TRAINING AND DEVELOPING MENTAL RESILIENCE

In case if we consider some of the most difficult tests, cadres, and selections of a soldier or a military officer can face in their career, we need to question what are the conspicuous attributes and attitudes which would be regarded as the most important elements to succeed at such undertakings?

 

EXPLORING AND DEVELOPING MENTAL RESILIENCE

A topic of high interest concerns mental toughness/strength and resilience has become one of the most important psychological constructs related to successful sport performance, as it has also attracted significant attentions in a military context. Sport psychology research over the last decade, in fact, has investigated the cognitive and emotional factors which are associated with athletic achievements in an attempt to identify the personality characteristics of skilled athletes and the mental preparation strategies they use to perform successfully. Mental resilience has proven to be an essential part within performance domains. In a military context where the ability to deal with adversity and challenge is essential to success, the so-called ‘mental toughness’ is commonly regarded as the most core attribute that enables an individual to achieve high levels of personal performance.

Perhaps, we can acknowledge that a ‘green’ training environment is replete with opportunities for recruits and soldiers to showcase their mentally tough behaviour. While individual talent which includes physical fitness is an important variable in performance achievement, it is not uncommon for talented individuals with exceptional physical attributes to fail to perform to their full potential. Indeed, it is these psychological factors which are recognized just as important as in determining athletic performance, with mental resilience being acknowledged as one of the key competencies and the most important attributes in attaining performance excellence, particularly in a context where the ability to deal with adversity and challenge is essentially vital to an individual’s success.

THE ISSUES OF STRESS, ANXIETY, AND FEAR

Problems of stress, coping and adaption are highly relevant in military training, where distractions, anxiety and fear are increasingly common to be experienced by recruits and soldiers as challenges, for which all of these require a degree of mental fortitude and various coping strategies. At present, these important psychological competencies are implicit with recruits and soldiers having to rely on their own cognitive functioning and coping strategies to control thoughts, emotions, and behaviour. Consequently, while many recruits and soldiers learn these vital mental lessons over time, the remainder will have varying degrees of difficulty in acquiring these skills. Therefore, it is arguably reasonable that the variety of applied concepts in sport psychology are deemed so critical to high-level performance of an athlete (mental toughness & psychological skills), which could be further implemented in military training to enhance performance and facilitate coping measures in any stressful situations.

DEVELOPING A SENSE OF RESILIENCY (MENTAL TOUGHNESS)

Prior to recommending which mental preparation strategies to utilize, it is important that we understand what mental toughness is and explore the underlying mechanisms associated with it. From a behavioural perspective, mental toughness has been defined as “the ability to achieve personal goals in the face of pressure from a wide range of different stressors”. The key attributes that characterize mental toughness include coping effectively with pressure and adversity, recovering or rebounding from set-backs and failures, persisting or refusing to quit, being insensitive or resilient, having unshakeable self-belief in controlling one’s own destiny, thriving on pressure and possessing superior mental skills. Overall, high levels of mental toughness in an individual has been proven to be related to lower ratings of exertion in high intensity exercise, higher pain tolerance or physical endurance, faster injury rehabilitation, and higher levels of optimism and coping.

In a military context, mental toughness has been shown to significantly predict higher levels of performance over and accounted for by individual fitness levels, normative as well as affective commitment, and recruit adjustment in training. Besides, mental toughness has also been found to be important for sustaining high levels of performance and success when faced with stress intensity and adversity of a physically and mentally demanding military task. Indeed, there are many similarities between the performance-related psychological challenges that soldiers and athletes are required to deal with. While studies have shown that mental toughness may be related to a collection of unobservable values, attitudes, emotions, and cognitions, mentally tough behaviour is simply or just that an individual’s behaviour itself. Therefore, the presence or absence of mentally tough behaviour (persistence, effort, perseverance) should be determined beforehand prior to focusing on unobservable predictors.