You Are Awesome by Neil Pasricha

I love the introductory comment to YOU ARE AWESOME by Neil Pasricha: “You are what you eat. And you are what you read. Are you hungry? Let’s go.” That mirrors the vibrant energy which best-selling author Pasricha (The Book of Awesome and The Happiness Equation) brings to the rest of his writing.  In YOU ARE AWESOME he focuses on “How to Navigate Change, Wrestle with Failure & Live an Intentional Life” while developing resilience. Writing before the COVID pandemic, Pasricha said, “we need to take all the uncertainty and failure and change coming at us and use it as momentum that slingshots us forward and forward and forward.” He offers nine “research-backed” secrets and personal stories to help with that journey.  This is a very easy read that is made even easier through occasional illustrations or photos, the use of bold type to set off key points, and memorable imagery. For example, Pasricha describes his mother “adding a dot-dot-dot to the end of the sentence. Letting things happen so she could navigate forward from a position of strength rather than feeling like all her doors had closed.” Readers may have encountered these ideas in other forms (“I can’t dance … yet” as “yes, and …” or “tell yourself a different story” as reframing), but Pasricha summarizes them with a conversational, optimistic tone and employs many questions to engage his readers.  Students could readily pick up this book and become absorbed on exploring a secret a week over the course of a quarter…