 good morning folks welcome to the 2023 annual staff retreat day thanks for everybody for coming out and coming early yeah our chief of staff leading applause ladies and gentlemen thank you Danielle Polzarski please continue to eat enjoy the breakfast and the drinks and refreshments I'm gonna start with a few housekeeping items first I'm Greg McGrath on year 18 of a one-year planet Norwich as the dean of students here now and happy to emcee this Kyle Southworth thank you so very much for tagging me for it you owe me we're gonna go with some announcements and then raffle winners and then I'll introduce Jesse Drown to talk about the staff survey results okay so please an announcement a reminder please check the board for the time and location some things may have changed or will change of your sessions so check time and location on the board big reminder we've tied two things together this year and that is this event and the annual employee recognition event and this is the first time we've been able to combine the two and it's the first time since 2019 I believe that we've had the employee recognition event in person so that's very exciting please join us this afternoon that'll be from three to 430 back here in Plumlee Armor and so please join us for that now I'm going to ask a good colleague and friend of mine Sherry Campbell to please come up here Sherry are you still here she disappeared oh that was her saying no hiding at the stars Sherry come on up you've won a prize so our first raffle winner of the day is Sherry Campbell Sherry has won sorry Megan but she has won a day off alright congratulations Sherry please don't use that today we'd like you to stay with us all right now here's an interesting one is Scott Wills with us all right Scott congratulations you know you won you won the president's meatballs and so it says here in my note Scott that any time between midnight and 4 a.m. just ring the president's doorbell and they'll be there ready for you that's perfect the real answer is that he's going to I think personally deliver them to you at some point on campus hopefully we'll check to make sure you're here and working but you get the president's meatballs personally delivered for you congratulations all right and Jesse Drown is Jesse here all right I'm sorry you didn't win anything but you win the opportunity to come on stage Jesse's our chair and staff counsel and Jesse you get to take over so Anna's gonna help me pull up a couple slides very quick I'm gonna take a few minutes just to go over high-level results of our survey that everyone just took and I appreciate you all taking that survey it really helps us and just click through yes I know I don't know what that black bar is but it says staff counsel under that it's okay so just as an intro staff counsel is an advisory body part of shared governance who served the president of Norwich University both through the dean of the fact I mean I'm sorry we serve them through the chief of staff's office sorry this is an old old note but we have recently moved yes we served through the chief of staff office now with our new realignment so we are charged with effectively representing all university staff constituencies and assuring that your staff issues are considered in a lot of those decision-making processes and why do we do this survey so we want to be engaged with our constituents we want to hear what's going on and we want you to know that we're here for you so we like to track and we started this three years ago the level of engagement that you either see in us or your likelihood to reach out to us so this really helps us to see where we need to improve and we also ask questions about what are those topics that are of interest to you what's on your mind where can we help it really helps form our agenda for the next year as a brief sidetrack our current members many of which are here today we have David Kisner Kelly Sutton Bosley Brad Gallimore Ben Sabo Rob Burkey Lee Hatch I am currently the chair Lori Lamoff is my vice chair and Julie gutsel is our executive secretary so thank you all for your service we are looking for members so we'll get to how you can do that in a sec over time I just wanted to give you a brief glimpse so response rate how many people are taking our survey that tells us how involved you want to be with us when we kicked it off we got a pretty good response rate about 38% we dropped last year I'm sure due to a number of reasons but I'm happy to report that we're coming back this year we had 165 responses that's a great number and 36% so I'm happy to report that we're getting some more numbers that means more participation and that's a good element so the first two questions on our survey relate to how engaged is staff counsel and how likely are you to reach out to us as you can see we're happy to report an upward trend when we started back in 2021 we were at about this is a 1 to 6 scale at about a 2.82 and then also at about a 2.3 so we have really worked to be more engaged and that you feel more comfortable reaching out to us we hope to improve on these numbers but it's a really good trend so we get to the what are the topics that you all are talking about and we ask a couple questions to find out what are those issues that are of importance right we do plan to go into more detail a report of this will be available and we actually have a meeting next week our coffee with the council will be dedicated to the detail of this type of presentation but in general these are the topics that come up most frequently compensation is the biggest thing on everybody's mind as far as our survey results reveal benefits comes in a second remote work and professional development seem to be hovering around that third area but some other areas that came up were communication employee management items like performance management training supervisor training and also this idea of culture and improving campus morale so Brandy Dewey is our survey winner every year we ask you to give your name we do not use your name in results or reporting we merely stick it into the super fun wheel and pick a winner so Brandy has won a sweatshirt courtesy of fallot bookstore and I will contact her I will contact her to connect you with fallot and you can pick out your sweatshirt and your correct size so I promised I'd be quick in closing this says learn more about staff council our email please reach out to us if you have questions we do have membership you are welcome to take a look at that but if you just want to reach out use our email staff council at norwich.edu we do have a SharePoint site there's a lot of stuff on there please check it out there is a tab to apply to join staff council we in June will have some new membership are some terms and we are looking for new members we like to be at a body of 12 so if you are interested if you have one year of staff ship under your belt please reach out we need good people and the more hands the less work it is for everybody else also on there are our agendas everybody is welcome to attend a meeting our meeting minutes and our coffee with the council recordings have recently been uploaded so if you missed one feel free to go in there and take a peek you should be able to review any of the ones in the last fiscal year also for today there are links there because we want to make it easy for you to nominate folks for all these HR awards so always check that out as well and nominate your fellow staff members for the good work that they do in closing I want to announce that our next coffee with the council is going to be next week March 15th 10 o'clock as always and we're going to go into these survey results a little deeper what were those numbers what do the trends look like and really what we're looking for is now that we have all this what do we do with it based on this data how can we help to form an agenda priorities and where are those staff council touch points that we can help you all with so that's all I have for today and thank you while we're getting reset up can I ask our staff council members that were introduced please stand for just a moment for some recognition those of you serving currently round of applause please thank you all I appreciate you all thank you Jesse and staff council members for your service greatly appreciate it thanks very much I now have the honor and the privilege of introducing Rebecca Schubert Rebecca where's Rebecca there she is so this is Rebecca off to the side over here Rebecca is here from the Green Mountain Higher Ed Consortium and she's going to speak with us about human flourishing and the good life that's it without further ado Rebecca please join us thank you so much for having me today I'm so excited to be here so I just celebrated my fifth year in my current role with the Green Mountain Higher Ed Consortium and Norwich staff retreat was the first event I attended when I started this role back in the end of 2017 2018 and I remember that day being so wonderful and exciting because all of you who were so welcoming Ellen Liptec was here at the time I'm sure you all remember Ellen and she was so passionate about well-being and working with me that I just really fell in love with Norwich and I also remember that day President Schneider how many of you were here when President Schneider was here yeah I had never seen someone so fully embody leadership and being a leader as President Schneider and I just remember being so excited and feeling like I found my place here and so when the staff retreat planning committee asked me to be the keynote speaker for today's event I of course said yes and so when I thought about the theme of staff retreat for a new you I started thinking about what does that actually mean what does for a new you mean and I started thinking about you know New Year's Eve it's always New Year knew this knew that right and so I got to thinking about the idea of a new you and a new me and what it meant and I wondered did that mean moving towards some different version of myself did it mean trying to change who I was did it mean adopting some big new grand habits or ideals and ultimately what I realized was that a new you or a new me really meant moving towards being the best version of ourselves for me it means building on our strengths and amplifying ourselves in a way that brings fulfillment and meaning and purpose and contribution to our lives and so that's what I want to talk to you about today so in the next half an hour or so what I want to talk with you about is human flourishing I want us to define what flourishing is I want to share with you a little bit of research behind flourishing and I want to share with you some strategies for how you can enhance flourishing in your own life so that by the time you leave here today you will have some tools in your toolbox to help you move towards flourishing so I want to start out by posing a question and that is what is a good life so when you think about good life what comes to mind anyone say that again good health family what else connection social connection what else say it again grown up children who have your children have successfully grown the net grown and flown the nest what else happiness anything else good life stability okay so if you were to Google the definition of good life the first thing that would come up is a life of luxury of pleasure and material comfort now that might sound good but it might not really be that fulfilling you see happiness is not all it's cracked up to be many people will say a good life is a life that is happy and sure we all want that right but can you really imagine being happy all the time that would be kind of boring and we'd really miss out on a lot and that brings us to the second definition of a good life and that is a way of living that is moral satisfying and fulfilling now that sounds a lot more interesting you see if we really want to live the good life we have to experience the full breath and richness of life and that means experiencing the ups and the downs because without bitter we can't appreciate sweet right without hardship we can't experience gratitude without service and contribution we don't have a sense of meaning and purpose and so a full life a rich life is one that we experience in all it has to offer so that brings us to the definitions of flourishing and the idea of flourishing has been around really since the beginning of time so Jesus defined flourishing as a life in all its fullness Aristotle decided to find it as success as a human being I like Abraham Maslow's definition he says flourishing means to become more and more of what one is to become everything one is capable of that's self actualization right becoming everything that we are capable of and the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand defines flourishing as a state where people experience positive emotions positive psychological functioning and social functioning most of the time so the definition that we're going to work off of today was developed by Martin Seligman and he is the past president of the American Psychological Association and he defines flourishing as having five distinct domains positive emotions engagement meaningful or positive relationships a sense of meaning and purpose and achievement and now while these things sound simple they may not actually be that easy because life has a way of hijacking our time and our attention and so if we really want to flourish in our life we have to be intentional we have to stay focused and we have to put in some effort and sometimes that means setting boundaries with ourselves so that we can allocate our time and our energy to the things that are most important and that will support us flourishing and living the good life so before we get into the nuts and bolts of flourishing and some tools around perma and how we can optimize our well-being across these different domains I want to share with you a little bit of research so since Martin Seligman's theory of flourishing came out there have been many many studies on the constructs of perma and what the researchers are finding time and time again is that people who have optimized these five domains have better physical and mental health more job satisfaction more life satisfaction in general more satisfying relationships better performance at work at school decreased psychological stress decreased likelihood of chronic disease and longer life expectancy now who wouldn't want all of that right and the good news is is that to enjoy or reap all of these benefits this is largely within our control and whether or not we are flourishing and living the good life really depends on us living with intention and taking action to move in the direction of perma so are you flourishing or are you languishing these are two ends of the spectrum right and so how do you know here's some questions to ask yourself so as I read these questions just think about your own answers I'm not going to ask you to share your answers out loud so rest assured and just rate yourself in your own mind on a scale of 0 to 10 0 being not at all and 10 being extremely how satisfied are you with your life in general how would you rate your physical health how happy or unhappy do you generally feel how clear are you on your purpose in life how content are you in your relationships do you often feel worried or overly stressed do you practice delayed gratification or are you someone who tends to give into your emotions and do what is comfortable or convenient now do you look for the good in situations or are you someone who tends to be more pessimistic and how would you rate your overall mental health so as we move through the rest of our time together and we talk through the constructs of perma just know any areas where you feel like maybe things are not where you'd like them to be so you can maybe focus on what you might be able to do to enhance those areas for yourself so if your answers to those questions point you toward flourishing then that's amazing you're either already living a good life or you're well on your way to living a good life if your answers to these questions are not what you would like don't despair with a little bit of effort you can change things and move in a more positive direction now keep in mind that flourishing will take work no one lives a good life by accident so we've got to be intentional and we've got to take action and be the captain of our own ship so let's talk now through the constructs of perma and learn a little bit more about them and what we can do to enhance our flourishing in each of these domains so the first construct of perma is positive emotions now remember what I said about happiness and it not being all it's cracked up to be positive emotions does not mean that you pretend to be happy all the time or that you pretend to be happy when you're not it also doesn't mean pushing away negative emotions but it means boosting your positivity ratio so that you can enjoy and experience more positivity in your life so Richard researchers have found that the optimal positivity ratio is three to one so that means that you would be experiencing three times more positive emotions to negative emotions if you're flourishing in this area so so often when something bad happens in our life someone cuts us off in traffic we get bad news something doesn't turn out as we would like we have an argument with a friend or a family member what do we do we tend to ruminate about it right we go around and around about it in our mind and we essentially circle the drain until we've talked ourselves into this downward spiral only making it worse right but how often do we ruminate when good things happen or we experience some positive emotion rarely right we so quickly glance over those things whether it be a thank you from a co-worker or a hug from a spouse or you know whatever it is we just sort of jump right by it and we don't take the time to savor it Barbara Fredrickson is a research researcher at UNC Chapel Hill and she developed a theory on positivity that she calls the broaden and build theory of positivity and her theory states that positive emotions open our hearts and our minds making us more creative and receptive and building our resources our resilience resources and enabling us to better face challenge and stress so that makes a lot of sense right because when you're experiencing some negative emotion how do you tend to feel closed tight narrow right when we experience positive emotions it opens us up we feel light expansive receptive right and so according to Barbara Fredrickson the resources that we gain from positivity build over time and increase our resilience and our well-being and that moves us into a positive spiral so the more positive emotions we experience the more well being we have the more resilience we have the more well being we have right it's this upward cycle so how do we boost our positivity ratio there's really three main things that we can do that has been shown to significantly enhanced positivity number one savoring positive emotions number two you've probably all heard about practicing gratitude and number three is a journaling exercise that we call your best possible possible future self so I want to do a quick exercise about savoring positive emotions so on the slide are ten common positive emotions serenity interest hope pride joy love amusement etc so I want you to take a look at the list pick out one positive emotion that you've experienced recently or you can think about a time in your life when you've experienced it now again we're not going to share this out loud so think about the time that you experienced that positive emotion what were you thinking what were you feeling what were you seeing who were you with maybe what you were smelling what did it feel like in your body to experience that so just close your eyes for a minute try to put yourself back in that moment and really as best you can in as much detail as you can soak in that feeling and and let it really permeate into your body so that you can feel it in your bones okay you can open your eyes so that is what savoring positive emotions is and that is one of the best ways to enhance our positivity and the good news about it is we have so many opportunities every day to do this if we just pay attention when we're getting a hug from a spouse or a child when we see our child or our grandchild be excited about learning something new or completing a task that they were trying to do or a sunset or a sunrise that we experience on our way to or from work really pay attention to those moments and just ruminate on it for a minute that's what savoring positive emotions is and that is easily accessible to everyone and it's something you can do anytime and it boosts our positivity there's so many opportunities if we just pay attention so the second way we can increase positivity is to practice gratitude and we've all heard about this right but really the most effective way to practice gratitude to enhance positivity is to spend five minutes once a week for ten weeks writing down and reflecting on five things you are grateful for and the more specific you can be the better so you don't just want to say my job my husband my kids my dog my house right you want to really think about specific examples that connection I had with my best friend when she blah blah blah blah blah right whatever it is the more detail we can garner the more likely we are to be able to increase our positivity with us so practice and gratitude the other is called your best possible future self exercise and I really like this exercise so to do this what you would do is you would think about your life in the future imagine that everything went exactly as you want it to be it's like the realization of all of your dreams and goals you've worked hard and succeeded at everything you wanted to be it could be it could it could incorporate your job your health your friends your family romantic partner hobbies goals and spend 15 minutes a day two weeks journaling about it so not only does that boost positivity in the short run but the other thing it does is it keeps us focused on what's most important any of you familiar with that movie the secret or the book the secret anyone remember that I think Oprah was a big fan of that right it was kind of like manifesting your dreams and I honestly didn't watch the movie but it makes a lot of sense because what you focus on becomes what you focus on right and so when I'm when I'm focused on the realization of all of my dreams it helps put in perspective and make clear what it is I want in my life which means I'm more likely to actually make decisions that move me in alignment with that so best possible future self-exercise the e in perma stands for engagement otherwise known as flow so when we're in flow we're totally in the zone we're so wrapped up in the movement in the in the moment that we lose track of ourselves we lose track of time and consciousness we become one with the activity so we might look back on the experience and find our self-thinking I was totally challenged but I knew I could rise to the occasion or it felt like things were happening in slow motion people who report the most flow states are happier they report less stress improved performance and they experience more creativity and higher levels of motivation so there's a lot of research done on extreme athletes right and put people who put themselves in these sort of life-or-death situations and we used to think that they did that for the adrenaline rush right like skiers who did helicopter skiing off you know crazy peaks or you know scuba divers who swim with the sharks that kind of thing but what they found out is it's not the adrenaline rush that lures these people it's actually the desire for the experience of flow so how many of you have experienced being in flow in your life what are some of the what are some of the things that put you into flow anyone yeah who a glider uh-huh and so you were just so lost in that moment yeah what else anyone else experienced flow yeah you're totally focused it's like your body's on autopilot yeah you're not thinking about what do I do with my arm or my leg right you're just there and it's sort of just like happening and you're just in it anyone else so so people have experienced flow glider ride skiing snowboarding maybe it's when you're knitting maybe it's running that's never happened to me by the way maybe it's doing a puzzle or being in conversation or dare I say when you're working right work can be a source of flow so how do we encourage flow states in our life one thing we can do is to set clear goals that have immediate feedback goals that aren't too hard but aren't too easy because flow happens at the intersection of skill and confidence right when you're when you're put when you're riding down that hill that seems a little scary but you know you can do it and you have the skills and you've got the confidence but you're still pushing yourself just a little that's when we can get into a flow the other thing that we can do is to focus on the process instead of the outcome that keeps us focused and being in the present moment we can also be self-directed and take action to determine how we're going to achieve our goals and the other thing we can do is single task how many of us have a habit of multitasking right what happens when we're multitasking we're jumping from this that to the other and back again right not only is it completely inefficient because our brain has to rewind to get back to where we were when we left that task but it diverges our attention the only way we can get into flow is when we're focused on the present moment the only time that flow can happen is now okay the R in PERMA is positive or meaningful relationships and these are ones where we feel valued supported and loved and we include relationships in this model because human beings are social creatures and we cannot thrive or live in isolation are you all familiar with the blue zones anyone heard of the blue zones a couple people not many so this is pretty fascinating so the blue zones are areas in the world where people enjoy some of the highest levels of well-being and life expectancy areas such as places in Costa Rica California Greece Japan what do all those things have in common a they have beautiful warm weather right they have an abundance of access to fresh healthy foods and they studied the people there extensively to figure out what it is about people who live in these blue zones that really set them apart in terms of their well-being and their life expectancy and what they found is that people who live in these areas get a lot of physical activity that doesn't mean they exercise they're not doing intentional exercise but they have active lives so they move around a lot throughout their day they also tend to eat very healthy diets based around whole foods they're not eating a lot of packaged and processed foods they take time to decompress it's not that they don't experience stress but they allow themselves to engage in healthy practices which help them to mitigate or manage the stress but one thing that sets people here apart is that they prioritize relationships they have very strong social networks and what we know is that poor relationships and isolation are linked with poorer health depression increased risk of chronic disease and increased early death so relationships really are key to our well-being and our longevity so how can we improve our relationships one thing we can do is we can celebrate people's successes and try not to one-up them or put it back on us how many times have you shared something with someone oh you'll never guess what happened to me this and they go oh that thing happened to me too and then all of a sudden it's like it's there it's about them right it means celebrating people when they share with you and not putting it back on yourself it means listening mindfully and paying attention to people making eye contact with people shows that you care and that you value them and that enhances relationships that means putting down our phones closing our computer screens right and really just being present with people when we're with people we can also be curious about people people like to talk about themselves right and it's interesting because the more questions we ask about people the more we get them talking about themselves the more they tend to like us so that's a great strategy for getting people to like you is to be curious and ask about them the other thing we can do is to work to cultivate more friendships with people that we may just be acquaintances with we can also join a club a religious group engage in some sort of activity that has a social component we can step out from behind our computer screens get off zoom go for a walking meeting and really engage with people physically the other thing in terms of relationships is around participation in religious services so church and other religious services are one of the best ways to build relationships and research from gallup shows that people who participate in religious services on a regular basis have much higher levels of well-being okay so the mean the m in perma is around meaning and purpose and that means having a sense of value and a sense of worth and belonging to or serving something greater than ourselves having a purpose in life helps us to focus on what's really important especially when we're faced with significant stress or challenge we can find meaning and purpose through our work some cause that we find near and dear to our heart activism religious service etc so how do we find more meaning and purpose can get it involved in a cause or an organization that's important to us we can try new things to find things that we might be interested in we can use our passion to help others right thinking about how we can use our own unique strengths and gifts and talents to serve other people we can connect to our core values and we can spend quality time with the people that we care about quantity time versus quality time right they are not the same thing so when you're sitting around in the evening watching tv with your husband and he's sitting there on his phone and you're you know watching tv or whatever you're not really kid you're laughing over here are you laughing at that say that again right but you're but you're not really engaged in quality time right i find one of the best ways to engage in quality time is to share a meal sitting at the table without phones or tv right and just really connecting with people but meaning and purpose doesn't have to be some huge big grand ideal it can be as simple as being kind to people or looking for ways to add value to the world around us when it comes to work we can find meaning and purpose just by thinking differently about our work and how it serves something bigger there was a really interesting study done some years ago on folks who worked in hospital setting doing custodial jobs and they interviewed folks who were working in these positions which are typically lower paying jobs and very difficult and physical work right so you'd think that maybe these people wouldn't really enjoy their job but what they found is people who thought differently about their work actually felt a great sense of meaning and purpose some of the custodians looked at their work not just as cleaning rooms but as promoting the health and of the patients and helping them to get better quicker so they took this work very seriously and they looked at for example how they clean the room and not only about just having a clean room but making sure that there weren't germs that were going to keep the person sick they looked at how they could connect one-on-one with people and form relationships and that added so much meaning and purpose to them and so you know one of the things that I that I find here and that I love so much about Norwich when I ask people what it is they like about their job they will always say to me the people and helping students I don't care what the job is but there's like this strong sense that everyone is here to help students be successful right no matter what it is and so when we're faced with difficult challenges at work or tedious tasks that we don't really enjoy doing reminding ourselves of the bigger purpose of why we're here can be very very helpful so the last construct of PERMA is achievement and that means working towards and reaching your goals it means delaying gratification in service of the thing that you really want in the long run it means persevering in spite of challenge and it means being gritty so Angela Duckworth wrote a great book about grit that I highly recommend um and it's all about why we need grit in our lives and how we can cultivate more grit so how can we develop more grit to achieve our goals number one find something that interests us nobody wants to push through and work hard at something that isn't interesting right so what did you spend time doing as a kid what what activities absorb you so much that you just get lost in the moment of doing them if money wasn't an issue what would you spend your time doing one of the best ways to develop grit is to intentionally do hard things right the more we can intentionally do hard things in our life the easier life will be so when it comes to grit one of the other things we can do is engage in what we call deliberate practice so there's this rule called the 10,000 hour rule is anyone familiar with the 10,000 hour rule yeah the 10,000 hour rule basically says to get better at anything you have to practice for 10,000 hours but there's more to it than that because let's take guitar playing for example if I want to get better at guitar and I'm already kind of proficient and I just practice the easy parts for 10,000 hours I'm never going to really get better I have to practice the parts that are really hard for me whether it's one certain chord that I can't get or one note that I just can't reach my finger at that's how I get better is deliberate practice at the hard things and that can help us to develop grit and there's easy ways to do this in our everyday life whether that's you know spending two more minutes on the treadmill when you really don't want to do it or forcing yourself to not check your email when the the ding goes off right so just looking at small ways that you can practice hardship and discomfort is one of the best ways to develop more grit so we all know that life likes to throw curveballs at us right we can have the best of intentions and life has a really funny way of trying to derail us and so as I was thinking about perma and the effort it takes to live a good life I couldn't help thinking to myself how am I going to remember not only these constructs but how am I going to remember to take action in direction of these constructs and I had an epiphany and my epiphany was values so values are not things but they are ways of being and values can really act as our north star to guide us in certain directions and so I was thinking about values and I recall one of the things that first came to my attention when I came to Norwich and that was the little card with the Norwich guiding values and so I realized that is how we can remember because if we make decisions in alignment with the values that will guide our way so men and women of integrity and honor integrity builds trust which in turn supports positive relationships we're dedicated to learning teamwork creativity and critical thinking all of those things support achievement and relationships we encourage service to others before self supports meaning and purpose we stress being physically fit when we're physically fit we're able to rise to the challenges and that builds our confidence which enhances our grit enhances our flow enhances our ability to achieve we stress self-discipline and personal responsibility again supports grit and achievement as does the Norwich motto of I will try so when we're faced with obstacles or choices in our lives we can look to these values to guide our behavior and they will most certainly point us in the direction of flourishing so now that you have the knowledge and the tools to move forward towards flourishing in your own life it's time to act this is where the rubber meets the road so we need to take decisive action now right life is short if we're going to live the good life we've got to start now so and think about the constructs of positive emotion engagement meaning and purpose meaningful relationships and achievement which areas are you flourishing in now and which areas do you feel may be lacking flourishing and living the good life are really determined by intentional practice small consistent action taken over times is over time is what will get us there and there's no time like the present to start so as you move through your day today I consider I urge you to think about how you might find or build more positivity how you might spread positivity to others how you might add value to the people around you how you might deepen a relationship connect your work to a higher purpose or work towards some goal that you've been wanting to achieve so with that I will leave you with a quote from Anne Frank and she says how wonderful it is that no one has to wait but we can start right now to gradually change the world thank you very much another round of applause please for Rebecca Schuber thank you all right folks a reminder lunch here at 1205 otherwise good news it's time to get up out of our metal folding chairs and head to your sessions enjoy the morning sessions folks will see you for lunch thank you Rebecca