John Cerquiera was one of the heroes of 9-11, carrying a disabled woman from the 68th floor of Tower One just minutes before it collapsed. Through this experience and his career as a strategic sales professional, he has helped people learn to work through adversity, grief, and to build more meaningful, satisfying lives.
Contact
John Cerqueira – johnc@aslantraining.com
www.linkedin.com/in/john-cerqueira-5a22963
Links
History Channel Documentary: 911 Escape from the Towers – https://watch.historyvault.com/specials/911-escape-from-the-towers/full-special (paywall)
Scott Galloway – https://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/scott-galloway
Stages of Grief – https://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – https://www.learning-theories.com/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs.html
ASLAN Training & Development – https://www.aslantraining.com/
The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better after 50 by Jonathan Rauch
Bobbi’s Takeaways
I hope that you found a lot of great takeaways and also inspiration and John’s story. In an attempt to keep my takeaways shorter than the actual interview. I’ve narrowed it down to the following.
1. When you’re navigating adversity, you have to have faith. You have to have faith that you won’t be in the stairwell forever. It’s temporary. Find a way to move forward.
2. When facing a crisis, find frameworks that work for you, and that will help you move forward. Frameworks help us to make sense out of the chaos.
3. When facing grief, it is okay and even healthy to feel the unpleasantness without judging it. It simply exists. And here I take a broad view on grief. Grief can happen when we lose a loved one, when a major change throws us off the course that we thought we wanted to be on, when we lose a job ,or just when times feel dark and scary.
4. We cannot pour from an empty cup. We have to have the courage to take care of ourselves, especially in times of challenge.
5. When things shift, we need to look at how do I operate within this new structure? Where can I serve?
These are just my takeaways. I’d love to hear from you what you found most beneficial by leaving a comment below.
