's done some not so good work at the end of his career, and he reports in his own book how he'd written some very lovely, popular psychology books, and the US Army and pretty much education authorities came to him and said, "If we gave you money, will you solve our issue?"

Fortitude - Apple Podcasts - Apple Rory Sutherland explores Fortitude - Apple Podcasts - Apple

So, that was it for me. It's like, okay, so firstly let's recognise that resilience does exist, or fortitude, or whatever you want to call it, it does exist; and we can see that, because we can see it manifested in like the people in Ukraine. Who could doubt that these people who were office workers on a Friday, and they're taking arms on a Monday, who could doubt that they've been filled with some inspirational level of bravery, that all of us consider to be almost inconceivable? We can't imagine that we would somehow do that. So, they seem to be imbued with something that is admirable and beautiful. But using the resilience word for it I felt was tired and weary.

This book started with a lot of promise. Although the subject matter was interesting and thoroughly researched I found it was longer than it needed to be. Sarah Ellis: So, it's interesting, as somebody who is a 0, so Helen and I, I think, read Fortitude through a very different lens and had a very different response and reaction to it, and I think partly because of that. It was like, we connected with different parts of the book, which also shows I think it's useful for everyone in different ways; because one of the things, one of the assumptions I was making as I read the early part of the book is, "Okay, some of these people who've got high ACE scores, crikey, they're going to have a lot of grit. They will have really grown their grit through no choice of their own, because of their very difficult life circumstances. Maybe that meant they've got a load of grit and a real growth mindset, and had to learn to be positive, and maybe that's helped them to be successful". Sarah Ellis: So, just thinking a little bit about identity, and we've mentioned it already, but one of the things that we've talked about before on the podcast is this idea of enmeshment, which is essentially when your identity isn't distinct from your job, so the work you do becomes who you are. And, there's some real dangers to that, because with our blurred boundaries, and when we are all probably working longer than before, there's certainly no evidence that people are working shorter that I've seen, this feels like it continues to be a risk.