Matthew Fox is a spiritual theologian, an Episcopal priest and an activist for gender, racial and eco-justice. He has written more than 39 books that have been translated into over 60 languages. In 1993 he was expelled from the Dominican order of the Catholic church after 34 years, by Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). His mistake was reviving Creation Spirituality which blends teachings from the Christian mystics with science, the arts, social justice, environmentalism, and ideas from other spiritual traditions worldwide (including those of indigenous cultures).

Matthew feels the difference between spirituality and religion is that religion has evolved to become mostly about social structures. Religion comes and goes in different eras or moments in time and at certain points, particularly in the west, has become linked to empire building and politics wheras spirituality is the essence.

Belonging is an archetypal experience that we all seek. In the workplace, a sense of belonging will only happen if you have both diversity and inclusion. When you facilitate diversity in hiring practices and instill inclusive policies, procedures and behaviors, your organisation has its best chance of creating a culture that supports a sense of belonging for everyone. 

Diversity is a fact. Inclusion is a behavior. Belonging is an experience. Diversity is a fact in that you can look around you and note that there are people like yourself alongside people who aren’t like you. Inclusion, meanwhile, is a set of behaviors, frameworks or approaches that promote psychological safety and connectedness among team members.

There are a lot of things that happen to us in life, events, injuries, trauma or divorce. With any type of life event happens we try to protect ourselves so we cover ourselves to survive and continue living. A life event such as the pandemic makes people withdraw and disassociate to protect themselves and others from things they used to care for. When people do that they go into a victim mindset - things always happen to me and only bad things will happen to me. What we are saying to ourselves, our inner voice or the way we speak to ourselves means the way we create stories in our mind leads to a lot of resistance and fighting that we have to go through. Whether it's a relationship with another or ourselves, the story we are living in and telling ourselves matters. Part of the challenge is to recreate your own narrative.

Dr Stephen Sideroff is an internationally recognised psychologist, executive and medical consultant and expert in resilience, optimal performance, addiction, neurofeedback, and leadership. He has published pioneering research in these fields. He is a professor at UCLA in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences and the Department of Rheumatology, and director of the Wallenberg Institute of Ethics. He was the founder & former Clinical Director of the Stress Strategies program of UCLA/Santa Monica Hospital and former Clinical Director of Moonview Treatment and Optimal Performance Center.

Dr Sideroff started his career as a researcher looking at a learning and memory. He then moved into clinical work where he quickly realised stress was a major modulator of how people felt. They could be feeling really good but as soon as the amount off stress in their life increased their coping abilities become strained and they began to develop different kinds of symptoms.

His most recently published book is The Path: Mastering the Nine Pillars of Resilience and Success. Amazon.com – takes model of resilience and lays it out path is a construct that is designed to help people who can get very overwhelmed when they think of all the things they need to do to become resilient – they feel they have to be resilient to work on being resilient.

Sallie Wagner feels resilience is incredibly important and crucial to our life and wellbeing in four major areas – physical, emotional, mental and social - and that there are some very simple ways we can build our resilience. Resilience can also help us to move out of all the regrets we have in life – the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘if only’.  As we build resilience we can move on from those regrets.

She also believes that to create success we need to make a process for everyday. Mindset is not taught and we need the mindset to view the success we have in the future and also what it looks like afterwards. We need to have the right skills to have the right mindset for our careers, businesses and lives and then take action to make it happen. Without action it’s just a philosophy. Without action it’s just hoping and dreaming.

The First Africa Family Business Summit (AFBS) will be held at the Kempinski Hotel in Accra on June 24th 2022.

The aim of the AFBS is to bring together family business practioners and help them to build a network that will allow them to share information and insights amongst themselves. The audience will be made up of family business owners and senior management, the next generations of their families and other key stakeholders in family businesses.

The AFBS is a hybrid conference with virtual and face to face attendance. Dr Russell Thackeray will be leading a workshop on building personal resilience and the toolkits needed to facilitate this in the afternoon session. The evening Session will allow wider networking and focus more on organisational resilience with key speakers on the theme of  “Building Resilience in Family Businesses for Continuity”.

Like most people, successful executive, life strategist, and author Rob Swymer has gone through his share of adversity. Rob married his first wife Bonnie at the age of 21 during the summer of his college junior year and together, they had 3 children. In 2013, Rob lost Bonnie to a massive brain aneurysm and he learned that all the adversity in his life prior had given him the strength to endure the loss of a loved one.

Rob believes our internal voice influences our every thought, belief, and action. He used this model to move forward. In reality our internal voice is louder than any external voice we can hear. Rob thinks you need to start with mindset. If you get your mindset right on a daily basis and with the inner voice in check there is nothing you can't achieve.

Often people attend time management courses and come back very enthusiastic about what they've learned. They start of with good intentions but after a short period slip back. Perhaps time management is bigger and broader and the question we should be asking ourselves is how are we managing ourselves.

In the bigger context it's apparent that more people are asking themselves this question now than three years ago. Post pandemic people are perhaps struggling to reset the boundaries of what’s acceptable, how they work, what productivity looks like and how it gets measured, how they compare themselves to others and their productivity and how they can still establish credibility with their bosses when there has been less presence around.

A clinical depression in her 20s, and later, a bipolar I diagnosis, caused Michele Capots to lose all self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth. She felt defined by her illness and was unsure what it meant for the rest of her life. She no longer believed in herself, and lost the confidence to achieve her goals.

Michelle knew nothing about bipolar and was in and out of psychiatric wards for three years. The self-stigma she felt was difficult to overcome and made her fight against. her diagnosis. Someone told Michele that she should to run towards the sound of the cannon and she took this as meaning she should run towards the problem rather than away from it. When she accepted that the disorder was only a part of her not all of her she found freedom and achieved mental wellness.

Kevin Roth began to play the dulcimer in 1972 at the old age of thirteen, and at sixteen recorded his first album which immediately launched him into international fame. His career took him to a concert and symphony stages around the world, to festivals, radio, television shows, and two appearances at the White House. Then came a sudden diagnosis of Melanoma which changed his life.

He was given around two years to live and had the choice to accept the diagnosis or live. He chose life. Through adapting and combining techniques from his music and performance practice with others that he researched, he found a simple and powerful method to change how he lived and discovered how to not just survive but to become truly happy and thrive. 

Kevin feels we create stories every day. When we wake up it can be a good day or a bad day. For example, if you’re in a really bad mood and the phone rings and it's a friend you haven’t heard from a while then suddenly you’re in a whole other dimension. All the drama that was ruining your life is gone. When you look at mindful awareness and take the time to contemplate it you realise that you really shouldn't get upset about very much. The story is the story.

We also need to recreate our life on a daily basis and retune ourselves through the day. Many people don't know how to sit in silence or be comfortable with themselves any more. We have an inner voice that will talk to us if we are quiet enough to listen so we can replace what doesn't work with what does.