Ep 7: Reviewing The Resilience Project by Hugh Van Cuylenburg

This is the first in our Reviewing Resilience series and coming in hot with Hugh Van Cuylenburg's The Resilience Project which has been a popular program for schools in NSW as well as the NRL. 

The dual factor model of mental health that explains the difference between mental illness and wellbeing/resilience/positive mental health can be found here: https://mindsettraining.com.au/resources/

Have you participated in the Resilience Project at your school or workplace? What did you think? 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Grab your coffee or your beer, pull up a chair where she's a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

All right, so welcome back to Harden Up and Other Unhelpful Advice. So today is episode seven, where we're reviewing the book The Resilience Project by Hugh Van Keilenberg. Well done. Oh, I had to practice that one in the mirror. Now, um, I want to be very clear about what we're reviewing today, which is the book, The Resilience Project, which is a little bit separate to his program, The Resilience Project. Now, this is a five-hour listen on Audible, and it's actually um judged by Audible as one of the top 100 books of all time. You know, they've got over 5,000 five-star reviews. So people love it.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Now, uh, Tommy, would you like to give us a summary of the Resilience Project?

SPEAKER_03 1:13

I think it's mostly well, it is. Um, his way of defining resilience using his lived experience, what's made him look for a happier life to be able to work with school kids originally, and it's manifested into working with other groups from sporting stars to mining as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:33

It's broken down into three parts being gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness. Um and I think there's a little bit more to resilience, but in this book, it's a really good way of looking at how to get started, how to make yourself feel happier and to become more happy, not just feel happy.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

You know, and I think we need to be quite specific about what we're talking about here, because these strategies, gratitude, empathy, mindfulness, have some evidence to support that they make you happier. How that's connected to resilience, that is a longer bow to draw. And so the theoretical underpinning of his model, which is not evidence informed, um, is that if you improve these characteristics, these psychological skills and their good psychological skills, that you will be happier and more resilient. Okay. What do you think about that idea?

SPEAKER_03 2:32

I think when you're going evidence-based, you're going off a peer-reviewed publication where he's got five, what would you say, 1,000 five-star reviews?

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Uh 5,000 five-star reviews.

SPEAKER_03 2:48

Yeah, 5,000 five-star reviews. All right. Sorry. Um, there's got to be something behind that. People aren't going to continue to listen to a book or to read a book when there's no benefit from it. So the other things that I I found really probably not evidence-based as we'd say, every peer-reviewed paper or something like that. But the amount of people still using his program. Like there's other programs out there when I was looking for uh resilience training to put into uh the work I was doing in peer work. This was one of the first books I read, but it was lacking so much structure for me, like looking at how we can support somebody else's life, trying to be happy without having some failures and stuff. You're gonna be happy for being happy, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah. So um I I think your argument is because it's popular, it must be helpful.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

No, my argument is that it's working for some people, that's why they're continuing to use it.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:52

So a lot of athletes still using the program and getting, you know, what they think is, you know, good um results from it.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Yes. And so I'm gonna jump into one of my criticisms of the book, um, in that it's a huge name-dropping wank where he has more than two chapters of talking about working with elite athletes and dropping every popular NRL player's name into the chapter. And it just seems like gratuitous, self-serving, ego-boosting content. Now, what I then did, because as you know, one of the jobs that I have um is as the uh club aligned psychologist for the Newcastle Knights. So I went to the well-being manager at the Knights and I asked him, how did it go? Uh and I was ready to hear, you know, it just was a flash in the pan, wasn't that great. And I heard the opposite. So um the Knights had a standalone session that was about gratitude. They embedded that into their team culture for the year. And he said, you know, it may not have been groundbreaking, um, but it was groundbreaking at the time because there wasn't really much else around it, and that people took something away from it, and gratitude continues to be something that they practice quite actively.

SPEAKER_03 5:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

And I was surprised.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

Yeah, one of the things that I like about it is when I do like uh he does a lot of talks in mines and blue-collar workplaces as well. Um, one of the things I love about the way that he delivers the story is it becomes very, you know, your mate talking to you. He's it's very open, he's a local cricketer. Uh, and I can see why he'd appeal to people, especially in the NRL um mining, stuff like that. I do talks every week in front of large groups of men, and the same thing. You get some of the biggest attitudes in the world, like when he talks about the gay project or the gay resilience project. I hear that stuff, still hear that stuff to this day, or misogyny towards women and calling that out in a safe way. But he delivers his talk, and obviously I've never heard him speak, but on these three parts of his resilience, and then people wanting to connect with him.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

So you hear people who've been to his talk talking about it with you.

SPEAKER_03 6:27

Yeah, yeah. And the same thing, like you're connecting to with somebody on you know the the same level as a peer, and that's how he comes across. I can see why people will reach out to him, and that they they'll use something like this to anchor themselves around resilience, not really um working on other parts, but just trying to find happiness. They've got to be more involved in what's going to happen and become if you want to become more resilient.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Yeah. And I do see the value of um the lived experience and sharing your life events in a way that helps to inspire and teach people. And that's a big part of what both of us do within workplaces and different groups to model some of the strategies that we're talking about, you know, to help people to normalize some of the experiences that they've had. But when I I think about this book rather than his program, what we have is a memoir.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

This book is a memoir of his experiences, and he has some powerful personal experiences in there, but also some of them are really boring. One of his experiences is getting in trouble for eating cheesels while he was working. What if you wrote a book like this? What kind of experiences would you put in for the challenges that you've faced in your life?

SPEAKER_03 7:49

Yeah, I wouldn't be um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Well, I mean, we'd be talking about stealing, you know, a giant fish from atop a fishing lure place, you know, and getting caught stealing the eagle from a different battalion and everything that came about from that. You know, it's just his life isn't that interesting. And I don't understand why the book is so popular when his anecdotes are so vanilla.

SPEAKER_03 8:18

Oh, I don't know. Uh the Cheesel story got me. I love Cheezels though, but I think it goes back to relating what is trauma for somebody, though. Like, I was a paratrooper at that time, being deployed year in and year out. So being a bit naughty and stealing an eagle, like that was a bit of fun. And the consequences for it was similar to what he was going to get, I suppose. So if I was going to use that story about stealing an eagle, I'd say choose better decisions in your life. Like I wouldn't use it in one of my talks because it was just me being bad. But why was I being bad at the time? I was overworked, was probably drinking too much, had a good mate at the time that was very encouraging. Um doing naughty things. Well, that's what soldiers do, though. Yeah, so but I love I'll just go back one for you to when you talk about Rosie Baddie doing her talk.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Yes. Uh, and context for listeners, uh, I went to a women's well-being luncheon last year uh that involved Rosie Baddie, who has such a heartbreaking story, trauma bombing for about an hour without purpose. You know, and so when people share their traumatic experiences, I think it needs to be done with a learning outcome that benefits the audience. But that's not what happened. There was a woman who is still quite um unwell from how she presented at this workshop, who just went round and round in circles around the trauma that she experienced and the secondary traumas that have happened from then how systems have responded or not responded to her. And there was there was nothing about well-being within that.

SPEAKER_03 10:09

So my point is whenever I use one of these stories in a workplace or you know, try to relate with people, especially with my military past or being a security contractor or being in business, kids, family, the story has to have a direct relation to what we're working on at that point. So trauma bombing is something that I don't often try to do or don't want to do. And when you're sharing one of these stories, my war stories compared to his Cheesel stories or your war stories to my war stories are going to be different, right? But um, it's still the level of discomfort that he would have got from that event is the way that I saw him trying to write that.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

You know, and I think that's a very compassionate view to say that um given his life experiences, that was something that was difficult for him. You know, and uh it's not judging him for that that experience being stressful.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

It's just in a memoir about resilience, yeah, getting yelled at by your boss, just it it's just not powerful enough for me. And it speaks to his privilege. Oh, right. That is one of my major criticisms of this model. Okay. And he uh I find this really difficult because I I'm in two minds about this. One is the challenge of um doing good research in this space is actually really hard. To demonstrate that a program is effective is actually really hard because of all of the confounding variables. And there is some research around whether or not the resilience project works in schools. And it says it's a little bit, but you got to do it for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Um, and I can acknowledge the challenges of trying to measure the outcome of a program because you've got things like socioeconomic status. What's the home environment like for those students? You know, so what you do at school is going to be limited because kids are exposed to so many other factors and influences. So it's hard to do good research. But there are tens of thousands of students who have gone through this program, and you would think that we would have some pre and post data, that we'd have some randomized controlled trials. We have no good science around his program.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 12:31

And one of the challenges to that is it's because he doesn't have an overarching framework for it. He's gone, these are good psychological skills. There is some evidence to suggest that if individuals do these psychological skills, they'll feel happier. And in some cases, we'll feel a bit less depressed. But the research that shows that deals with healthy people. And so my major criticism of this program is the poor student who is neglected at home because they live in a single-parent home, parent is working a lot or experiencing mental illness or is absent for other reasons. What are they supposed to feel grateful for? You know, who are they supposed to show empathy to? And a kid who is experiencing that at home, getting them to do mindfulness, that's actually too fucking hard.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

You know, so I see this as something that's really helpful as a mass product when people are okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

But it does not treat mental illness.

SPEAKER_03 13:38

Yeah, at no point did I think it treats mental illness. It's a support only for mental health rather than for treating any mental illness that all has to be done yourself with either a therapist or you know, working through your issues. I think this at best is an adjunct to try to help you, you know, become more grateful in life and practicing mindfulness, gratitude, and empathy. You know, we practice empathy over the years, helping people out, doing things like that. And it makes you feel better.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

Um, gratitude being happy for what we've got in life compared to other people. How many third world countries have we been in? And you know, you really feel grateful for what you've got back home. But somebody that's there living that life is great, you may be grateful for what they've got.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

But you know, overall, I think they'd be happier with more resources, more water, more, more food.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Yeah, less illness, more education. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:43

And it's really hard just, you know, that they would be doing much better on themselves. So the place of privilege that he comes from when he's in India and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:52

I think I agree with you.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

And I can really relate to India being such a paradigm shifting experience for him. Um, one of the things that I'm grateful for every day is flushing toilets. Um, I didn't spend a lot of time outside the wire in Afghanistan, but um I did have, I think it was a 10-day period where I was at a patrol base that um had no running water, but it did have Wi-Fi because there was Wi-Fi everywhere. Um, and the practicalities of um going to the toilet without running water, especially when you need to go number two. Um I every time I can flush a toilet, I'm like, that's so cool. So when you don't have much, you really appreciate it when you come back into a resource-rich environment.

SPEAKER_03 15:45

In this time where you weren't flushing the toilet, were you using a room with a hole or a bucket?

SPEAKER_01 15:52

It was a bucket with a plastic bag in it and like a camp chair with a toilet seat. So all my infantry brethren out there that have had to military experiences may differ, there's no doubt.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Excuse the um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

I thought we weren't comparing hards. We're not comparing your heart to my heart, and we're not comparing Hughes' heart.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

I thought that's what we were oh when we're being professional, but we're still veterans, mate. We're gonna take the piss out of each other. So one of the I suppose um lost my train of thought there.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Um Well, did you have any criticisms for the book? Or is this just something that you went up? This is a great read.

SPEAKER_03 16:37

Oh no, no, I struggled to read it because it what it parts of it were just bored me. Um, other parts, it could have just been a pamphlet. I practice gratitude. What does practicing gratitude look like though? And that's the part where write down three things that you're happy for. And you know, I see this all the time when other people in mental health are doing talks. Um, people writing on LinkedIn, you know, I practice gratitude at home with my son or you know, my family. Like, if you're making your kids do it, they're not practicing it, they've been made to do it. Yeah, volunt. Voluntole. So um practicing gratitude is taking the time out, probably being a bit mindful about it. How do we actually do that in life? Like, I don't how do you do it? Well, last night I had a thing where the the night before the boys had a you know a fight, and last night I they I got home from the the sauna and they were doing things together, being happy, talking, and and like I'm happy that you know I've got the opportunity to be with my boys and that they have got those communication skills that I've been trying to talk to them about over the years. Instead of getting angry with each other, they they can have that anger, walk away from it, and come back. So I I'm grateful for that interaction that they're able to have. So the way that I practice is look at the situation. Why am I happy that that's happened? Why am I happy that I've got this thing in my life? Yeah. Rather than just that was great that you know, I found$10 on the road today. You know that$10 I could do for something like, I don't know, bad example. We've just gone to a Cheezels example.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Yeah, but I it's it sounds like for you, gratitude is being able to reflect on why is this a positive experience?

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

And really looking at, you know, it's not just that I like to see my boys getting along, but they're developing and they're resolving conflict and they're practicing skills that you've had to really push hard for them to understand.

SPEAKER_03 18:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:45

You know, and that that's in every other part as well, like pretty blessed in life as it is. So you know, it's hard. You don't want to take that stuff for granted. And that's what can easily become, is that we just take these things, and therefore, when something doesn't go right for it's it's the worst thing in the world. Yes. But when we practice that, you know, my life is pretty bloody good. I go home, I've got two beautiful boys that you know all take it in terms of cleaning, I've got fun dogs, I've got a beautiful girlfriend, I've got extended family, my daughter's somewhere doing something. Just keep it. And they all participate in my life in a way that you know makes me happy, or whatever it is for you, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

So I've I've got thoughts about gratitude because I've run uh the count your blessings exercise in many different workshops. And you know, there are a lot of brief interventions for gratitude that are quite powerful, and that's one of them. Um there's a wonderful book called The How of Happiness by Sonia Lubomirsky, and it really unpacks a science of different interventions for improving happiness, and gratitude is a big one. So there's lots of good science around it, and even though Hugh doesn't cite much of the science in the book, there's maybe three pages about gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness in total in this 250-page book. Um, but Sonia really unpacks the how and the when and the why. And she talks about how gratitude is actually something that you can habituate to. But if you do it too frequently, yeah, that it loses all meaning, you know. And so if you wanted to do the count your blessings exercise every day for the next six months, you start being repetitive and paying it off. So the general principle is what you pay attention to in your awareness, um, you amplify.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

So once you start paying attention to gratitude, then you see it, see more and more things to be grateful for. So that is a process that's well supported. However, everyone varies on how frequently that's helpful. And so for some people, doing it once, amazing. Doing it for a week, good. Doing it for two weeks, trash has the opposite effect. Yeah. And so frequency is one of those things that you might play around with because the more novel the experience is, the more powerful it tends to be.

SPEAKER_03 21:16

I like that.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

So what you pay attention to, you amplify in your awareness. Yeah. Um, were there any practical takeaways for you in this book?

SPEAKER_03 21:31

I think what you just well one part that I I think needs to be practiced more is empathy in the world.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Um And how do you do that? What's because uh when you say empathy in the context that we're talking about, I think kindness and random acts of kindness in particular.

SPEAKER_03 21:49

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:52

So when I think of empathy, there's one example that sticks out in my mind of just absolute beautiful experience. Experience that I had. And it's when we were living at Concord East at the time, and a young waitress had it was working in a busy cafe, and this old bloke had brought in his photo album to show her.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:19

And she sat down with him when there was everything else that she needed to do at that time.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Drop it.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

I remember.

SPEAKER_03 22:27

Yeah, and I took a photo of her at the time, and I'll make sure it's posted in this with her permission. She's now an Air Force officer. Um but she just took this time out to sit with this man and to make this beautiful moment. Nothing else happening. The people needed to be served. It's a great little cafe. And uh she just made it between him and her and that photo album. And I like, there's no other distractions, there's just me and you, and I'm giving my time to you to hear what you've got to say because that man had lost his wife or something recently.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Yeah, she was quite alone. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:07

So that time and time together. So when I think about empathy, you know, we can do random acts of kindness, which is great. And you know, over the years we've been privileged enough that we could do that for people quite often. Sometimes possibly. Who loves their family? Um, but most of the time when I think about really giving empathy, it's being with that person present, hearing what they've got to say, giving in your time and your space for it. Yep. Yeah, it's beautiful, yeah. So for me, it's like what he speaks about in this book. After doing my toolbox talks on mental health and workplaces, you know, I'm there for an hour, hour and a half. I'm I never leave there before four hours, sort of thing. And I'm listening to people, and a lot of the time it's first thing in the morning, it's 5 30, 6 30 in the morning. And that is where I've got to practice empathy the most. And I don't have to practice it as much because I want to be able to help these people to be able to listen to what's happening for them and be able to get put them in contact with the right resources.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Yes. Yeah. And hearing your personal stories is what opens the gate for people to have those conversations. And I I do recognize that the talks that Hugh would do would have the same effect. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a wonderful thing.

SPEAKER_03 24:33

So for me, the reason it I liked it as much is because that deinstitutionalizing mental health. Let's not make it as complicated as we need to be. A little bit from Hugh's book, a little bit from you know resources that you might trust more than others. Um, you know, I I've said it before on other podcasts that we've done, but there's lots of misinformation and bad information and people that are trying to profit off your trauma, your pain.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 25:01

So you've got to make sure that you're getting it from the right person. Just because somebody says words that you might like, are they trying to do the right thing by you?

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:11

That's every aspect of your life.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

So do we trust the teachings of this book then?

SPEAKER_03 25:17

I trust these three principles of gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness. Yes. And if they're not going to do you any harm, then if they do you some good, then I'm all for it. Yes. So, and mindfulness is the only one we haven't spoken about, but I think without mindfulness, like my life would be very different to what it is now from when I first got injured or second time I got injured, um, right through to my recovery. Like learning how to become mindful and to work with those voices, not just um, you know, the voices in my head, like uh the difficulties that I was having, but then the you know, the imposter syndrome, being able to take time away from that, having anxiety attacks before I deliver, and 30 seconds before I've got to deliver a talk to a group or to an audience, being able to bring myself back into that space to be able to deliver. So mindfulness, I do think it is got a lot more um a lot further that we can go with it. Yes. Um much further um incorporating your breath into it. Um the science, you know, is ever evolving with it. But it's something that, you know, I I think the three of them together work well.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

I agree. I think each of them are helpful psychological skills. And I just want to acknowledge, though, that they're skills that help us to improve our mental health, but they don't necessarily help us to manage mental illness as two separate concepts. And I'm gonna pop just a one-page explainer in the show notes about the difference between symptoms of mental illness versus characteristics of positive mental health or well-being. So they're they're great psychological strategies to improve our well-being, but do they necessarily help to reduce the symptoms of mental illness? That's a slightly different thing. And so I think the principles are great. However, they're limited in their application. And sometimes we see them as a magic silver bullet to preventing and treating mental illness, and that's not what they are, and that's not what they um are designed to be. Now, um, just to kind of summarize, is this book worth it? And I'm gonna jump in first and say no. If you want to know more about gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness, this is not the book for you. This is a memoir about Hugh's experience in developing and delivering quite a successful program, but there's not a lot of information around how do you do it. Okay. So for me, it's a no. Really? Yep. Okay. What take?

SPEAKER_03 28:15

I think if you can learn something whilst having a good read at the same time, I'm all for it. There's three things in this book that I agree with. Um there is a little bit of waffle and a little bit of privilege, but I loved some of the anecdotal. Is do I say that right? No. Anecdotal. Yeah, and anyway, speech impediments. I like the stories that surround it. Um, you know, I would have, you know, probably gravitated to somebody else as the author, but um, you know, I'm all for this book. If you're gonna get something out of it, that's great. If it's a stepping stone onto something more, then even better.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:56

Um, if you go and do the program and you get something out of it, that's great. My only point being is if you do do this and you don't get something out of it, don't stop there. Find the next thing that will work for you rather than just saying mental health stuff doesn't work or resilient stuff doesn't work for me. Because this didn't work for me when I was trying to find a program to help peers out in the veteran space. Sure. It veterans are just not ready to be grateful sometimes, or practicing mindfulness is too much of a step, and then empathy, it's a real, yeah, it's a work in progress. Yes. It's got to be smaller steps explained better, and that wasn't there.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

It wasn't there. Though, if you find that you're someone who is motivated by people's personal stories, then it's a great place to start. And I think similar to who we recommended everything is fucked, that book too.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

People who want an entry point because they like hearing about other people's experiences, that's the book for you. But if you're a teacher, an athlete, you know, that you're helping to support the resilience of others and you want to know how, this is not the book for you. I don't think it's worth the five hours listen on audible. We agree to disagree. We agree to disagree. Uh now, I'd love to hear from our audience that if you've been involved in the resilience project through schools, either as a teacher or a student, um, you've had contact through some of the sporting clubs that have introduced it through the mines. Tell us your experience. Did you love it, hate it? What did you like about it? What did you dislike? Um, what do you still use? Tell us how it had an impact on your life.

SPEAKER_03 30:36

Yeah, you're either in Team Tommy or Team Mel with this. So let me know how much writer I am because I've got to win one time.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

All right. Thank you for listening. And uh yeah, we'll have a couple of links in the show notes to different resources that we mentioned today. And uh, we look forward to talking to you soon about mental health first aid as a program, a mental health program. Uh, and we've got the resilience shield as the next book in our resilience program.

SPEAKER_03 31:09

Yeah, really looking forward to the resilience shield. I've read it a couple of times, and it's what got me started on this sort of the training year as well.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Yeah. Can you hear in my tone? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Alrighty. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_03 31:21

You're gonna be wrong twice in a row.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

We'll talk to you soon. Bye.