Once upon a time, life was a ball.

You got up on the sunny side of the bed, greeted the day, and you kept moving with the flow like a pro. Bad things hit you and caromed off like you were rubber because they didn't affect you. You were in control, and the new book "The 5 Practices of Highly Resilient People" by Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal helps you harness that again.

When she was a young teen, Taryn Marie Stejskal had a stalker.

The first time she saw him, she says, he was peeking through her bedroom window. Later, he trespassed in her parents' back yard. Reports were filed but the man was bold: one evening, he tried to break a glass door before the police arrived.

That was a scary time for Stejskal. So how did she overcome the trauma of it all? And how can you come out stronger at the end of a pandemic, loss, fear, and change?

There are, she says, five main ways that people can enhance their resilience.

First, embrace the challenge, don't shy from it. Stejskal says, "it is in adversity that we discover our strengths, talents, and wisdom..."

"Challenge can't (and shouldn't) be entirely avoided by careful planning."

Remember that resiliency is not about "bouncing back." Instead, "Resilient people bounce forward, not back."

Learn to see where you've already been and what you already know by making a "reverse bucket list" with three items on it: something you lost, a bad health diagnosis, and "thing(s) that scare you." These are what makes you the person you are.

Allow yourself to be molded by your experiences, rather than hardened by them. Learn "productive perseverance" and how to "pursue goals intelligently." Understand how to make connections, both externally and within yourself. Be grateful and open to the possibilities, "set aside time to worry, and then release."

The most amazing thing about "The 5 Practices of Highly Resilient People" is this: every single power inside this book is already inside you. You only need to know how to coalesce and make them stronger.

Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal does a fine job at that, starting with a hair-raising story of her own to illustrate how staying resilient is possible. Through her tale, Stejskal makes it clear that a certain amount of the process is personality-based, possibly genetic, definitely innate, but that much of it's accomplished by pulling one's self up by the bootstraps. Just knowing that you have the raw materials already will be a giant comfort to readers – parents, teachers, leaders, businesspeople, entrepreneurs – who need to see that in print. It's like getting a Superhero Cape for free.

This is the kind of book you'll want to spend some serious time with, and you'll be glad you did. It's easy to read and surprisingly simple to employ. For anyone who wants a solid boost of confidence, one they can refer to again and again, "The 5 Practices of Highly Resilient People" is a good book to have a round.