“Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.” – Pema Chodron

In the face of adversity, why do some people flourish, while others fold? The essential condition required to live a flourishing life is not found in the absence of adversity, but rather in a person’s response to difficulty.

Here’s what resilience is NOT:

Merely bouncing back, resilience is dramatically more than elasticity.

A mentality of “this too shall pass.” As Andy Warhol said, “Time changes things, but you have to change them yourself.”

Adversity is a trip we take. Resilience paves the road. Resilience is, as Rumi said, “the business of being human,” the willingness to endure hardship, and, as a result, to allow ourselves be fundamentally and forever changed. In return for our effort, we receive gifts of enhanced confidence, strength, wisdom, and compassion.

After working with hundreds of extraordinary leaders, five core practices of particularly resilient people have emerged.  Now it has a name: Adversity Quotient (AQ): The inability to be deterred by failure. Perhaps it’s not IQ or EQ, but the ability to persevere, despite the odds, to acknowledge fear, setbacks, and failure, and forge onward is the stuff of true success.  In this keynote address, we will share all five practices (Vulnerability, Productive Perseverance, Connection, Grati-osity, and Possibility) including new ways to re-think high potential leadership competencies as well as our own.

“There is only one road to true human greatness: the road through suffering.” Albert Einstein

You will learn:

• The five practices of particularly resilient people
• How best to develop leadership (your own and others’) resilience
• How to create a culture of resilience in your organization