All-Veterans Wellness Toolbox
RSL Active and The Resilience Shield have teamed up to bring you an All-Veterans Wellness Toolbox.
This series of short videos has been created by Veterans for Veterans to provide insights into how you can assess and build your resilience.
The Resilience Shield is an Australian Veteran-owned business working to improve outcomes related to leadership and resilience. The team behind the Resilience Shield have been working for more than 15 years to develop a model to understand factors that help support resilience. The Resilience Shield model was developed by Dr Dan Pronk, Ben Pronk DSC, and Tim Curtis, all of whom are Australian SAS veterans with combat experience in theatres, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone and Timor Leste. Their service experience furnished them with an understanding of leadership under pressure and drove a deep desire to understand exactly what resilience was and – crucially –how it could be developed and improved in individuals and organisations.
In this video series, they share the important things that we can do to maintain our health and wellbeing and become more resilient every day.
This video series is FREE and available to everyone and we encourage you to check it out.
RSLWA CEO Vince Connelly introduces the All-Veterans Wellness Toolbox (2:54)
Ben Pronk DSC introduces the Resilience Shield model developed by Dr Dan Pronk, Ben Pronk DSC, and Tim Curtis, all of whom are Australian SAS veterans (12:53)
Tim Curtis and Ben Pronk talk about the concept of stress and the physiological changes that happen in the body when we are under stress (3:34)
The psychological and spiritual components of resilience are profound, this is exploredin depth in the Mind Layer. This layer includes discussion of mindfulness, breathing techniques, meditation and gratitude, focusing on practical and accessible methods of incorporating these into our lives (10:44)
Techniques and philosophies to empower you to reframe life’s events – the everyday and the profound – to bolster resilience and develop what Stanford University professor Carol Dweck refers to as a ‘growth mindset’ (13:59)
The physiological elements of resilience are sleep, diet and exercise. Learn how to improve in these areas in a realistic, achievable and sustainable manner. Learn about physical activities that allow us to strengthen other layers of our Resilience Shield (13:08)
Luke Gregory from Life Ready Physio in the Perth CBD, delves into exercise, injury management, and chronic pain (12:54)
The Social Layer of the Resilience Shield focuses on how interactions with people we love help develop resilience, and in turn will allow you to identify the critical social engagements in your life and prioritise these – not only in terms of time, but also in terms of the mindfulness and presence that you bring to each experience (15:44)
The professional layer refers to the time we spend at work. It is important that humans are able to find their work meaningful and a source of (rather than a detractor to) resilience. The Professional Layer also emphasises the ability to reframe work-related challenges as opportunities for development (5:44)
RSLWA Vice President Miquela Riley talks about transitioning from the Australian Defence Force back into civilian life and her experiences (20:06)
The final layer of the Resilience Shield, Adaptation, surrounds the entire model and can be seen as an output of a fully mature shield. After developing each of the previous layers, we will be in a position to adapt our learnings and experience to face any challenge and remain resilient against anything life throws at us. (10:25)
Concepts such as ‘getting active in your own rescue’ and going ‘always, a little further’ don’t mean that you should do things all by yourself! Resilience starts with you, but it’s not a solo sport. We can benefit from assistance from other people (6:24)