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How do you build resilience, an important ability that helps people to heal from trauma, handle adversity well, and thrive? The Resilience Shield, published in 2021 by Dr. Dan Pronk, Ben Pronk, and Tim Curtis, helps answer this question.
The authors are three veterans of the Australian military. They understand firsthand the importance of resilience. Together, through research and personal experience, they have developed The Resilience Shield, a model that helps people build their resilience.
The Resilience Shield Review
The book, while diving deeply into research on resilience, is very readable for someone without scientific training. This deep dive into the research also demonstrates the support for this model, which enhances its credibility.
The model of growing resilience presented in this book is easy to follow and highly adaptable, enabling a wide range of people to implement it. Because of this, we can easily apply the findings and ideas in this book to Tria Corda Ministry’s resilience model, which we will discuss further below.
The authors demonstrate each area by including many stories of its implementation and impact, both from their own lives and from others’. These stories also illustrate the model’s usefulness. However, the stories can sometimes include cursing, so be aware of that as you read.
Additionally, the authors only briefly include religion and spirituality in their model and lump them in with the mind. I appreciate them including these aspects, but I wish they separated them from the other categories and delved into them more.
Overall, this book is a good read for understanding resilience and how to grow in it, but it is essential to be aware of the above points and read with an open but critical mind.
Defining Resilience
The authors begin by explaining resilience.
They first note that resilience has three characteristics: Dynamic, multifactorial, and modifiable.
This means that how we build and express resilience will change over time and in different circumstances, that many different components can improve resilience, and that deliberate activities can enhance our resilience.
The authors also note that resilience requires a stressor to display resilience against (which can be a big thing like trauma or a small thing like being stuck in traffic) and a better-than-expected outcome after (such as healing or patience). We can’t show our resilience against stress without having stress.
How Did the Idea of Resilience Come to Be?
The authors also spend a good chunk of time describing how resilience emerged.
The idea of better-than-expected outcomes following stress dates back to early civilizations.
However, the first time the word “resilience” was used in research was in a 1973 article by Canadian ecologist Crawford Holling. Holling used the term resilience to describe the maintenance of function despite stress in an ecological system.
Later, another idea of resilience emerged, and researchers began to describe it as the speed with which something returned to normal after experiencing stress. In other words, they began to see resilience as recovery.
In the 21st century, interest in resilience has exploded across disciplines, leading to a massive research field that continues to grow.
When it comes to human resilience, the focus began in the 1980s and 90s. Initially, psychological researchers sought to identify qualities that made some people resilient, then began to examine how people acquired these qualities. While continuing these first two waves, psychological researchers are now examining what drives people towards resilience, working with disciplines such as philosophy and theology.
The Resilience Shield
For the rest of the book, the authors dive into how to build resilience.
They focus on six areas that, combined, form a shield that protects us from the negative impacts of stressors. The six areas are as follows:
- Innate: We all have some resilience, so this level doesn’t necessarily require intentional activities to improve. Grit, optimism, conscientiousness, openness to experience, extraversion, and agreeableness naturally help us be resilient. The other layers are things we can change with effort, so no worries if you think those traits don’t describe you!
- Mind: This level includes all things psychological and spiritual. Things like making sure your thoughts are rational, staying present, having a growth mindset, and praying can all help this level.
- Body: This level includes things like fitness, sleep, and good nutrition
- Social: This level involves deep, meaningful investment in relationships with your friends and family. The authors emphasize striving to grow in selflessness, which helps you invest in others.
- Professional: This level is about finding your unique life purpose and investing in it.
- Adaptation: This final level is a proxy for the strength of your resilience. When the previous levels receive your intentional investment, you can better adapt to stressors, big and small.
So, how do we apply this model? The authors of The Resilience Shield suggest regular assessment of each area. Based on your weaknesses, set goals for improvement (e.g., completing a habit a certain number of times or achieving a specific outcome). They suggest creating routines that involve something in each area daily.
The Resilience Shield and Tria Corda Ministry’s Resilience Model
Here at Tria Corda Ministry, we see there are five building blocks of resilience:
- Mental Health: Living in accordance with the truth in your thinking
- Physical Health: Good friendships and taking care of your body
- Spiritual Health: Prayer and regular reception of the Sacraments
- Virtue: Living a virtuous life and striving for that
- Vocation: Investing in our state-in-life vocations and other callings God gives us.
The Resilience Shield model provides research support for these areas and their ability to promote resilience. Caring for our minds, bodies, and souls aligns well with the shield’s mind, body, and social areas. Finding your purpose and investing in it also aligns well with vocation.
The virtue area also maps well with this model. In the social area, the authors of The Resilience Shield emphasize growing in selflessness, which ultimately helps you to grow in virtue.
Additionally, this model helps us understand how to implement these resilience-building blocks in our own lives. Instead of using the six shield areas as your assessment, you can use these five areas.
Conclusion
Resilience is an important ability, and The Resilience Shield provides an excellent explanation and a helpful model that sheds further light on Tria Corda’s resilience model. I highly recommend picking up a copy to learn more.