From battle to Bunnings: How an ex-SAS soldier and City Beach dad builds resilience

Sydney Morning Herald

2 days ago

In this series, WAtoday reaches out to the Perth community to discover three things people love most about our coastal capital. Today we feature City Beach's Tim Curtis, MBA, former Special Forces officer, crisis management executive, co-author of 2021's The Resilience Shield, co-host of The Unforgiving60 podcast, and father of three. He has led businesses and cross-cultural teams in some of the world's most challenging and austere environments. His new book, Building Resilient Kids, published July 1 by Macmillan, focuses on helping children become happy, healthy and confident adults.
I love Innaloo Bunnings. I'm ex-SAS, and I call Bunnings a family mission. You have never been tested as until you've taken three kids to Bunnings, it's the SAS survival course meets a close-quarters battle. Have you heard of the four Ds of time management? Well this is another four Ds: the Danger of the paint aisle, the Distraction of the sausage sizzle and the Delusion – of thinking you'd get out in five minutes, or you just needed one thing. Cue the kids loading up the trolley with a pile of things you don't need. And the fourth D, of course, is the family dog. The Innaloo Bunnings is mainly good for its proximity to me, but it's also got a really good plant section; I'm geeking out about all things gardening, I'm now spending more time in the garden section than the warehouse.
I love City Beach. It's where I've taught my kids to get through the turbulence of the waves, providing a bit of a metaphor for life; when it comes to building resilient kids you have to be a bit like a lifeguard, and not prevent the swimming – just the drowning. All my kids have learnt their surfing skills with the Floreat Nippers and it is resilience training disguised as fun; watching them get knocked over and back up was inspiring. We always go to City Beach on Christmas morning and meet the extended group of friends we met through the kids' schooling. Every year, it's a special few hours we spend together and embodies the philosophy that it takes a village to make a resilient kid. Those adults all have great relationships with my kids, and they can change the angle and the prism on things that their parents would have, which has a big impact, especially in the teen years.
I love running the two bridges at sunrise. The one thing we know adults must do to build resilient kids is to build it in themselves – to model resilience, to be the best version of themselves. A precious time to do that is running the two bridges in the city at dawn, where effort and exhalation meets stillness. The calm river, the rising sun over the hills, the rowers on the water – it's all quite meditative, and you feel you're ahead in life whatever else happens that day. You've experienced all these moments, no matter what might hit you for six later on that day. People might say they have to exercise, but it's important to recognise that it's a privilege to exercise. And it doesn't have to be effort, effort, more effort, or a heroic distance or time. It's just being able to do small things, in such a special time and place.
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