Life Changing Advice From An Ex Special Forces Soldier - Toby Guttridge (Former UKSF)

unfortunately one of the rounds took me right through the neck and hit me straight through the spinal cord anyway yeah two weeks later yeah i was back on the ground uh unbelievable and yeah back on the ground and then unfortunately uh and this is where it gets quite serious and quite i guess maybe a little bit more but um life-changing mate yeah life-changing moment yeah another big job came out ended up in a massive firefight game we forced through some compounds regards to the compound where they were inside we we couldn't blow in because apparently there were children on target so we had to kind of kick down the drawer just down the door made a lot of noise you came through the door literally there was a bloke standing probably 10 meters away and um he just opened fire he was pitch black he was shooting into the dock you just hear the noise and uh unfortunately one of the rounds took me right through the neck and hit me straight to the spinal cord straight through the middle of the neck in my spinal cord and now that's that was the first memory i woke up in a neurosurgical ward in birmingham queen elizabeth and to be honest i was under so much sedation i didn't have a clue what was going on i went straight into the uh fear training mode i thought i was being interrogated and they were pumping me full of drugs the other information and i wasn't talking to anyone um it was yeah name ranked number and that was it that was it um and i mean yeah i was having a full-on go at them came in and he was like yeah coach you haven't been catching me this is what's happened and and just explain the whole situation and that that was when it dawned on me and then they called in the surgeon explained my injury my injury and i i had to try and deal with that i try and process that how do you how did you try and deal with that this is the father i struggle with the most yeah i lost my career i lost my my physical ability which i prided myself on um it was what made me who i who i was and i completely lost so you know i'd never walk again i'd never talk uh well as a farmer i thought i'd never talk anything from the neck down i felt like i lost everything and i had no idea where to go from there so i woke up and they were like yeah well thank you ma'am your career is over your physical ability everything is now so now i have to think who am i who am i where am i where do i go from yeah i'll be honest i didn't want to the first time in my life where i thought well that's it i'm done i'm done um you might as well switch our machine off now um because i i've got nothing left to give i already don't and it is it is hard for me to talk about it um because i felt like i gave up at that moment yeah and there are points where i did i remember lying on my side one night i could feel the air running out of my running out of my body what it actually happened my left lung neck collapsed and i was slowly suffocating and it's hard for me to actually say it so it's the first time where i thought i don't care that that's journey you know after that it took a pretty long time to come right i'm not going to say it was a short fixed um gap i was in attack large quartz or staring into no man's land and it took me to look deep inside me and go right what are my three core values that i know are me they were determined um passionate software i remember the third one was but um i made the decision then there that uh i was gonna keep going no matter what and then it started coming back to me you know it came back to me that i'm just going to keep taking one step forward and i will take accountability for myself this is what's happened you can either deal with it accept it and try move forward or you can take the other route which is despair blame everyone blame the world find an excuse for why everything is rubbish and i didn't want to be that person so yeah so yeah i took the right hand right and i decided this is what i'm gonna do i talk about resilience with quite a lot of organizations and um people think it's a word that is kind of you are resilient or not and you know i understand that it's it's a wave you're gonna have good days you're gonna have bad days you're gonna have bad weeks you're gonna have bad months you're gonna have a bad year um but you can have good as well and the kind of resilience is just taking those steps moving forward it's it's resetting realigning who am i what i've heard there is you've looked into yourself who am i what do i stand for this is what i'm going to continue doing and uh that's important and that's clearly been uh the cause for your success what you've got now so

Channel: Duratus UK

Views: 302

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: UKSF, Special Forces, SOF, Toby Guttridge, Bravery, Royal Marines, RM, Para, Parachute regiment, sas, sbs, special boat service, resilience, duratus, duratus uk, mindset, extreme sports, military, veteran, how to adapt to cope with sudden change, sudden change, adapt, adapt to survive, elite mindset, motivation, how to cope with change, accountability, how to show accountability, advice, motivate, life changing

Id: iCayZAgFnFQ

Length: 6min 0sec (360 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021