I am fascinated by why and how some people can overcome overwhelmingly difficult circumstances. Some people draw on the strength of social supports, others on peak physical fitness, and some have amazing mental strength. At our best, the resilience that guards us in tough times is a strong combination of all factors, as books such as The Resilience Shield explains. Another important resource for some is faith or spirituality – which is why I was attracted to John Eldredge’s book Resilient. The book addresses why we need to give attention to recovery from trauma and build reserves of resilience. In drawing from religious resources, John Eldredge’s words are helpful to readers of any living faith (or none) about how they can draw on both their own inner spiritual resources and that which they see as bigger than themselves.

Eldredge is an American Christian counsellor and author of over a dozen books, best known for his book Wild at Heart. He writes on why we desperately need to focus on recovery from past trauma and build resilience for challenges of the future. He writes from his own Christian tradition and perspective, though points to practices and principles that are accessible to anyone.

The book discusses how COVID-related stressors remind us we need all the help we can get for resilience. We have already seen challenges to resilience levels from society’s addiction to technology, media consumption, social media and other exhaustions of modern life. But COVID-19 brought isolation, grief, anxiety and other vulnerabilities to record levels. We’ve seen toilet paper stampedes and mental health support waiting lists grow. Populations resorted to renovation projects when locked down and then holidays in record numbers.

There has been a “Great Resignation” as people quit jobs and church attendance fell dramatically. We have not actually seen the end of COVID’s after-effects either – as with any trauma, the aftermath is most concerning.

Eldredge urges taking time to recover from the uncertainties of recent times and building resilience for the future. He says we need the Churchillian grit to “Never surrender; never give up!” but with more developed strategies than turning to a bottle of wine and munchies with a Netflix binge. Eldredge counsels (re-)building resilience through engaging with beauty, nature, walks, play, stillness, positive self-talk, forgiveness, simplicity, being off-line and at times limiting giving out. As well as the physical world he urges also being comfortable in the spiritual world and tapping into resources of God through prayer and worship, and connecting with the depths of love, joy and hope. Eldredge offers other resources along these themes in another book Get Your Life Back: Everyday Practices for a World Gone Mad and in his “30 Days to Resilient” experience, accessible on the free App “One Minute Pause”.

The metaphor for resilience Eldredge uses is a camel which has amazing resilience, but its Achilles heel is that it can collapse without warning. We may have high levels of resilience, yet even then can reach a tipping point:

The lesson is to keep our reserves maintained rather than reaching a point of pushing on too long until nothing is left, and we collapse in discouragement or blankness of soul. This is why we need margin to allow our souls to breathe and space for recovery and resilience – which was part of the gift of Sabbath from Judaism and Christianity, but available for all of us:

Eldredge’s advice is to build reserves by ensuring more is coming in than going out resonates with something I heard a CO tell their Command team – they said they wanted the unit’s wings to be operating at 80% effort for the next quarter of a year. The rationale was that there was an anticipated surge coming that would require a greater effort and adaptability, and the unit needed to ready to tackle that with their reserves full up not and not depleted.

To check in with ourselves and our teams, Eldredge suggests insightful and probing coaching questions:

• How is your operating strength and if you normally function at 100%, what are you at now?
• What sort of reserves do you have available?
• If we experience another pandemic or other unexpected challenge, what is your capacity for endurance?

A highlight of the book is its stories of survival situations that bring out our best and our worst. Examples include the climbers of Mount Hood who urged each other to “put away the pain and hold on”; or by B-24 crewmember who crashed in the Pacific Ocean and hogged the leftover food for himself from fear of not having enough. Crash survivors, mountain climbers, or endurance athletes can get tired and dehydrated and have their physical and mental abilities eroded. However, the same can happen to any of us in work and relationships – thus the critical need for guarding our resilience levels.

Resilient is relevant, particularly for people of Christian or other faiths, but offers inspiration and valuable skills for anyone who wants to guard and rebuild resilience in themselves and their teams.

Notes

The publisher details are John Eldredge, Resilient: Restoring your Weary Soul in these Turbulent Times (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2022). RRP $29.99. Available also as an audiobook. An earlier version of this review was published in the Australian Army Chaplaincy Journal (2024), 135-136.