Diana Reeves, Army Test and Evaluation Command's Ready and Resilient Program Manager, and Staff Sgt. Oscar Orozco, ATEC Training non-commissioned officer in charge, act out a skit during a Master Resiliency Training session on Activating Events, Thou...
The Army's Ready and Resilient program was developed to support and promote the physical, emotional and psychological resilience in Soldiers, Civilians, and their Family members and to help them cope with life challenges. ATEC provides monthly comprehensive resilience training sessions to support the resiliency development of its military and civilian workforce. These sessions teach life skills that enable individuals to rebound from hardships and become more emotionally, spiritually, and mentally tough.
ATC training helps to build self-awareness. A key objective of the training is to identify heat of the moment thoughts about an activating event (a challenge, adversity, or positive event), examine the consequences of those thoughts, and learn how to have greater control over your emotions and reactions. The training emphasized how thoughts drive immediate reactions and can make the difference between either a productive or a non-productive outcome.
"A lot of times we think that our consequences result from the activating event that occurred in our lives," said Diana Reeves, ATEC's Ready and Resilient Program Manager. "But our consequences really come from our heat of the moment thought(s)."
Reeves explained how taking a step back to separate the activating event, the thought, and the consequence, can help pinpoint thinking patterns that were not previously recognized.
"Since our thoughts drive our emotions and reactions, you can actually figure out what you want to think, before an activating event, so that you can have the emotions and reactions that are most productive," said Reeves. "In the moment of the activating event, you can change your thoughts to change your emotions and reactions. You can also reflect on your thoughts later to understand why you felt and reacted the way you did."
Reeves discussed the following three key principles of ATC that can help individuals gain control over emotions and reactions:
• Separate the A (Activating Event), from the T (Thought), from the C (Consequence).
--A: Just the facts--who, what, when, where
--T: Your interpretation, what you say to yourself in the heat of the moment
--C: Your Consequences
• Detect patterns: Identify any patterns in your Ts that undercut your performance and mental toughness.
• Self-awareness: Self-awareness is a primary target of ATC.
Reeves teamed up with Staff Sgt. Oscar Orozco, ATEC Training non-commissioned officer in charge, to focus on the 'T' portion of the first principle by highlighting the thinking traps that can hinder us from controlling our thoughts.
"Falling into thinking traps can be extremely counterproductive," said Orozco. "They can cause you to have misleading information."
Orozco discussed the following most toxic thinking traps:
• Always, Always, Always - Believing that negative events are unchangeable and that you have little or no control over them.
• Everything, Everything, Everything - Believing that you can judge a person's or your own worth, motivation, or ability, on the basis of a single situation (character assassination).
"People that fall into these common thinking traps feel like they have no control over any of the events that happen in their life," said Orozco. "It's easier to pick up on these thinking traps in loved ones than it is to notice how we fall into these thinking traps."
Orozco charged the class to understand and identify thinking traps so they can help others and themselves become more mentally agile.
At the end of the session, attendees shared their thoughts on the ATC MRT session.
"I thought this session was very informative and it opened my mind," said Kimber Hill, a program analyst in the Aberdeen Test Center's (ATC) Command Staff Business Management office. "It made me realize that I do shut down during certain moments, and that I do jump to conclusions in bad situations."
Ralph Scutti, Armaments & Munitions division chief from the ATC Firepower Directorate, shared thoughts on civilians and soldiers attending MRT sessions together.
"The neatest thing about attending the session was experiencing the session with other Soldiers that were here," said Scutti. "When we [civilians] come together with Soldiers, we see that they go through the same things we do in trying to solve problems."
He added that he hoped the resiliency training sessions continued to be mixed with military and civilians.
For more information about ATEC's Ready and Resilient Campaign, visit http://www.atec.army.mil/r2c. To learn more about the Army's Ready and Resilient Campaign, visit www.army.mil.readyandresilient.
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