Welcome to the Christian Leadership and Resilience Podcast, where faith meets leadership and resilience is more than just a mindset. It's a calling. I'm Romeo Char. And I'm Christina Gebe. And we are here to guide you through real conversations that equip you to lead fearlessly, serve humbly and rise strongly, no matter the challenges ahead. Every episode we dive into stories, principles, and practical tools rooted in scripture and lived experience to help you grow as a Christian leader. Hello, hello, and welcome to our Resilience Christian Leadership Podcast. Today we're gonna talk a little bit about what resilience is and to learn more about this concept. My name is Christine Abe, and I've been in the field of psychology, and specifically in the area of the scientific aspects of resilience for over 25 years now. I have master's in doctoral training, in counseling psychology, and I've given, I. Hundreds of talks about this very important topic. I am also a professor, a mom, and um, a therapist as well. I've written lots about this topic and I've spoken internationally and nationally about this important concept, very passionate about resilience from a personal as well as a professional perspective, and I was so blessed to. Haphazardly, but nothing is really spontaneous, I think, to have met Romeo who's also passionate about this topic. And so we bring you this lovely podcast to talk more about resilience, Christianity, and leadership. Romeo. Let us know a little bit about your background with resilience and good morning everyone. Thank you, Christine. Yeah, actually I'm a father. I'm a husband and I'm from Lebanon. I'm just. Passionate about resiliency and like during all my life, like so many people lived in the Middle East, we go through resiliency the day we are born. So it just a way of life and uh, that's how I grew up. And when I discovered the power of resiliency, I couldn't stop digging and understanding, discovering. And. I was like, oh my God, what's an amazing set of skills and that I couldn't stop digging more and more. I'm also a certified life coach and I speak around resilience through faith, and it's so lovely and, um, yeah, me and Christine, we met like it's nice to meet you without any prior preparation, Christine, and how we just. I got into this resiliency discussions and we were amazed about how, how resilience can really be so deep impacting our lives, and not only our lives, but the people that we meet and we interact with. It's obviously how resilience can be a powerful motivator and a catalyst even sometimes, and. That shape things and help us to be closer and adapt to situation and to people in a way we could never imagine. That's why we are doing what we're doing here by approaching this. It's amazing, don't you think? Absolutely. It is definitely amazing because I've been passionate about resilience now for over 25 years, and it's so interesting that I. Experienced it before I knew it scientifically and from a professional perspective. And so to hear all your experiences as well has been wonderful to see how resilience can be applicable in different situations, different countries, different upbringings. Very cool concept, very versatile and um, you know, very, very versatile across different situations. So looking forward to talking to our audience about it as well. Yeah, and the beauty of resilience is not, it's a combination that start by being personal thing, but it goes to be, also goes into your professional life and impact your decision making and how you overcome challenges. And it started at the personal level and it develop itself to be used at the other level, which is the professional one. And that's what is amazing about it. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And um, oftentimes we think about anytime there is difficulties or there are challenges we wanna run away from them and go and hide, and we don't learn really how to suffer well. And resilience is about learning how to suffer well and to come out of that situation. And it is an upward spiral of wellbeing. So instead of spiraling downwards. You're actually spiraling upwards. It helps us to look at multiple possibilities when there's a challenge, and that, again, you don't have to just succumb and give into that challenge. Research also tells us that resilient people see the world more optimistically. It increases their coping skills. They play that bad hand really well, and it buffers them from other symptoms of mental illness. Things like depression, anxiety, and faith does the same. So imagine if you combine faith and resilience together. Um, you have a very powerful force about how to overcome difficulties and challenges. Uh, uh, exactly. That's a powerful combination. And, uh, you know, uh, as we lived our faith and we as Christians, we encounter this everywhere, almost even in the Bible. That is very obviously how it's set, how the faith made people that went through hardship and challenges to just overcome things based, anchored on faith. And then they go and adapt the situation and move on so they can, and they become leaders later on in what they're doing. And the best examples I can always think about Joseph. So how he stayed anchored on his faith, even that he was sold by his brothers to the travelers. Then he ended being a slave in Egypt and then he was wrongly accused. And he went to jail and still he was always anchored and truthful and did all his decision based on his faith, on his values, and be anchored into God's will. And he adapted to the prison life and he had the key to do a very high level decision. Mm-hmm. That's the power where of resiliency based on faith. That, and by making the person a great leader so they can not only change his life, but change the lives that he's surrounded or he's, uh, you know, ruling or whatever. So that's that. Yeah, absolutely. That's how me and Christine, you know, how we just ended by, Hey, we need to do something about this, because it's something that it starts, but it never ends. It. Keep going. Mm-hmm. So, absolutely. And even the research supports that, that resilience is kind of like a chain reaction that once it starts, it keeps going and going and going. And um, at times in our life we may not feel very resilient or understand what is happening and the. Issues that we can be experiencing can really impact our psyche in a different way each time. But we do get a little bit stronger and I always, uh, tell my clients and my students resilience is like a muscle to grow. It's a lifelong muscle to grow. And so if you keep exercising that muscle, that muscle gets stronger. And um, yes, at times. Life is difficult and we, we may not feel very resilient, but you keep working that muscle little by little, by little. You keep working those coping skills little by little, and you're not denying the challenges, you're not denying the difficulties, you're not denying that there are problems sometimes, but you experience all of those, the spectrum of human emotions, you're not consumed by them and you thrive despite them anyway. And so while it may seem like you know. In insurmountable. It's not insurmountable. And so you have skills within you. We have faith that can help us, but in all of these situations, that's what helps us to kind of move resilience along, make it stronger, and that's kind of the vision that I have, is that we can all build our resilience muscles a little bit more and more. Yeah, definitely. You know, if we go and reflect on our lives, we can see obviously how we grew. Like everything got changed by phases. Like I always remember and give this example, you know, newborn babies when they come to the phase where they wanna start walking. And we remember this as parents, how we were like anxious about our kids. They went from crawling to walking and yes, beauty of it. Now there is, we know that they're gonna fall several times while attempting to walk. But still from our side as parents, we gonna like, it's okay, you're gonna fall, but you have to stand up again and try again. Mm-hmm. That's the perseverance. Mm-hmm. And also, we are giving hope to our kids so they can go and start believing in themselves, which is the self confidence. Mm-hmm. And also have faith that they can do it. Mm-hmm. Let's do it. And we include them. Mm-hmm. And that's the support we give our kids. And then mm-hmm. Our kids will try this 1, 2, 3, several times, but, and they will keep like, believing in what we are saying and the support we giving with love and, uh mm-hmm. Like we are. So we're showing the passion and compassion about do it. We gonna love you, we, we support you, all that. And then guess exactly. They do it. Mm-hmm. Start working and we all start jumping and you know, I remember when Mike, when Mike, like each one started to work. It was crazy. And yeah, that's resilience in action. That's one of the phases that clearly explain how resiliency is work, like how it's built up. And that's when the growth starts. So. To have a resiliency, you need to face challenges without the challenge. Yes. You cannot grow resiliency and, and with by being, you know, it's like if you do nothing, no challenge, no hardship, nothing happens in your life. You're so chilling. So that's how resiliency grow by, you know, embracing our challenges and move on with it. Like mm-hmm. It's okay. Mm-hmm. If we fail. That's where the hope and the belief in ourself self-confidence that we can do it again, we can overcome this. If we fail one time, that's not a failure. That's a learning phase. So we can move on to be more resilient, to be more open to new perspectives, so our brain will be able to work in a different way, have new perspective, have a new way of adapting and flexibility to change. Because if we are so like a rock, it's very hard to move a big ship. It's very easier to move a small ship into different directions. So the more we work out these challenges and embrace them, we are gonna have more flexibility in moving around challenges so we can find a solution and increase our problem solving skills and be able to yes, move on in our lives. Otherwise, we are gonna fall apart and it's not gonna work. Mm-hmm. It's gonna be hot. Absolutely. Resilience definitely is a process. It's a lifelong muscle to grow and we don't grow it alone. We grow it along with making good connections with good people who can inspire us and support us and encourage us. Relationship is so important to the concept of resilience. Every problem has a key and has a solution. We just have to be perseverant sometimes to find. That solution. And oftentimes in our very quick paced world, we want an answer now, but in the example of Joseph, in the example of a lot of examples from the Bible job even, it takes time to get to that place. To get to that place of. Success or growth or understanding, having, you know, just an understanding of what's happening. And so it takes time. It doesn't always happen immediately, and so the more that we kind of work towards that perseverance, we can navigate all those challenges and difficulties. But in the meantime, it's good to also have goals and take decisive actions towards those goals, not just. Sit status quo, but also take one step at a time every day, even if it's a little scary. And what we're gonna, we're gonna be talking about fear. I know in the future, but sometimes it's scary. We don't know what is in that unknown, and I don't wanna go there. But sometimes when we feel that fear and we push against it a little bit wisely with discernment, not just, you know. Jumping out of an airplane with like no parachute or something, but with discernment, walking, little by little, we can take this decisive action and we can find opportunities of self discovery. Even when things are challenging, we can look at a positive self view of ourselves, keep things in perspective. Again, nothing stays the same forever. Things change and we have to change and adapt with it. Making sure also for self care. Maintaining a hopeful outlook. But I think ultimately resilience, at least from the scientific perspective and from my own personal experiences, it's about flexibility and adaptability and about learning. And if we take nothing else from all of this, if we can apply those three things, I think we can all walk a little bit, little by little towards more resilience. So, and yeah, as you can see, it's just resilience and umbrella of different things. It's not just one thing. Mm-hmm. It's one word. That's true. Mm-hmm. But underneath, there's a lot of skills that needs to be built up. So it form the resilience. It's like, you know, when you're walking in the rain, you need that umbrella to protect you from many things so you can go and continue your life path Resiliency. It's the same umbrella that. Uncover us. So protect us while moving into our lives so we can keep moving forward. So, mm-hmm. So there is a lot of details. We gonna go through them later on under different topics. So we gonna approach resiliency and there's a lot going on about resiliency sea nowadays because people are discovering mm-hmm. The importance of being resilient because anything we do in our lives is how we overcome things.'cause if we are mm-hmm. Blocked, we cannot overcome something, people collapse and they will lose self-confidence and we are gonna then lose hope, and then we are gonna mm-hmm. Add a total failure, then things goes further and nobody knows what it happens. Mm-hmm. Yes. Difference by being resilient and not being a resilient person. Mm-hmm. So being resilient, you can just keep moving forward in your life. And overcome those challenges, whatever they are on personal level and on professional level, because that's how we can improve our lives and be moving forward and based on that. So Christine, based on your scientific expertise and resiliency, so mm-hmm. How do you define it? Or what, what is that, you know, we discussed before about amygdala. Can you explain to us mm-hmm. What's that and how it works? I. Yeah, the amygdala is a part of the brain that is responsible for emotional memories, emotional components, and when there is a trauma, it actually enlarges because it ends up kind of scanning our environment, looking for is there potentially more trauma coming? Is there something similar that is triggering me? And so it stays kind of alert. To potential future difficulty. What happens with resilience is that we kind of challenge ourselves to say, Hey, I've been through a difficulty and a challenge before in my past, but I can also define this as a new problem. I can challenge myself as. I've been through challenges before. I've used these tools, these tools have worked. How can I use those similar tools in this current problem that I'm going through? Is there a similarity? Is there something that I can rely on that's in my amygdala, that emotional memory that can help me to solve this current problem? Based on similarities from a past problem. So I'm deconstructing the current problem, challenging myself to say, Hey, I've been through difficulties and challenges before I came through it. Okay, how can I apply those same concepts to the things that I'm experiencing now? So again, it's not about putting my head in the sand. Oftentimes when I give talks, I literally show a picture of a man with his head in the sand, like an ostrich. If I hide my head in the sand, then there must be no problems, but the threat could be right here over my head. So if I avoid it, that's not gonna help. It's just gonna grow larger and bigger. But facing it head on, obviously with supports, with encouragement from other people, knowing my own strengths and abilities, and I can face it head on, that can help me to grow. I can grow around the problem and use my past experiences, past tools, you know, supports again. To help me to overcome that problem. I actually grow and stretch around the problem using those same memories that I've applied in the past. This is amazing. Or you know, from what you were saying, I can easily see how growth is not something metaphorical curve. It's something that it's physical, physically happening inside our brain. So when we say, yes, you need to grow, it's a physical thing in the brain. You know, when the amygdala start working with our challenges and working on finding solutions, overcoming boosting hope, positivity mindset, sense of humor and so on, and all the coping skills related to. So all these things, they help that amygdala to grow. So growth is something physical that happens in the brain, and we need to respect this and keep nourishing this growth to keep happening because at each phase of our life, personal or professional, I always emphasize on these two that we need to keep growing because the moment we stop, well actually it won't stop. It's impossible to stop because if we decide to, like we don't want to grow. A challenge will occur and then it's gonna push us subconsciously and consciously to work around that challenge and to see how we move on in our lives. And that's what happens our daily lives. And that's one of the main things that we're gonna talk about later on, is about the uncertainty and the fear that you mentioned, Christine. The fear is very, very powerful thing that in like it, it surrounds us all the time. But it's, but it's all about, you know, if you take resiliency and fear, it's about looking to the half full cup, which half you gonna see first? Yes. Mm-hmm. That's, you see the empty one or the full one first, and how you gonna deal with it? So that's the power of resiliency and that's how it just take our life to a different level and to a different scale each. We go through challenges and hardships. That's the secret. As you said, we should embrace our hardships, embrace our challenges, embrace our scars, our traumas, our failures, because there are opportunities to learn and to grow and not mm-hmm. Obstacles that will destroy us and may diminish us because we are creatures that learn and grow. But we have to give ourself the ability to see that, to have the hope that we are going to learn from this for a bigger purpose. That's the hope that the positive thinking that goes along when we are going into hardships and that what make us human beings. That's what is different from being other creatures like animals because we have that ability to. Discern things to get the logical part and also the faith, the spiritual part or metaphysical part so we can make a change, so we can upgrade our wisdom, our mindset, our way of thinking, and how it is developed so we can make a change and not to stumble again and again and again into the same pothole. That's in a simple way, the power of resilience. Absolutely. It is indeed very powerful. And like I said, oftentimes people like to run from their problems, but in faith we talk about surrender. And to surrender to God that God is in control. In psychology, we talk about acceptance that life has challenges, life has difficulties. Life has problems sometimes, but if we focus on our strengths rather than our weaknesses, if we focus on gleaning meaning out of that difficult situation, what can we learn from this? How can we pull meaning out of this situation, use that situation to help others as well. And learn to kind of expand our thinking, broaden our horizons, think in a larger way than just narrow thinking. We can often get out of that problem, not only just getting out of the problem, but we can get out of it strongly, well thriving, flourishing, because we have gleaned meaning out of that difficult situation. And yes, sometimes difficult things happen. That's part of life. But again, how do we develop meaning and grow that meaning as time goes on? So these are all topics that, you know, fortunately we're gonna be exploring in this podcast, how to balance different areas in our life, how to glean those strengths, how to glean that meaning out of these difficult situations. So it's going to be a wonderful kind of series that we go through and learn together and grow together, and learn how to be more flexible and adaptable when those challenges hit. This is gonna be a journey. So we're gonna go all walk through and enjoy it and learn a lot of things about resiliency and how it impact our leadership skills and boost it so we can be a better leaders. And so we can manage our businesses, we can manage our teams, and not only by our wisdom, but also based on faith, because that's the anchor that the faith is. What makes us to have that hope and a better future? Because we trust in the wisdom of God and how everything happened in our lives, and me and Christine, we witnessed that it worked for our own good and that we are now like vessels to express and to show how God worked in our life through the hardships. To make us better people, better fathers, mentors or whatever you want to be like life coach counselor. So we are now like so many other people and like you as well, that went through a lot. So you can be. Mentoring your kids, mentoring your teams. Help them to overcome and be better persons and be better team members, and to have that successful business, that delivering services to support others or sending to others. But after all, you bring success to the community. Bring success to empower others' lives, to make them also leaders in their lives. And that's the beauty of, of resilience being shared. And being transmitted through powerful leaders that changed the world. And there's so many examples out there. If we start counting them, we're gonna stay for a decade, putting names there, but stay tuned to more episodes to come so we can go more in different topics. That's gonna be. These things that usually we don't want to talk about. Like nobody wants to talk about fear or uncertainty or hardship here and there, but when we start, you know, diving into these topics, we are gonna see the power of resilience and how these can be encountered in a way that help us to move on and move mm-hmm. Along with our teams to a better future and to a successful leadership based on Christian faith. Absolutely sounds like a wonderful plan. And again, in touching on these hard topics, it is important to face these things head on. It makes those problems not seem smaller, but it gives us the skills to stretch around the difficulties and to grow and to develop and to be the best leaders, parents, spouses, employees, business owners that we can be, and using our talents always for good and for growth, and for the support of ourselves, our families, and others in our community. See you soon. Thanks for joining us on the Christian Leadership and Resilience Podcast. If this episode has encouraged you, share it with your friends. Leave a review and stay connected with us on social media. Next time we'll dive into another topic that will boost your resilient leadership. Until then, lead fearlessly, serve humbly, and rise strongly in faith. God bless.