Battle Ready

by Ollie Ollerton

  Start with phrases like ‘I am . . .’ and ‘is . . .’ e.g.: ‘I am not drinking’, ‘My home is clear and clean’, ‘I am exercising regularly’, etc. Date each step, so that you can look back and see how you’ve progressed.

  Once you have filled in your clock, put it in a prominent place, so that you see it first thing when you wake up. You might want to make copies and put them around the house – on the fridge, perhaps, or stuck to the bathroom mirror. Starting from the first step, focus on that thought for the whole day. Imagine yourself having fulfilled that goal, what you look like, how you’re feeling. The next day, concentrate your energy on step 2, and so on, starting the cycle again when you reach step 1.

  Simply by writing your desired changes down you start to breathe life into them. This list of 12 mantras was to start opening doors in my subconscious, and just a few months later I experienced an epiphany that changed my life. It was while I was working for the oil company in Brisbane that I realised I wanted to start my own company. I wanted independence and freedom and something for myself to make into a success. A company might provide me with the sense of purpose I lacked, and some income. The name Break-Point came into my head and I loved it. The name came before the concept of what it represented. At first, I thought it would offer something to do with security, as that was what I’d been doing in Iraq and it felt like a familiar skillset. But it didn’t ignite my passion. I found myself unable to infuse my idea with any detail or verve; there was no end goal. But one day, at the oil company, a couple of former fighter pilots came into the office to give us a staff-training day. I thought to myself, ‘If they can make this relevant to us, think how useful it would be to teach people skills from the Special Forces . . . imagine that.’ And I did exactly this, I let my mind wander.

  A few days later, while on a plane flying across the endless Australian outback, an idea suddenly presented itself to me so clearly I could picture it taking place across the landscape outside my window. I imagined civvies from the corporate sector doing a simulated escape across the outback. I saw veterans suffering from PTSD working as instructors and finding their feet again through teaching mental and fitness techniques to people who wanted to stretch themselves. Break-Point would be an existential rocket up the arse of the beleaguered victims of corporate grind. This was my epiphany, and in that moment all the dots joined together to form a future constellation. It only lasted the blink of an eyelid, that’s all you get with an epiphany, but the afterglow on my eyelids left such a strong imprint I knew it was my one and only purpose. If I’d seen a glimmer of it – my desire to help others – in Thailand saving those kids, now it was clear as the sun in a cloudless sky. There was one problem: I just didn’t see how I could make it work while having to pay for all these things I’d accumulated whilst living in Australia. Here I was between a rock and a hard place. I’d have to do it in England, and I had vowed never to go back there.

  Once I set the desire and started to be so passionate about it, my world in Australia started to fall apart; my contract came to an end and the new contract I was supposed to start was withdrawn, things were not looking great, but what did I expect? I told myself: You dummy, this is what you subconsciously wanted! And it’s not the death but the birth of something. As when something is dying and phasing out it cries the loudest. Be careful not to focus on the tears but pay attention to the serenity of a new life taking shape.

  A few weeks later I bolted upright in bed. It was 3 a.m. on a Thursday. Something inside me said, ‘Go home to the UK!’ What was I thinking? I promised myself I would never go back but the more I allowed the gate of opportunity to open, the more I could see it all made perfect sense. Within two weeks of this nocturnal thunderbolt I had sold everything I owned on Gumtree and returned to England on 11 July 2014.

  CHAPTER 3

  FINDING PURPOSE

  We are defined by our sense of purpose. When I was in the Special Forces I was an important cog in a well-oiled machine and, although I wasn’t entirely satisfied, I felt fulfilled in many ways: the teamwork, camaraderie and sense of a mission provided me with direction. When I left, the gap between myself and my purpose created a monumental void that I failed to under-stand at the time. It unravelled me very quickly.

  Purpose gives meaning to our lives and something to aim for. Those without it get mired in depression and addiction as they attempt to plaster over the emptiness that comes from a lack of purpose. Whenever I’ve lacked meaning in what I’m doing, my life has spiralled out of control. If you can’t think of a purpose, life will find you one, and it will be a lazy choice it makes for you, a safe, grey option the colour of a drizzly Lancashire sky. You’ll get sucked in to the false belief that your purpose is to get up at the crack of dawn, spend a big part of your day in transit to work, then do a job whose only function is to pay off the mortgage for a house you barely spend any time in, and you only get to see your kids for an hour in the evening before they have to go to bed. No wonder people end up getting addicted to the first thing that offers them some quick excitement. Without a goal you drift, time passes cruelly by and you can feel utterly pointless. Everyone has a goal whether they like it or not, it is what your dominant thoughts focus on.

  The antidote to this is to sit with yourself and really think about how you can find your inner purpose. Your life can be as small or glorious as you allow it but only if you’re the conductor, the architect and captain.

  Viktor Frankl was a professor of psychiatry and neurology and the founder of a strand of therapy known as logotherapy, whereby patients are guided to find the meaning in their life. His book Man’s Search for Meaning follows his horrific experience in Auschwitz as a concentration camp inmate. Subjected to freezing weather in poor clothing with no shoes, malnutrition, rats, regular beatings, torture, disease, not to mention the threat of the gas chambers, he lost his wife, mother, father and brother to the camps. Amid all this tragedy and hopelessness, he manged to find meaning in his suffering. He noticed two types of people in the camps: those who had lost all sense of hope and faith, and those who had a why to live – something meaningful to be fulfilled by them in the future. This second group saw the daily hell they went through as a challenge to overcome. It was the latter who survived the longest.

  So how did he find meaning in his suffering? For Frankl, he found purpose in a manuscript he wished to publish that would help others. He treated all the terrible things he was exposed to as future material for lectures he would one day give on the subject of finding one’s inner purpose. Frankl turned a negative into a positive: ‘Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.’ Frankl believed we need to find meaning in something bigger than ourselves, something outside of us. He also reflected that however much the Nazis tried to dehumanise the Jewish prisoners, they could not take away their right to react to their situation in the way they pleased: they could be reduced to scavenging like dogs or continue to act like humans, practicing kindness and attempt to overcome the situation. Your attitude to your existence makes you who you are. He said:

  Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances . . . you and you alone decide what your life will be in the next moment. Man is capable of changing the world and changing himself for the better.

  Frankl also asserts that when we lose ourselves in a task that holds great meaning for us, a cause greater than ourselves, happiness occurs within us as a natural by-product; we shouldn’t chase happiness and success per se, but rather dedicate every fibre of ourselves to our purpose and they will both come naturally.

  In Okinawa, a Japanese island home to some of the oldest people on earth, the word ikigai roughly translates as ‘a reason to get up in the morning’. The word derives from ikuru – Japanese for ‘life’, and kai meaning ‘the realisation of what one hopes for’. In order to find our inner purpose, our ikigai, we must ask four questions: What is my passion? What
am I good at? What does the world need from me? What can I get paid for?

  Answering all four so they complement each other is, according to Okinawans, the path to fulfilment, but it’s not always straight-forward. If you’re purely focused on earning money but have no passion for what you do, it will leave you feeling empty, while doing what you love but which contributes nothing to the world is selfish and ultimately unfulfilling. When we multi-task naturally our focus becomes diluted. We can only find real flow in ourselves when we cast all our attention on one thing.

  I stumbled on the first glimmers of my true purpose, not as a member of the elite SBS but after I left the Forces, when I found myself in South-east Asia, liberating kids from a dark future of prostitution and premature death. My personal balm to a life of empty restlessness, addiction and dissatisfaction turned out to be something as simple as helping others. I was 43 when I came to this realisation and I’ve never looked back since.

  EXERCISE: IKIGAI

  Take some time out to ask yourself these four questions.

  What do I love doing?

  What am I good at?

  What does the world need?

  What can I get paid for?

  Give yourself half an hour to complete this task and contemplate your responses. How do they relate to how you spend your time currently?

  Without a self-defined purpose we are lost, unfulfilled and hollow. To understand your purpose, you have to level with yourself: where are you right now and where do you want to be? Until you understand who you are as a person, you won’t understand what you really want out of life.

  I did well at school up until a certain point when I asked myself, ‘What is the fucking point of all this?’ Because I couldn’t relate to how academia benefited me and what positive end it would lead to, it held no purpose for me. No meaning. I needed a direction and purpose through which I could channel my energy and drive. Fortunately, I found an outlet for it in sport, particularly cross-country running. As a kid, you’ve got so much energy and drive that needs to attach itself to something positive; unguided it will end up getting you into trouble, which is precisely what happened to me.

  I couldn’t keep out of it as a teenager, be it petty shoplifting, or stealing a shotgun and wandering around with it under my parka like Burton-on-Trent’s answer to Wyatt Earp. My mum managed to get me back into sport and that gave me a much-needed direction, a focus. I was a decent 1,500-metre runner and good at cross-country and she, bless her, would drive me all over the place so I could compete. And once she did that, that took me out of my familiar surroundings and away from the people who said I’d never change, that I was a repeat offender bound for nowhere but jail. My success as a runner gave me positive validation from others, a newfound respect for myself, and a sense of fulfilment. It also made me realise that I could change for the better and didn’t have to conform to what others said I would be. Just hearing their predictions made me want to prove them wrong.

  Most prisoners in UK jails and, I’d hazard a guess, in most prisons across the world, are youths aged between 18 and 27 years old. The brain is still building itself till around the age of 27, and while the frontal cortex (the part of the brain that does the rationalising and rulemaking) is ‘closed for construction till further notice’, youths have to rely on their lizard brain. They act out of fear, fight-or-flight behaviour and don’t think of the consequences. But another reason they end up in jail is they have no purpose. Consider how many great boxers throughout the sport’s history have said they would have ended up in prison had it not been for the discipline of boxing taking them to the gym instead. This was my problem; I just didn’t know what the hell to do with all that restlessness and energy. Had it not been for running and my obsession with joining the Royal Marines, I probably wouldn’t be here now.

  As I said earlier in the book, I didn’t find my real purpose until I worked for the Grey Man, helping liberate children from the sex trade. And although it ended abruptly, the silver lining to that cloud was that I had finally discovered that my passion in life was helping others. Victor Frankl was bang on the money!

  Think of your goals over the next 12 months, and ask yourself: ‘What do I need to add or subtract to help me achieve my goal and lead a happier life?’

  THE PURPOSE PYRAMID

  The Purpose Pyramid is a useful tool to measure the worth of anything in your life that may be of questionable merit. This can be something that’s a current habit or something that you’re negotiating bringing into your life. The central subject matter represents that which you’re questioning. As an example I’ve placed ‘alcohol’ there, but it might well be ‘job’, ‘relationship’, ‘business venture’ . . . in fact, place anything you’re not sure about in the centre. Starting at the top ask yourself: ‘Does it add personal internal growth to me?’ I’m not talking money, but rather does it make you a better human being. When it comes to alcohol and me, I can categorically state that it doesn’t make me better – in fact, it makes me worse.

  Next: ‘Do I enjoy it?’ In my case, for example, do I enjoy the three days’ muddiness and depression that follows falling off the wagon? No, I don’t.

  And the last question: ‘Does it help others?’ Only the landlord of the pub and the managers of the off-licence that I (used to) buy my alcohol from. Certainly, it doesn’t benefit me or my loved ones, as I end up being the worst version of myself, grumpy and self-loathing, which is not a good place to operate from.

  The subject matter must generate two ticks out of three (minimum) for you to keep it in your life. If it only ticks one or none, you need to bin it sharpish. Always keep this simple triangle in your mind and apply it constantly if you want to be in control of your quality filter.

  EXERCISE: THE PURPOSE PYRAMID

  Complete your own purpose pyramid. Place an element from your life that is of questionable merit in the middle. Then ask yourself the three questions: Does it add growth? Do I enjoy it? Does it help others? Be honest with yourself.

  Does it add growth?

  Yes/no: _____________

  Do I enjoy it?

  Yes/no: _____________

  Does it help others?

  Yes/no: _____________

  Now you’ve done the exercise, how many yeses did you get? How many nos? Remember – to keep the thing you’re wondering about in your life, you must answer yes to at least two of these questions. If you tick only one you must seriously question if it has a place in your life, or none means that you should bin it from your life immediately.

  EXERCISE: TAKING STOCK OF YOUR LIFE

  Question the purpose of each of the topics below, and be as honest as you can:

  People in your life: Take a good, hard look at the people you talk to on a regular basis and consider how much quality there is in these friendships and working relationships. I talk to far fewer people now than I did ten years ago. But I tend to talk to people that I care about and who care about me. Some people who I’ve known for years, I no longer talk to because I realise the effects they have on me are not positive. Although I haven’t removed them from my life, they’re not part of my daily nutrition.

  Your job: If you weigh up the positives against the negatives, how does your chosen employment stack up? What is its purpose, and do you feel aligned to that? Do you feel like you’re moving and progressing? Do you feel satisfied? What are your working relationships like? How does your boss treat you? Do you feel inspired or unmotivated? Are you earning what you want to earn? Did you picture yourself doing something else?

  By asking these basic questions, ‘What’s the purpose of this?’ or ‘Is it having a good or bad effect on me?’ we are able to identify the elements in our life that cause us pain or waste our time. Once we identify the negatives that detract from the good in our lives, it makes them much easier to let go of.

  When you complete this exercise with any current habit or activity, and also anything you’re negotiating in the future, you’ll start to get an idea o
f what’s good for you and if you’re investing your time in activities that mean something to you, where you get a good deal from your ROI (return on investment) or not.

  A person with a self-defined purpose is a force to be reckoned with. Look how I trod water in Brisbane for two years with the oil company. As soon as I had my epiphany about starting a company, within two weeks I had sold up and gone back to a country I swore I’d never visit again. If your why is strong enough, you’ll flex to any what in order to achieve it. Purpose is the engine that drives us. As Bruce Lee, the famous martial artist and movie star, once said: ‘A purpose is the eternal condition of success.’

  He believed that when we are full of purpose, the pursuit of our goal doesn’t feel like hard work but rather the pursuit of becoming ourselves. ‘Your main purpose is to become your true self. You don’t have to have your purpose figured out but put yourself on a path to find it. Do you feel like you’re in the flow or stagnant?’ When our purpose is to be true to ourselves, when we are on the right path, our goal becomes easier to achieve.