Leading Through Crisis: Building Resilience in Families, Businesses, and Communities

 Join hosts Christine and Romeo as they team up to explore how resilient leadership can guide families, small businesses, and corporations through challenging times. Drawing from personal experiences and professional insights, they discuss the impact of the recent government shutdown, share actionable strategies for adapting to uncertainty, and offer practical advice rooted in Christian values and emotional intelligence. Together, Christine and Romeo provide real-life stories and mentorship tips to help listeners persevere, communicate effectively, and inspire future leaders. 

 #ChristianLeadership #Resilience #Podcast #FaithInAction #LeadershipDevelopment #CrisisManagement #Buzzsprout 

Dr. Christine E. Agaibi -  M.A. & PhD Training in Counseling Psychology
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Romeo El Chaer - Keynote Speaker - Resilience Through Faith - Life Coach
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Transcript

0:05

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.

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 0:47

Hello and welcome back to another episode of our Christian Resilience and Leadership Podcast. Today we're gonna be talking about an important topic about how we can lead during challenging times. As we know, there has been a lot of changes, especially towards the end of this year, related to government shutdowns related to insurance issues, and these things impact. Everything from large corporations down to small businesses, of course, and that trickles down to our families and to our individual lives as well. And so today we're gonna discuss how leaders can lead even during challenging times. Because sometimes when we are faced with very much difficulty, we experience things like. Fight or flight or freeze or fawn, which are trauma responses that happen to try to protect us from difficulty and challenge. So today we're gonna talk about some of the challenges that have been going on in the United States and in countries around the world as well. And then also how to face this from both a leadership, resilient leadership and Christian perspective. Romeo, what do you think about some of these things?

Romeo El Chaer 1:58

Well, this is, this is very, it's obvious that it's very challenging what, what the US is going through, you know, not only as a government or it's also as people, and that's where the most important part of the pie, know, the government shut down. It was not something normal. It's last lasted for around 40 days. That's long period for, for a government or like United States being crippled in that way, that impact lives. and millions of lives actually that related to you know, a lot of families impacted by this, that their employees that work in the government, in the public sector, that they were like home and there was delays. For their pays. And nobody knows what, nobody knew where things were heading. And also there's a lot of small businesses that they, that they were impacted because of many things that's happening in the states because the fear I was talking to a lot of friends around me that they have small businesses and they were all worried. They said, Rome, you know, things are slowing down. The business are are not like usual. Like month ago. They all those conversations were not going, like everything was good. The business was okay, the opportunity opportunities are okay, after that shutdown things changed and people are kind of hesitating to spend money. And that very dangerous for small businesses because that's what makes those small businesses to keep, you know moving forward to keep funding their businesses. when you say this, funding their lifestyle of, you know getting all what their families needs, at least. comes the healthcare, which is there was a huge impact on so many families and millions of Americans. So during those times, we need to address those issues, so we make sure that can just move on. Into those times. That's what resilience is all about. What to do next, how to handle those situations. How we can overcome the fear. How we can, what we could what? What to do next. How to read between the lines. about the tariffs? What about the deals that's happening? Around, what about X, Y, Z? And now we are heading to 2026. Also, there is the impact of tariffs, the impact of the changes that happened. What's gonna happen to the next? Shut down. It's gonna happen again like this one or not, because it's after three months, this is gonna occur again. All these can make people's lives so hard and they hear the questions, how to handle those situations. How during those hard times as Americans, as people living in this place, how we. Need to act and react so we can just keep our, you know, our heads on our shoulder. So that's what we are gonna try to discuss today address it so we can just help to move on in these during, during those challenging times.

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 5:15

As we always say that resilience is a muscle that needs to grow. So the first thing is enduring this hurdle. Of course this is a hurdle and as we said a few minutes ago, it's impacting a lot of people, millions of people. From large corporations down to the individual you know, individual person in a family, to the entire family. And so the first thing is to endure. That hardship to find novel ways to solve the problems that we are encountering and to persevere despite these challenges that are at times outside of our control, but finding things that are within our control. So we are going to adjust our focus to our values, to what is really important in this situation. Try to eliminate the ruminating fears that are around us. And knowing as, as long as it's been 40 days, yes, it's been 40 days but it's not an you know, it, it will come to an end and it isn't insurmountable. And that's a big part of resilience too. Sometimes we see the, the challenge in front of us like a mountain, but we need to take little baby steps. To focus on what we can control and try to learn new things around this shutdown. We also need to focus on being empathetic and emotionally intelligent when dealing with other people who are also dealing with the situation. Sometimes people can shut down. Sometimes people get angry. Sometimes people get callous when challenges hit. And as Christians, this isn't our perspective. We need to be empathetic and understanding and be kind to one another. Which is really important. And then we need to develop new ways to be creative and effective in this situation and figure out what resources are missing. So the resources that could be missing are, could be communication problems, could be conflict in our goals and our values. There could be. An issue related to our needs, related to resources being limited. How do we manage resources being limited in this kind of situation? If you're interacting with somebody who's helping you or you're helping them and one of you has unclear expectations, you're definitely going to have a challenge in that regard as well. And so there's a lot of stress and there's a lot of pressure. But what happens is, the real important need to communicate the needs that are occurring, and again, doing so in an empathetic, emotionally intelligent way so that you can communicate the needs that are around you and find the right solutions that will help you solve this problem. So that's gonna take active listening. To your colleagues, to your peers, to other people that are in the same boat, or even if they're not in the same boat maybe learning from their successes and them learning from your successes. So all of these things can happen together. Active listening is really important for resilience because. If you don't understand what the other person's experiencing, or you don't even understand what you're experiencing, how can you solve that problem? So your understanding has to come from listening to understand, not listening to respond and responding with understanding, responding with how you can help with those needs, but you're basically. Trying to gather more information, gather more information about what is valuable what are your immediate needs, what are your long-term needs, and then finding solutions to each of those different areas.

Romeo El Chaer 8:42

Yeah, based, you know, with what you're saying, very important during these days to have the, the skill of adaptation. We need to adapt to the changes. We, we cannot just keep our lives, keep going as it is on, at, at any level, personal level, and professional level. need to change. We need to be give ourself. The, the opportunity to start thinking outside of the box. And what I mean by that, know, we might have a certain lifestyle that we are used to, to have with the, when such big changes happen into our lives, we need to be flexible and, you know, start taking toward making some changes. Because we stay in our comfort zone. And blindsided everything. Like things are gonna be all right soon. Things are gonna be okay soon. Okay. very optimistic. I understand we are optimistic as resilient people, but we have also to be aware that cannot go as we wish. to make sure that we make some changes here so we can keep our, our lifestyle, you know, with the basics to be safe. Otherwise we are gonna have issues in the near future that we didn't calculate. So that's the, the power of adaptation or the skill of adaptation and being flexible to change is very important. And resiliency. So we can lead our lives in a way that we can protect what we have without panicking, without having the fear of, what if I don't do that? What if I did that? So, because the what if usually it comes in the, with the critter mind. It just freaks out when change is happening. And that's where I highly recommend to be aware about. Don't be afraid from changing, but be aware that not to change be, can have some consequences that you don't want to have. At least be aware of this. for that, there is three levels that can, we can approach here. Christine. there is first on the family level, how to, what to do with the kids, to do with marriage, how we, we maintain relationships and such hard, hard times because everything is getting, is getting impact by that stress, anxiety. where raise more conflicts, more you know, a misunderstanding between couples, between family, between parents and kids and so on. So it'll have a lot of impact. So we can approach this. Second, we gonna approach also, you know, we need to approach the entrepreneurs. People like they have small businesses and they are trying to, you know, keep moving forward building door businesses and that's where what they need. To learn or to have to make sure that they can survive what's happening. And also for the corporations or big businesses, there's a lot of challenges here because also the dynamics the economy and the political changes, not only in the state, but also abroad, level, there's a huge changing happening. How they can be prepared to face all what's happening. economic level tech, technological technology level politic level, everything, because they're individual, their teams, they're, they're gonna be impacted. And we need to make sure that those people, they are like, you know, protected and they have all the tools, skills equipped and ready to go. So that's, that's the thing that. And we need to start approaching so we can just make some positive impact on those three, three categories that impact only, you know, our communities, but also the whole nation. And basically it's gonna also impact the world because, you know, this is the states, it's just the center of the world now. So if, if it's shaked, it's the whole world will shake. Yeah.

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 13:08

Yeah.

Romeo El Chaer 13:09

So.

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 13:10

Yeah. So we have to figure out where in the structure things may be breaking down, whether again, it's in the, in the home structure or it's in the business structure. But we're basically looking for. Where is the root cause of these needs? And everybody in the team, in the company, or even in the ho in the home needs to be able to have a free space to speak without fear. And then we establish clear priorities. Where are the priorities that you need? 'cause like you said, if there's. A problem with scarcity because of these shutdowns. Then we need to prioritize what do we cover first? What do we cover second? And negotiate and compromise and kind of have a mediation between, you know, all of the different needs and promote kind of collaboration and cooperation and these kinds of things. The issue is, is that. You know, there's sometimes differences in personalities. There's differences in perspectives. There's differences in who thinks what is the most important issue to cover First, there's individual biases, there's negative interpretations of things. And so we have to take all of these different things into consideration. But we can't be ambiguous. 'cause when we're ambiguous then we can't really be resilient. So we need to figure out what is the priority. Where is the kind of holes that need to be plugged first and start with those areas and then work from there. Ultimately, if there's ineffective leadership the problems are gonna get worse because it really starts at the top. Again, whether that's at the house with the parents, it will trickle down to the kids. If it's a problem at the boss of the company, it'll trickle down to the employees. So we can't have ineffective leadership. It has to be bold, strong, discerning. Wise addressing the problems of the company. Hearing everybody is perspective. Effective leadership is truly individuals that are clear. They make good, clear decisions. And these are also things that are applicable to resilience regardless of the struggle. Their leadership is relevant to the times that we are in. It is very timely to the time that they're in. It's very specific to how they're gonna fix the problems. They're honest. They're not beating around the bush and trying to hide things and, and not tell the truth or because the truth always comes out and they have to be kind of task directed. Target in their behavior, actionable in their behavior and explaining things as they go along. But people that are vague or you know, wishy-washy in what they're doing or blaming others rather than taking accountability or manipulative in some way, again, whether that's in the home front. Or in the work front, that's not gonna work, especially in times of crisis. So a person who's a leader is decisive. And they figure out quickly how to manage the situation without shaming or blaming or manipulating or any of those things. So I think those are important qualities for leadership in crisis.

Romeo El Chaer 16:12

Let's approach the families, you know, during these hard times, you know?

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 16:17

Yeah.

Romeo El Chaer 16:17

You know, Christine, that we, we both have kids and there is two ways now that I think we need to start consider considering how far we should get our kids involved in daily life and how management and, and, and money management, how to make them prepared for what's coming. Because

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 16:41

Mm-hmm.

Romeo El Chaer 16:42

they need to start getting involved in what we are doing. Or getting involved in our businesses or getting involved in taking care of the house or taking care, like being aware more about the money spending like how far we go with, with, with the activities, everything. When,

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 17:02

Great question.

Romeo El Chaer 17:02

because you know, when we are just living hardships, you need to adapt. That means you have to let go of your things. That can be dangerous. You know, we might think at the beginning that, you know, I have to make my son or my daughter to go to the piano and ballet and tennis and X, Y, Z is six, seven activities during the, the, the week. But on, if that continue like that, you're spending tons of of money. That can disrupt their life in the, in the near future. And that can put them in a little bit in a place that all what we are building now, if the house collapses, everything will go away. That's the, that's the danger that can families go through the, the house collapsed from inside. Do we need to maintain that the relationship with the parents is still, you know, empowered by being more resilient. And by that, to keep the communication channels open, to be more that we need to make some changes. For example, if I say, you know, let's say we are a couple and we go say, you know what, I'm gonna put my kids in doing. Five activities during the week so we can enrich them. This is excellent. By third, by, it's by by, by all means. But what if, but you're gonna say, but hey Romeo, we not, we don't have enough money to survive with all the activities. So what do you, how do you think here? Are you, like when you to manage the situation, do you stop those activities? Do you reduce them or you just. doing what you're doing and saying, you know, things will get, hopefully things will go better. That's three options. They are very, very, very critical and in my opinion, if you, if you just keep things at it as it is, that can endanger the money level That can disrupt the whole family because then the quarrels, you know, when lack of money was there, oh my God. Then everything starts to. Be tense because the fear of paying the bills, paying the mortgage, paying the, the, the car loan, X, y, z, you know, keep the business running so everything will be disrupted because the money was gonna be shrinking. But at the same time, there will be personal conflict. What I, what I do with my kids, I'm gonna like. Not giving them what they need. I will be X, Y, ZI will be feeling like shame I was not able to give them. So I'm gonna take back from them what they enjoying, but we need to make some balance here. Keep the house.

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 20:09

Yeah, absolutely.

Romeo El Chaer 20:10

the house above their heads first.

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 20:13

Yeah, absolutely. And I know when, when things are challenging, I'm sure in your household with your, with your wife and your kids, you, you do discuss these hard things with them and finding that balance. You know, and, and anytime there is a challenge, I've had a. Challenging challenges in my own household this year with some some damage. And so some things had to be cut out so that you could focus on the priority of you know, the damage and getting the insurance and here to fix the things in my house. And I'm glad you're able to, you know, discuss those things with your children and your spouse, like your discussing you know, as you're saying right now, and it is important. To not frighten your children because they may not have the entire perspective of everything that's going on. I know my kids, you know, saw all the water when we had the water damage in our house this year. And it's important to kind of explain to them and how we're gonna maneuver around this situation. And as the parent, as the adult in my house, I had to, you know, take charge and educate them and explain to them, but also. You know, tell them that we are okay. We're gonna be okay as a family. The insurance is gonna come in, it's gonna fix these, these things. And that indeed is what happened. So I think as a leader, as the father in your household and as the mom in my household, I think it is important. To prepare them, to prepare the people. And even as, you know, leaders in business or as a, as a professor, as a whatever I am, you know, in these, in these situations, you are preparing the people that are kind of under you and explaining and teaching and communicating, but also taking charge and being bold that it's going to be. Okay, we're gonna figure this out together as a family. And, you know, that's, I think that what it, what a good leader is meant to do. A good leader is sent to serve, not be served. They're sent to kind of prioritize the needs. They're still humble through the process, but they have integrity and honesty. Again, they educate, but they're bold and they make impact and they influence. And I'm sure you do that in, in your family. I know. I try to do that in my family. But it is, it is certainly difficult when you yourself are being challenged. By things that are outside of your control. And so like you were saying before, this is where you have to adapt and be flexible and learn yourself but also not to allow the people around you to be frightened, but know that you're gonna work together. You know, the four of you in your home is to, to work together to get the situation resolved. And that's how you act as a leader, even within your own house.

Romeo El Chaer 22:53

We need to start giving our kids responsibilities. handle inside the house to be aware about what's going on. Not to expose everything from parents' perspective, but to start making them involved because that's how you start preparing leadership within your kids. If you keep them not aware about what's going on with the minimum level, they would think that life is full of roses. And when they are in that situation, when things happens in their lives, they will collapsed. it's the best time to start making them aware that, you know, there's things needs to be changed. Because if you keep them on this soft edge, they'll be so soft when they grow up. will be exposed to really dangerous situations because they will, they will say, dang, this never happened before. But what's happening is that parents are very protective sometimes we become overprotecting our kids, and that can be very dangerous because the kids are not exposed to anything. They're just exposed to luxury life, to being, getting what they want for everything they need and nothing they should be worried about. that can put them, that can be, not the, the, the real thing. It's not the real deal. It's not the truth about living a life. Living alive, living alive. They need to start knowing that there is. You know, there should be some balance. And because, because if we just open everything for them and protect them 100%, that can just make them fragile when they go outside and we know that, you know, sooner or later they gonna be exposed to the ward. When they go to the college or university, like in, in different state, are we gonna help them with the money? So that's where it's very important to start building resiliency from this age. And that's where during those hard times we are going through, we can those challenges and hardships and start, you know, shaping that resiliency within our kids and to prepare them step by step, little by little to be future leaders so they can lead their lives and they know things can go a little bit tough.

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 25:12

Right,

Romeo El Chaer 25:12

shape things. So that's, that's

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 25:15

right.

Romeo El Chaer 25:16

about, you know, if we think about family level. So what, what, what, what do you have on this, Christine? How do you see it from your own perspective?

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 25:27

Yeah, I completely agree. You know, there is some things that, that they need to be shielded from, like I said, so they're not afraid. And again, it's, it's age appropriate. But I 100% agree that resilience is a muscle, that needs to be built, and it can only be built in hardship. So there is no resilience without challenge. There is no resilience without things unraveling. There is no resilience without there being hardship. There's a lot of people that think that resilience means that, you know, you just kind of just get strong and, and then you forget about all the difficulties that isn't, that isn't true. Resilience is the product of. Persevering and continuing through and being mentored through and believing that you can even during a time of hardship and a time of challenge. And so as Christians, we always believe in hope from a psychological perspective, though hope is about action, it's not just believing things are going to get better. We do believe things are going to get better as Christians. But the added step with psych psychological research on hope is what action am I putting into this? And so not just saying status quo and you know, in my, in my case, it was like water damage that I was mentioning in my house. I don't just stand in the puddle of water and say, oh. You know, it's gonna get better. I have to take action. I have to call the insurance company. I have to call contractors. I have to, you know, call people and negotiate things. And as my kids were watching me do this, they're learning, they're being mentored. You know, they're looking through the situation. And this took. You know, a significant chunk of this year dealing with that hardship. But they saw, you know, a strong mom dealing with that, with that situation, building on the strengths that God gave me taking what God has given me, building on what, you know, I have to bring to the table. And you know, bridging relationships in that with contractors and plumbers and whatever else was needed. And. Being able to kind of focus on this. They learned through that process. So I didn't shield them. I taught them, and when we say we discipline kids, it actually comes from discipleship or modeling or training. Somebody to do something in a hard time, not hiding from it, not running away, not putting your head in the sand, but facing it. And that's a big part of resilience.

Romeo El Chaer 27:46

ama, that's so beautiful what you just said. It's really, that's practically how things goes in life. Not to shield them, not to make them under fear,

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 27:56

Yep.

Romeo El Chaer 27:57

to start mentoring them. About how to deal with life. And that's also now my, my son when he came back from deployment. So I just said, Hey dad, start, you know, working together. I need your support. And actually, you know, some, you know, parents and kids, they don't always get along. I said, look, dad, I'm doing this. I have this back office work and I have this front office work, so I need all the support here. So I expose to him my problem. Then he volunteered. He said, okay, dad, you know what? I'm gonna start helping you. now he start learning things you can see that they, there's a lot of things that needs to learn. he said, wow, there's a lot. So let me take it. Like, know, I don't want to get the elephant to one time, so I'm gonna get it. And by small bites. I respected that of course, and that's how it should be. So, but he's now getting involved. And that's part of mentoring him so he can later on when he comes to his own business. He will know that there is hardships, there is. Know that he has to manipulate this and he will already have some skills. It'll be built in. That's mentoring him and accepting the fact of having dealing with a business and life needs a lot of skills and understanding maneuvering skills, adaptation, being flexible, to learn more. You know, being disciplined so he can just build up things so it can help him to lead his life and then lead his business or lead his position, whatever he is going to work later on in life. So that's, and from there, I'm gonna jump. Based on the word mentoring to the small businesses where the entrepreneurs now, they are struggling a lot about what's, what happened now during the last 40 days. It's not only about the shutdown, you know, the shutdown, it happened before, but this time was really long. It impact everyone. And now

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 30:10

Yeah.

Romeo El Chaer 30:11

Thanksgiving and all the travel. Air travel is disrupted. There is, it's not safe, and you know, on the ground and you cannot just do it like that. Then you

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 30:23

Mm-hmm.

Romeo El Chaer 30:24

everything is on. People were sent home. People are struggling to go back now and they are

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 30:30

Yeah.

Romeo El Chaer 30:30

not paid. And now they were in the middle of, they were in the limbo like, are we going back? Are

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 30:36

Mm-hmm.

Romeo El Chaer 30:36

do we go search for the new job? So those are huge situations that people went through and they're like in the limbo, why? We have no clue what, what's what we're gonna do? We are like freaking out and they have all the right for that.

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 30:50

Mm-hmm.

Romeo El Chaer 30:51

But.

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 30:52

Mm-hmm.

Romeo El Chaer 30:52

how we handle this, should we out we go and try to take, swallow that challenge and see what to do next? And that's where, you know, entrepreneurs. Especially, I'm talking about the small businesses and entrepreneurs they need, it's the best time to start building their resiliency and understanding and learning the skills that they need to overcome challenges that they had. Recently, like I have a friend of mine that he's, he works in, in, in commercial cleaning and carpet cleaning and those stuff. This is a small business. telling him, Hey, come join my, join me to, to a networking group that we are doing. He said, draw me. I don't have time. I'm fully booked. And I was talking to him yesterday. I said, Romemu, you know what, you know, after, like, this was like three weeks ago, that was the conversation now. He said, Romemu, I don't know what's happening, but everything's just shutting down. All the business that I had, they're just delaying me. He said like, can we do it later? Can we do it later? So they just, some people they even, you know, stop their contract, like freezing them, and that was very alarming. Okay. How

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 32:08

Mm-hmm.

Romeo El Chaer 32:09

with the businesses, how we di diversify, how we keep money on the side. So when it, when Belmont like this happens, we need to survive you know what to do next. Do we still doing things as it is? But with the lack of businesses or opportunities, the business will slow down. Are we prepared mentally to just challenge the new for, to, to face those challenges or we collapse? Those things that were, you know, employers, entrepreneurs, they need to start learning. That's by being open to under, like, to take into consideration taking, you know, those trainings about resiliency, about leadership skills, about any skill, you know, being open for ai, being open for understanding things behind the scenes. Like, okay, now I

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 33:03

Absolutely.

Romeo El Chaer 33:04

a CPA to do my accounting. What can I do about this? so on. So those are the steps they take. To be proactive as you mentioned, that those things needs action, are already, are

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 33:18

Yep.

Romeo El Chaer 33:19

to do the actions to adapt to those situations and make some changes, or they just stay in the static

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 33:25

Yeah.

Romeo El Chaer 33:25

and wait for things to happen.

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 33:28

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, I do agree with the mentorship and I agree definitely that, and even this is in the resilience research. Some supportive figure. So when you were talking about your son earlier, it's important that he knows he has support. So you know, even people that you work with in your company that you are there to support each other. That's really important as well. Even if things are challenging, you have people that you can fall back on, whether it's in your family or friends or colleagues or whatever that you're not alone because, again, loneliness in and of itself. It is another problem. It's an epidemic. And people start to fall apart when they're by themselves. So it's good that you were reaching out to that friend of yours. It is important that we have connections. And those connections again, make you feel like you're supported even through a hardship. Like businesses shutting down, the airlines shutting down. Unfortunately, even people having food shortages with benefits being cut down in that way. And so there's a lot of interwoven kind of problems. They're all, you know, interwoven together and they all, you know, are creating problems for each each other. So the more support that we have, and if I can help you with this area and you can help me with this area that it won't seem as hard. And so that's important in business and in family. You're not by yourself. You know, pick up a phone and call somebody or have them call you or vice versa. But to try to find some sort of support, somebody that knows a little bit more in this area than you, and when they can help you, that's what's gonna make things feel a little lighter. And again, that is also a biblical concept, the concept of community. And as Christians, we know the importance of community and connection with other people. So when you're in, you're in a struggle. Don't run and hide. Face the struggle, but try to take people along with you and it'll feel lighter. We are supposed to carry one another's burdens, as the verse says.

Romeo El Chaer 35:23

Keep walking forward and relying on God because

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 35:26

Yes.

Romeo El Chaer 35:27

you to move forward. It'll, it will give you hope. You know, and that's what made both of us and so many people that I know keep moving forward in hardships. 'cause when having that belief. and, and, and, and God, we know that, you know, even the hardships, he will be walking with us and we can walk through the value of, of death. And that's that's what it is. It's when you're going into hardships, you feel, you feel lonely, you feel alone. You feel like or you know, you house is collapsing on, on your head, but you know. God will always bring people to your life that will just inspire you, that will give you hints that even will support

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 36:05

Hmm.

Romeo El Chaer 36:06

in a way you can never imagine. that can be in a, in a physical way or in an emotional way or in a spiritual way. We need also to understand that we are not just material human beings. We are mixed of emotional, spiritual, mentally, and physical wellbeing. We are very complex, so don't just. Think that, you know, the physical part will be the only thing. We need to be that we need to, you know, nourish all these, because if we, if we lack nourishing one of them, we might have some lack of balance. We will not be able to balance them all, all the time. That's. For sure, at least working and being proactive and keep these balance, these, these, these, these four categories, balanced in a way to keep us seeing what's happening and being aware about what's happening so we can move on and be able to overcome the challenges. Otherwise, it's gonna be more really, it's gonna be tough and that's no one wants to be, we want to be able to just. Walk through the hardships be aware of it with all our senses, with all our awareness, also to have some hope, which is kind of for us as man of God and woman of God, we need, we rely on God, on keep things moving forward because without him is gonna be really, really difficult to keep moving because we don't

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 37:37

Absolutely.

Romeo El Chaer 37:38

the enough energy and endurance. To keep moving into hardship. It's like that weight on our shoulders

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 37:46

Yep.

Romeo El Chaer 37:46

you know, the more we walk with all the weight, we are gonna be more fragile, but God will just, you know, put his finger there and we're gonna like, make those changes to happen and see the brighter side that we can overcome this, we can do it, but have the faith in

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 38:01

Yeah.

Romeo El Chaer 38:02

and in yourself that you're gonna make it him by just being, you know, having faith in him and keep working.

Christine E. Agaibi - Caresilience 38:15

Absolutely. I think we discussed a lot of wonderful points today on, especially when things are outside of our control. Something like this government shutdown, it's outside of our control, that it happened, when it will end, how long it'll take, how to come back from that. All of those things are out outside of our control, but what is in our control? I think even to just kind of summarize the many points we talked about today. Grade points first is potentially to prune away the things that are, are not important. And when we prune, it's, it's very hard to do and very challenging to let go of things, but to focus on the things that are the most valuable. You know, changing in the lifestyle, again, being flexible community is very, very important. Being able to teach children and teach you know, family members, how to respond to hardship in a positive way with faith, with confidence that we will get through this, it is not insurmountable. And again, community is really, really important. Just within the family. But mentorship within your community, within your colleagues, within those kinds of things and all of these things together during times of hardship, managing and controlling the things that you can control because you can't control everything. So manage with what, what is within reach and that'll help you get closer to the goals that you have. Staying grounded. In your values, your Christian values your values about leadership, your values, about morality, and, and all of those different things, it's important to stay grounded in those truths when everything around you is. Outside of your control. And ultimately I think I would end by saying, just take baby steps. Just take one tiny step at a time and you'll climb out of the situation that you're in. It truly sometimes feels huge and uncontrollable. And what do I do next? Just take the next correct step and one step will lead to another. One will lead to another one, will lead to another one, and you'll climb out of it. I do hope you know that all of this shutdown stuff resolves soon. The airplanes, the food supply, all of that stuff. I hope this stuff improves. I know there's millions that are suffering, but there is hope and there is always hope in Christ. And there's hope, even in the strengths that he gives us to climb out of these situations. We are not alone.

Romeo El Chaer 40:35

And I joined my voice to yours and I will just sum up with three important things that went through this conversation that first be able, like, have to adapt. You need to adapt to what's happening and have ability and the mindset to be flexible to change. with that, go and check your life and see what you can declutter that can help you. You know, you cannot get a new furniture. While you have the old furniture sitting there, you need to change things. You need to get thrift of things, and you need to bring new stuff into your life so you can keep moving forward. And that needs adaptation, flexibility, and decluttering. So if you work on these things during those hardships, believe me, you're gonna make some positive changes in your life so you can keep up moving forward and you can apply this to your family and. To your small business and even to your corporation because that's how we survive in handling crisis like this one that we had and we are going through. And that's how it goes. So hang in there, do what needs to be done on with your life.

42:06

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.