Jason Fox: Approaching life with a Special Forces mindset (E264)

0:28Watch it early on the High Performance App. certain point where they feel that they're superhuman to whatever it is that they're dealing with. If I was told 15 years ago that I would be doing this job, I'd bang myself out. That is Jason Fox. This is High Performance, the show that unlocks the minds of the most fascinating people on the planet. I'm Jake Humphrey, and alongside Damien Hugh, as we learn from the stories, struggles, and successes of our guests, allowing us all to find High Performance. and we know that Jason Fox or Foxy as he's known has had an incredible career. He's well known on UK TV screens.

1:05He was a member of the special forces. That's what he's done, how he's done it and why he's done it isn't discussed often enough until now. Prepare to meet the Jason Fox that you didn't even know existed as we welcome Foxy to high performance. However, first, a few messages from our valued partners, allowing us to give you this content for free.

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3:15Well, Jason, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on. I'm like, I'm super excited. I'm almost like, I can't believe I'm here. I'm also scared. You scared? Yeah, just, I don't know. You've had like big hitters on this show. We'll talk about fear in a minute, actually, because it plays a big part in your new book. But before we get there, I want to know from you, with the experience you've had in the military, the experience you've had in media, the experience you've had of civilian life since leaving the military, what do you now believe high performance is? High performance is operating in your chosen environment, your chosen industry, your chosen profession, whatever it may be, to the highest level and in a state that you're able to deal with anything that's thrown at you, whether that's a failure point on your part or an unexpected occurrence or eventuality.

4:12Very few people listening to this will live the life that you've lived, right? how much of what you've learned and seen in your military days is relevant to the people listening to this the likes of damien and myself to parents to colleagues to friends to children i'm no different to having anyone listening or watching this all you guys i grew up as a normal kid

4:38extremely uninspiring person i believe and i was able to go out and i learned an awful lot and i experience an awful lot primarily in the military and i've and everything that i learned and experienced in the military has helped me with other things the harder things that we all go through and i think it is it's all relevant so one of the one of the references in your first book jason is about when your daughter was born and you say she was born with with with difficulties at birth. And I'm interested in, you also describe yourself at times in the special forces as feeling almost superhuman. So how do you bridge that gap between somebody that's born maybe with challenges and that superhuman state?

5:25What are the characteristics that you learn that you have in common? What we have in common is we're all human, regardless of how we come into this world and what we go on to do. And because of that, we are susceptible to emotion, we're susceptible to outside influence, which creates the emotion within us. And the superhuman bit was just me understanding that I could control how I operated and responded to things, not necessarily, I don't like the word react, react's not great, but responded to things that I was trained to do. I think that anyone can get to a certain point where they feel that they're superhuman to whatever it is that they're dealing with.

6:14For example, my daughter has managed to get to the age of 19 now under extremely difficult circumstances. And I believe that she, in her world, in her environment, is superhuman. She's worked out how to do that. And she has overcome probably way more than I'll ever have to or hope to experience. So if you were to boil it down, what are the same characteristics that you achieved in the military that your daughter's achieved in facing her challenges? Finding the resilience to bounce back from difficult situations and work out what your superhuman is, I suppose. She doesn't know that, but she as an individual has worked out how to deal with constantly being in and out of hospital, nearly dying on numerous occasions, and also how to deal with not really understanding the people around her because we communicate in different ways and she sees the world through different lenses.

7:17But she's managed to get herself to a point where she's extremely happy and she knows what she needs to do to keep herself in that state, regardless of what gets thrown at her. And how much of the things that you learned in the military, where you went from what you said as a deeply unspectacular young man to suddenly being a member of the elite special forces, what did you learn in that period that you needed when, as a parent, which is the biggest fear of all of us, you're faced with the loss of a child, you're in and out of hospital, you're totally out of control in so many ways. It was all the softer stuff.

7:53So you join up as a young recruit and you think it's all about how to strip your weapon down in 10 seconds and put it back together blindfolded and how to move from one piece of cover to another. You think it's all about the tactics and yet it's the first thing that they pretty much teach you is to embrace a culture to live by. and all military units do it and they all have their own version of it. It just so happens that I joined the Marines so that's the one that sticks in my head. There's the ethos but there's also something that they call the spirit, the commando spirit and it's made up of four parts and they basically drum it into you.

8:34You've got courage, determination, unselfishness and cheerfulness in the face of adversity. It was that that taught me how to deal with the more difficult things in my life. I've taken that on board and I've applied it to my career but then once you come outside of that or you're still within that but you operate outside of that sort of arena my kid gets bored and I'm like, hang on a minute I need to find the courage here to deal with this uncomfortable situation I've not been taught how to deal with this at all and I actually look back on it and it has had a massive impact on me I think I've been scarred by how it all happened the birth and you know so on and so forth but i needed to find courage there to sort of like work out how i was going to become comfortable with it i had to have the determination now i don't believe i got it right to be fair because that relationship that i had with her name's mia her mum it didn't last and that was because i didn't get right how i was supposed to be dealing with that thing happening.

9:44And it took a while, don't get me wrong. But I was still trying to find my way. But it did at the time involve, you know, there was courage needed, there was determination. The unselfishness bit is where I mucked up. That's where I mucked up. Say more on that. So in the military, unselfishness is about making sure that you put yourself before, no, put yourself, put everyone else before you. You make sure that they're okay. and at first, so I joined up at 16, you're like, I can remember thinking, I can't even iron my own clothes in time, let alone look after these lot. But then when you sort of look into it, you suddenly realise, hang on, there's all these lot are looking out for me, so I don't need to worry about me and I'll do the same for them.

10:28The bit where I mean I've mucked up there is because I wasn't thinking about other people. I was trying to work out how I dealt with my child and I wasn't thinking about the other person in the relationship. I wasn't bothered. I was still thinking about my career and I think I definitely didn't get the balance right and that's where I mucked up there. And you said the fourth one was about cheerfulness in the face of adversity. Yeah. How do you deal with that? So that is about everyone thinks it's about having a laugh which I am up for. In fact I try to apply it to most things I do. But it's more about finding the silver lining to every dark cloud.

11:12And I am pretty... I believe I'm quite good at that. I went through a period where I wasn't. But that's one thing I did get right, I believe, when my daughter was born. And how did you find a silver lining in that? She was still alive. She's in the capable hands of the people that brought her into this world. I'm here. Her mum's brilliant. I took a lot of positives from the fact that she was in a bit of a state to begin with. It's just the unselfishness thing I got wrong. I'd like to talk about this real world thing. Damien read some interesting stuff about the work that you've done outside of the military.

11:55And I think both of us were intrigued about what someone who's been in that precise world of preparation and camaraderie and attention to detail, What does someone like that think when they come into our world? How most of us operate and the businesses that you've been in and the things that you've seen? I found it difficult coming out of the military. It was because I just struggled with the fact that I lacked identity and I lacked a sense of belonging. And I've moved out of that. And when I first moved out of that, I was like, what is my identity? What is my sense of belonging? And I couldn't really connect with people because they spoke differently.

12:34You have your own language. They spoke differently. They had different priorities, and they just did business slightly differently. I was responsible for people within a work environment, and everyone had desks. They worked in an office space. And if the people that I was responsible for, if I was happy with what they'd achieved and they'd done what they needed to do, I used to just tell them they could thin out, they could go. But it wasn't to be, you know, I got a slap on the wrist for it. Whereas in the military, you're in an environment where you focus on what the mission is, you get given that, it's a statement, whatever.

13:17If you're done, that's it, go. If there's fuck all to do, do fuck all. Embrace that time that you've got to relax, to chill out, to have a break from whatever it is that you're throwing an awful lot of time and effort into. So it was more the culture thing. Let's talk then about your new book. Was this born out of some of the frustrations that you saw in our civilian world and you thought, right, you guys need some messaging and I'm going to give it to you because it is a book packed with lessons for how people can live, think, communicate, operate. It's not a book born from me looking out at the civilian world and being like, God, these lot are useless.

13:59I need to start educating them. It was more born from me making my own mistakes and picking things up along the way, going through certain experiences and going, oh, so what happened was, what part of this book is about is, I was in the military. I performed to a reasonably high standard. I enjoyed it. I loved it. I left under circumstances that I would have, I'd rather it not have been that. I'd rather have left under my own steam. I got medically discharged because of post-traumatic stress disorder. I had a very difficult journey with that. And then I found myself in a new career in the media, doing other bits and pieces around that.

14:44And then I also found myself going through, as everyone did, the pandemic. There's all sorts of stuff that's gone on. And in that journey, I've realized a lot of the stuff that I thought was obsolete having left the military has helped me. I've also got an awful lot wrong and I was also flying by the seat of my pants. I was like, oh, I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing now, but I might try and apply this to that and so it goes. So essentially it's like I've taken a lot of things. It's my opinion on what life is and I've used a few, you know, to back up some of my thoughts and theories on it.

15:22we've used snippets of information from other people that have got actual qualifications. Listen, you've got plenty of qualifications. Let's go into some of the big things that we learn. We've got an E in English. Join the club. Let's go into some of the things that we learn from reading the book. One thing that surprised me, and I think will surprise a lot of our audience, is that you talk about fear a lot in the book. You sat down in this chair, and the first thing you spoke about was being a bit scared, coming on this podcast. People look at you as a form of special forces operative and would think, surely you learned to not have fear as part of your mental makeup.

16:01So explain to us your relationship with fear. Every single person on the planet has a fear. Fear is an emotion and it is one that you have to learn to manage reasonably quickly when you join the military. It comes down to the whole courage thing. You've got to have courage to deal with uncomfortable situations. And being fearful is an uncomfortable situation. We don't like it. It feels unnatural. In fact, we try to avoid it. We naturally try and avoid fear, as in subconsciously. But it is an emotion, and it needs to be managed. Now, I have a healthy respect for heights. The Marines do an awful lot at height.

16:46You climb cliffs, you abselle, jump out of helicopters, so on and so forth. So I needed to deal with that pretty quickly. Looking back on it as a 16-year-old, I don't know how I did that. I just literally didn't give myself a get-out-of-jail-free card, as in I didn't have another option to do any other work outside of being in the military. I didn't do well at school. I had to force myself down that route. As I become older and more aware of emotions, I suddenly realized that fear is there for a reason. It is there to make you focus on what it is you're doing. You're scared of something because there could be an outcome.

17:32So again, going back to the heights thing, what I suddenly realized I did do as a 16-year-old subconsciously was when I was working at height, doing stuff, whether that was climbing, abseiling, whatever, I sort of slowed everything down and made sure that I was happy with everything that I was doing I started switching on and I was looking at my equipment checking all the bits of equipment that were coming into me and I was concentrating on what I was doing with my hands my arms my legs my feet and made sure that I was doing the best that I possibly could to risk mitigate and then And that alleviated the fear.

18:10So all I was doing then essentially was taking the emotion, using it to make me slow a situation down and making me concentrate. And then I slowly was able to manage that fear and operate in a way that was helpful. Fear can, and we all see it, turn people into snotty heaps on the floor. And that wouldn't have served me any use. and I wouldn't have had a job in the military. But the same goes for anger, you know, the emotion, anger. You get it because something's going on and it's basically our way of saying to ourselves, you need to pay attention to what you're about to do because ultimately if you allow the emotion to drive the next action, if you react, then it's probably going to be one that you...

19:04And there's some interesting research on this, Jess, about that the emotive part of the brain that feels fear or anger tends to react in, say, 0.3 of a second. Yeah. Whereas your rational brain takes another three or four seconds to kick in. And I'm interested in that gap between the emotion of fear and that logical processing of, I need to slow down here, I need to check my equipment. Would you tell us and our listeners on how we can deal with the gap? okay so I mean we're all different so I do I mean what I do might sound different but and it's taken a while to do it I did it as a youngster with fear anger took a little bit longer although in a military setting we were always taught there was like this saying don't rush into your own death which basically means before you make a call on something before you react don't do that respond think about something make sure that you've risk mitigated and then when you respond do it quickly so I taught things like that now when I left the military I forgot a lot of that and I was succumbing to fear I was getting angry and responding and it wasn't helpful I had to revise myself on what I'd learnt and so over a period of time and also actually doing the show that I do has helped me hone the skill of slowing a situation down.

20:39Fear is an example. If I start to feel fearful, clammy hands, the backside's going ten to the dozen, instead of then being like, oh, shit, I'm free, full on the floor, whatever, I'm like, okay, right, what's going on? And what do I need to do to stop this being an issue? So I'm using the physical feelings that come with the emotion as an alarm bell to say, right, don't do anything yet. Just look at the situation. Anger is a classic one. So when I get angry, my back of my neck goes prickly. I don't know why. I probably go red-faced. When I feel that prickly sort of feeling on the back of my neck, that is I consciously, and I force myself to do it over time.

21:27told myself right slow everything down do not react like if you can walk away if you need to talk to someone do it in a in a more you know reserved fashion don't use aggressive language don't be confrontational all that sort of stuff so or don't give someone the wanker sign out the window because you first of all you look an idiot anyway and secondly it's just not going to help you and so it's it's all those things that i use i use the alarm bells which are physical feelings that come with an emotion to try and help me to slow down. It's taken a lot of work, though. The only thing that I think about here, though, is when you're training and you're in charge of the abseil ropes or you're on the helicopter, you've kind of got space and time.

22:10In the real world now, if one of us say something that annoys you and your hairs prickle up on the back of your neck, you've got time. When you're in a firefight in the military, there isn't that thing in space, I don't imagine. There is. Is there? Yeah. How did you find that, then? So if you've got time to slow a situation down when you're getting shot at, you've got time to do it anywhere. And you do get taught it very well. So if you come under fire, you're an open ground, first thing you do is, and you're allowed to do this, obviously. This doesn't mean if someone shouts abuse at you, you punch them in the face and then you move into a position where you can think about it.

22:47You return fire. You react because you have to react, because your life's at risk. you then get into cover. Whether that's a fold in the ground, a ditch behind a wall, you do that. Now I've been in situations where we as a group, a small organisation, a small team, have moved into cover and I've watched a bloke start rolling a cigarette while we start thinking about what the next move is. And there's bullets flying, you can feel them hitting the wall and he's there rolling a cigarette because that's what he needs to do. He's having a little drag, probably passing it around and we're like, right, what do you reckon we should do?

23:22right, there's ground over there, if we can snuggle along this sort of ditch line to there, we'll have better covering, we can put covering fire down onto that. So you're thinking about what you're doing before, and you're not getting angry. Anger doesn't serve you very well. You've allowed that anger to calm down. You've looked at a situation from a slightly different perspective. So when you're in that small group, before you go into battle, would you talk about tells that you might have and go, listen, when I go red-faced, I'm about to lose it, so I need your help, I need you to intervene. No, not really.

23:56The lads know what everyone's like, so we sort of don't need to talk about the fact that, oh, I'm feeling angry. In fact, I have never seen anyone angry in a combat situation because it doesn't serve any purpose. You might feel it initially when the first few... In fact, the anger, the only emotion I can remember feeling when you come under fire is excitement, weirdly. I don't know why. I mean, you know, there is no anger. It gets drummed into you from the beginning. There is no place for anger on the battlefield. It does not serve you a purpose. I've never, I don't, I can't remember feeling angry when I know people are being shot, friends of mine.

24:41I just feel excited and I need to now think about what we're going to do next to get us out of this. So when did that process happen, though, from, I'm thinking of you as a 16-year-old Marine through to serving with the elite of the elite. When did that process of actually first having bullets fired at you transfer from the fear of it to actually the excitement that just came on? So my career, so I joined the military at 16 and I was in the Marines for about 10 years. And in that period of time, I didn't see any combat. I played a lot of sport. I travelled the world. I had a very good time getting drunk.

25:22But I was also, throughout that period, learning to be a soldier. You know, you don't just do 30 weeks of recruit training and then, hey, presto, you're all singing, all dancing, elite soldier. You're always learning. And whilst you're doing that, you're going on exercises, you're in stressful situations, albeit not real, but still quite dangerous. You are conditioning yourself, not consciously, but subconsciously, to deal with those sort of situations for real. So then I go on selection, I pass selection, I join the special forces, and I'm immediately thrust into real life situations. Now, I can remember the first time that I came under fire, and I was excited.

26:06I don't feel, I can remember a vehicle coming around the corner, full of guys in the back, they loosed off a load of rounds, I didn't feel angry towards them. In fact, a geezer next to me got shot, and I didn't feel angry, I just felt, right, I need to start thinking about what we're doing now to stop this spiring out of control. You know, fortunately, I'd, you know, nearly 10 years worth of training that subconsciously I conditioned myself to deal with that situation. I can remember it vividly. I can remember it better than what I did yesterday. I want to talk about failure because you talk in your book about training to fail.

26:46And I think, again, we would assume that failure is not something that you would ever chase, but you actually extol the virtues of failure, the power of failure. Yeah. I think it's one of the most important things we as humans can experience and go through. And if we can deal with it in a positive way, then it only becomes a building block to us being high performers, I suppose. But I've dealt with failure, you know. When I was a Royal Marine, and I was training to be a Royal Marine, I failed at something and got back, they call it back-trooped, so I went back and intake. What did you fail? You get to the midway point, you do a test exercise, I pass that, but it's all about you looking after yourself predominantly in the field.

27:33you can navigate a little bit, all this. You then go on to another test exercise, and it's probably structured differently now, but that is all about tactics and performing in the field as part of a small team. You're doing different things that a small team would do in the Royal Marines. And you're being watched. And I fucked up on one of those actions, and I'd left a bit of kit behind, and that was a failure. So I got back to you. The thing is, what came with that is, I went into a holding, what they call a holding troop. They called it Hunter Troop back in the day. It's now called Hunter Company because it's a bigger group.

28:12That was the best thing that happened to me for my career because I went back into that depressed, felt like I'd failed, worried about whether I was going to make it in this chosen profession. And I met a guy who was one of the instructors in that Hunter Troop. and he was an older guy, a former Falklands vet and he taught me like an actual teacher. I wasn't getting beasted. I wasn't getting, my head wasn't on fire trying to take in all this information at the same time as doing thousands of press-ups. Piss wet through as a 16-year-old wondering what the fuck I was doing. This guy took me out on exercises.

28:51We were able to go out on exercise and he was teaching me without the stresses of getting hammered what I should be doing as a soldier. And I learned he definitely set something of light in me and I realized that I could do this. I then joined the next intake that was behind the one that I was in and loved it and just excelled and did well. Go through Royal Marine life, still failing at things, but he taught me that you can get through it, that you can look at things in a different way and you'll pick it up and you'll go again and actually failure makes... The one thing I do remember is I can remember that moment that I failed at something in training.

29:38And I never do... I remember that. Whenever I'm leaving an area, even if I'm leaving the bloody changing room in the gym, do a secondary sweep, make sure I haven't left anything behind. Maybe it's because of that moment. But what did he do that you took on... So when you eventually became a sergeant in the military, your job is to lead people. What characteristics did he show you that you took into your own leadership style? He showed me empathy. A lot of people feel like leadership's about, especially in the military, is about dictating, shouting, screaming, making sure that people respect you.

30:17And yes, there is an element of that that is useful, but I find he showed me that I could trust him that he was showing me some form of loyalty. We were going out. We had a laugh. We were going out. He was looking after me, making sure that I was all right, making sure I was good to go when we were going into the field. And he showed me empathy. He was telling me, yeah, this is difficult. It's hard work. I've been in these situations. It's horrible. And I'm like, wow, that's awesome. And I think they're the three, for me, they are the three key things for a leader above and beyond anything else.

30:50It's the softer skills. You're asking people to do difficult things in whatever walk of life you're in, if it's a chosen profession, it's difficult. You're asking people to do difficult things. You should remember that. I think you'll get a lot more out of people he did. And I believe and I hope that I took that forward in my career. And I still believe it now. You still need to be hard on people, but you've also got to remember you're asking them to do difficult things, and they're looking at you to be a trustworthy, loyal person. Can you give us an example of, for you as a leader, how you role-modeled those three things?

31:28I would always be trustworthy. I hoped that I was someone that you could count on. So what's your definition of trustworthy? Being good at my job and being there for people around me and making sure that they knew that I had their back regardless. Even if it was in a situation that wasn't attributed to warfighting, if they're in a difficult situation, I'd like to think that they could trust me with sharing information and then being there for them when they needed me. So that sort of thing. But the same goes for being on. I mean, you know, there's been moments where it's nearly been called into question.

32:06You're in a ditch getting shot at and I'm shitting my pants, wondering how we're going to get out of this situation. And I've looked down the line of the ditch and after giving myself a proverbial slap around the face, looked down the line of the ditch and seen the other lads there and been like, hang on a minute, I've got a responsibility to them as they have to me and I need to start getting a grip of myself and that's me managing the old fear levels. But that's the situation and weirdly in that moment we didn't even speak to each other, we just looked, saw each other, stood up, kicked our way through a hedgerow and fought our way to the next, fought our way, the bound to the next sort of like location.

32:50So there's things like that, you know, not turning into a snotty heap on the floor, remembering that you've got a responsibility to people to be there for them. So that's the trust I'm talking about. And the empathy? The empathy is also looking down that line of the ditch and realising that we're in a shit situation and that one of us could get shot. But, you know, everyone knows, yeah, we all know that it's you get to the you do that bit you get to the next bit and you're like you're right mate that was fucking horrible but then how do you handle it when the empathy gene is there where you're role modelling it and then you see one of your colleagues that's fallen how do you switch off to be able to keep the mission in mind because you default back to you know you are there for a bigger thing that's what you've got to remember sometimes you've got to get sometimes when that sort of thing happens You've got to remember, you default back to what you were told the mission was.

33:47And you're like, right, that's what we're here for. There's a bigger thing. There's something bigger than us here. We need to keep going for that. You compartmentalize it, basically. And then when it's all over and you've got the luxury of being able to then, I suppose, reflect on the emotion, then you can have a moment to yourself. but you've got to realise at that moment in time when the obvious has hit the fan, sometimes you haven't got time to be, you know, you haven't got time to be emphatic towards people. You've got to, you know, you've got to get on with the job. You can do it later.

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36:38you talk in your book about the power of the emotional stock take would you take us into a moment when you had to do an emotional stock take out in the field and the form it took i think that for that a good example is that ditch one the reason being i was a senior guy within the squadron i've been in situations not dissimilar, being shot at loads, being blown up, you know, all sorts of things, and then we find ourselves in a hairy situation. I've done the initial bound, a bound is like moving a distance before you take cover and, you know, re-evaluate. I've bounded, I've dived into a ditch, rolled onto my back, and I'm shitting my pants.

37:22I've never felt, I have felt fear like it, but it had never manifested itself and all of a sudden I wanted to be, I can remember, this is how I remember it now, wanting to be at home with my mum as a 10-year-old boy. Now, that's because I was scared and it was then I had to do, I had to be like, you're allowed to be scared. At first I was ashamed of it. I didn't actually speak about this for a while but I was ashamed of it because I was like, hang on a minute, I should not be thinking about being at home as a 10-year-old boy with my mum because I'm supposed to be a professional soldier. So I gave myself that slap around the face, but I realised that I was scared and I needed to do something about it.

38:04So that was the first time I properly consciously did an emotional stocktake. Why were you so scared in that situation if you'd faced bullets and bombs? I think the lead up to getting to where we were going was pretty terrifying. We were getting shot at as we were flying through the sky. There was RPGs, heavy machine gun fire. There was about six minutes of that happening. which was, you're not even in control, you're just sat there like that. We landed and it was chaos. Landed, there was explosions, gunfire, you could hear bullets zipping past your head. And it was a short bound and then before we got to that ditch, we had a message telling us that one of our own guys had been killed, which was how that information was assimilated and communicated that quickly, I do not know.

38:55And how do they communicate that? You've got a little earpiece and you can all talk to each other. So you literally just, you've got to press and talk. You press and talk. And you're constantly getting information as to what's going on. Normally, because there's gunfire, no one will talk. Everyone knows that's a procedure. When there's a contact, stay off the airwaves unless there is something important to say. And obviously telling us that there was a guide dead already is pretty important. You know, it tells... They're telling us, not for an emotional response, which isn't going to happen, but they're telling us because we as a tactical team on the ground need to know that one of the other teams is restricted in its ability to manoeuvre because they're down a man and not only that, they're carrying him as well.

39:42You know, they didn't leave him lying there. They've carried him... They're carrying him into the fucking shit show. So, yeah, that's how we communicate. You said that the moment where you reflected on wanting to be a 10-year-old boy and being with your mum, you didn't talk about it for a long time. Was that because of shame? Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. I don't know why. I look back on it now and I'm like, why was I shameful at that? Because ultimately, I didn't want to feel like that. So it's just a normal thing to have happened. It's just natural. We should just embrace it. And I think me suppressing a lot of things like that is probably what also had an impact on my mental health.

40:22Because I wasn't allowing myself to experience that emotion. Whether, not then, obviously, it was not helpful then, but it would have been helpful later on to be like, yeah, yeah, that's, and maybe share it as well. And in sharing it, we probably found out there was a few other lads, in fact, I do know now, there was a few of us that were like, fucking hell, that was a bit sketchy, wasn't it? But yeah, I think, I think, I was just ashamed, I think, to begin with. I was a different person. Were you? Yeah. How would you describe yourself now, then? More zen. Bit of a hippie. Bit of shame to say that.

40:59No, I'm not. You are, though. No, I know. I found that out later. That was in the woods. Can we talk about chaos? You mentioned it was absolute chaos there. Chaos is a recurring theme in the book. in fact, Embrace the Chaos, is the title of the book. What would you like our audience to think about when we talk about chaos and embracing chaos? The thing is, so chaos is a part of the book, so part of life is chaotic, but I would suggest it's probably the most relevant. It's the one that happens all the time because we're not in control. We can control things like our own emotional response. We are able to do that if we really want to.

41:43But life in general is chaotic. There's about 8 billion people on the planet and we've all got our own version of what we want to do. So it's chaotic. And so instead of trying to fight it, we should embrace it. And what can we do in chaotic moments to make sure that we are all right? And I learned that from the military. I didn't bring it forward for a bit because I didn't think it was relevant. but dealing with chaotic situations is part of being in the military. You've got a plan. You hope it goes according to that. It never does. And then you've got to think on your feet. And so embracing chaos is all about being flexible, I think, and not being freaked out by it.

42:26Explain about being flexible. The flexible thing is basically you wake up in the morning. It's a work day. you've got a loose plan in your head you know what you want to do you know where you're going to go then something happens and it throws that loose plan into absolute disarray it becomes chaotic what I mean by being flexible is not getting pissed off because your routine your plan has gone through a shower of obvious it's about understanding that this is just life and you're going to be flexible with how you now approach the day. Just react, not react, respond. And, you know, don't be freaked out by it.

43:11A lot of people in corporate businesses, they have plans. They're like, this is what we're going to do. If it doesn't go, you know, according to that plan, I've seen it before where people just turn into an absolute, it does turn into a ball of chalk. Because they're like, oh, the plan, instead of being like, okay, this is cool, let's have another little re-evaluation and look at what we're going to do and respond to this chaotic moment. So that's the flexible side. It's about not being freaked out when things go to chaotic or turn into chaos even. What's the 10-second rule? The 10-second rule is coming down to the whole, is the emotional thing again.

43:51But before you react, take 10 seconds. It might be less than that. It might be more than that. You might have the luxury of having more time. but take the proverbial 10 seconds to just calm yourself down, breathe and re-evaluate what's happening and how you can respond to it. So the 10 second rule, again, initially you've got to force yourself to do it, to learn to embrace it and take it on board as part of your way of doing things. But after a while, if you keep doing that, you will eventually, it will be second nature as with everything that we do. If you keep repeating a habit, that habit will become second nature, or the habit will become a habit.

44:36And your book title wasn't the original title. It was about Remember You'll Die. Yeah. So I'd do a speaking tour, and at the end of it, I end with memento mori, the Latin for remember you will die. And everyone's like, oh. And I'm like, no, no, no, it's not depressing. It's like, you know, yeah, okay, the Grim Reaper is somewhere around the corner, but, you know, remember at some point we're all on this path and we're going to die, so we should fill this life with good shit. And also, because we're going to die, why speed up the process, you know, try and be a little bit more healthy. And so I thought, ah, it'd be great if I could call the book Remember You Will Die, because it's striking, you know, it might sound a bit weird, but I'm I'm sure it will attract someone's attention.

45:26And I went into the publishers with this great idea and they're like, sit down and shut up. We're going to go to a load of experts. And then we came, we all agreed on Embrace the Chaos. It was slightly less negative. Yeah. Well, can I ask you about the dichotomy of that? Because I'm interested in, you talk about your experience in the military, but there's also that tall poppy syndrome, isn't there, that anyone that puts their head up from the military after they've left often gets knocked down a little bit or it's not your story to tell or who do you think you are. How have you coped with that idea of you were once part of a brotherhood and then sometimes the brotherhood doesn't necessarily welcome you coming out and talking about these kind of things?

46:11It's a chunky story, this. So I left the military in 2012. I got discharged with PTSD. And the next probably, I'm not going to say three years, but I'm going to say the next two years were horrendous. And I, I mean, you've read Battle Scars. That bit where you were thinking of throwing yourself off. Yeah, yeah, I eventually found myself on top of a cliff thinking about throwing myself off and realising that there was actually a way out of this. Anyway, I struggled with the work that I was doing. I came out of that corporate job because it just wasn't, It wasn't right for me. And I was finding it really difficult to get work that my old career would lend itself to.

46:59So being in security, I couldn't join the police. I couldn't join the fire service. I probably couldn't join the ambulance service. Because of the PTSD. Because I was, at the time, it might be different now, but I had a brand stamped onto me. I had PTSD, so I couldn't get decent jobs away working for security companies that would mean I was armed because ultimately everyone's like that. yeah, mate, I'm sorry, but... So I was scratching around for work, and it wasn't great. I picked up a little bit of work here and there. What happened was a good friend of mine, who I served with called Aldo Kane, he had got himself into the TV world working as a safety supervisor.

47:40Took me on a job for the BBC. He knew I was in a pickle, because I was living on my mate's sofa. He took me on a job working for the BBC where we stunt rigged someone into the wind tunnel down in Southampton Uni. They've got a big sort of aerodynamic wind tunnel. Did that. We had a laugh. He couldn't afford to pay me. A few weeks later, he was like, mate, I've got another job out in Madagascar. Can you cover it for me? So I went out there, and I was the medic and the underwater cameraman's dive buddy. Did an all right job. It was great. I then came back from that job not knowing what was next.

48:14I'd been paid. I was like, wow, this is awesome. I've been paid. going back to live on my mate's sofa. Landed. Got a phone call because of someone that I was with in Madagascar who told someone else in the TV world about me. Now, he had been privy to a meeting about the show that would become SAS Udares Wins, and he's like, mate, I heard you're a former Special Forces soldier. Could we talk to you? And I was like, yeah, okay. He said he was working for Channel 4. So I went at this meeting, and I thought that I was being teed up to be a consultant on the show and it soon became apparent that that wasn't the case and they wanted me to be in it, one of a team of four.

48:57And I was like, mate, that doesn't sit right with me. I says, you know, that's not what we do and I'm really nervous about it. I says, I'm not sure. And actually it was point blank no to begin with. Then we carried on talking and I was like, it does sound like it could be quite fun. And I was like, you know, you're obviously going to pixelate our faces. And he's like, no, we're not, because that's happened. And audiences just don't connect with people. You've got to be front and centre. And I'm like, fuck. So I came away. I needed to think about it. I spoke to a friend of mine, the guy that I was living with at the time, and he's like, mate, it's a big opportunity.

49:37Then what happened was I got a phone call from a department in the special forces that deals with people that are going into the media world. And I'm like, I answered it. I knew the guy and I was like, yeah, how's it going? He's like, yeah, yeah, all good. I says, it's very nice to hear from you. He said, yeah, yeah, I just thought I'd see how you're doing. I was like, oh, it's nice. It's been three years and you've decided to give me a call, see how I am. And he said, yeah, yeah. He then said, oh, we've heard that you might be getting involved in a TV show. And I was like, yeah, I know. I says, your sources are good, aren't they?

50:13And he's like, yeah. I says, what are your thoughts on it? He's like, well, I'm telling you not to do it. You shouldn't do it. And I'm like, okay. I said, that's all well and good. But, mate, I'm living on my mate's sofa. I said, I've got no money. I can't get a job. I'm not able to find anything that's working at the moment. And I'm in a pickle. I says, no one's phoned me. I don't want anyone phoning me, but no one's phoned me. And the first time you phone me, you're telling me not to take a job. And this is a difficult pill to swallow. I says and I'm not I am not going to stitch the unit up I've already thought about this I'm not going to do anything that brings the unit into disrepute and I'm not going to do anything other than going on telly and I'm not going to do anything that's going to jeopardize people who are out on the ground who or who could potentially be out on the ground later on in life you know that's not me is a you know is there a way that we can work this out and there was and we we went through a process and there's still this process that we follow and I follow and so So that's how it came about, and that's how I saw it.

51:14I saw it as a new opportunity that I should probably take. And the criticism from current or serving soldiers? So I've got mates that are still serving. I've got mates that have just left, you know. And we all get on. We all touch base. People laugh about it. Give me a bit of stick. I buy beers because of it. There are people as well that don't agree with it, and I understand them totally. If I was told 15 years ago that I would be doing this job, I'd bang myself out. Because I'd be like, what are you doing? That's not the thing to do. But we go through life and it's a journey and we experience things and we're in sticky situations and opportunities present themselves.

52:03Right, quick fire questions. Are you ready for them? Your three non-negotiable behaviours that really matter to you? Wake up, check in. Even if I don't need to, I'll give myself at least five seconds to see how I'm feeling. Then I move. I do exercise of some description, whether it's moving to get my joints moving, I'm getting old, or whether it's doing an actual workout. I'll move and then I'll eventually go, I went to the gym this morning, but if I haven't got time to do the gym, I will do a five, ten minute squats press-up session in the house and get it done. Something. There's a consistency.

52:44And as little as it sounds, I feel better for it. And then it's a mix between if I'm with my missus, I'll communicate with her. I'll say hello, make sure that she's all right. If I'm feeling low, I'll tell her. And I'll probably tell her the reasons why so she knows. if she's not there I'll just go and have a cold shower now the reason I have a cold shower isn't because of health reasons and whatever it's because I don't want to do it and it's my that is the first win because I know that I've had the discipline to do something that I could have avoided what advice would you give to a teenage Jace just starting out I used to live down in the south west where there was even after I left and I used to see young lads who'd obviously just joined the marines or the navy I used to get upset not upset upset but I used to feel emotional about it because I'd be like, fuck, they're in a great place but fuck, it's going to be hard work.

53:40And then it made me think about that and I was like, if I could meet me, I'd just be like, mate, you're going on a great journey. You're going to have a right laugh. It's going to be hard. But if you feel negative about anything, just talk to people about it because I didn't and it's what cut my career short. What's your biggest strength and what's your greatest weakness? my biggest strength is my vulnerability vulnerability is easily the biggest strength it's the it's the one thing i was petrified of and then when i started to become vulnerable to myself i became stronger and your greatest weakness i try not to be but the perfectionist thing it comes from my dad love him but i wish he'd never given me that it can be a bit of a it can be an Achilles heel sometimes it can make you too slow what's the single best piece of advice you've received and why?

54:40essentially it was live life like a toddler it's in the book the toddler analogy because that doesn't mean go around shitting your nappies and forgetting your diary dates or what not it just means be more present because toddlers are present you know they get hurt they don't worry about doing that again they go and do the same thing normally they eventually learn through repetition but ultimately as a toddler you're just in the now all the time and we ain't we spend too much time worrying about what's happened and decisions we've made and then worrying about the impact of them or something happening much similar to it in the future which is ludicrous because it hasn't happened and the final question the thing you'd like to leave ringing in people's ears, your one golden rule for a high-performance life?

55:28Memento mori. Yes. It's got to be that. Remember, you will die. You know, fill your life with good stuff, but when you do something, do it to the best of your ability. Even if it means you fail, it doesn't matter. It means that you've pushed yourself to that limit. Jason, thank you so much.

55:50Damien. Jay. You know what? I had this idea that Jason was going to come in and talk to us about the sort of specific actions of being in the military. You know, like you said at the beginning, stripping your weapon, how to form up for battle, the tactics that it takes to beat the opposition. But that was a conversation not about those hard skills, but about the soft skills. And, you know, yet again, a conversation with someone in the military, but not really about military life, about life and things that all of us can learn from. Yeah, definitely. I was wary about getting in too much of a conversation about military because it's like sometimes talking to somebody about sport, the parallels between sport and life are often less than you might imagine.

56:30And it's the same in the military. The clear rank and hierarchy and that sense of mission makes it quite a unique environment. But I'm absolutely with you. I think the one that I took away was being cheerful in the face of adversity, the ability to be flexible and fluid when things go wrong and they will your ability to adapt and see the best out of it was a real masterclass from him and also it's a good reminder for people that he can have that amazing military career obviously came out, struggled with PTSD spoke to us about that very briefly and then he now seems in a good place but when he told us about his non-negotiables one of them was give myself space, check in with myself and if I'm not okay, talk to my partner or do something to make myself feel better.

57:15And it's a reminder that for him, as it is for so many people that enjoy this show, mental health, happiness, it is a constant work in progress. And we mustn't ever make people think, right, I've reached the point where I'm always happy. I've got that now onto something else. Because it's never like that for anyone. To me, it's like a muscle in the gym, isn't it? If you don't use it, it atrophies. It wastes away and it becomes weaker. And I think the mental health is exactly the same. it's something you've just got to keep on top of and keep maintaining and his 10 second rule of just take that time to stop and do almost like that emotional checking with yourself it's an easy tip for any anyone listening and watching today what a conversation i loved it thanks mate yeah brilliant thank you that brings us to the end of today's show i can't thank jason enough for joining us honestly his new book is really interesting i would recommend that you check it out.

58:11And please, if you can do just one thing for me, all I ask is that you hit the follow button. By doing that, it grows our channel. We can attract incredible people to the show and give you even more value. Remember, stay humble, curious, and empathetic, and we'll see you soon.

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