Life Under Fire

by Jason Fox

  One way of shorting that particular mental circuit is to find gratitude in suffering. If that sounds weird, consider the following examples from my time in Basic Training at Lympstone:

  The pain of lugging a teammate on the shoulders for two hundred metres can be celebrated: you’re still alive.

  Any pain or frustration experienced during the Tarzan assault course is an achievement: it means a potential Royal Marines Commando is still in with the chance of passing out at the end of the gruelling thirty-two-week course.

  The mind-twisting frustration at having to polish boots to a pristine shine is an opportunity to develop discipline.

  Gratitude has long been recognized as a valuable tool when striving for resilience because it stimulates three areas in the brain: 1) The anterior cingulate cortex, which helps us to concentrate and which links our thoughts and emotions; 2) The brain’s stem region, which is responsible for producing dopamine, a neurotransmitter that allows us focus, to find drive and to explore; and 3) The striatum, the reward centre, where the dopamine ends up.

  When these three areas are working well together, a person becomes happier and more productive; they’re also more impervious to the kinds of stress thrown up by intense events, emotional challenges and the difficult workloads I experienced on Royal Marines Basic Training.

  In other words, when we’re going through the shit, it helps to adjust our thinking. Don’t moan about it; be thankful instead. Find gratitude.

  While rising at 3 a.m. to power through a tricky work project, remember the trust and respect people have placed in you in order to get the job done.

  In the middle of overcoming an illness, be thankful that you’ll be able to recover and function again.

  In moments of painful physical effort, don’t stress about the hard yards ahead; picture the ones you’ve already completed and feel pleased they’re out of the way.

  Try to briefly picture the worst-case scenario – failure, frustration or, as in my case, that photo of my old man and his reaction if I flunked – and use it as fuel to drive you on to the end. Then imagine the spoils, focusing on them when the pain threatens to become overwhelming. By allowing the brain to do the heavy lifting, the body will be more inclined to carry you to the end.

  PHASE TWO

  The Power of Purpose

  My Royal Marines Basic Training and the Commando Spirit laid the foundations for long-term fortitude. However, to become truly resilient I had to discover my purpose.

  Purpose is propellant. It fires us like a bullet towards whatever target we might be aiming for. It brings commitment, bravery and desire, allowing us to break through barriers we might have previously thought impenetrable while forcing us towards our goals. In tough times, purpose can be enough to see us through to the end. If we have a cause to scrap for, then anything is possible.

  An extraordinary example of this happened in the United States in 1982 when an American woman, Angela Cavallo, was reported to have saved her son’s life after a car had slipped from the jacks he’d been using to support it. In the accident, Cavallo’s son was pinned to the floor, but she summoned up an unknown reserve of strength, heaving the car upwards while two friends repositioned the jacks, and pulled him to safety. Physiologically, her superhuman lift had plenty to do with an extreme surge of adrenaline, but purpose – being a mum, saving her kid’s life – was the catalyst.

  As an example of what can happen when somebody is being powered by purpose, this is about as apt as any. But you can find that drive too. All it takes is a few simple steps.

  Life carries momentum for people with a ‘why’; having a reason for what they do makes them stronger and resistant to some pretty scary twists of fate. Meanwhile, people without a ‘why’ can sometimes find themselves feeling restless, isolated and frustrated. At times they can become vulnerable. I know this because I’ve lived through both sets of circumstances. The strength that comes with having purpose helped me to become a senior operator in the SBS, but I’ve also endured the emotional stress that kicks in when purpose is stripped away. I’ve learned that the knack to becoming resilient is to have something to fight for, and that the chosen something is always unique to the individual. It could be a significant other, family, a charitable cause, self-respect or professional success.

  The importance of finding your purpose, or ‘why’, when building resilience isn’t a revolutionary or new theory. However, it’s one that a lot of people seem to have overlooked. In his 2009 TED Talk ‘How Great Leaders Inspire Action’, the motivation expert and author Simon Sinek explained how everything should start with the ‘why’. In a theory he called the Golden Circle, Sinek listed the ‘perspectives’ shared by successful companies and leaders. Having drawn three concentric rings on a whiteboard, he wrote the word ‘what’ in the outer circle (for what a person or company does). The middle circle was the ‘how’ (how the person or company does their ‘what’). And finally, the inner circle, the bullseye on the target, was the ‘why’ (the major driving force behind the ‘what’ and the ‘how’). Too many people or companies, argued Sinek, have started with the ‘what’, when in reality the route to resilient and robust progress is to focus on the ‘why’. Sinek explained:

  ‘Every single person, every single organization on the planet, knows what they do, 100 per cent. Some know how they do it, whether you call it your differentiated-value proposition or your proprietary process or your USP (unique selling point). But very, very few people, or organizations, know why they do what they do. And by why I don’t mean to make a profit. That’s a result. It’s always a result. By why I mean: What’s your purpose? What’s your cause? What’s your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care? As a result, the way we think, we act, the way we communicate, is from the outside in.’

  In other words, if you start with the ‘why’ then your chances of success increase considerably.

  Sinek then outlined how a tech company like Apple had become so resistant to tricky market forces when their equally competent competitors had failed. He argued that Steve Jobs and his colleagues had focused on a clear ‘why’ when establishing Apple as a brand. Sinek continued:

  ‘Here’s how Apple actually communicates: “Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?”’

  Put like that, Apple’s ‘why’ has been pretty compelling so far. But all of us have a ‘why’ within reach. My personal experience with purpose began with the desire for adventure and self-improvement through the military. It’s currently fuelled by the need for self-care and a desire to inspire others who suffer from mental health issues. As Sinek explains, it’s vital that everyone begins their next project, career move or lifestyle change with the ‘why’. For example, a business developer might open a community farm in response to a local government incentive – let’s call them Developer A. Another, Developer B, might have an ambition to connect people in a positive manner or to change the way in which society views food consumption, the environment and the importance of shopping locally, so they, too, might open a community farm. I reckon that in tough times, Developer B will have the motivation to stay the course. They have their own internal purpose. They’ve discovered their ‘why’. But Developer A, with their purpose decided for them, has a greater chance of falling away or quitting.

  Don’t be Developer A.

  STEP ONE

  FINDING YOUR ‘WHY’

  Finding the ‘why’ doesn’t always begin with a lightning strike or a once-in-a-lifetime event (though it can definitely happen that way). According to Angela Duckworth, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, author of Grit: Why Passion and Resilience Are the Secrets to Success and previously an advisor to the White House and the World Bank, the way a p
erson usually finds their purpose is much more progressive. Having interviewed the Stanford development psychologist Bill Damon, the book suggests that people with a ‘why’ begin with three steps:

  1) They find their ‘spark’ – an interest, or passion.

  2) By watching someone else succeed in a similar way – a ‘role model’ – that spark later develops into a moment where the person understands how this passion might accomplish results ‘on behalf of others’, while seeing the emotional rewards it could bring.

  3) The person realizes their achievable accomplishments can make a difference in the wider world.

  My military career probably followed a similar path to the one outlined by Professor Duckworth. I’d signed up with the Marines as a teenager straight out of school. I wasn’t a bad lad when I was growing up in Luton, but lessons bored me to tears and I was often in trouble. It wasn’t anything too worrying; I wasn’t a violent kid or a bully. In fact, I hated bullies – it’s one of the reasons I joined the Royal Marines in the first place. But I couldn’t get my head around the work, or exams, and I needed something exciting to grab my attention. I was always hearing stories about the Marines from Dad and I loved mucking about in the outdoors, so I signed up on the Potential Royal Marines Course. Step one: I’d found my spark.

  Having made it through the training programme, life clicked into place in the Marines. I took signals courses and made trips to the jungle, the Far East and the Mediterranean, but I saw very little in the way of action. The hostilities in Northern Ireland had calmed down and nothing much was going on elsewhere. I eventually became sick to the back teeth of listening to a load of old-timers banging on about the Falklands and the first Iraq war. I wanted more. I needed to push myself to improve. I wanted to be pressurized and to find out if I could cope at the highest level, with the best soldiers in the game, serving the military. After ten years of serving as a Royal Marines Commando, and having heard all the stories about what the Special Forces were doing and what they were achieving for the UK Armed Forces, I applied for Selection. Step two: Having watched the people around me, I wanted to know if I could achieve the same results, ‘on behalf of others’, through my passion. I wanted the buzz of being the best of the best.

  I didn’t need to worry about a lack of action. Within a few weeks of beginning Selection, I listened enviously as the War on Terror kicked off in Afghanistan. By the sound of it, all my old mates were in the thick of the scrapping, but I didn’t care too much because life as an elite soldier would eventually give me more autonomy, more control and more focus (and I’d end up deployed somewhere along the line whether I’d passed Selection or not). I’d also get to do loads of cool stuff, like raiding enemy buildings and fast-roping out of helicopters – all the things a lot of young boys dream of doing as they grow up. Once installed in the conflict as an operator, my mental resources were stressed much further than they had been in the Royal Marines. The fighting was intense and dangerous. Missions took place every night and the schedule was physically exhausting. But all the way through I knew I was doing the right thing. Step three: My spark and achievable accomplishments were making a difference in the wider world.

  I told myself I was helping my country to defeat a militia force, or forces that wanted to wreak havoc upon innocent communities. I was taking down bad guys and destroying their infrastructure, smashing into terrorist training camps and tracking down IED facilitators. I had a cause, and the personal horrors of war were manageable for me because I saw them as a sacrifice worth making in order to secure the safety of people I loved at home and of the civilians who were being oppressed by unpleasant forces within the countries we were working in. Whenever I had doubts regarding my personal safety, I remembered my ‘why’.

  My experience of finding that propellant for my career might sound incredibly simple when written down as three steps. But the process I went through is probably familiar to anyone claiming to have found their purpose in life. Those steps, based on the work of Stanford’s Bill Damon and Professor Duckworth, are also easily replicated: 1) Find your passion; 2) Watch others accomplishing results ‘on behalf of others’, while seeing the emotional rewards their efforts bring them; 3) Figure out how you can make a difference in the wider world.

  With purpose as fuel, you’ll become more resistant to adversity. Say you love trekking and for charity you want to make it to the top of one of the Seven Summits – the seven continents’ highest mountains: Aconcagua (South America), Denali (North America), Vinson (Antarctica), Elbrus (Europe), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Everest (Asia) and Carstensz Pyramid (Oceania). The training will be tough and at certain points the effort might threaten to defeat you. But with a charitable cause at your back you’ll feel less inclined to quit. And if that cause is one you feel personally connected to and makes a difference to somebody you know and love, you’ll feel inspired to push through the pain and finish the job whatever happens.

  STEP TWO

  THE DANGER OF LOSING PURPOSE

  Without purpose we can become vulnerable, as I discovered when my ‘why’ was suddenly torn away.

  By the time I left the military, in 2012, after twenty years of service, I’d been rinsed. My first onset of PTSD had kicked in a couple of years previously while I was working on a night assault, as the three helicopters we were in swooped on to an enemy compound only for us to be attacked by an unexpectedly large mob of gunmen. The intensity of the work, and what I had seen and experienced during the assault, left a devastating mark on me. Day by day, week by week, my enthusiasm for the job waned in the fallout. I couldn’t see the point in being an SBS operator any more. The operations that once filled me with excitement were leaving me hollow with dread. I had lost my purpose.

  I wanted more than anything to get my mojo back, and I tried bloody hard to reclaim it. I spoke to psychiatric nurses at the Royal Marines’ base, where I lived and worked while not fighting abroad, hoping they could present me with an armoury of techniques and processes to help me get back on my feet. ‘I want to want to return to battle,’ I told them, but there was nothing they could do. As far as they were concerned, my time was done. I was prescribed anti-depressants, which were like a death sentence for a bloke like me. I became withdrawn and moody with each dose. My experiences and some of the horrors I’d witnessed haunted me like ghosts, especially my memories of traumatized youngsters I’d seen after a gunfight or suicide bomb in a civilian area. At times, I became so spaced out that I struggled to communicate with the people around me.

  Previously I’d been in the thick of the laughing and joking when I’d been away on tour with the military. Now I was a shell, retreating into the shadows until I was eventually medically discharged. The job that had once given me a reason to get up in the morning was gone and no pill was going to help me – not fully, because the pain wasn’t coming solely from a chemical imbalance in my head. I’d been detached from my sense of purpose through extreme stress, so medication was only a Band-Aid; I’d have to go much deeper emotionally in order to recover. The answer was to find a new purpose, though what I hadn’t realized at the time was that it couldn’t be forced, or created artificially in a quick fix. It had to be genuine, authentic. Much in the same way that pills couldn’t truly replicate a long-lasting and healthier state of mind, so manufacturing a ‘why’ or striving for a purpose I didn’t really believe in would only lead to disappointment.

  I know because I tried, and failed.

  Bloody hell, starting out in the Real World was tough work. I’d hoped that my first day of civilian life was going to be the first page of the opening chapter in a brand-new book. In reality it was more of the same pain. I was miserable, fuzzy-headed and unable to find any meaning to what I was doing in life. I ended up landing a job as a project manager in a company that specialized in delivering infrastructure services. It was OK work, but there was nothing to match the excitement of taking down a truck of enemy guerrilla fighters as they opened fire on our positions in a desert stron
ghold. I was bored out of my brains. Worse, I had lost my sense of self. Stripped of all meaning, life seemed worthless.

  That’s when I decided to throw myself off a clifftop on the south coast.

  At this point in the story, it might sound as if all my resilience had deserted me. I was definitely running on fumes, but I had enough in the tank to drag myself away from the edge, and from the tide smashing on the rocks below. With the support of a couple of friends, I was able to seek help. I came to understand why I’d been ravaged by the emotional stresses of war and why my focus had waned. I was encouraged to live in the ‘now’, concentrating on my immediate surroundings rather than dwelling on the mistakes I might have made in the past, and I learned how to manage the fears I was feeling for my future.

  After a while, I took these ideas on board. Had I ignored the advice, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be writing this now. And while the really hard work was still to come, I soon discovered that I wasn’t alone (though my experience was definitely at the extreme end of the spectrum). For many people, a crushing sense of grief can follow the loss of a job or a role in society. At times we all lose steam. We fall out of love with something or someone that once got us out of bed in the morning, or our priorities might change. The trick to surviving, as I was about to discover, was to refocus.

  I had to find a new, authentic ‘why’.

  STEP THREE

  RELOAD

  Being freaked out by change is never a good thing and during my time as an elite operator I’d been trained to be flexible enough to handle a constantly evolving enemy threat and to work in a number of different environments. During training, specialist soldiers are often flung into a series of changing situations for that very reason.