Every Parent Needs Some Mental Toughness

Seven Secrets of Resilience for Parents: Navigating the Stress of Parenthood is a game-changer for every parent who has ever been stressed out with work, laundry, cooking, cleaning, making the kids’ lunches, dishes in the sink, more laundry, shuttling kids around town from sports to music lessons, school, youth group, and back again, more laundry, the bathrooms need cleaning and the floors vacuumed and mopped, the dusting hasn’t been done in weeks, and now more laundry, more shuttling. I’m stressed out just writing the list.

All parents want their children to have a better life than they have. But just being willing to do anything for your child isn’t enough, otherwise, every child would grow up and enjoy a happy, successful, and fulfilled life. A balanced life. A life filled with harmonious relationships. A life filled with thriving abundance.

It is not enough to love your children. Not enough to want the best for them. There’s one and only one thing that is enough. This one thing is resilience. Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. I call it mental toughness and define it as the ability to take control of your thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and actions proactively, especially under pressure. Resilience is the skill to handle anything life throws your way.

Seven Secrets of Resilience for Parents is a field guide to imitating, learning, and modeling resilience and mental toughness. It not only gives the biopsychology (how the body, mind, and emotions interact) of mental toughness and the cognitive neuroscience (how the brain works) but also real-life examples and illustrations that can be imitated, along with adopting science-based principles.

“Wittman’s book is both challenging and consoling as it handles the complicated, hard-truth aspects of parenting. His work guides us with straight-forward knowledge and high-impact strategies creating parents who are present, forgiving and disciplined- and who now fully understand that as the leaders of our family we must first be those things to ourselves. Well worth the read!” says Sandra Beck, Host of Military Mom Talk Radio.

When people have kids, someone inevitably tells them something like: “They don’t come with instruction manuals” or “There’s no degree or class in parenthood.” Seven Secrets of Resilience for Parents is the closest thing to filling that gap.

Andrew D. Wittman, Ph.D., is a United States Marine Corps infantry combat veteran, a former police officer, and federal agent. As a Special Agent for the U.S. Capitol Police, Wittman led the security detail for Nancy Pelosi and has personally protected Hillary Clinton, King Abdullah of Jordan, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Sir Elton John, as well as Fortune 20 CEOs. As a security contractor for the State Department, he taught high-threat diplomatic security to former Navy SEALS, Marines, Rangers, and Special Forces. He is the founder of the Mental Toughness Training Center, a leadership consultancy specializing in strategies on how to take control of your thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and actions, especially under pressure and is also the author of the book Ground Zero Leadership: CEO of You (2016). Andrew lives in South Carolina, with his wife, Kim and their three children, Drew (20), Jack (17), Michaela (14).

Jack, Michaela, and Drew