With decades of experience as a CEO, executive mentor, facilitator, and public speaker, Omar Rivas understands working through uncertainty. Rivas opened his talk with a personal narrative of his recent surgery- where he woke up feeling disoriented, unsure, and weighed down. He likened the experience to how we all felt at the beginning of the pandemic. Our entire world shifted overnight and many of us woke up feeling helpless, stuck, and lost in a new world with many variables that are out of our control.

During this time CEOs across the country have been faced with adversity for months on end. Many businesses are struggling to survive and perplexed on how to adapt to this ever-changing pandemic economy. Large sweeping changes to your business might not be possible right now, but it is possible to make small adjustments in your business and in yourself. Rivas emphasized the connection between CEOs personal and professional lives stating, "What happens to you will happen to your business, and what happens to your business will happen to you." Making internal changes on the factors you can control within yourself, will have a lasting impact on your business.

Rivas outlined six factors to bouncing back stronger:

• Capacity to make realistic plans
• Ability to carry out those plans
• Effectively manage your feelings and emotions
• Communication
• Comfort in your strengths and abilities
• Problem-solving skills

Each of these factors are not character traits but tools and skills that can be practiced and developed to build resiliency.

View Omar Rivas' full talk at the link above as he elaborates on the six factors essential to bouncing back stronger.