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Sharing My Survival Kit
In The Resilience Mindset, you present the ReBAR framework developed following your long road to recovery after a devastating cancer diagnosis. Why was this an important book for you to write?
After many of my speaking engagements following the release of my memoir, At Face Value: My Triumph Over A Disfiguring Cancer (2001 1st edition, 2006 2nd edition), audience members often approached me to say they had read my memoir, but what I spoke about included so much about how others could deal with change, conflict and adversity in their own lives. Many encouraged me to write another book sharing my survival kit and ReBAR framework in a workbook style so others could learn my methods and personalize to their own life journey. So I was compelled to write this to help others.
One of the most powerful scenes is your reaction after learning the potential extent of your surgery. Why was it important to share that moment so openly?
That was the turning point moment when I realized life would never be the same for me. I was at a loss on how I would be able to move forward. I wanted to share that vulnerability with my readers, hoping it would inspire them to have confidence to be able to open up about their own pains and challenges.
Of the four elements of ReBAR, which do people tend to struggle with the most?
I think the Act phase is the most difficult for people to implement, because this is where the real work begins. This is when we must focus on what we can control, find ways to confront our challenges, and set goals to make progress toward a better future. This is where the rubber meets the road, but it’s critical that we focus on progress in small increments, so we don’t get overwhelmed or frustrated along our positive journey forward.
When readers finish The Resilience Mindset, what do you hope they believe about themselves that they may not have believed before opening the book?
I want readers to believe that we each have the capacity to build resilience, to find purpose from pain. I want readers to understand that we can learn how to build resilience, we can find our inner strength, and we can bounce forward from change and adversity, not just bounce back. By developing simple habits that take just a few minutes a day, we can change our life for the better so that when future adversity presents itself, we have the tools to better cope and keep hope.
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“Finally, a book that provides practical guidance for business professionals and everyday people to find greater success and purpose despite daily challenges.” — Grant Riggs, CEO, Riggs Distributing
Adversity can deliver a blow to our emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual health, eroding our self-confidence and self-esteem. Having experienced a harrowing ordeal with a life-threatening cancer that left him with a permanent facial difference at the age of twenty-one, Healey found a way to harness daily inspirations into key turning points that enabled him to create an actionable framework of four key principles to not only manage adversity whenever confronted with it but to learn how to create a better, more fulfilling life — because of it. Healey’s four principles are invaluable to individuals and to those leading teams of people.
Coping with adversity is one thing, but thriving is another. To thrive, we must find happiness, success, and purpose by developing ways to build resilience, embrace change, and strengthen our resolve so that we become unstoppable. Each of us has the capacity to incorporate Healey’s resilience framework into our daily routines and become more empowered and self-confident.
The Resilience Mindset offers evidence-backed research and stories from others who overcame seemingly insurmountable odds, including paralysis, traumatic brain injury (TBI), severe dyslexia, burn injuries, and other adversities. Offering more than just inspiration, The Resilience Mindset provides readers with the tools to build their own survival kits to take on the smallest and biggest obstacles, leading to a more fulfilling life.
The Resilience Mindset: How Adversity Can Strengthen Individuals, Teams, and Leaders
The Resilience Mindset is Terry Healey’s part memoir, part practical guide to living through adversity without letting it harden or diminish you. Healey begins with the devastating cancer diagnosis he received as a young UC Berkeley student, then follows the long aftermath of surgery, facial difference, recovery, faith, work, support, and self-rebuilding. From there, he shapes those hard-won lessons into his ReBAR framework: Reflect, Build, Act, and Renew. The book widens near the end through stories of people such as Robert Paylor, Shawn Harper, Jamie MoCrazy, and Jason Schechterle, each of whom has faced profound hardship and found a way to keep moving toward purpose.
Healey doesn’t write about resilience as if it’s a glossy slogan on a conference wall. He writes from the raw place where fear has a pulse. The scene after the Tumor Board, when he runs to the restroom after hearing he might lose part of his face and possibly his eye, is painful in a way that feels completely human. So is the moment on the Bay Bridge when Corey Hart’s “Never Surrender” comes on the radio and suddenly, almost mysteriously, the world lets in a little light. I found that tenderness persuasive. The “take it away” guy could have felt too neat in another book, but here the encounter lands because Healey is so alive to the small mercies that arrive when a person is nearly out of strength.
I also appreciated the book’s central idea that confidence can be rebuilt through repeated, deliberate acts. That feels compassionate and useful. The ReBAR framework has a sturdy, workable quality, especially when Healey connects reflection to gratitude, action to risk, and renewal to the daily work of becoming less afraid of change. The book leans into encouragement and statistics. I appreciated how the book leans into encouragement and supporting research, giving its message both warmth and structure. Even when the prose moves quickly from pain toward purpose, that momentum feels true to Healey’s larger vision: resilience as an active, daily practice rather than a place where we stay still for too long. The writing has a warm directness that suits the material. Healey’s voice is earnest, and even when the book becomes more workbook-like, it never loses the sense that someone real is sitting across from you, offering what helped him survive.
The Resilience Mindset understands that adversity is not a single dramatic event, but a long-term internal weather system that changes how a person sees everything. Its best passages are the ones where Healey lets vulnerability and resolve stand side by side. This is a good book for readers facing illness, grief, career disruption, insecurity, or any season that has shaken their sense of self, and it will especially resonate with people who like personal stories braided with practical reflection. I’d recommend it to anyone who needs a steady, humane reminder that rebuilding is rarely glamorous, but it can be deeply beautiful.
Pages: 208 | ISBN : 978-1770418561
