“The Resilience Shield”
- co-authored by Ben and Tim
The Resilience Shield is written by Dr Dan Pronk, Ben Pronk and Tim Curtis, all of whom are Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) veterans with combat experience in theatres including Afghanistan, Iraq and Sierra Leone. Combining vignettes from the authors’ amazing lived experience with cutting-edge academic and medical research, The Resilience Shield is written for anyone who wants to understand more about the concept of resilience and apply practical methods of developing it within themselves or their team.
This book was conceived after the authors witnessed first-hand the markedly different reactions that ostensibly similar individuals had to stressful events, including the gruelling SAS selection course and the incredible demands of leading high-performance teams on Special Operations missions – life and death situations with national strategic implications. These experiences fuelled a deep desire to understand exactly what resilience was and – crucially – how it could be developed and improved in individuals and organisations.
Through applied research conducted over a period in excess of fifteen years, the authors sought to identify the constituent elements of stress and resilience and develop a model that was dynamic, multi-factorial and modifiable. The result was the Resilience Shield – a highly applied model of resilience that identifies the key characteristics of this mercurial quality and provides a framework for defence against the chronic and acute stressors that impact all of us on a daily basis. While this concept originated on the battlefield, the authors are firmly of the belief that the resilience secrets of elite soldiers are universally applicable, a belief reinforced by the successful implementation of Resilience Shield programs within organisations as diverse as elite policing units, business conglomerates and accounting firms.
The Resilience Shield opens with a discussion of why life is not fair, why there is no happiness without struggle and the virtues of going – always – a little further, before conducting a detailed analysis of the concept of resilience and the impacts of stress. Readers are then introduced to the Resilience Shield model, with a chapter dedicated to each ‘layer’ of the Shield - Innate, Mind, Body, Social, Professional and Adaptation. Within these chapters, readers are taken behind the scenes of special operations missions, into the boardrooms of leading companies and to the edges of contemporary research to demystify the constituent elements of resilience and identify a range of easily implementable methods of increasing the strength of each layer within their own lives.
Life is hard. Rocketing rates of physical and mental health issues across the globe stand as testimony to the fact that greater defences are needed against the pressures of the contemporary world. Drawing upon hard-won lessons from combat and beyond, combined with the latest research in the field, The Resilience Shield offers a potent solution. Written in an easily-accessible, entertaining format, this book arms readers with a powerful set of highly-actionable tool to allow them to start making immediate improvements to their own lives.
Let's build your Resilience Shield!