Session description: «A strong man overcomes an obstacle, a wise man goes the whole way»: I find this Zen Buddhist quote enlightening and empowering because it means that we have to embrace every experience we face in order to disclose our full potential. I am in fact convinced that we don’t have to be defined by what we perceive as mistakes, our life is much bigger than that one event and setbacks are indicators that we have to change the course of action. In reality, if we remain aware that we are made for a higher scope, we don’t stress ourselves and expect things to go as we think is okay. The concept of failure is misleading since we learn from our losses as much as from our victories and only if we see failure as a means to grow we will become immune to the consequent feeling of discomfort. Actually, setbacks are a defeat only if we don’t use them to adjust our next move. Consequently, our power becomes the understanding that everything we experience is a learning occasion. That’s why I would suggest the urgency to shift our mindset, starting from thinking about “problems” as “exercises”. But before doing that, we should seek to establish a complete vision of our life and determine how everything we do contributes to or takes us away from that, aligning our personality with our purpose through our platform. In this view, the greatest turning points begin with the awareness of the place we want to fill in the world: we have to understand how we want to contribute to the betterment of a healthier whole and this has to be the fuel to achieve our aspirations. Our biggest project should be the realization of ourselves, of our uniqueness, by fine-tuning intelligence, sensitivity, tastes, inclinations, experiences. That’s why I am convinced that in order to outgrow and to capitalize on our potential, we have to implement the be→do→have paradigm, according to which I am therefore I do. By BEing the person that we want to be, we will DO the things that a fulfilled person would do, which will enable us to HAVE what we aspire. Starting from building our “being”, I suggest that success can be defined by the following formula: success= (personal preparation/talent/ability + degree of learning from the re-elaboration of the causes of previous failures + rate of self-evolution + intrinsic potential of our dream) * favourable space-time context * grade of repetition-perseverance. Finally, in addition to aiming to achieve the most authentic and best expression of ourselves as human beings, we have to aspire to success and to leave a legacy, to deliver a service, through resilience and education, keeping the focus on the meaning it brings for us and for the others This is the only long-lasting and eternal success, in our world of the finiteness of emotional, cognitive, physical, monetary resources.

Bio: Napolitano is a 24 year’s old economist with an unrelenting passion for learning constructive insights on well-being, self-growth and lifelong betterment. During her degree studies, she was inspired by the principles of economics no longer as an end but as a medium and the theory that ethics and economics are intertwined in a triple bottom line perspective, thus analyzing the resilience of sustainable funds to the Coronavirus pandemic and the growing market interest towards impact and sustainable finance. She has won two times a national prize and, after graduating cum laude both from the bachelor and the master’s degree, she was invited as a keynote speaker at the 12th edition of the Workshop on Cooperative and Responsible Finance for Development, promoted by Euricse, and she is now enrolled in a Master of Public Administration (MPA). She aims to sustain cognitive transformations, help others change perspectives on critical situations, and make herself the spokesperson for new interpretative models and techniques to develop resilience, especially during unstable times.