When life delivers a gut punch, here's how to survive

Whether it's a crisis in your business, personal life or society, cultivate resilience by allowing your emotions to ebb and flow (and be bottled up) when needed, finding social support, seeking reasons to be optimistic and looking for the silver lining in every cloud, writes author Eric Barker. "And when times are tough, friends are the emotional EMTs who might not always know CPR but can resuscitate your spirit with a well-timed joke or just their sheer, absurd presence," Barker notes.

Put it into practice: The good news, according to researchers, is that resilience is our default mode when we face a challenge or setback, Barker notes, which makes it easier to find reasons to be optimistic. "We're like those wobbly inflatable tube men outside car dealerships -- flailing wildly, but you can't keep us down."

An email newsletter is one of the best ways to engage your customers, writes business advisor David Baker, who advises you to never try and sell through it, but offer valuable insights and a unique point-of-view that builds a relationship with readers. The value of an email newsletter, Baker notes, is that you own it, it's easy to scale, everyone uses email and it's easy for readers to respond to you personally.

Put it into practice: Baker says he's serious about not selling anything in your newsletter or making company announcements. Instead, go deep into your company's specialty and become the go-to expert in your field to build trust so that when your readers need what you're offering, they'll come to you.

Companies can use AI to build talent pipelines to recruit new employees and use it to tailor responses to applicants as well as retain current employees through automated messages and meeting summaries, say experts. Leaders must create guidelines for AI's use, says David Quinones, senior vice president of editorial and content for RockOrange, who notes, "Anything that involves direct communication with candidates should remain in human hands."

Put it into practice: Relying too much on AI generated messages can erode trust with both applicants and employees, Quinones notes. A human must still curate every message to make sure employees feel seen and heard by leadership.

Provide a broader understanding. It's great to see that 80% of you report that your team members understand the important parts of your organization outside their own team or function. That obviously improves coordination, helps them appreciate knock-on effects of their work and makes them better prepared to take on larger or different roles as their careers progress.

For those of you reporting that your teams aren't familiar with other functions, put together a plan for how you can build their knowledge. Are there cross-functional projects you can put them on? Are there online courses they can take to understand other functions? Can you create mentorship opportunities with leaders from other areas?

The better your team members understand what the rest of the organization does, the more their own roles make sense to them and the better positioned they are to grow in their careers.

-- Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS, which includes TITAN -- the firm's e-learning platform. Previously, he worked at McKinsey & Co., Capital One and Scotts Miracle-Gro. He is a West Point graduate and author of three leadership books: "One Piece of Paper," "Lead Inside the Box" and "The Elegant Pitch."

Despite growing up poor in East St. Louis, Ill., Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee says a positive attitude, overcoming self-doubt after an injury in 1984 and not paying attention to critics were the keys to her success. "There are 30 of us, and only one of us can get the gold -- that's my attitude," says Joyner-Kersee.

Three previously unknown plant species could provide more climate-resilient cocoa than their close relative Theobroma cacao, which produces the beans used to make chocolate. T. globosum, T. nervosum and T. schultesii grow in South American rainforests, and their discovery "shows how much more work there is to be done to catalog the vast amount of unknown biodiversity across our planet," says James Richardson, an author of the paper in the Kew Bulletin.

Trauma is a real thing, but I'm relieved to learn that research shows that resilience is our default setting when bad things happen in our lives. Eric Barker gives a comprehensive rundown on resilience and how we can cultivate it when things go sideways. Whether we're worried about political shifts, market shifts or economic shifts that directly affect our business, we have the tools we need to weather the storm.

Recently, I've been leaning into the tools of optimism and community. I see these two as going hand in hand because when we're out in the world among friends or strangers, it feels good to make a connection with others, even if it's long enough to smile and say thank you to someone holding a door for us.

It can be easy to get caught in our own heads, making up stories about how things could go wrong or how changing times and circumstances may affect our lives or our business. The tools Barker offers can help us break out of that trap by contemplating the good things that may come from the new situation or challenging ourselves to find the blessing in the moment.

Either way, we should avoid the urge to repress our feelings. If we need to cry, we should. If we need to shout in frustration, we should. If we need to control our temper to avoid making a bad situation worse, we should do that, too. Being flexible in our emotions can help us avoid extending our suffering, Barker notes.

"After big tragedies, it's common to wonder if you'll ever be happy again. The answer is a resounding 'yes,'" writes Barker.

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