Ed Jackson | Extraordinary Life Stories

0:12Ed, welcome. thanks for having me looking forward to it yeah me too tell me who is ed jackson oh that's a good question um and it's changed quite a lot over the years i think as we'll probably get into but um ed these days i suppose is someone who i mean i always think to answer this like how would your friends describe you or how would your family describe you um i think i'm good fun my mum might describe me as a bit too adventurous but my friends would describe me as adventurous i'm a husband my wife's a very important part of my life I suppose that's it I mean if you got into the things I do then we could be here all day but you know well let's do that because there's there's a number of different things that have that you've achieved that you've done but there's a significant moment a kind of life before life after an accident which you can talk me through yeah so my life before to give it context I was a professional rugby player for 10 years um that was everything I knew that was my whole identity it was great I was the young lad who got to do PE for a living basically you know going around in the field with his mates but then at the age of 28 that all came to a bit of a sudden conclusion when I was at a family friend's house and I was recovering from a shoulder injury after lunch I went down to the swimming pool and had a feature pool with a waterfall in one end took my t-shirt off dived in where the waterfall hit the water thinking it was eight to ten feet deep turned out to only be three feet deep so I hit my head so hard on the bottom of the pool that um it dislocated the bottom of my neck and I mean if anyone knows you know any doctors out there c6 c7 vertebrae dislocated the disc in between exploded and it rendered me completely paralyzed from the shoulders down instantly which of course is pretty terrifying when you're in a pool when you're underwater I mean terrifying anyway and at first you're fully conscious at this point fully conscious I mean I was dazed because I'd hit my head so hard but I didn't lose consciousness and at first I was like just confused as to why I couldn't move but then you know that confusion quickly turned to panic because I thought I'm gonna drown fortunately my dad and another friend were there they pulled me to the surface of the pool um but ambulance came 45 minutes later went went into hospital actually transpired that that ambulance journey I had to be resuscitated three times so very lucky to be here at all to be honest never mind doing what I'm doing today and then I woke up after a seven hour operation and nothing had changed I was completely paralyzed from the shoulders down and a week passed of a lot of soul searching and a lot of you know fear and anxiety of like what does this mean for the rest of my life what have I done to my family and my friends and all of these sorts of things and was I ever going to be able to walk again and the doctor came in a week after said look we've done all of your test results the Asia test American spinal injury assessment and your prognosis is you're never going to walk again we're hoping you can get the use of your arms back so you can use a wheelchair and yeah that was it I was staring down the barrel of life in a wheelchair which was kind of the exact opposite of what I had been doing for my whole life my whole identity was being physical and being you know able and you know being a sportsman and now I was the complete opposite and it was interesting though because in that moment when he told me that I remember him saying the word we hope you can get these arms back so you can be independent and the word independence was the thing that really you know obviously it was like getting punched in the stomach and getting winded hearing those words you never think you would but actually I realized that point it wasn't just about me it was about anyone that was going to have to care for me for the rest of my life.

3:57And my mum was in the room, my wife's in the room, they're both in tears. And I remember thinking, I've got to do everything I can to try and get out of this situation, or at least to try and get my independence back, so that it doesn't have to affect them as much as it's affecting me. And it was incredibly motivating, still terrifying, I still didn't think it was actually going to happen, because the doctor had told me categorically, I just knew that in six months time or a year's time, if I'm still in this situation, and my wife's having to care for me full-time whatever it might be I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror unless I'd known I'd done everything I could because then it was out of my hands so what can you do because at that point you've been told by a professional you're not going to walk again and you might be able to get some independence if you get your arms working you've obviously I think it's really key to say that that competitiveness that sort of fitness as well both mentally and physically that you've built up through being a professional sportsman must have been a huge asset to you to get through then what must have been such a difficult time to have walked in here today having done countless adventures since but at that moment you were told you would never do that again so what can you do what did you do have you ever seen the film kill bill yes you all you can do is stare at your toes and will them to move and you can like you can still send the messages in fact if you close your eyes because your body still thinks it's moving because it hasn't got time to readjust to the disability and um you i I'd close my eyes, move my toes, I'd try and move my toes and open them, nothing would be happening.

5:25I'd do this for like an hour. You had nothing else to do, right? Nothing. So you can laser focus on that. Yeah. And then you pass out of sleep after an hour because you're like so exhausted from, even though you're not even moving, just that, the level of energy and attention that you're putting into it far, you know, outweighed anything I'd done in professional sport before that, which is crazy to think, you know, you're just neurologically exhausting yourself. and it was only 36 hours later that one of those times I tried to move my toes and open it my toe was wiggling did you believe it no no no I closed my eyes again I was like and then I just remember being like I shouted for my mum who's in the corridor I was like mum come in I think my toe is moving because I was having spasms and stuff I thought it might be that but sure enough it was wiggling and then you know that that was just all bets are off then because it doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to be back walking again the odds were still very much against me but it meant there was still a connection past the level of injury so in my mind everything the doctor had told me after that point was complete rubbish which of course it wasn't he was just basing it on test results which he was right to do but I just clung on to that and just pushed and bit by bit you know my body started to come back to me after sort of two months I stood in a standing frame after four months I checked myself out of hospital I was still using the wheelchair up until about seven or eight months but then using a frame after that and then after 12 months I climbed my first mountain you know hobbled up it my first mountain yeah my first mountain and you know just to give a bit of context I'm where I am today eight years later I'm um I've still I'm a walking quadriplegic which is a technical term incomplete quadriplegic my whole body's affected all my limbs left side poor movement but good sense uh good sensation right side good movement poor sensation then all the underlying health things that go on with spinal cord injury, bladder, bowel function issues, temperature regulation issues, spasms, all of this stuff that people don't see when you see someone in a wheelchair or whatever, and you think it's just a movement thing.

7:22I live with day to day, but to be honest, because in that moment when I was told I was never going to walk again, and all I'd set my eyes on was independence, everything after that has been a bonus. And I would have thought that any one of these things, I'm not being able to use my left hand again or having to wear a bag because a urine drainage bag would ruin my life if you told professional rugby player Ed but because of the context the whole situation how fortunate I know I am to be here at all you know it frames it completely differently and I do feel very lucky yeah I can tell and you can see that in your eyes you you look alive there's a whole spark there and it's an interesting concept for me where some of the people I've met that are the most alive have had a near-death experience, or something they've had to battle and overcome.

8:07It could have been that they've been diagnosed with cancer, and they've been told that they're not going to come out of this. And then they've come through, and then you're with those people, and you can feel the energy. You can feel that everything they choose to do, every day they're living, they're maxing it. Is that how you see your life now? Yeah, absolutely. And you'd never go and recommend people dive in the wrong end of the swimming pool or have near-death experiences. But there is some, you know, there's post-traumatic stress, but there's also post-traumatic growth for a lot of people.

8:34They'll go one way or the other. And I know a lot of people who've had near-death experiences and have had that context put on their life. I'm fortunate enough to work on the Paralympics quite a lot. And there's a lot of people there who have had these big life experiences. And if you genuinely have to contemplate your own mortality, which I've done twice, where I genuinely thought my life was over, like full-heartedly thought it was over, and then it's not, you just appreciate your life way more when you come out the other side, whatever it might look like. And it's not something you ever consider before.

9:04You know, it's not, it gives you that frame of reference and that sense of gratitude that I never had before to just be able to walk down the stairs or drive a car or get on the tube, you know. I find that interesting to me is there's a purpose. So before you had your accident, you were striving to be the best you could be for your team, for your rugby and other things in your life because you're competitive and kind of that was driving you then your purpose becomes can I wiggle my toes to ultimately can I climb a mountain and I'll come to that because there must be so many other things you still want to achieve but is there is there a message there that someone listening and watching to this that's really struggling with their own motivation and ultimately discipline in their life and actually is it that lack of purpose and finding it as you say no one wants to dive into a swimming pool and do themselves the injury but how do you find your purpose because I know you have a lot of people now come to you for inspiration you started putting stuff out on social media and people came to you saying you know you've inspired me you've given me hope yeah I know that you turned that into gosh I have a responsibility now I have you know I have a message if you like that I'm giving out that's helping people how do people find their purpose when they are not afflicted by an injury yeah it's a good question I think I thought my purpose was being a rugby player you know that's the thing my identity was wrapped up in but obviously it wasn't it was just now I know it's just something I did and something I'm very grateful to have done but when the slate got wiped clean and I had to lie there and go right Ed who really are you like what are your values what do you enjoy doing and I had this it was a weird gift to get given this clean slate to start again because by the time we get to our 20s 30s 40s normally society is molders is it was put us in lanes and we think that that's our purpose or we're feeling purposeless we're an accountant because we were good at maths and then that's just the route we went down and we're feeling a lack of purpose but I believe that purpose is built not found it's not something you just stumble across one day and it's not something that other people have got it and you haven't I think it's in the way when you interact with the world on a daily basis and to do that you've got to understand your values like what is important to you you know for me it's work ethic it's also being kind to other people it's having fun and if I approach life in all the situations with those things in mind you know if I'm passionate about something I work hard towards it I'll try and have fun where I can and I'll be kind to other people treat them the way I want to be then all of then the universe kind of takes care of the way the rest and I don't think we need to think too big and think oh one day I might find my purpose or I won't it's like just start interfacing with the world in line with your own values and the rest will unfold that's powerful that's very much being present as well isn't it that's actually being turning it internal I think so many people are so quick to put the TV on an evening and watch Love Island and disappear into a sort of non-reality, if you like, actually spending time on yourself, asking yourself questions.

12:03And you had the time to do that. You had no choice, if you like, but you also then turned that into a purpose. In terms of role models, I sort of use that word responsibility. We were talking off camera before about the need for, particularly in the world of boys and men, that sort of lost identity, almost a crisis there in boys growing up, not feeling needed and feeling society kind of almost brings them into it. How do you go about sort of trying to almost be that role model back into society? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the main things that I try and do is speak about the things that men aren't comfortable to speak about, but I know they struggle with being vulnerable, you know, and I was the opposite because I was a rugby player we were literally taught to not show any weakness if you're injured don't let the opposition know and now i work um i would work as a trustee of restart who look after all the professional rugby players and the mental health issues involved in the game you know are massive because of this still inability to to talk about the things you're struggling with and for some reason this masculine tie between struggling with something is weakness or but talking about everyone struggles with stuff but and being able to talk about your vulnerabilities is a strength you know not hiding it but you're right the the bad role models make more noise and they're easier to cling on to and there's so many amazing role models out there and they came out of the woodwork for me massively when I was in hospital I was lucky I had a bit of a shop window having been a rugby player and there were some people who had been through accidents before former Paralympians but not just that just amazing human beings who would reach out and I could tell them what I was really struggling with and I could I could tell them the things that I didn't want to tell my family and friends because I didn't want to upset them you know telling them I you know I don't want to be here anymore I'm going to be a burden on people and they'd be like this completely normal to think like that don't worry things get better and I just wanted to pay that forward you know and that that is what I know how much it helped me because I've been on the receiving end and then that's why I started the charity it's why I do the mentoring I do it's because I know how powerful it is and it's it's a humbling position to be in to be able to impact someone's life like that from a point of experience but it is a responsibility as well because i'm quite an empathetic bloke and it's like you you speak on an almost on a daily basis to people or families who are going through very traumatic experiences so it's a blessing and a curse in equal measure not an equal measure it's much more of a blessing than a curse but it's a responsibility that i take on you embrace it embrace it because that's where i get my purpose from yeah you know how if your if your life benefits other people whether that's a lot of people find purpose in their their kids right because they're turning them into better humans or the work you do if it helps other people i think we're set up as humans to you know to be part of the tribe and to add something to other people around us so if we can start doing things that are in service to that and that's why a lot of my friends who work you know crazy jobs in the city and own good money so they're doing something good for their family i'm like focus on the life you're giving to your kids not the fact you hate your job and your boss and also you know do stuff outside of work that go and volunteer you know you can find a sense of purpose from that you don't need to like just sack everything off and go and live in the mountains in a cave and meditate you know i love that and actually that tribal element yeah that means talk about strength um in vulnerability you not wanting to show weakness in a in a team of very macho yeah strong rugby players you know that that element of being thrown out of the tribe is probably where this whole historic behavior has come from.

15:37Exactly. I'd rather not show any sort of weakness and be vulnerable. Yeah. Another key part of that is always needing a challenge. So it sounds like that you've sort of built an amazing habit, if you like, from having hope from wiggling the toes to then be able to come back into a way that you can start thinking about what am I going to do next? How important are challenges for you both to not just get, I'll say the word attention for the charity and so on but also for your mental health i mean massive i mean when i first did snowden uh when it was the highest mountain in wales a year after my accident i didn't actually think i'd get to the top but i just wanted to send a message to other people in hospital that i've been told i was never going to walk again and i'm back on my feet but then that whole journey was just life-changing because i stood on the top of the mountain nine hours after setting off and it was just being outdoors but also being amongst other people achieving something that i didn't think I was going to be able to achieve before then I got the bug and that's obviously taken me all over the world to the Himalayas and it's given me a space to not just raise awareness for spinal cord injury and disability in those environments and try and inspire some other people but for me to heal myself like the headspace the emotional side of my healing that's been affected by that as well as the physical is massive and I you know it's true in life you know if you want to grow and improve and have that sense of progress which is linked which is definitely linked to purpose you know people who are stagnant whatever they're doing will probably feel a lack of purpose then it's a good environment to do that because I'm not very good at it I'm still quite new to it I'm getting to do it with some amazing people some of the best climbs in the world so every day my improvement curve is so steep and that's that's immensely rewarding and then having the ability to take others with me now who are in similar positions it was a community is amazing how builds that community.

17:24Yeah. Because in the rugby days, you'd have been training to the next game. You'd been training for tournament. So you had a focus. That was the challenge. But the daily habits and the strength training and all that, which was building you physically and maintaining you physically, was also helping your brain. So there must have been a really crushing time during that sort of rehabilitation period where knowing you may not be able to ever do that again. I don't know how you got through that. I don't know what got you through that. because you mentioned people came to see you role models if you like that said you and you were sharing these thoughts of um yeah i don't want to be here yeah you know i want to take you back to that moment where you're coming through a period where you've got your wife you've got family you've got people but how alone did you feel and how did you pull yourself out of that yeah i mean i did feel very alone especially at night during the day you get the distractions of your family and friends and you put a brave face on for them and actually that's really useful you kind of embody that and at night you're by yourself and the thought you met your you know your brain naturally goes down negative routes and it's terrifying so I learned to work on mindfulness you know distraction tactics but also trying to stay as present as possible because I found I was eating myself up and this is still a tool I use to this day thinking about where am I going to be in five or ten years time or what could I have done differently to not be in this position now which which are both reasonably pointless things to be doing if you're just lying there staring at the ceiling because i'm not actually you can't change it i'm not impacting the future at all so i learned from going to i want to walk again turning to i want to move the third finger on my right hand a little bit more today and then that would be a win i'll go right now a second finger and then um so turning those goals into much more short-term goals and having the long-term dreams as aspirations and not fixed goals because i find if they're fixed goals and this is the same with mountains you're just disappointed when you don't achieve it but if they're aspirations and you see them as part of the journey flags in the sand to make sure you keep moving in the right direction and keep those daily habits going and keep improving you'll end up in way better places than you thought in the first place and that I learned that all in hospital very early on when I was sort of just completely crippled by the thoughts of the past and the thoughts of the future to actually just go what can I control today and see where it takes me and it's taken me places that were never part of the plan like I'm doing loads of stuff that I just never imagined I'd ever be doing are you coming up with these or are people giving you ideas bit of both like I'm running a marathon soon there's a three-legged race with a mate he's bonkers that was his idea I'm like okay I'm just going to do that um on the mountaineering side the ideas come from all over the place um but from you know writing books to starting the charity to the things that actually are my careers now all of those just evolved from what I said before about trying to align my values saying yes to opportunities that feel right to me rather than because I was like there's no way I can write a book like that's ridiculous I'm not an author the imposter syndrome was screaming at me and like the thought now that I present on live tv would have terrified rugby player Ed I remember I used to be captain of our team at school and someone else had to give the team talks in the changing room because I couldn't even speak in like in a room full of my own peers so to now think that I'm presenting in front of you know the Paralympics millions of people is baffling but it was just getting it's pushing outside that camisole a little bit more a little bit more and then you end up somewhere you never thought you would is there any challenge that you've got is almost like your north star is there one thing you really like to do that might actually be potentially not attainable but you're like I want to do it different different things in different walks of life but mountaineering wise have actually got a big trip in august this year to kyrgyzstan to try and climb a mountain that's never been climbed before by any human so it'd be the first time there's been a first ascent of a mountain by someone with a disability obviously um and that would be fun because then you get to name the mountain if you get to the top so there might be some sort of social media poll for end up with a boating with boat face situation but um no that that to me is a proper adventure because we are walking into a valley an upper glacier that no humans have walked on before um and so it will be like being a you know old school explorer in that sense so that's really exciting and then professionally i just want to keep the charity moving in the right direction like it's in a great place at the moment tell me more about the charity just anyone watching listening that doesn't know what you're doing yes the charity is called millimeters to mountains and um we help young adults overcome trauma by using the outdoors and adventure and that trauma can be physical or psychological and we've also set up a network of walking groups across the country called together outdoors where people who people who are either going through trauma themselves or are the support network of those going through trauma can just get together um for walks um so it's using the outdoors as a healing tool for mental health.

22:24I love that. There must have been, from a journey point of view to where you are now, which is looking super healthy and bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, if you like, if you could go back to the morning of the accident and not have the outcome of what happened to you and be living a life that, as far as you're concerned, at that point would be normal, would you change it? No, definitely not. How long did it take you to get to probably answering that? so the caveat to that is obviously if i could keep all of the things i'm doing now and the psychological the growth in terms of what i understand and how i approach life and the gratitude and the perspective obviously i would take away the fact that i don't have to wear a plaid bag and i don't have spasms at night and things like that however obviously that's not life you know you get the whole package or not and it's not even close you know now i think after a couple probably about two years once the charity started and i started to really see an impact of what we were doing on other people's lives I actually said to myself on the top of Snowdon if enough good can come from this situation for other people then by definition I can change it from a bad thing that happened diving in the pool and break my neck to a good thing literally by definition because enough more good than bad has come from it and that was the mission we set out on and I'd pleased to say that that tipping point for me happened probably six years ago now.

23:44that's cool because yeah there must there must be plenty of people and particularly that you help within the the charity and that really struggle with that and like you say looking over your shoulder i'm i'm guilty of certain things that happened to me and i'm frustrated with myself about how much i'm looking over my shoulder and i can't change it yeah and that mindset that you have to you have to it's a discipline like you have to work on it and have those conversations with yourself and seek probably people around you and knowledge to be like, right, face forward, renew and refresh your purpose.

24:13And one of the things we talked about just earlier was sort of community. You use social media as a force for good. You've built a really loyal tribe of people that love what you put out. That started organically, didn't it? You didn't, you didn't look at it. I think you started putting stuff out. I remember watching a podcast and reading about you prior to today. And you were just starting to share how you're feeling, again, being vulnerable and then that drew people to you because I think so many people are inauthentic on social media and trying to be something they're not you just you just put out how you were feeling how you were struggling that's built your community how much do you value that yes I mean it's massively important it was really hard to do for me in the early stages because I was keeping voice notes and I was in hospital to help me get to sleep which were private then my friend I woke up one afternoon my friend was reading them all and and he was like you should make some of these public because it might help someone one day and i was like absolutely no way because i was still in old rugby player head mode don't show any vulnerability then my wife got involved and then i had to do it and then uh and then and then i realized how beneficial it was you know you saw the change as you put it out yeah and it was like it was at the start it wasn't there it was there to help others i thought but actually all of a sudden i get these messages from people self-therapy who become my support network and i felt the benefit myself of sharing being open and honest and it's something I continue to do and and there's you know there's never anything disingenuous I've put on social media try and share when I'm struggling or when it's going well and I think it's you're right a lot of people do end up creating that divide because they'll find a bit of attention for something that they've done and then they'll chase it and I think that's dangerous because you'll end up creating a chasm between who you genuinely are and who your social media profile is I'm quite happy to say that mine's one and the same so um i do really value the support network we've got i've got to make some amazing people that follow and they also come to real life events as well that's the amazing thing because of the charity and the walks we run you get to meet a lot of these people too so i'm very grateful for it and it also does keep the pressure on to keep doing it like some of these mountains accountability i'm halfway up them and i'm like why am i doing this again but um to motivate myself to do the next one i'll just announce it and actually start fundraising for it and then I've got no choice.

26:30Yeah, I thought that I was going to say there's an accountability. It's not just you. Yeah. When you started to be able to wiggle your toes, you had that hope, you had an opportunity to believe that you could change the outcome of what the doctor had said. A lot of people at that point would just be happy with probably recovering. When did you start to plan adventures and start going back to the old mindset, coupled with the new mindset of showing that I can now climb a mountain? That's a good question, because I was trying not to think too far ahead for the obvious reasons of getting frustrated because recovering from something neurological takes years i mean i'm still recovering eight years later so you don't know when it's going to stop so you don't want to try and get too ahead of yourself a wiggling toe might have been all i'd let i'd ended up with um so i was just focusing right wiggling toe now try and move my leg now try and stand in the standing frame bit by bit i never imagined i'd be hanging off the side of mountains like really didn't didn't cross my mind until it gets there and i think it was actually snowed in after a year where I was like okay let's see how high we can go keep pushing keep pushing and I think it's important to still have those goals but try and keep them I think it really should stay aspirational and then keep them as dreams which is hard because if you get too fixated on a goal you know if you get there you're like great but then if you don't get there it's a bit demoralizing and I think it's probably a good thing to to kind of wrap our conversation up with, if you like, is that, you know, if you, with all this experience and perspective you've got now and the charity set up to help people with trauma and so on, is there one piece of advice, is there one thing you'd say to someone if they just suffered an accident, had something happen to them where they're in that crisis period and they could be feeling, you know, really down, really lost, life shattered, what can you say to them?

28:13It's going to be okay. I think the pendulum of them always swings I love that saying and in as long as you don't give up at the back end of the swing just time will bring it back through and if you know if you've got to make me say one thing to them that's what I'd say obviously there's lots of other things I would say like speak to people take your time it's okay to be feeling like this but I think the most important thing is to realize that it's going to be okay because in those moments it feels like the world's ended it literally feels like there's no hope and you might as well give up but it will come back Well, I've been looking forward to this chat.

28:48I already knew you were an inspiration, but it's been such an inspirational conversation. Thank you so much. Pleasure. Cheers.