JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska - According to the Army, resilience is the ability to grow and thrive in the face of challenges and bounce back from adversity.
Resiliency, along with building mental toughness, character strengths, and strong relationships is a key component to the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, which focuses on Soldiers having strong minds and strong bodies.
Resilience is built through a set of core competencies including self-awareness, self regulation, optimism, mental agility, strengths of character, and connection.
Using these skills, soldiers are better able to cope with stress, overcome setbacks, solve problems, remain task focused, and perform under pressure.
It also helps soldiers increase their confidence and decrease helplessness, depression, and anxiety.
Training in resiliency is being conducted locally here at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson as a way to help soldiers get by and cope with adversity.
Sgt. 1st Class Robert A. Wood, a healthcare specialist from Fairbanks, Alaska, assigned to the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, as the brigade’s medical noncommissioned officer in charge, said, “Resiliency training basically gives you a lot of coping skills to help you deal with day-to-day life - not just in the military. It will assist you in interactions with your spouse, your family, and civilians. It helps you with different obstacles you encounter growing up in life.”
Wood, who received his Master Resiliency Training Certification at University of Pennsylvania, said, “To me, being resilient means you are able to bounce back from an obstacle that you have encountered. You can recover faster, and you can move on with life. Some people can’t. They run into different experiences in life, and they just get hung up and can’t let it go. They just keep thinking about it and it brings them down, down, down. They go into a downward spiral.
“I think the training can help these people if they absorb it, and start practicing the techniques that are taught in the training. The key, just like with anything else such as alcoholism or gambling, is recognizing you have a problem. If you don’t realize you have a problem, then you are not going to be able to help yourself.”
Wood said resiliency training should be held on a continuous basis in small groups.
Finding the good stuff in life is very important, said Wood.
“At the end of every day, just write down one good thing that happened to you that day. It will put a good positive thought process in your mind, and when you go to sleep like that you will start out better the next day,” Wood said.
Utilizing the steps of the training helps people recognize the things that have a negative impact on them. By recognizing these triggers, they can try to avoid them the next time, said Wood.
“Go into resiliency training with an open mind and absorb as much as you can from it. Try to put it into action,” Wood said.
According to the Army, individual resilience can be built, maintained, and strengthened when viewed as an enduring concept and acquired through regular training.