SESSION OVERVIEW
Performing at your best when life gets hard or uncertain.
Life doesn’t always go to plan. And when the unexpected happens, most people just try to survive it.
This keynote is about something different. It’s about how the hard thing can actually become the advantage we have been looking for.
The opening: how do you show up to hardship?
We start with one question, because everything else hangs off it: when the hard thing arrives, how do you
show up?
The instinct is to run. To protect, to brace, to wait for it to pass. But the better organisation, the better team, the better you… they live on the other side of the hard thing. So we don’t run away from it. We run straight at it.
Principle 1: Own Your Circumstance
Bart’s cancer story, and the very valuable lesson this experience taught him.
Before you can do anything with adversity, you have to stop arguing with the fact that it’s here. This isn’t about blame or fault. It’s about taking full possession of where you actually stand.
The moment a team stops litigating whether the hard thing is fair, is when change begins to happen.
Principle 2: Seek Discomfort
The story of my Bart’s Aurélien’s, and the workout he created in his honour.
Growth doesn’t live in a comfortable place. And in this modern world, the only person that can open up the door of your comfort zone and step out, is you. It’s a choice.
Actively seeking things that challenge you gives your team direction.
Principle 3: Love Your Fate
The story of Bart’s degenerative nervous system condition.
There are things in this life we can’t control. Most of us know this. So rather than remaining stagnant as a result of something that’s out of your control, the better strategy is to open up your arms and love it. Then, and only then can we use our thoughts and actions to work with it.
Where we land
The three principles are a sequence. Done consistently will turn any challenge you face into an opportunity of profound growth.
PRESENTER
Bart Walsh is a performance and resilience speaker and one of Australia’s most respected voices at the intersection of resilience, health and personal development.
But it’s not only Bart’s expertise that will empower you, it’s also his story.
At 23, Bart was diagnosed with a malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumour on his jaw. He fought cancer, survived it, and came out the other side with a very different understanding of what human beings are actually capable of when their backs are against the wall. Later, he would lose his firstborn son, a grief that doesn’t have a manual, a framework, or a finish line. And all of this while living with Charcot Marie Tooth disease, a degenerative condition of the nervous system that he is forced to manage every single day.
Bart is renowned for walking into any room, with any audience, and deeply connecting with audiences in a way most speakers can’t.
As the former National Head Coach of Jetts Fitness Australia, Bart spent years in the trenches building people, not just programs. He led teams across a national network, understanding firsthand what it takes to hold a group of people together under pressure, to keep standards high when energy is low, to build cultures where individuals feel strong enough to bring their whole selves to the work.
Today, he works with organisations across the world on a single mission: to show leaders and their teams how to navigate this changing world by seeing their challenges as opportunities for profound growth. Because the teams that come out stronger aren’t the ones that avoided the hard stuff. They’re the ones who learned how to use it.