Battle Ready

by Ollie Ollerton

  PART II

  BARRIERS TO CHANGE

  CHAPTER 4

  THE NEGATIVITY DEFAULT

  You can’t replace a spark plug in a car’s engine without knowing what it does and where to find it. Similarly, in order to make successful change within our lives it’s vital to know how and why we are hardwired toward certain behaviours and how to challenge them.

  LPS (LIFE POSITIONING SYSTEM)

  Recently, I was running short on time to get to an appointment – a common occurrence these days. So I jumped into my car, punched in the address on my satnav and headed off sharpish. It took me longer than expected to get there, and by the time I arrived I was extremely late for my appointment. And angry: after the meeting I checked the route and realised the GPS had taken me on a much longer journey than I would have usually taken. I was irked by it, but then I reflected on how stupid I’d been, allowing myself to be dictated to by a system that had no real understanding of my needs; it was prepared to take me on a route that avoided the efficiency of the alternative and less-trodden path. I jumped in my car, automatically drifted to autopilot, and let the system tell me where to go without a thought for my own appreciation of the route and time to get there. Does this sound familiar? Is this how your life has become?

  That’s the curse of modern technology: what it giveth, it taketh away. People are like old horses on a riding-school hack who plod along with their eyes shut, automatically following their old routes. I call this the Life Positioning System. Like GPS, the Life Positioning System points us to where we’ve already been rather than offering us the road less travelled, which has so much more to teach us. In a rare moment of consciousness when you do pop your head up, you often realise there was a much better route you could have taken, one that was fresh, different and therefore more stimulating and rewarding (and, consequently, more efficient too).

  Our default blueprint is to be sheep, to follow the herd, to be lazy and never challenge the status quo. It’s easier to mimic other people and fit in and be meek, but with that comes boredom and stagnation. Our reliance on tech is absolute and we now lack the resourcefulness of our forefathers a hundred years ago who had to look at a map to find their destination or use a pencil and paper to do maths. And this is the same with our lives. Sometimes we need to take out a pencil and paper and plan our route.

  Most people nonchalantly follow their LPS till the day they die and then wonder on their deathbeds why they’re consumed with regret. But how are we to dust off our Life Positioning Systems? Imagine that you were going to die tomorrow night and that life’s final gift was to allow you one more day to do, go or be anything you wanted until midnight tomorrow. What would it be?

  The best way to wake up and stop falling into your LPS is to meditate regularly (see Chapter 11 for instructions on how to meditate), which allows you to be more aware of yourself, to let yourself be curious, and not take everything for granted, and to be present in the now. Question the status quo and look for the direction that feels natural to you and not dictated by others.

  The more we understand that as humans we are programmed to be resistant to change – because change represents a threat to our survival – the more obvious are the many barriers we erect to stop it happening; even when it is a necessary change that will make us happier. To become Battle Ready, we need to be versatile and flexible to deal with what is thrown at us and to seize opportunities, and that means embracing change. We’ll come back to my own story and the bootcamp I designed in order to achieve my goal and follow my purpose on my return to England, but over the next few chapters we’re going to learn about how the brain works and the mechanisms within us that operate automatically. In this chapter let’s take a closer look at the barriers we need to navigate in order to break out of our not-so-comfortable comfort zones.

  THE SURVIVAL BLUEPRINT

  As humans, our primary focus is survival, and to this end we’ve evolved to live in a state of near-constant fear and vigilance; we’re as wired to negativity as wasps drawn to an open bottle of Coke, always looking for something that will go wrong, forever anxious with what ifs? Blame it on our distant ancestors, but fear and self-doubt have kept us alive ever since we left the safety of the trees to make our imprint on the world 2.5 million years ago. Back then, we weren’t top of the food chain and we couldn’t afford to be over complacent – there were cave bears and sabre-tooth tigers looking to feed on us each time we left our cave.

  Then 1.8 million years ago we caught a break and discovered fire, which in turn enabled us to cook and sophisticate the diversity of our diets thereby developing the human brain. Fire also helped keep predators at bay and allowed us humans to stay up later and develop communication and intellectual thought. Fast-forward to around 300,000 years BC and early mankind was able to use wood and stone tools effectively, build shelters and had also begun to talk to each other with basic grunts (sounds like the Marines!). Anatomically modern humans emerged about 200,000 years ago, but it wasn’t until around 50,000 years ago that our species enjoyed an explosion of innovation, with much improved weaponry, and the advancement of language developed to such an extent that we could communicate very precisely what we wanted, which resulted in culture becoming more complex and structured.

  Despite all these developments mankind is still hardwired to fear. In our 2.8 million-year journey to where we are now, 99.9 per cent of that time has been spent evolving under dangerous circumstances – as little as 15,000 years ago we were still being hunted by predators! It’s no wonder certain modes of behaviour, like the ‘fight-or-flight’ syndrome still dominate our reactions even in situations where we’re no longer in mortal danger. Look at what happens in a moment of road rage – one moment a person is listening to Smooth FM, then someone cuts him up and he regresses to behaving like a caveman. Chemicals within the body create the symptoms of fight or flight – shaky hands, weak leg muscles, increased heartbeat, churning stomach, loss of breath and sweating palms – through increased cortisol (stress hormone) and testosterone (fight hormone), which hijack the blood flow, oxygen and synaptic activity in your brain responsible for making you act rationally; putting it instead into the limbic system which is home to the instinctive amygdala part of your brain, where fear is processed and anger is triggered. One driver goes into fight mode and ‘sees red’, while the other flies for their life and hurriedly drives off.

  Fear dominates our lives on a daily basis: fear of failure, fear of what others think, fear of missing out, fear of getting older, fear of success, fear of the dark . . . the possibilities are almost endless, amplified by the constant drone of negativity staged by the media on your TV, newspaper and social media. Given then that we’re now top of the food chain, and tragically most of the animals with teeth who can eat us are on the verge of extinction, why are we still enchained to fear?

  Consider the speed with which we have evolved over the last 2,500 years; relative to our slowly morphing ancestors, the apes, it’s safe to say that time and technology have overtaken our general evolution. Which is dangerous. ‘Tech’ has become so much an integral part of our lives and is developing so rapidly that we can no longer control it or live without it. When the geeks in Silicon Valley quietly admit that they won’t let their kids near the stuff they design because it’s too addictive, and Elon Musk, the man taking us to Mars in 2030, believes creating artificial intelligence is akin to summoning the devil, you know we’re in over our heads!

  The human survival blueprint, like that of many animal species, is still hardwired to fear as a means of survival, which results in us avoiding taking fresh new paths when a familiar well-trodden one can be followed instead. It also means we’re not fulfilling our potential and leading the full lives we might. Taking the untrodden path towards new experiences is our birth right. Humans are brilliant creatures and creators – we’ve built sky-defying monuments to our gods, cured diseases, established free healthcare, mapped and even visited the heavens, but we are still pale, h
alf creatures unnecessarily cowering by the firelight in the cave, and falling well short of our true potential, outside in the brilliant sunshine. Once we learn to understand our genetic make-up and how as humans we’ve been designed to think and feel, we can more easily recognise when our default fear mechanism is depriving us of a new experience.

  THE SHORTCUT SYNDROME

  The Shortcut Syndrome is something we’re all guilty of and can all relate to. As humans, we tend to want the end result without doing the work necessary to achieve it. We’re wired to take the easy path and avoid stress at all costs. Take surfing, for instance. Learning how to surf is a time-sapping and humiliating process. I have several boards and even own a surf van, but can I surf? No! Surfing, like almost everything worthwhile, is one thing that you can’t shortcut, it takes time and effort to gain any knowledge and skill of the art. It’s about persistence. My failure is linked to my inability to see purpose in the outcome of surfing. Yes, I’m sure it would be cool and very satisfying, but until you get the taste of success you fail to see the need and purpose, and purpose alone is the one thing that drives anyone to achieve their goals. One day I’ll be able to surf, as soon as it ascends to the top of my goal-setting priorities.

  Colin Wilson, a great twentieth-century thinker, believed we live our lives in a sleepwalk, only waking in rare moments when we are stimulated by something that allows us off the treadmill. He said:

  Human beings are 99 per cent ‘robot’. Our bodies are programmed to breathe, to sleep, digest, excrete; our instincts are programmed to reproduce our kind and protect our children. But our minds are also mechanical . . . I am typing this page without effort, because after thirty-odd years, typing has become ‘automatic’. We live automatically. The simplest way of ceasing to live ‘mechanically’ is to make a continual attempt at ‘vigilance’, self-awareness.

  The drive to satisfy our primal obligations of food, sleep and procreation take priority over everything else, and in order to ensure these fundamentals are met, the mind takes shortcuts. As soon as you walk into a new situation it will make a few rapid enquiries in your memory bank to try to connect the present situation to something similar you have experienced before; an approximation, a shortcut. And if it can’t find an appropriate example, to ensure you’re still fit to fulfil your primal obligations it will send you fear to avoid your attempts at trying something new. We often experience a sense of fear disproportionate to the situation.

  What we perceive as the real world around us, we’re in fact viewing through a lens of our past experiences that are attached with corresponding emotions. This is a subjective way of seeing new experiences, where we filter anything new through all our past hurts and joys, successes and failures, so our response to the new thing is tinged by what we have been through in the past. We need to make a conscious attempt to view new things objectively, to perceive them happening as they are around us, rather than being ‘automatic’ in our response.

  While the left side of our brain deals in logic, is more aware of time strictures and prone to worry, the right side – if we’d only allow it, through slowing our breath and relaxing – comes to our aid delivering clarity and calm. In pressured situations, our panic mechanism kicks in as we ask ourselves, How do I get out of this? We need to recognise the behaviour and breathe our way out of it, until the fear has subsided. As I mentioned in the first chapter, while I was in the Special Forces I learned a trick I named ‘Breathe, Recalibrate and Deliver’. In moments of stress or when you have a mental blockage you want to navigate around, just by breathing slowly and consciously you can slow yourself down to a state of calm, and from this position you’re able to make a rational, focused decision.

  When I have to get up and start my daily routine at 5 a.m., my body says no. So I breathe, recalibrate and take action within a few seconds, otherwise my brain will support the opposite. Focus on why you need to get up, get fit, meditate. Don’t dally, don’t’ think for long, just GET UP! Breathe – recalibrate – deliver.

  THE EGO

  ‘The ego is a veil between what you think you are and what you actually are. You live under the illusion of the mind, totally unaware that you are directed by a great big load of stories!’

  – Isira Sananda

  In the Special Forces, it is assumed that operators have little or no ego, but that would be a false statement. What they do possess is the ability to be aware of the ego, to know when it is unbalanced in a situation and be able to control its output. I’ve met some of the most humble but dangerous men while in the Special Forces, all capable of inflicting severe pain and destruction, but who have the ability to back down to a weaker opponent when the greater good was at stake.

  The ego is your self-image of who you think you are, a construct of the mind based on your beliefs, talents and experiences. The ego separates you as being distinctly different than the things around you, leaving you disconnected. We take heed of the ego’s incessant voice in our mind, believing everything it tells us, even though it is driven by the need to be liked and to feel good about itself and will happily bullshit you to satisfy that end. It lives in the past, reliving old triumphs, and in the future where it pictures owning yet more glittery things – a better car, a boat, a bigger house – but it’s never enough, for once you’ve attained what it lusts after, the ego gets bored, feels unsatisfied and those glittery things become empty and worthless. The present is never good enough for the ego, it’s continually projecting forward, thinking it will be happy when it has attained this or that. The more we submit to the mindless religion of consumerism, the more debt we get ourselves into and the more enchained we are to the wheel of predictability. We’re addicted to owning stuff that supports the perception of who we want to be. It’s as if it is in our DNA.

  Imagine you were the last person on Earth. Would your choice of car, clothes and material objects change, given there was no one to impress? Would it become practical rather than flash?

  The ego is a diva driven by an insecure need for constant recognition from others. Eckhart Tolle, one of the most well-known spiritual teachers on the planet, suggests the ego’s identification with things begins as toddlers when we become territorial over a toy, ‘That’s mine!’ This need to identify with possessions deepens in adulthood, the need to be defined by what we possess becomes almost an obsession. On a greater scale of ego, consider the behaviour of countries and their need to possess other countries in order to feel strong. In his book, A New Earth, Tolle says:

  Fear, greed and the desire for power are the psychological motivating forces not only behind warfare and violence between nations, tribes, religions and ideologies, but also the cause of conflict in personal relationships. They bring about an illusion in your perception of other people and yourself.

  You could argue that Western society has become lost because it has engorged itself with material possessions, and an overfocus on money. Bhutan, in stark contrast, is a little-known principality deep in the Himalayas, sandwiched between Tibet and India. In 1971, its forward-thinking king rejected GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in favour of GNH (Gross National Happiness), which seeks to measure prosperity by the spiritual, physical, social and environmental well-being of its citizens. The idea that inner health and the preservation of the environment take precedence over material growth is unique. While the remainder of the world has screwed itself with corporate greed, overdevelopment and a lack of care for the earth we live in, Bhutan is like a different planet.

  In business, I have chosen to focus, where possible, on what my company does and why, not just what it earns. And while I project what its earnings will be next year, I also consider the people the business is going to positively affect, be it veterans or civilians. Helping others is my passion, and I believe if I hold true to my passion, the profits necessary to keep the company successful will follow. If, like Bhutan, we were to ask ourselves: How am I going to create happiness? as opposed to, How am I going to create wealth? we would be more fu
lfilled.

  In his book, Stillness Speaks, Tolle suggests that once we learn to recognise our ego’s inner voice and observe our thinking mind, we will start to wake up and free ourselves from the ego. This newfound awareness connects us to the present, the essence of who we really are. A Zen monk might describe this as going beyond thinking. Picture a conversation with someone. How present are you as you listen to them? Are you interested in them and curious to hear what happens next, or are you waiting for your cue to speak about yourself? Are you judging and imposing your mental labels on them?

  Our modern conception of the ego is derived from the Latin ego, meaning ‘I’, and true to form the ego is purely self-oriented. Sometimes I catch myself feeling jealous when a friend has had some good news. Then I step out of myself and observe what’s going on: it’s my ego at work, threatened by another’s success. I remind myself that my focus and achievement is my training company, and then that horrible green-eyed snake in my guts slithers away. Social networks like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are platforms of instant validation and gratification and are fertile fields for the ego because we measure our success as people by how many likes we’ve received for a comment or photo we posted.

  After we pass our physical prime in our twenties, the brightness of our looks begins to fade. From an evolutionary standpoint, we no longer need to procreate, we’re supposed to have done that by the time we’re 30, so nature doesn’t require us to be so physically attractive. We grow wrinkled and grey on the outside but hopefully wiser on the inside. And yet the world is so obsessed with looks, and vanity so integrally linked to self-worth, that many men and women refuse to grow old gracefully, taking Botox fillers and hair transplants in an attempt to cheat time and be like Peter Pan. Again, the ego fears its relevance will be diluted if it no longer gets the attention it has always enjoyed. Self-worth can become defined by how others perceive us. The sooner we realise the fakery and false reality of the ego, and learn to listen out for its voice, the sooner we will see that the things it tells us are not reality at all. That true self-worth lies in the happiness of the inner self.