Another update from one of the Soldiers participating in this week’s Master Resiliency Training as a part of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, a new program designed to help Soldiers focus on not just physical strength, but emotional and spiritual strength, as well.
Day 1 Reflections:
We had the opportunity to have BG Corum and LTG Hertling speak to us today. It is an amazing feeling to hear Army senior leadership recognize there is a problem with the resiliency of soldiers today. There is no better time than now to start this sort of program. Our country has asked a lot of us over these past eight years and it has not been without a cost. The challenges we face can wear down even the most hardened soldiers, and is exponentially destructive for the weak ones.
Leaders often talk about how they spend 90% of their time on 10% of their soldiers. The resiliency program is a step in the right direction by focusing on the right population. Resiliency, as part of the broader Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, focuses on the 90% of Army population that is doing well but wants to do better. This is the population that is going to be around year after year, deployment after deployment fighting to win this country’s wars. They need the tools to enhance their own effectiveness in both leadership and resilience.
Day 2 Reflections:
The course thus far has discussed a lot of skills that are generally common sense; however, we do not commonly use these skills. We discussed the “ATC (Activating Event, Thoughts, Consequences)” Model and realized the practical application in our self awareness and self regulation. As with most skills, this requires practice. A common point of feedback from students revolved around time. “There isn’t enough time to go through this model for every event to shape our responses.” I would offer that this model is like reflexive fire drills: it is not a natural action under pressure, you may have a poor shot group or even miss the target at first; however, with practice it becomes more natural and your shot group gets tighter.
The other big concept we discussed today was thinking traps, which are very easy to fall into. We are conditioned as an Army culture to believe certain things or to have conditioned responses to certain events. Often times these responses are the result of thinking traps, especially jumping to conclusions, blaming someone else, or conducting character assassination. Just imagine the thoughts that would go through your mind when a large, slow-speaking, soldier with a GED reports in to you and informs you he is joining your unit. Given our culture, it is likely that you have fallen into a thinking trap and most of your thoughts are probably negative. Without even speaking to the soldier, most leaders would write him off prematurely. We have to have the mental agility to change our thought process and avoid this sort of thinking trap.
-Major Damon Delarosa, Student, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth Kan.
