Pamela Coburn-Litvak

When life knocks us down, there are two brain tools that help us to pick ourselves back up: grit and resilience. In psychological terms, resilience describes our emotional health. It's our ability to bounce back from challenges and the emotional strength we use to overcome crisis and failure. Grit, on the other hand, describes the mindset we use to persevere through challenges, crises, and failure. These two brain tools work hand in hand. When life knocks us down, resilience gives us the emotional strength we need to get back on our feet. Grit is what makes us decide to get back up, brush ourselves off, and keep going. In this session, you will: - review four key elements for building grit and resilience; - learn a fail-proof method for succeeding at your goals; - discern the secret of staying resilient during times of crisis; - discover the ten most powerful emotions to promote emotional wellbeing; and -determine how to find your true passion and purpose.

What creates FOCUS? When using a camera or a pair of binoculars, it’s the lens that converges light rays on the right target. But some lenses are better than others -- crystal clear lenses sharpen our focus while blurry lenses only cloud up the view. Likewise, some "lenses" you and I use in work and life will help us stay focused on the personal or professional goals we have set for ourselves. If these goals remain in sharp focus, then our actions will move us closer to the life we want. Using blurry "lenses," on the other hand, will cause us to stumble further away. In this session, you will: - review the five best practices to become less distracted and more focused on your most important life goals; - learn four steps to translate work and life goals into a detailed action plan; - discover how to overcome the internal urges or external forces that distract from your goals; and - learn practical tools to manage some major distractions at work, like email and meetings.

Many who work in caregiving professions do so because they – and this will sound completely obvious – care. Compassion is their jam. It brings them immense joy. But like any other fuel, compassion can and does get depleted under certain circumstances. The technical term for this is compassion fatigue. Caring for others can drain our own physical and emotional strength. We feel spent and cynical. We have a hard time empathizing or caring about our clients/patients, co-workers, and even our loved ones. Compassion fatigue affects healthcare workers, counselors and therapists, teachers and educators, correctional officers, ministers and clergy, and many others. What can we do about it? How do we build trust? Where do we start? This presentation will give an overview of the symptoms of compassion fatigue, how to recognize it in workers and how to measure its severity, and research-based techniques to address it. Note: this topic is also available as a workshop.