1. Overview & Resilience Toolkit
MRT Instructions:
(If applicable) Introduce yourself and briefly share your experience as a participant in MRT.
Add your personal motivation step and grab the students attention preparing them for the lesson.
(If applicable) Ask participants to introduce themselves if they do not know each other and if the size of the class permits
Introduce the course as part of Comprehensive Airman Fitness
Distribute participant guides
Conduct Housekeeping:
Talk about length of course
Breaks
Lunch schedule
Bathrooms
(For RTA Course) Delivery of “teach-backs” on day three
(If applicable) Emergency exits

2. Overview CAF Mission & Vision CAF Domains & Tenets Resilience Defined
Benefits
Learning Resilience/Fixed Vs Growth Mindset
Broaden and Build Theory
Goals
Introduction to Resilience Skills
MRT Instructions:
Provide a brief preview of the main points for this lesson. Try not to read each item as if you’re reading a laundry list.
Ask the participants if they have any question so far, then proceed to the next slide.

3. CAF Mission and Vision:
“A Thriving and Resilient Air Force Community Ready to Meet any Challenge”…Airmen taking care of Airmen, Wingman Concept
Vision:
“Build and Sustain a Thriving and Resilient Air Force Community that Fosters Mental, Physical, Social and Spiritual Fitness”…Always Ready
MRT Instructions:
MP 1: CAF Mission and Vision
Mission
The CAF Mission is….“A thriving and resilient Air Force community ready to meet any challenge” …Airmen taking care of Airmen, Wingman Concept
Vision
The CAF Vision is….“Build and sustain a thriving and resilient Air Force community that fosters, Mental, Physical, Social and Spiritual Fitness”…Always ready!
The AFI’s strategy to support…
CAF is strength based
Foundational life skills and competencies to meet an Airman’s needs at the right time.
CAF incorporates the Wingman concept
CAF provides tools for leaders to successfully create a culture of comprehensive fitness
CAF encourages early self-help seeking behaviors

4. CAF Mission and Vision
“Resilience begins and ends in the squadron. So, part of this whole business of resilience is arming squadron commands and squadron SNCOs with the tools they need to actually build and sustain resilience across the force…
…What if we were to reorient our resources a little bit towards - not minimizing bad behavior - but to enhancing human performance; enhancing Airmen performance, which is a bigger population.”
MRT Instructions:
Discuss the perspective from our AF leadership.
Key point: the Air Force is going in the general direction of enhancing human performance.
Instead of focusing on the minimizing of self-defeating behaviors, the force is transitioning to enhancing positive behaviors and coping strategies to be a more effective force.
Focus on enhancing Airmen performance places the importance of resilience on a bigger population of Airmen already doing the right thing. It is our duty as leaders to enhance Airmen who are already performing well but need the routine maintenance they deserve to stay in the fight.

5. COMPREHENSIVE AIRMAN FITNESS (CAF)
CAF Domains & Tenets
MENTAL
Awareness
Decision-Making
Adaptability
Positive Thinking
PHYSICAL
Nutrition
Endurance
Strength
Recovery
SOCIAL
Communication
Connectedness
Social Support
Teamwork
SPIRITUAL
Core Values
Perseverance
Perspective
Purpose
MRT Instructions:
MP 2: CAF Domains and Tenets
What is Comprehensive Airman Fitness?
A holistic approach to develop over-arching Airman fitness and resilience. It is a total force initiative (Mil, Civ, and Family members) that encompasses the four domains. The four domains are the areas of a person’s life which capture the totality of how they experience and relate to others and themselves, and being fit across the four domains will lead to a more resilient individual.
CAF is a cultural shift in how we view and maintain fitness to hold ourselves and each other to the Air Force Core Values.
Leaders and individuals throughout the force must understand, promote, and support CAF.
By practicing the resilience skills the domains and tenets will strengthen. You can enhance your resilience and effectiveness both professionally and personally
Comprehensive Airmen Fitness Domains and Tenets:
Mental: The ability to effectively cope with unique mental stressors and challenges needed to ensure mission readiness.
Physical: The ability to adopt and sustain healthy behaviors needed to enhance health and wellness
Social: The ability to engage in healthy social networks that promote overall well-being and optimal performance
Spiritual: The ability to strengthen a set of beliefs, principles, or values that sustain an individual’s sense of well-being and purpose
COMPREHENSIVE AIRMAN FITNESS (CAF)

6. CAF Domains & Tenets Mental Domain
Awareness
Decision-Making
Adaptability
Positive Thinking
Self
Behaviors, Feelings, Motivations
Situational
Accurately interpreting and to attending to cues
Thoughts and behaviors used for problem-solving, goal-setting
MRT Instructions:
Refer to the tenets and give a brief description of them.
Awareness: Self-awareness is broadly defined as the self-descriptions that a person ascribes to oneself that influence one’s actual behavior, motivation to initiate or disrupt activities, and feelings about oneself. Individuals must also have situational awareness, or knowledge of what is going on around them for accurately interpreting and attending to appropriate cues in the environment.
Adaptability: Ease of adapting to changes associated with military life, including flexible roles within the family.
Decision Making: thoughts and behaviors used for evaluating and choosing courses of action to solve a problem or reach a goal. The decision making factors include problem solving, goal setting, adaptive thinking, and intuitive thinking.
Positive Thinking: Information processing, applying knowledge, and changing preferences through restructuring, positive reframing, making sense out of a situation, flexibility, reappraisal, refocusing, having positive outcome expectations, a positive outlook, and psychological preparation.
Changes in military life and flexible family roles
Reframing and making sense out of a situation; positive outlook

7. CAF Domains & Tenets Physical Domain
Nutrition
Endurance
Strength
Recovery
Quantity
Quality
Proportion Sufficient
Protect against disease/injury
Accomplish the mission in a repetitive fashion
MRT Instructions:
Refer to the tenets and give a brief description of them.
Endurance: the body’s ability to continually accomplish the same task in a repetitive fashion.
Recovery: Practices that restore energy and counterbalance stress that can offset adverse mood and deteriorating performance.
Nutrition: the provision and consumption of foodstuffs in quantities, quality, and proportions sufficient to preserve mission performance and to protect against disease and/or injury.
Strength: ability to generate force and power, thus lowering the relative work required to complete mission tasks.
Generate force & power
Restore energy & counterbalance stress

8. CAF Domains & Tenets Social Domain
Communication
Connectedness
Social Support
Teamwork
Exchange of thoughts, opinions, or information
Problem-solving & relationship management
Quality & number of connections with people and places
MRT Instructions:
Refer to the tenets and give a brief description of them.
Communication: The exchange of thoughts, opinions, or information, including problem-solving and relationship management.
Connectedness: The quality and number of connections with other people in the community; includes connections with a place or people of that place; aspects include commitment, structure, roles, responsibility, and communication.
Social Support: Perceiving that comfort is available from (and can be provided to) others, including emotional, tangible, instrumental, informational, and spiritual support.
Teamwork: Work coordination among team members, including flexibility.
Perceiving comfort is available & can be provided
Work coordination; flexibility

9. CAF Domains & Tenets Spiritual Domain
Core Values
Perseverance
Perspective
Purpose
Principles that guide:
Organization
Person’s conduct & relationships with others
Persistence in course of action despite difficulty
MRT Instructions:
Refer to the tenets and give a brief description of them.
Core Values: Principles that guide an organization's or a person’s internal conduct as well as its relationship with the external world.
Perseverance: steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.
Perspective: How one views situations, facts, etc. and judges their relative importance.
Purpose: The reason for which one exists.
How one views situations and facts
Reason for one’s existence

10. Resilience Defined
The ability to withstand, recover and/or grow in the face of stressors and changing demands
MRT Instructions:
1. MP 4: Resilience Defined:
Definition of resilience: The ability to withstand, recover and/or grow in the face of stressors and changing demands.
Resilience enables an individual to over come daily hassles and major obstacles.
Allows you to cope and adapt to adversity or stress to be successful even when under significant stress.
b) Being resilient doesn’t meant you won’t experience adversity. But, if you do, resilience can protect you from the adverse effects of stressful life events.
2. People can learn resilience
Resilience is more than just stories that you hear about when people experience adversity. It can be trained and taught and through practice. Anyone can become a more resilient person.
Research has shown that learning new skills—and practicing those skills—can increase resilience. In particular, focusing on positive coping skills and self-regulation can build our resilience. Training and Practice can actually change our physical Brain Structure. The brain has the ability to rewire to find new ways to do things and adapt - learning new patterns of behaviors and ways of coping can play an important role.

11. Benefits Performance Creativity, academics, decision making
Health
Lower blood pressure, better sleep, longer life span
Teamwork & Leadership
Valued by team
MRT Instructions:
Being a resilient individual can lead to positive outcomes.
Here is what the science of resilience tells us…
Resilient people…
Resilient people have stronger performance and better health. They perform better in a variety of areas to include creativity, academic achievements and decision-making.
Resilient people have lower blood pressure, get better sleep, have healthier immune functioning, and a longer life span
Resilient leaders are more open to feedback from members of their team, more valued by members of the team, and more skilled at reaching consensus during negotiations.

12. Embed selected Resilience video
MRT instructions:
Select an approved video from the MRT SharePoint page.
Embed or have the capability to show video that demonstrates resilience
Ensure you are capable of reinforcing the skill through the utilization of the video
Key question to reinforce video:
How are/did the characters demonstrating resilience?
Appropriate Responses to think about and steer the audience to:
Perseverance, Strength, Social support, Accuracy, Perspective, Flexibility, Ability to bounce back etc.

13. Fixed vs. Growth Mindset
MRT Instructions:
Having a growth mindset is critical for learning resilience skills.
Discuss the differences on the slide between a fixed vs growth mindset.
Individuals with a fixed mindset believe their talents and abilities can’t be improved. They avoid challenges because of the risk of failure.
Individuals with a growth mindset are open to new perspectives, and believe that challenges are an opportunity for personal growth.
Think about the mindset you have as you approach learning new skills. Ask your course participants which mindset they bring to training. Remember that growth and fixed mindsets are two ends on a spectrum—it is a continuum and we slide up and down that continuum. In some areas of our lives, we may have a more fixed mindset, and in others we may have a more growth mindset.
Dweck, C (2006). Mindset. New York: Random House.

14. Famous failures MRT Instructions: Famous Failures:
Embed or have the capability to show video of famous failures
Have students watch the famous failure video
Note that these are real life instances of resilience
Key Question to ask:
What allowed these individuals to become successful?
Anticipated Responses: Perseverance, strength, Growth Mindset, flexibility, belief in their mission, belief in themselves, not allowing another individual to define them etc…
Resilience is not only about traumatic moments—it is also about dealing with daily hassles and stressors.
It is about ordinary peoples accomplishments in the face of challenges and stressors.
These individuals are now very famous for their accomplishments but they all experienced adversity and grew.

15. Broaden and Build Theory
Positive Emotions
Broaden
Open Mindedness
Build
Take action
Build skills
MRT Instructions:
The Broaden-and-Build theory (developed by Barb Fredrickson) suggests that
when people feel positive emotions, they are “jolted” into a different way of thinking and acting. They become more creative and open-minded thinkers. Positive emotions broaden our way of thinking and awareness of what is around us, resulting in greater creativity and exploration. In turn, this builds our skills and resources, including strengthening our resilience.
Individuals who use a broader range of coping strategies experience less distress from stressful life events. They recover more quickly from stressors that increase cardiovascular activity. Positive emotions are the fuel for resilience.
A positive mindset and expansion of skills allows us to more easily master challenges, which generates more positive emotions, which further broadens and builds thinking and action, and so on.
Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002

16. Goals Resilience Toolbox
Learn tools/skills to strengthen your resilience (and teach to your Airmen)
Try them
Use them
Teach them
MRT Instructions:
Discuss the bullet points on the slide
The goal of RTA training is to ensure you have the tools and resources you need to become a CAF asset and initiate squadron level functions that reinforce the resilience concepts and strategies.
Having flexible coping strategies is linked to lower distress after a stressful life event (Bun Lam and McBride-Chang, 2007). What does that mean for you? Flexibility in the use of coping strategies contributes to resilience, so have a range of tools in your toolbox.
Not every tool is right for every situation, but you need a wide range of tools, and need to know which one is best in a given situation. There may be a tool that doesn’t work for you. If so, learn it and practice it so you can teach it to others.
This curriculum will allow you to train your Airmen and Family members on resilience.
Bun Lam and McBride-Chang, 2007

17. Introduction of Resilience Skills
FTAC
Overview of Resilience
Gratitude
Values-based goals
ABC
Check Your Playbook
Mindfulness
Good Listening & Active Constructive Responding
Interpersonal Problem Solving
RTA/Wingman Day Skills
Balance Your Thinking
Capitalizing on Strengths
Spiritual
Physical
MRT Instructions
MP6: Introduce Resilient Skill Toolkit
Resilience Skills…
FTAC skills are to be presented in the 8 hour block of instruction during the First Term Airman’s Course.
RTA/Wingman Day skills will be utilized to increase resilience to the force during CAF/Wingman Days and for assistance during squadron training events.
All Skills:
Help you take action on your goals and values
Help you acknowledge and accept counterproductive thoughts so you can focus on taking effective action
We are going to learn skills that will:
Increase awareness of your strengths, how your brain processes events, and how to cultivate awareness of positive events
The skills being taught in this course are constructed in a way that makes it easy to understand.

18. Overview & Resilience Toolkit
MRT Instructions:
Close the lesson by re-motivating the students to the concepts of resilience
Place on break