Jay Morton - Full Interview with the Mulligan Brothers

ptsg so post-dramatic growth and i guess that's what i felt i remember running off the back of the helicopter and there's kind of rpgs flying over our head machine gun fire and we just looked at each other and just burst out in laughter energy's something we've all got right we're all giving off some sort of energy all right so my name is jay morton i am uh x special forces xsas and i come from preston originally people who will be watching they probably won't understand what preston was like so what was it like growing up in preston what was your lifestyle like um growing up in preston's just like growing up in any small town um you know like i'm not like i'm from just a kind of ordinary family um went to kind of a normal school um and yeah i just grew up doing what normal you know kids did in in you know northern schools or in in schools m days so getting pissed in in the park on cider and um trying to score with as many women as you can and failing at the same time um and then yeah like went to school i i don't think i got on with school to be honest i don't think school got on with me um like i wasn't really someone that got into trouble a lot but i think kind of looking back i was just bored and just bored of the topics that were getting taught um and just you know probably a lack of inspiration from the teachers that were teaching those lessons and just being indoors as well like being stuck in a classroom um you know it's it's like being stuck in a cage um so yeah like i didn't really like school and at the time when you're a young kid you don't understand why um but it's literally that it's a lack of of stimulation and that transferred on to when i went to college after i left school i went to study uh sport and yeah like again like i enjoyed playing sport but like 90 of the time was sat in a classroom in a cage and you know that's not where i'm supposed to be so like quit after a year or actually quit before here and um yeah then it was like then i just got stuck in dead-end jobs working in factories and i had a job making upvc glass windows and a job as a delivery driver and yeah that kind of sparked my interest into going into the military it's interesting because the way that you're portraying it you live the very ordinary life for a for a certain period of time and you're kind of finding yourself in and you you know now there's a lack of stimulation in your life before you joined the military before you joined the paris or joined sas did you ever know that you was capable of doing kind of extraordinary things um do you know what i always thought that i always thought that i wasn't set out for the normal life you know we have this vision of a normal life where you get up in the morning you kiss your wife goodbye and wave goodbye to your kids and set off on your nine-to-five job on the trainer in the car and you work for those eight or nine hours during the day and then finish and then come home and you know the t's on the table and you know you you do whatever go and play tennis or golf or go to the gym and then go to bed and then repeat that i don't know like i always i always kind of knew deep down that like that life would just not entertain me from the start um i you know looking back now like i've always been into fitness or pushing myself like even as a kid like i was the one that was going out running when i was at school um you know i remember like my parents or i remember i bought you know for christmas i wanted like the weights bench out of argos right and the set of weights and i was like 13 years old just trying to get massive just doing everything completely wrong um so like from an early age i kind of i found comfort in pushing myself um do you know you all your other mates are you know still drinking and trying to score with girls and yeah i was just trying to throw weights around from an early age and just just run it's important to kind of figure out where your kind of purpose lies and it sounds like you had a feeling of what you should be doing and then you kind of followed that feeling you knew you wasn't meant to be in a cage you knew you'd like to push yourself then you went and joined the paris at a young age did you feel that you was following a feeling and is that something that's important to do yeah like even now i think you know that gut feeling or that good instinct is is generally how i navigate through life and you know i think the more you do it and the more you actually follow that gut feeling and listen to it the more in tune you get to it but back then you know 16 17 years old it was i don't know like i i've always had it in that like i'm i'm competitive right i've always wanted to you know secretly or or whatever just be better than the people around me and not in a not in like a bad way as in still now i like to feel like if we if we all just went for a run that i'd i'd be able to hold my own or just be at the front because i never i guess i never had that growing up like i was quite a chunky kid and um quite a shy kid so i've always just had this this thing that's followed me around you know i've always had this like vision of myself following me around that i'm just this shy chunky kid that i was when i was younger and i've always just tried to get away from that throughout my life um which led into kind of doing the fitness you know the august weights bench set and um yeah and that probably still like chases me around now so i've always just you know at the time like i'm trying to get away from from that kid at the same time yeah just you know just trying to i guess it's you're just trying to develop yourself every day and you don't realize that when you're young but the older you get when you look back retrospectively you notice that that's what you were trying to do you were trying to get away from almost what everyone else is doing everyone else is just going down that normal life path you did say something you said if you're doing the same thing as everybody else you're doing the wrong thing what makes you say that um because we're i think human beings are just pre-programmed to just take the easy option um and the world we live in right now just gives so many options to be in you know gives so many options to just live in those easy options like we live in a house right we don't have to feel the weather outside of the elements you know there's no rain like we've all got a warm bed to sleep in we've all got cash in the bank whether we work or not um you walk down to the shops or get in you you you transport vehicle your car it's like everything's easy right like life is set up to be easy and um so it's more about just you know it's by no one's fault that everyone just ends up living the easiest life that they possibly can and just and you know that that monotonous kind of life that everyone just seems to fit into right leave school get grades go to college get a levels study go to university um and then get that nine to five job like earn a load of cash save up for your retirement retire have that mortgage in that car and um i don't know it's like you've got to be able to pull away from that and try and understand why everyone's doing that and everyone's doing it just because everyone else is doing it and that's not a reason to be doing stuff um so you've got to like say well what do i want in life what do i want to do and you know for me the military gave me a lot of those answers because it was something completely different i think even just going to war or going to battle or being involved in combat you know you grow up in a different way and you get to see the world in a different way going to war and being involved in combat you kind of see life from a very different perspective i can imagine you can only see life from that perspective if you go to them kind of conflicts what did it teach you once you've kind of been in a war zone or you've been through a conflict what did they teach you about life or your life um do you know like earlier on earlier on in my career um you know like i was you know i joined the paris i was 19 years old deployed to iraq i was 20 deployed to afghanistan in 2006 i was 21. and yeah like we got involved in like heavy fighting pretty early on and uh like 21 years old like all your mates are still doing the same thing that they're doing back at home and you grow up very quick um it's a different kind of education and then i think kind of you know like you full of testosterone when you're 21 years old aren't you and you know you almost i don't know you kind of want to be in battle but at the same time you don't want the bad you don't want the negative aspects of it like you don't want to see your mates die um or anyone die for that reason on your side um and i think the older you get like the more wise you get and the more you're able to like listen to your body and mind more and just like understand more about i guess what you want and where you fit into into combat and i guess like the the further on on in my career was more of just like seeing what human beings are just capable of doing to each other and again you can look at that in like a really negative way but i kind of i looked at it as a positive and just because you know life's short and life's even shorter when you're shooting bullets at each other so it's like you know there's kids or whatever or young people or all these people dying and it's like they're all living in this like hellhole kind of thing and it was um for me it was more about you know it taught me it taught me more about just how i want to live my life outside of of that area and uh understanding that life's short and you do what you do what you do to make you happy and you follow those things instead of you know what we say about like following that normal life dream you say that humans are capable of well you go to places like that in extreme conditions and you find out what you humans are really capable of doing to each other some of that stuff must stick with you how's how do you do she kind of combat that and block that out um do you know what like i've always seen you know the things that you're exposed to i've always seen it as a as a positive to be honest um because i don't know it depends what kind of frame it depends what kind of character you are right some people are exposed to battle and death and seeing dead bodies and teammates dying and they go one way right they go down it's that ptsd route and um i think for a lot of people they see that stuff and you know i've heard the saying a lot of times but i don't think lads are that aware of it is ptsg so post-traumatic growth um and i guess that's what i felt was you know i was seeing all this stuff i was being exposed to all this stuff but like i felt i don't know give me like like i said i grew up right it gave me a different view on the world and there are positives to take from that like you know nothing i don't have anything that haunts me i don't have any snags or problems now it's just you know if you like if you think of it like humans have been at war for so long like it's so it's so natural it's so natural war but at the same time so unnatural because we live in such a safe environment um so yeah you just you're just partaking in history i've never heard of psg before but when you put it in in the way that you have it can kind of i suppose enrich your life because you know life can last for not a finite amount of time not an infinite amount of time and i suppose you'd leave them places knowing that actually i've got a bit more clarity and direction with what i want to be doing with my life and where i don't want to be going when you was younger you you would join the powers at a young age you went to cat's rick is that where you did your training yeah basic training yep your what was your mindset like at the beginning compared to the end and what was the lessons you kind of learned from your basic training um so yeah like i was 19 years old turning up at basic training and you know you know i still had that like element of that fat shy kid that was like chasing me around so like when i turned up i remember turning up at the train station and um you meet like you end up you all meet in the same location and um like the screws or the corporals come and take you take you up to to the camp and i remember looking around at the other lads and just thinking like there's some some big big lads or but like but everyone looks stronger and fitter than you or like more confident or you know you just have this perception of them and they're probably you know looking back now they're doing exactly the same they're looking at you going like [ __ ] like these guys are stronger fitter than me i think it's just something that humans have got ingrained into them um and then yeah you jump in the in in the mini buses and drive and get thrown like a set of like ronals and a maroon jumper and that's you you like get your head shaved and you're initiated into the into the transformation camp from civilian to soldier um and it is literally that right you turn up as a civilian you know wide-eyed eager and you leave as there's a soldier um and it takes six months and uh yeah like do you know what i was i kind of shocked myself getting through that because i was never i was never the fittest like i was never the strongest i was never at the front like and we used to do these exercises where you know you'd be it'd be a warm up before we went on a tab and the ptis would you know point to a tree and just say right everyone to that tree and back last last 10 go again and i'd always be in that last 10. um and then it'd be right go again last five go again and i'd always be in that last five but um i kind of like i had a bit of a theory around that and um i guess because i was never the fittest never the strongest but i've always completed stuff and always hung on so i've always been used to being you know in that fatigue state like that's quite normal for me which as we all know that builds resilience and that builds a stronger mind and body whereas the the front runners they were just used to you know running at their normal pace and just being okay with that um so you know when you deploy to places like the jungle or some of these harsher environments like where everyone is on that level of fatigue like for me it was just normal and you'd see some of the fittest people just fall over and you know collapse with heat stroke or you know just not be able to to carry on just because of the conditions i've never heard it described like that before i've never really heard that theory but yeah for me when i have the j morton theory it doesn't exist do you know what though i get tired a lot and actually i'm probably tired all the time when i'm working out i'm probably fatigued but you're living in your comfort outside your comfort zone more than others so when they go outside their comfort zone you kind of know what it's like to be there it's it's more comfortable for you than it may be for somebody who's fit and hasn't gone to that dark place so i do kind of i get it but i've never just considered it that way before yeah and it might just be that you know if you went and did something like everest you'd find it not as hard as someone who's done like a handful of of marathons and ultra marathons and finds a pretty easy kind of thing because everyone suffers when you go up in high altitude i don't know if you get it but when you're like working out especially when you're pushing yourself through training maybe when you push yourself up at everest you don't really have conversations with people you talk to yourself in your head what the kind of things you're saying to yourself in your head to kind of drive you through these situations um do you know what like my head goes empty when you're in that dark place um i've just always been someone who can put one foot in front of the other i think if you break down any mental or physical challenge it's just a case of progression and as long as you can keep that momentum and keep that progression going forward you'll get to where you need to go have you ever had a point in time where you've obviously applied that method one foot in front of the other but you felt like me i couldn't put that next foot in front of the other foot no no i like going back to again like i'm in i'm in my comfort zone when i'm when i'm fatigued so you know that i just know that i can just keep you break it down right and it's just one step and then the next steps just one step and just you know forget about where it is that you you need to go and just concentrate on that next step and like the rest is just time and time moves right time ticks down and then eventually you just find yourself in that position you spoke about going to um going to war being in compact zones and can you remember the first time that you came into contact like your very first time and what kind of emotions you were feeling and what kind of what was happening for you at that point in time yeah um so we on that 2006 tour of afghanistan so the first time that i came under contact we deployed out so it's supposed to be a peacekeeping operation um and we didn't know it would go as noisy as what it what it did but we deployed to a place called nazar naozada and there was we had a patrol splatoon that were already stationed there doing some recce stuff and we literally landed on these landed in these ch-47 helicopters and um i remember running off the back of the helicopter and you know that was the first time that i had the crack and thump of a of a round flying over your head and we'd just run into this massive scrap that the uh the patrols lads were in so there's kind of rpgs flying over our head machine gun fire um and you know what i think soldiers are very good at hiding fear with humor and we just looked at each other and just burst out in laughter and uh yeah i remember just running to this wall and just getting down behind this wall and we all just looked at each other and just went well this is it isn't it like this it started um and that was a long day like you know i think we're in contact for say six to eight hours and personally i'd you know i think once you get over the like once you get over the first reaction of the first round that's been fired and the first round that you've heard the rest of it just all sounds sounds the same like you're in that moment then um and the rest is just about thinking logically about how you combat that situation and how you get out of that situation and when you're going through the motions of it are you able to kind of think logically and rationally does it take a long period of time to get there or is it quicker than you think obviously under pressure of fire um yeah like those kind of contacts you've got a lot of time to to stop and think because generally you know you could be shooting at each other from 100 meters away you know nine times out of ten or yeah nine times out of ten those rounds aren't very accurate so you can generally get behind some sort of cover and take time to plan and think about your next move um you know as your career progresses and you end up you know fighting closer to people so in buildings or in closed spaces the time it takes to make the action or make the decision gets reduced so that's more about your instincts and more about just training that you've done previous you obviously said that he was like that shy chunky young man and that kind of followed you around and you was always trying to outrun that person people who join sas or sbs any kind of form of special forces especially uk people think you would have to be superhuman maybe not that young shy boy that was kind of following you around so how did you manage to get from being him to then going into the sas and he was only one the only one in nine who left from your parent regiment to actually make you through training for the special forces right yeah um do you know what i think deep down i still got that you know shy chunky boy just follows me around everywhere um i think probably a lot of people that you know are that look successful from other people's viewpoints probably have some sort of shy chunky young boy that follows him around sounds a bit weird doesn't it i think anyone that's you know got to some level of success probably has some sort of past that follows him around whatever that is um and that shy chunky boy doesn't seem to disappear you know he follows me around even now um and you know kind of going back to what he said like you know guys in the special forces are like we're still human beings um you know we're the same as everyone else um you know there's no difference there like you still feel think and do everything that every normal person does it's just you've got a different you know you picked a different job career and you've got a different level of training you start the the process of of training and you're only one of nine who you came with who got through what was the hardest part of training for you and why do so many few people actually make it from start to finish yeah you know selection is like a race of attrition and um you generally start with around 150 to 170 in the first three weeks you're probably down to around 50 and then you go out on the next phase and you know you could come back with say 20 25 people which is probably a good a good course and then the rest of it's just training to get you ready to join during the squadron um i think for me like i enjoyed selection um like there wasn't one day when i woke up and just went that i didn't want to be here it was more just about it was more just about you know just proving to myself that i could get through each day and i kind of found enjoyment in seeing people fall off i think a lot of people do as in not in a bad way right i didn't rub anyone's face in it but when you're doing things that are difficult and you've got an easy option to get out like you can literally vw and you know hand well you don't have a number and you literally vw and you can just walk off and pack your kit and go you'll be in a warm shower and bath and you know whatever food you want so it's easy to to quit which makes it you know the majority of people do quit i think when that happens like you you see their weakness and pumps it puts you up a level right puts you up a level of um puts your strength up a little bit so yeah i i enjoyed those six months on selection and i think as as the less able members the less able soldiers start to drop off you end up with a tight-knit bunch of guys that have all been through the same [ __ ] and uh you form bonds through those through those dark times you counteract it with a bit of humor at the end you're left with a good group of lads if you if someone's to come and ask you what you would need to be to be a special forces soldier in terms of like not the courses you need to take or what or in terms of joining the army what kind of characteristics what attributes would you need to have um what are the main ones that you think somebody needs to have um read my book joking um yeah do you know like resilience is probably one of the biggest things for soldiers to have and being a soldier will teach you a teacher about resilience and all resilience is just an ability to be able to do difficult things but then you know i think a lot of special forces soldiers highly motivated people intelligent intelligent people um not necessarily like iq so not necessarily like an educational or um what would you call it you call it eq and aq i think yeah so you know emotional intelligence and yeah adaptable intelligence so less an iq right which is yeah um just intelligence right so being able to remember um a lot of detail and more kind of a situational intelligence and an emotional intelligence because at the end of the day if you're in the special forces you're working with a group a group or a team and you're all going out and doing taking actions under high stress environments and then you've got to be able to read those environments well um and then obviously a base level of decent fitness that you can work on but you know like every special forces soldier just wants to get better at what he's doing and it's a high you know it's a high testosterone high alpha male environment where everyone's just trying to outdo each other secretly and um you know everyone wants to be better at it everyone wants to be better better than everyone else that's shooting or whatever it is it's a good environment to be in when you go into that environment do you feel like you need to prove yourself we need to stand strong in that environment and if so how do you do it yeah like it can be quite intimidating when you first start because especially me like i was 24 in a past election and like the rest of the guys in my troop were all you know late 30s early 40s they're all men and uh yeah so it's quite intimidating and you know the staff they've already got high standards right they've been using all the kitten equipment and doing run outs way before i've turned up so it's you know i've i've now like i've done a six month course right which is selection but that doesn't mean that i'm a special forces soldier like that comes after like when you start training with the teams when you start learning different crafts you know i went away and became a medic um you know became a highly a high-altitude parachutist like all these different skills and um experiences that you that you learn that you can then bring to the team um so yeah it's you know you want to prove yourself and you want want to feel accepted when you decided to leave um special forces you you then went on to do other stuff you kind of seem like you're not the kind of person who could ever sit still you're always kind of looking for something to get into which is going to test you and push yourself in terms of climbing everest was that harder than selection or is everest harder than special force selection um there's probably a lot of sf blokes that are going to kill me first but um like selection's hard right it's probably one of the hardest things i've done everest is different two different experiences everest is harder they're quite they're quite difficult to be able to put them both in the same category you know selections over a six-month period and you're not under that severe stress for that whole six months right it's like off and on whereas the the most difficult thing about climbing everest is the altitude because you know we're just sat here normal now like chatting away like what you know the clothes we're wearing are suitable for the the temperature outside and you know i've got a fridge full of food and you make a cup of tea whenever you want it like everything's difficult the higher up you go and you're doing that constantly for six weeks living at altitude sleeping in tents you know eating the same food over and over again lunch and meat potatoes rice that kind of stuff um you know sitting in a barrel in the ground um not really showering you know you get a bucket of hot water and then you know that's just a base camp then the higher up you go the more difficult that gets and the more the harder it is to generate energy to be able to move um so yeah the the two are very different but like like i said i enjoyed i enjoyed both but i enjoyed selection just because of the you know the group and the camaraderie ship whereas everest is a different beast and that you know that final summit pushes yeah takes its toll on you a lot of people would look at you and and and they'll be thinking you do stuff that scares me you do stuff that would kind of incite fear within me whether it be climbing k2 or everest twice or going into war zones or being a special forces soldier is that something that you've ever felt fear and if so how'd you kind of work with that um i think i think like when we use words like fear it gets it gives it a negative um a negative gives it like a negative what's the word condensation nah like a feel condensation on the windowsill connotation yeah like when we use a word fear it gives it a negative feel um and it's like if you break it down like fear is just a reaction in your body um yeah like i've felt fear before in in the past and like fear generally only happens for like a short period of time because there's usually a logical explanation that that you can put to why you're feeling that fear whether it's a round that's just cracked over your head or something that's just exploded or you know maybe there's some rock fall on a mountain like that's a moment to be scared right but there's a logical explanation for it and there's usually an action that you can take which is going to get you out of that fear feeling and get you to some sort of safety so you've got to break it down that way i think kind of the things that that scare me more than than those dangerous kind of things are just you know like living a stagnant life or living a boring life um like boredom and mediocrity fit like scare me way more than than climbing everest or being shot at and i think like i'd hate to just get to the age of like 80 or 90 years old or 100 and just turn back and just think that i've wasted time you could say like what's the most what's the most what's the thing that you feared most people might say it might be heights or whatever your sounds like it's sitting on the sofa and watching the tv and waiting for life to pass by but i do believe there's a lot of people who do work at nine to five and they want to break it they don't know how to break it and fear is probably an element of that in terms of the stepping outside of the comfort zone not having that level of security it sounds like you haven't struggled to kind of step out of your comfort zone for but for people living in nine to five what did you need to do to get out of it um do you know like just start small and you've got to like be honest with yourself right it's your choice like it's your life like no one else is going to change it so you've got to make that decision and then it's you know if you're not happy with your life and you want to change it then then do it right and and i don't know what that is what what anyone else is feeling but you know if you start small and whether it's you know you want to get in shape like start walking start trying to create habits that are that are healthy for you for your body and for your mind you know start walking join a gym join classes put yourself in these situations and this is where you grow right because you're putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation and my uncomfortable situation is completely different to someone else's uncomfortable situation and you know you could say that a million times over and career is like a big one right like that's the that's the that's the comfiest thing that people have is a career and money coming in because that's you know without money like the chances of being homeless and not being able to pay for food for your kids and your family like that's that's the biggest fear right um and i can't tell anyone to to change that you know you've just got to ask yourself whether that's something that you want to change you spoke about something there which i know you spoke about before but with struggle comes growth and i know that you do a lot of working out and you're into your fitness and you i think something that a lot of people can do is they can start to struggle in the gym on the road running in the swimming pool but how important is it to get yourself into that struggle to then expand from it yeah like i think you know going back to what we're saying before it's like the world's an easy place to live in i don't think the human body's set up to not feel struggle um you know we've struggled all our life right and if you think the reason why we're all sat in these buildings and eating good food is because we struggled in the past and that struggle has generated systems and put things in place and now i've built supermarkets and cars but that all came from struggle so good things come from struggle but it's hard to find it these days so like you know it goes back to what what i was saying before it's like struggle could just be going for a run or struggle could be reading a book or you know just doing something difficult like when i was that shy kid like struggle for me was just having a conversation with someone but like the more i do it the better i become and it's about you know if you can look back when in 10 years and just go like [ __ ] i never used to have a conversation with someone now i can walk into a room and speak to everyone openly and confidently like that's what you get from struggle right it is it does grow a lot i noticed you said that with hard times hard time to build hard men that build soft times to build soft people and i suppose that related to me in terms of children if you have them or people that you help out maybe you might have been for a hard time but then you make it more comfortable for people you said stuff like building supermarkets doctors pharmacies and stuff so people can have it easier and then they get away from the hard times and the struggle and the growth and i think doing exercise or pushing yourself in a way where the world is set up for us to live easily and have a nice life where everything's kind of accommodated for us there's still different ways we can push ourselves and struggle but then it comes from kind of us taking ourselves to the struggle rather than just being born into the struggle yeah like like i'm not saying by any means you know burn down the supermarkets and let's go back to shooting deers and picking apples from trees right but like that's the world that we've lived that we live in now um i think fitness and exercise is the easiest and best way to just find some sort of struggle and it's manageable right it's manageable it's easy you join a gym you go out for a run and you've got something to work for if you start running you can work up to a 5k or 10k marathon it's measurable you've got goals that you can tick off if you're going into a gym you can start lifting heavy and you've got you've got a measurement right that you can go off that you can see yourself getting better at something sports the same like like i surf like i can feel myself every time i go surfing getting better and better and better and that's a good feeling and then you'll notice in other areas of your life that you know changes will happen and whether it's you know confidence or whether it's in the workplace or whether it's in a relationship or whether it's just your general happiness like the more of these things that you do when you're developing yourself and getting better and better everything changes you said people often sell themselves short rather than upsell themselves and i think you spoke about you were acquiring a set of skills that were put together in a military way which then allows you to then go and do other things in life and from what you've done you you was somebody who joined the military but then after that you did probably things which required different skill sets like write a book start up a business um running a business things that you probably didn't think that neither were your kind of your kind of bag of your kind of thing to do how important is it to kind of pick yourself up rather than saw yourself short um i think it's just more for me it was more about just understanding what skills i had and um like yeah i mean you've got to look at what skills you've developed right and again it's that we live in a normal world where people associate their skills to the job role they've got or the quali qualifications that they got on university of college whereas like you know like i mean like i've gone gone and set tasks up in certain countries that's the same as setting a business up right it's just different in a way you've just got to look for different things you've got to look for connections you've got to network um you've got to buy assets or you know buy things in and and get people to do stuff here and that's the same in business the two are the same um [Music] so it's more about just understanding what you can do as a person because it's it's way more than what you think it is and you just get led to believe that all you can do is that nine to five or that job that you've got whereas actually like we live in such a world where you can just log on to a computer and learn anything that you want to learn and re-skill yourself in anything it's so easy um so yeah i am that's probably one of the things that took me kind of from where i was to where i am now is being able to identify transferable skills and if i think there's a chance that i may have may be able to do something because it's similar but in a different way it relates to something else i'll give it a go yeah and i think a lot of the time you find that like what you're saying you're capable of a lot more than you think you are but some people they get narrow sighted and can't see how some skill sets they've got could transfer into different areas writing a book for you start to finish was it an easy task or was it a hard task um i just kind of going back to what you were saying though like i think as well like everything that you see is being hard i think you know when you start making progress it starts opening doors right and then those doors open other doors and then those other doors open other doors and before long you you know before you know in no time you've kind of gone through different journeys and paths and ended up in places that you never thought you would do um but yeah writing the book was i was like it was good it was it's difficult right but it's you know it takes time and it takes a lot of you know digging up all the the memories good bad um and just kind of going through your life and and you know making sure you've got everything down completely kind of getting your story out there yeah i mean it's not an auto about autobiography like i didn't want to do an autobiography um like i feel like i've got way more in me and way more experiences and things to talk about in an autobiography later on down the line like like that's not where i'm at right now um you know and this book is more about you know this is a combination of the last 14 years of my military experience um you know i was lucky to [Music] to have a very very kinetic and fast-moving career in the military and you know joined at a time when you know the british army was under a lot of heavy fighting and uh you learn a lot of stuff during those times and it was more about me just going back through that time and just you know making a note of the systems and techniques and what's helped me get through difficult times and you know what i'd you know how i've managed to seek out opportunity and end up on some of the highest mountains in the world or building resilience and all these kind of tricks and lessons that i've learned over the last 14 years i just wanted to put them into some sort of you know dialogue with experiences that i've had and stories that have that i've experienced and and put that into the book it sounds really interesting and i i don't want you to tell me too much about what the context of the book is because people need to read the book so really get the full experience of it but it sounds like you've had a career in that career you've learned many lessons through stories or experiences and then you're kind of putting them onto paper for your own perspective of things that you've learned but in terms of your career or even maybe your life what do you think the hardest lesson you learned was hardest lesson i've learned listen to yourself um yeah listen to yourself before you listen to anyone else um and i'm not gonna go into the story because it's it's not for for this but um yeah i learned the hard way in a certain experience where i listened to some someone else and something went wrong um when i knew what i should have been doing and i should have listened to myself and you all you know yourself the outcome or what you want the outcome to be so yeah just listening to yourself a little bit more i've been thinking recently quite recent as well actually he said that i think people truly know what's right and wrong maybe for them i think deep down if any situation pops up you know the choice that you should probably make and i don't know if you'll agree with this or not but say something does go right it does go wrong but you choose to take someone else's advice and it does go wrong do you feel like even if it did go wrong and it was your choice you would sit with her you own it right like i have to own the fact that i listen to someone else which is even worse which plagues you right but then you learn those lessons the hard way um and like what you're saying like you you you know yourself where you want to go right it's like when you ask someone their opinion of something you already have the answer in your own head you're just like you're just trying to find clarification or um you just want them to agree with you so that you can go ahead and do it that's um that's something i've been thinking about a lot just recently um with special forces soldiers people think they're probably super human and the more that i've looked into it you probably think with the job that you do and what you see and what happens that you you there's a switch in the back of your head and you can just turn off your emotions and speaking to you today that's not something which seems apparent it just seems that maybe you're in control of your emotions and you're able to rational and think logically about what's going off but throughout your career have you ever had a time where emotionally you've not really been able to keep yourself intact or it's been a really tough emotional time and so how'd you get through it um is yeah so emotional time where he wasn't emotional yeah like kind of going back to what you're saying yeah i think you've got to be really self-aware and self-observant of your emotions um at the same time you know when you go overseas and when you're carrying out operations you do tend to you know like have a switch that you know when you start doing whatever whatever it is you need to do you almost like just you're able to compartmentalize those emotions um and switch them off whilst you whilst you're doing what you need to do um but you need to be self-observant and self-aware of that because i think that's probably where people could run into problems down the line you need to deal with that emotion at some stage um and yeah like i've always been pretty pretty good with that kind of stuff [Music] um there was kind of one experience that i had when uh well yeah like it was quite a you know the last three months of a tour was a quite a kinetic fast moving you know we were going out on on jobs most nights and um i'd come back from so we literally did yeah it was it was a busy time in in that in that tour and you know we were going out on multiple jobs most nights and to the point that when we did our handover our handover consisted of just going out on the ground and uh yeah you know we we've managed to do some good work and took down a took down a network in a certain area but i remember returning from that and like i i got fast-tracked usually you go and do some sort of decompression and i came back within you know i remember coming off a job that you know we did three three jobs on the bounce and then i remember coming back and jumped on a plane and flew back to the uk and i was back in 24 hours on the on the train up to up to preston to meet my then girlfriend and uh i knew inside that like something wasn't right um you know you call it ptsd or whatever but it was just like a feeling i had inside that you just gone through this you know you just gone through a massive change in environment and uh emotion and what's been going on and you literally just you know 20 hours later 24 hours later in a completely different environment it's it's a benign environment there's no danger and uh yeah it was a weird feeling i just kind of had in my head i just kind of had in my head that everything will be all right and like probably took about three weeks for me to get back to normal i didn't speak about it back then i didn't tell anyone um but like i was you know i was arguing with my girlfriend at the time like every night i found drink and help which you know isn't the right answer but it just numbed what i was feeling and uh yeah like i just had it in my head that i think the more time went on the better i felt um which just confirmed that you know eventually this will pass and i'll be fine which it did and it's just it's just a reaction that you have from going from one extreme to another right you go from fight into you know being back in you know being back in the arms of a loved one you know and she's she's telling you she loves you and you're you know you've completely switched off all your emotions inside and it's a difficult place to be yeah i suppose you're still on edge at that point it's not something where you can just completely yeah i think there's a lot of things going on right and it's hard to pinpoint exactly what's going on but you know that's a feeling that you've got inside and hey you just gotta roll with it right like at the time looking back now you know i don't think talking about talking about that kind of stuff was was in you know i don't think people did it you know if people had ptsd it was generally you know generally the the whole process of going through that was done away from the rest of the teams just because like men have never been good at sharing that kind of stuff right um and even when i was in it was it was quite taboo like no one really spoke about it you'd never confide in your mates about what you'd seen and done and like maybe you'd had a sleepless night or whatever um you know now or later on in my career it completely changed and i know there's a lot now about men's mental health and which is a great thing but at that time it was just like me on my own kind of thing but again you know i got through it and that made me a stronger stronger person was a struggle from his growth exactly i've just got some words that i just want to read out to you and it just it's just what pops into your mind when you hear the words um it's not a short thing so it's not like a one-word answer just summarize it in as many words as you want really um but the first one would be um purpose yeah like it's important to find purpose in everything that you do right and that's you know it's as important it's as important as it is in your career or in your fitness regime or your motivation um because i guess like purpose brings momentum and me personally like if i'm not moving forward and i'm stale and that's like that's my worst nightmare making sacrifices yeah like i think if you want to go anywhere in life you've got to make some sort of sacrifice you know if you think that you've got that safe comfortable job right now there's gonna be certain things that you're gonna have to sacrifice whether it's friendships you know whether it's with loved ones whether it's with family but if you wanna if you want to live but live life by your terms you've got to make these sacrifices um freedom freedom's important to me like that's freedom is probably one of the reasons why i chose to live like the life that i live now um and it's freedom of everything right freedom of um having no no one tell me what to do when i wake up in the morning and you know freedom to to pick and choose what i want to do each day and you know freedom to choose how i earn my money and freedom to choose where i travel and where i want to work from um yeah like with with freedom comes a lot of sacrifices too right energy um yeah i see energy is energy is something we've all got right we're all giving off some sort of energy and you're around some people that you know i call it drains and radiators like people are either a drain or they're a radiator and if you're a drain you know you always know that drain when you're around that person you generally come away feeling drained right that's what they do they're negative people um they're the kind of people that make excuses for what they're doing whether they're wearing the wrong boots or um you know they've not had breakfast that morning um yeah they're drains right and i think the more you're around those people the more you feel it um and then you've got radiators and radar is radio energy right you know a radiator you know when you're around someone because they're they're positive people um they've always got your back they've always got new ideas they're always doing stuff they're always wanting to move forward i think the more you can be around radiators and the less you can be around drains like the better your energy's going to be right i've never heard it explained like that before but it makes perfect sense yeah i really like that um a positive mindset um yeah like positive mindset positive mindset is important um just seeing things in a positive way it goes back to drains and radiators like you should be more more of a radiator right like you've only got to turn the media and news on now to be swarmed with negative you know negative media and negative news whether it's about covert whether it's about the u.s elections um and it's about you know surrounding yourself with good people um having goals and ambitions um and seeing every fuck-up and failure is just a positive you know everything's there to to learn you know everything's put in front of you to learn stuff to look everything's put in front of you to learn from um it's how you view the world right if you view the world in a positive mindset and you're always going to be moving forward you're always going to be creating and meeting good people excuses uh yeah like excuses are uh excuses of the devil like everyone knows someone that makes excuses for stuff that of why they can't do something right um yeah like i've always just been someone who even if you've got an excuse you just don't say it um because no one likes someone who uses excuses it's just weakness i think that's right as well i think we was going to be a bit late today um it was a little bit late and i just thought to myself there's no point telling you why we're going to be late we've got about seven minutes late don't know just get them on time and if you're not gonna get it on time just take it don't make an excuse for it because it doesn't [ __ ] change the outcome really does it yeah and it creates like a dual mindset right because like you end up if you if you work with those kind of people and you're like oh i'm late but we you know we we stopped at the services and uh johnny had a shirt and like yeah we're late uh and then the kind of people that received that and then like well you know i don't know i just feel like you know if you just own your fuck-ups right like we weren't late because you know we're just not late like yeah no dramas like everyone's late right yeah yeah failure um a fairly i think failure is something that you should be seeking um because you to do anything that puts you out of your comfort zone you're gonna [ __ ] up every now and then and that is you know that's failure right um you know you shouldn't aim to fail but you know failure should be a byproduct of what you're doing um because like i look back at some of the stuff i've done that i've i've you know what you would see as my biggest failures in life and that's where you learn the most like you learn the big lessons right from failing just like listening to myself instead of listening to other people um soldier that's booked by j martin um yeah soldier soldiers yeah soldiers are just you know people that put themselves in a career choice um they're hard people you know they've got a hard job good sense of humor um yeah i spent 14 years as well you should know pretty well yeah i've got one more um one foot in front of the other yeah i think um you know we're all searching for some sort of momentum and progress in life and you get that from just sticking one foot in front of the other um whether it's fitness whether it's career just keep moving forward success is hard to define right i think success is someone else's opinion of you because i think people are trying to find success will never get get to success because they're constantly searching for it i think other people's opinion of someone might go that person is successful i've agreed with that yeah and i'm say just just one more just because you mentioned that um quite interested in the ptsg is there something specifically that like a specific moment you remember yourself and what was if you do what was the growth or one that sticks out and what was the growth that you gained yeah um so yeah ptsg like well you know i think it was that 2006 tour right 21 years old and you know we had six months of just constant fighting like literally you know we're based at a place called sangin um which was probably one of the you know probably one of the most kinetic most dangerous places in afghanistan and yeah we're just going out and scrapping every day and um like i see i've seen some guys get you know get affected by quite a few things and i came back and i had a bit of shell shock like you know where you hear bangs and makes you jump um and that probably lasted for like the remainder of my career but in terms of weird one i'm just coming back and thinking about like i remember seeing like guys eyes change right like after certain incidents and then they just went downhill and came back from that tour and just started drinking and um i just i like questioning myself and just asked like why i didn't go down that path and instead i kind of came back with just a view on the world that was completely different and i don't know like you grow up a lot and i felt like i'd mentally aged 10 years um it's hard to define right that ptsg and it probably happens differently for everyone else but it was more just about the perspective that i had when i came back from that tour and just you know i felt like a better person because of what had happened it's crazy how you say people's eyes go and you can you can recognize and you can see that that person's probably changed forever now or first for for a definite period of time and then the other way it goes either way i suppose he goes what's our positive mindset and he's always negative is always a positive yeah it's a hard one to pin down right because i think without going too psychological because i'm not an expert but i think a lot of a lot of reasons for people going one way or the other way is down to genetics it's down to you know childhood and the way they were brought up and what they've been exposed to prior to to that incident happening and then that incident happens right and you can either go one way the other way i remember like literally seeing this bloke kill he was involved in this this scrap and i think they killed three people and i remember chatting to him afterwards and i was like like his eyes just look different and his character and demeanor and uh you know i'm never gonna name names or anything like that but i bumped into him a while back and he's just still the same it's quite sad from that one moment i think i believe similar to you i think that the kind of experiences and genetics that you go through as a in your early years kind of build coping mechanisms which then when you get into certain situations if you've not developed kind of healthy ones or being supposed to too much when you're younger you can revert back to poor coping mechanisms and it can push over the edge yeah it's like i mean we only know what we feel like right we don't know what anyone else feels like and everyone else has got their own struggles and insecurities and problems and we all love them even like the most confident of people on the outside you know there's some suffering going on on the inside um and you just put people put that face on right and you think that person's invincible but yeah like i said like everyone's got something going on inside whether it's that shy chunky kid or whether it's something completely different you don't know whose internal dialogue is in their mind but in a way it benefits you yeah in a way yeah yeah yeah and you know what just being like self-aware and just being aware of of that guy going that way right and like i don't want to go that way i don't want to constantly have resentment for stuff that i've done or for the military like i wanted to go the other way right like the military don't owe me [ __ ] like they don't owe me anything they gave me an amazing life like i'm grateful for that i'm grateful for every experience that i've had because i've learned from it in one way or another and that's sent me in a different direction you

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Id: buU3cMUCV_0

Length: 65min 3sec (3903 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020