The Resilience Plan: A Strategic Approach to Optimizing Your Work Performance and Mental Health

by Marie-Hélène Pelletier

Overview

2025 Nautilus Book Award Gold in Business & Leadership

2025 Axiom Business Book Award for Work-Life Balance/Time Prioritization- GOLD WINNER

“This gem of a book draws on best practices from both psychology and business... Use this book to enjoy a better year ahead!” ―Dr. Christine A. Padesky, PhD, coauthor of Mind Over Mood​​​​​​​

Resilience is not a given. You need a strategy.

Leaders and business professionals handle grueling hours and exceed high expectations. They are undaunted by challenges and embrace opportunities for growth. They assume they are resilient.

But given enough demands, anyone can burn out. This makes logical sense, yet you likely still think it could never be you. You are fabulous and at risk of burning out.

Resilience is not an innate character trait. Whether you’re in a leadership role or working as part of a team, you need to implement strategies that build and nurture resilience. You need a resilience plan.

Award-winning mental health expert Marie-Hélène Pelletier draws on her clinical practice and extensive knowledge in therapeutics and business practices to explore how resilience is the best defense against burnout and how everyone can build it in themselves—not with a one-size-fits-all plan but with strategies to help you create a custom plan.

Pelletier uses relatable stories and activities to bring her concepts into context. By working through the exercises in this practical guide, you will have a goal-oriented, custom strategy with the knowledge to implement and sustain it, to protect your health and success into the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781774583661
Publisher:	Page Two Books, Inc.
Publication date:	02/06/2024
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Marie-Hélène Pelletier is an award-winning workplace mental health expert and psychologist. She holds both a PhD and MBA from the University of British Columbia. She combines business and clinical expertise, translating research about health, performance, resilience, and overcoming challenges into strategies professionals, leaders, and their teams need to thrive. She has led workplace mental health strategy in senior leadership roles. She lives in Vancouver, Canada. Connect with her at drmarie-helene.com.

Editorial Reviews

The Resilience Plan is highly valuable for a pair of reasons. First, it convincingly identifies resilience as a necessary trait for surviving and thriving in today’s frenetic world. Second, it not only shows the importance of having a strategic resilience plan, but also details the specific form the plan should take. It’s not to be missed.” —Robert Cialdini, New York Times–bestselling author of Influence and Pre-Suasion

“This gem of a book draws on best practices from both psychology and business. The Resilience Plan guides busy professionals and leaders step-by-step in the creation of a personal plan to reduce burnout and boost resilience. Unlike some books, it takes into account actual work/life demands and resources. Marie-Hélène Pelletier delivers on her promise to show you how to boost your resilience and mental health in just a few minutes a day. Use this book to enjoy a better year ahead!” —Christine A. Padesky, coauthor of Mind Over Mood

“In today’s competitive marketplace, it’s not enough for leaders to simply do their job well. In The Resilience Plan, Marie-Hélène Pelletier expertly weaves science and story to help leaders build a custom resilience plan based on individual priorities and the context they live and work in.” —Dorie Clark, Wall Street Journal–bestselling author of The Long Game and executive education faculty at Columbia Business School

“Marie-Hélène Pelletier provides a practical, inspiring, and engaging reflection on resilience. Pelletier anchors her perspectives in a deep understanding of psychological theory and research, and weaves engaging anecdotes from her personal and professional life that animate the core ideas. The Resilience Plan is a delight to read, a source of insight, and a valuable resource for addressing the challenges of work-life in the twenty-first century.” —Michael Leiter, coauthor of The Burnout Challenge

“Every CEO and leader knows that mental health is a growing challenge—and an opportunity—but how does one build resilience? In this regard, Marie-Hélène Pelletier’s The Resilience Plan couldn’t be more timely. She offers us a very human, empathetic, and pragmatic approach to resilience, one grounded in psychology and refined through her extensive real-world work experience. We can all see ourselves in this book, and that’s a good thing.” —Dean Connor, Corporate Director; retired President and CEO of Sun Life Financial

“A comprehensive plan for avoiding burnout and enhancing well-being . . . Pelletier’s consistent tone of pragmatic optimism very effectively seeds the ground to make the goals outlined in her Daily Resilience Planner seem entirely within reach.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Will motivate readers to take action . . . This [book] is a valuable opportunity for professionals to find that elusive balance between demanding careers and life's challenges.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2023-11-09
Pelletier presents a comprehensive plan for avoiding burnout and enhancing well-being in this self-help guide.

“We don’t want an unrealistic plan that does not get implemented; we want a realistic plan that you start on today,” writes the author, a mental health expert, in her nonfiction debut. “Done is better than perfect, and when it comes to implementing changes and building self-efficacy, this is even more true.” She observes that most business leaders (her clear target audience) consider themselves tough, resilient people, and points out how dangerous this kind of thinking can be—specifically, how easily it can lead to burnout (Pelletier notes that pre-Covid-19 studies showed that only 8% of the working population took advantage of their corporate employers’ employee and family assistance programs). Productive, resilient people can’t just wing it, the author asserts; they need a strategy, and she provides one in these pages, built around a four-part framework that directs readers to consider the sources of their energy, assess the demands upon it, manage a balance according to values, and to contour the whole process to a specific context. Each chapter contains ample bullet points and “questions for reflection” designed to help readers along the process. Pelletier’s consistent tone of pragmatic optimism very effectively seeds the ground to make the goals outlined in her Daily Resilience Planner seem entirely within reach. Her frequent reminders to her readers that their foremost obstacles come from within (“unhelpful thoughts eat your best intentions for breakfast,” she writes) are a welcome change from the modern emphasis on external factors. The text clearly and forcefully lays out helpful strategies for extracting contentment from a day that pulls one in a dozen different directions, encouraging readers to take such mind-clearing measures as going on a short walk and pausing for a couple of minutes before tucking in to a meal. Advice like this, although familiar, is valuable.

A thoughtful if somewhat pat guide to focusing on resilience strategies.

Kirkus Reviews