this invisible fellowship of people who have been—or are going to be— challenged by life.We canlearnfrom them. Admittedly, some people— really good survivors—have better genes for surviving difficult situations. They have extra amounts of certain brain chemicals that act like fire extin- guishers in stressful situations. But essentially, we’re all the same.
How did the Survivors Club website come to be? A colleague at ABC News was dying of esophageal cancer, and I was able to keep track of his story and his fam- ily using a wonderful website— www.caringbridge.org—which allows families in crisis to stay in touch. I was lying in bed one night thinking about my very ill former col- league and friend, and I began to real- ize that the survivors club is a real thing, it’s not the act of imagination onthe part of anauthor. Every sec- ond of the day, people are joining this group of menand womenwho have been cut down by life and have picked themselves back up and keep going. There’s a collective wisdom in the millions of people around the world who are surviving and thriving in the face of all kinds of adversity. And I thought, perhaps the real thing to do—in addition to writing the book—is to create a place, an online resource where people can go to find high-quality, trustworthy information about dealing with the adversity they’re facing, to meet other people who have been similarly challenged, and to find ideas and inspiration for dealing with their own challenge. It was pretty audacious. I had no experience on the Internet, but I set out to collect a group of people who do, and we launched the website when the book came out, although it’s [much more than] a com- panion website to the book.
ACCOMPLISHED AUTHOR: Ben Sherwood wrote two best-selling novels before pub- lishing The Survivors Club, including The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, which became a movie earlier this year.When Sherwood,whose appearance is arranged by the HarryWalker Agency, takes the stage at Convening Leaders on Monday, Jan. 10, he will share with attendees the real-life lessons he learnedfrom survivors on howto thrive after disaster strikes.
Your book outlines the steps you can take to prepare for an emergency. How can meeting planners prepare themselves for potential crises on site? I believe that the best survivors and thrivers [offer us] a lot of lessons. The secret sauce of survival when things go wrong is adaptability. That means changing your attitude and actions in response to a new situation. It sounds a lot easier thanit is. Most people are not adaptable and choose to see things as normal, or that they’re going to return to normal shortly. They’re biased against the idea that something fundamental has changed that they need to respond to. Adapt- ability is the most important survival tool, and it applies to convention planners, policemen, and doctors. It’s something that you can practice and learn. And it really makes the differ- ence between effective, successful people and ineffective and unsuccess- ful people. Resilience—the capacity to get
back to your original shape after you’ve been twisted or bent—is the other pillar. Again, that sounds easier than it is. But we all know people in life who get knocked down and pop
right back up. The question is, how can you be one of those people? In terms of a disaster striking your meeting, there’s a lot
that’s helpful in the military’s approach to handling an emer- gency or crisis. You have to hug the monster. You have to imagine the worst, because the more you wrestle with the worst-case scenarios, the less scary it becomes and the more you are able to overcome it. You really have to imagine what is the worst thing that
could happen at your meeting: What’s our nightmare sce- nario? What is our PlanA, our PlanB? And evenwhat is our Plan C? Confront it. And it may again seem incredibly obvi-