Jay Morton - Building A Special Forces Mindset | Modern Wisdom Podcast 246

Jay Morton is a Former SAS Operator and Two-time Everest Summitee. Becoming a soldier means dealing with fear, coping with pressure and performing with excellence. The SAS is the best of the best and today we learn the key lessons from Jay's 14 year career. Expect to learn how humour can help with fear, whether climbing Everest is harder than the SAS Selection Process, the coolest operation Jay was a part of, how to take advantage of opportunity and much more... Sponsor: Get Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (Enter promo code MODERNWISDOM for 83% off and 3 Months Free) Extra Stuff: Buy Soldier - https://amzn.to/2IgecoX Follow Jay on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jay__morton Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #sas #specialforces #jaymorton - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Oh, hello people in podcast land. Welcome back. My guest today is none other than Jay Morton, former SAS operator and two-time Everest Summitee. Got him on today to talk about his new book, Soldier. Becoming a soldier means dealing with fear, coping with pressure and performing with excellence. The SAS is the best of the best. And today we learn the key lessons from Jay's 14-year career. So expect to learn how humour can help with fear, whether climbing Everest is harder than the SAS selection process, the coolest operation Jay was a part of, how to take advantage of opportunity like a soldier and much more.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 0:54Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.

• 1:09Chris Williamson?

  But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Jay Morton.

• 1:29Chris Williamson?

  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Jay Morton. Jay, welcome to the show.

• 1:35Speaker 04

  How's it going, Chris? You good?

• 1:36Chris Williamson?

  Very well. I'm in Dubai. How could I not be well? I do need to hold my hands up for everyone that is watching on YouTube. Yes, I'm wearing a vest. Yes, I caught a little bit of sun today. Tiny little bit, just a bit flush, right? But I haven't seen sunshine for like six months. So give me a break. I've also got you currently, Jay. You're balanced on an upturned bin in my hotel room. And I'm doing this after tethering to my phone on roaming data. So God knows how much this is going to cost, but it's more than worth it. So thank you very much for coming on, man.

• 2:07Speaker 04

  Too easy. Yeah, you never see what's in the background, do you, of what you've got?

• 2:11Chris Williamson?

  Chaos.

• 2:11Speaker 04

  I've done the same, man. Where you've just got to balance your phone and whatever's going on in the background. So, yeah.

• 2:16Chris Williamson?

  Absolute chaos, mate. It's just a total.

• 2:18Speaker 04

  And you're a northerner too. You're a fellow northerner. So don't do well in the sun.

• 2:23Chris Williamson?

  Look, I've got two ginger parents, but thankfully I don't think I've fully inherited their skin. But you're totally right, man. When you're from Winterfell, you don't tan, don't tan massively well.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  Exactly. You just, you go white, you just seem to go white.

• 2:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. That leads me quite nicely into, talking about the temperature, leads me quite nicely into something I wanted to ask, which is, which is more difficult, the selection process for special forces or climbing Everest twice?

• 2:50Speaker 04

  I'd have to say climbing Everest. Selection, you know, six months, I say selection just seems to, it's drawn out over six months, right? And when you start, you're already a, you're already a seasoned soldier. Like for me, I'd done one tour of Iraq and two tours of Afghanistan. So you almost get to that stage where you, you, you want to prove yourself as, as a soldier. And I was, you know, 24 years old, like full of testosterone. So like, you go on selection with a bunch of other lads and you're all, you know, you've got this unified kind of cause that you're all trying, that you're

• 3:28Speaker 04

  all going for at the same time. And I actually enjoyed selection for that reason. Cause you meet, you know, you, you end up, all, all, you know, you start with maybe 150, 170 people. After the first three weeks, you're kind of down to 50. And then after the next six weeks, you, you're kind of down to maybe 20, 25 people. And these 20, 25 people have been through, through absolute shit. So you end up forming this like super tight bond where you're all really close and, and all really clicky. And then you get to the end of selection, after that six months, you get given your stable

• 4:09Speaker 04

  belt and your beret. And you get like a picture took next to clock tower. You shake everyone's hand and then you disappear into whatever regiment and squadrons that you go to. And then the next day, you're kind of big boys rules into the, into the mix.

• 4:25Chris Williamson?

  Thrown into the lion's den.

• 4:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I remember, I remember turning up day one and like I was 24, like it's quite a young age to pass the election. And like the rest of the guys in my troop were all kind of, I mean, some of them were touching 40 years old. So as a 24 year old, turning into, turning up into this SAS troop with a load of 40 year olds. Even like the guy who came in two years before me, he was like, you know, two, three years ahead of me. And like, they're all like big guys, like big kind of men with like grey hair and stuff and.

• 4:59Chris Williamson?

  Big hands, massive hands.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  Massive hands, like, you know, we had, Billy was one of our, one of our senior sergeants at the time. And, you know, he was like a, you know, ex, ex kind of football hooligan from London and just covered in like skull tattoos. And like flames up his arm and stuff.

• 5:21Chris Williamson?

  Very welcoming.

• 5:22Speaker 04

  Turns like, yeah, we, we actually went to Norway on our first exercise and I ended up spending it, spending the whole six weeks living in a tent with him. So we, we got on quite well.

• 5:33Chris Williamson?

  Very cosy after a while, yeah.

• 5:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, as it turns out, he was the nicest guy there.

• 5:38Chris Williamson?

  That's awesome, man. Yeah. And how does that relate to Everest then?

• 5:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. So like Everest is.

• 5:47Speaker 04

  Everest is like quite a big, it's a big misconception for some people. And because a lot of people think that because of the amount of people that go up and, and the caliber of people that go up, it's an easy thing to do. And coming from someone who's done a lot of difficult things in their life, Everest is by no means an easy feat. It just seems to attract people who can afford it because it comes with a very high price tag. So it kind of attracts a certain caliber of people.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  And you do end up with a lot of, a lot of dross on the mountain, which doesn't give it a very good reputation. But Everest is more.

• 6:27Speaker 04

  It's six weeks of living at altitude. So if you think like,

• 6:35Speaker 04

  altitude just basically takes away energy from you. So if you stand up and walk 10 metres at sea level, it's fine, right? You don't think about it. But if you're a, you know, six, 7,000 metres in the sky and you stand up and walk 10 metres, you know, you're taking a couple of steps, stopping, breathing, taking a couple of steps, stopping, breathing. So like, everything that you deemed easy at sea level is magnified in difficulty the further up you go, to the point of, on your summit push, when, you know, if you think of your summit push, it's quite, just to give a picture of, of kind of the severity of it,

• 7:19Speaker 04

  you do like an acclimat- you, you get up to base camp, you're doing acclimatization, which takes five days or, or six days. You come back down, you rest at base camp, which is at 5,600 metres. And then you kind of sit there and look at the, the weather windows. Um, and you get, you always get one weather window to summit, which is clear skies, you know, minimal winds. You sometimes get two weather windows and you rarely get three. So it's this balance of all your weather, weather systems and speaking to like people around the camps and finding out what's going on. Cause like you've invested all this time, right? You've invested like the last three weeks of living at altitude, eating shit food, um, you know,

• 8:03Speaker 04

  shitting into a hole in the ground every morning.

• 8:06Chris Williamson?

  A frozen, frozen hole in the ground.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  A throat like, you, you lit- it's like clockwork every morning and, you know, your only entertainment is the game of cards that you play at night in the tent. And you, by this time, you're sick of lunch and meat and rice. Um, so you invested all this energy and time into making the right decision and getting to the, you know, getting high up and summiting in the, in the right weather window. Cause if you don't, that's it, you know, you, you only get one shot at summiting. And then you kind of set off at camp three on your summit push. So you'll leave camp three, which is 7,000 metres. Um, and there's four camps till summit. So you go camp three, 7,000 metres, leave there at 5am on oxygen. You climb up to camp four, arrive at camp four, say 4pm.

• 8:53Speaker 04

  So that's a full day to get there. Camp four's eight thousand metres, so you rest there in a tent for, you know, six hours. You try and get some sleep, you you get some hot water on, you cook some food. Um, and then you leave that night at eight P M. To summer the first light, so, you know, six A M, seven A M in the morning. And then you've got all that day to come all the way back down to camp two. Which you get to camp to at, say, like I got there about nine P M. So.

• 9:29Chris Williamson?

  It's a fifteen hour day at ridiculous altitude.

• 9:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you start five A M. It's like two days, basically, just constantly with no sleep. Minimal water, um, at that altitude. Your body doesn't work the same, so you don't ju- digest food. Um, so I was literally living off like the little energy sachets that like cyclists and and triathletes and that use. Which obviously then, you know, ended up with that, just all over my hands, just like sticky and it just leaks out into your pocket. So every time you put your hand in your pocket, your hand gets stuck. Um, you you not drink as much water just because you're constantly needing to move and. Kind of beyond camp four up to the summer.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  It it's your your body's kind of that drained and tired and exhausted. It's simply just that one foot in front of the other, that slow, kind of monotonous. Like, tap, tap, tap. And then you kind of, you just see everyone doing it, everyone kind of puts their arm, like their their elbows on the the legs and like. Because you're on like a steep hill and just.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  Just gives it like a few couple of puffs of breath and just composes themselves before they they set off again. Um, and then you get to the top and then coming down is even worse because it's steep ground. And then you've got this this mass of people that are coming down at the same time, so you. You know, you're trying to work your way through all these people for like the next.

• 10:58Speaker 04

  For the next seventeen, so you sum it at six AM, I'm no good at maths, sum it at six AM, get back down for ten PM. So what's that, sixteen, fourteen hours of walking downhill, where your toes are just hitting the front of your boots for fourteen hours, to the point you, you know, you start walking sideways and then you change to the other side and then you start walking backwards. Yeah, you just, like, like, I've been exhausted and tired and like fatigued and so many times in like my military career, but like, you're never that fatigued and exhausted that you are on Everest.

• 11:40Chris Williamson?

  It seems like a big part of that is the camaraderie that you had in the support structure from when you were doing special forces selection, I guess as well, like, if you're in thin air and it's really cold and you're on a thin ridge, it's like, first off, you're spread out, second, you've got to save your breath to be able to focus on the few bodily functions that your physiology is still able to do. Whereas, as you said, during your special, special forces, you're really able, you've got this sort of unity that that binds you all together and makes maybe the suffering a little bit less solo.

• 12:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, a little bit. I think, you know, for a start, you're at sea level, so that makes things way easier. Yeah, like, I guess, when you're at sea level and you're doing the things that you're doing in the special forces, you always know where the end is. And the end's usually quite comfortable. So say you're deploying an operation that is anything from, you know, ten hours, twelve hours on a night raid, or you go out for a week and live in a building and put an OP in or whatever it is. And you always know at the end of that, you take enough food, you take enough water, you know, you're warm, you're taking enough, you know, sleeping equipment or enough jackets and warm clothing

• 13:00Speaker 04

  that you're going to be, you're going to be semi-comfortable, right? There might be a little bit hardship, you might be walking in with some, some weight and some kit, you do the job, you extract or whatever it is. But you know, at the end of that week. Unless the job or mission changes, you're going to come back to base or wherever it is that you you live, whether you're in the UK, you come back, you're probably, you know, having beers with the boys at the weekend or whatever. Or if it's if you're overseas, you know, you're coming back to a camp, you're de-kitting, you go for steak and eggs in the morning, you're going to get back in the gym. Whereas like on Everest, it's like, you set off on that summit window and that rotation on that summit window is seven days.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  So you leave base camp, you leave, you leave base camp with a rucksack and you come back in seven days with that same rucksack. And then, and you, you know, you're not coming back to steak and eggs and beers with the boys and a warm shower. You're literally, I mean, you know, you come back to a hot water, you know, hot bucket of water and a little bit of leftover like shampoo that you're tossing.

• 14:08Chris Williamson?

  A slightly bigger, slightly bigger hole in the ground to have a poop in.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, everyone's just been like filling it in whilst you've been gone. So it's like overflowing.

• 14:16Chris Williamson?

  Oh, no, no, no, no. Please make it stop.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  It's not like that hotel room in Dubai, I tell you.

• 14:22Chris Williamson?

  This is, it is lovely out here. So we're talking about your new book today, which will be out when this episode is live. What does respect is earned mean?

• 14:31Speaker 04

  And so kind of the book is just, you know, it's, it's to just say like, this is my 14 years of military experience in the special forces and the paras. And I've just put all that knowledge and experience into the book. And it's, it's essentially that, right? It's read this book and respect is earned. It's like, do the hard stuff through my military career. And it's like, that is how you gain respect.

• 14:56Chris Williamson?

  I understand. Let's go through the four tenets of the special forces. I thought this was really interesting.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you've got relentless pursuit for excellence. So that is, you know, if you think of like values that you live your life by, the special forces has those and first ones relentless pursuit of excellence and, you know, it should be something that we should be searching for every day within the special forces, whether it's whatever we're doing, whether it's shooting, we're always trying to get better at shooting, whether it's, you know, surveillance, OPs, whatever it is that we're doing, we need to always be searching for that level of excellence. And like, obviously, you never get to that level, you know, you never get to that level that is excellence, but that constant progression of just keep chipping away at whatever it is you're doing, whether

• 15:46Speaker 04

  it's in the gym, whether it's at home, whether it's whatever it is to just be a better human being and better in the job that you're doing. And that's kind of the first one. The second one is honour and humility. So kind of humility is a massive one in the special forces. Do you know, it's, I mean, even like, I remember bumping into a load of SBS lads when I was in the paras and the first thing that came across was, you know, you had these, these guys, they were, they were men, they were like 40 odd years old, like big dudes and that, but they were like the saddest guys ever. And they came and found us, looked after

• 16:28Speaker 04

  us and we played volleyball and they bought us a load of beers and, um, do you know, just that, it doesn't matter what you do in your career and where you've been, it's like, you still have that humble approach which will keep you hungry and will keep you always wanting to improve. And then honour is, you know, as it says, it's, it's having honour in what you're doing, honour of the people that you work with and honour of the job that you're doing. And then discipline, discipline goes without saying. It is, you know, it's one of the most important things that a soldier needs to have is discipline. You know, it's,

• 17:11Speaker 04

  it's no hidden secret that, you know, soldiers are people that, or if you're on a job or on a task, you're getting up early, you're doing things that aren't necessarily comfortable things to do.

• 17:28Speaker 04

  Or aren't very natural things to do. And that requires a lot of discipline, a lot of self-discipline to be, you know, to be that, that best cohesive team unit that you can be. And I've had a mind slip. What's the fourth one?

• 17:45Chris Williamson?

  I haven't got them written down, mate. So we can leave it at three. We can leave it at three.

• 17:48Speaker 04

  I'm trying to think. What is the fourth one? What is the fourth one? There is. Yeah, we'll leave it at three.

• 17:53Chris Williamson?

  Three it is now. That's fine. The fourth one's obviously not that important.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  They've changed it.

• 17:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, they've changed. This is the new, this is the Jay Morton version of the four tenants. I didn't realise that the SAS was split up into four squadrons with four troops within each. Can you just take us through how this works and the personalities that you explain about that?

• 18:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. So you've got kind of different teams within any special forces unit. And then those teams are broken down into into individual skill sets. And kind of the skill sets are air. So anything that is in the air, so helicopters. Mainly kind of parachuting and being a subject matter expert in parachuting. Boats, anything that's to do with water. And then you've got mobility, which is land vehicles. So motorbikes, quads, off-road vehicles, four by fours, all that kind of stuff. And then you've got mountain, which is what I was, which is

• 18:59Speaker 04

  anything to do with the mountains. So above the snow line. So you've got kind of Arctic warfare and, you know, stuff in kind of, you know, the Scandinavian countries, that kind of stuff. And then that kind of filters over into kind of a, a more, like a rope work kind of,

• 19:19Speaker 04

  like a rope access kind of thing to try and

• 19:23Speaker 04

  not put too much detail on it, if that makes sense. To try and keep it as bland as possible as that.

• 19:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I understand. What's the coolest operation that you can tell us about?

• 19:36Speaker 04

  Um, do you know, like, I don't know, coolest is probably like the, not, not the word I'd use, but like the, there's a few that really stick out. And a few things that I, I kind of ticked off whilst I was serving that, again, I can't, I can't talk about. But there was one, one job on a, on an IED factory. It was, it was a daytime raid on a night, so an IED is an improvised explosive device. And so it's, it's like a homemade bomb that the, the enemy would use against us. So it could be anything. So it would be anything that is homemade and that, you know, the, the, the main way of using it would be sticking it in a, in the ground, covering it with dirt.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  You walk over it, it blows up. Um, and we hit a factory that was, that was making these on a, on a mass scale. Um, I kind of don't, I kind of don't want to go too much into the detail like Chris, because it's.

• 20:37Chris Williamson?

  I understand.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Basically.

• 20:39Chris Williamson?

  Operational secrecy, yeah.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, we, we, we basically had nine guys on it and it was anything. It, it, it almost reminded me of like a crazy Western movie, um, when we kind of landed the helicopters, uh, next to the compound. And, um, I was with a team of Afghans and we, we come running off the back of this helicopter. And a few of the, few of the guys from the factory just like legged it from the factory. And they took their chances and just like ran and I was like first man out. There was only like, I think there was only a few of us, um, a few of us, uh, British. And then these Afghans just started firing over my head. And I literally just, I could feel like bullets just whizzing past me.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  I literally just, literally turned around and just said, stop firing, stop firing. They're trying to shoot one of us.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  It was, it was like a crazy western film. Um, but no, that was, do you know what? That sticks out as one of the, one of, one of the best jobs I, I did, probably because the impact it had on, on the local air in terms of, you know, the IED, the numbers of IEDs that were hitting British troops that were operating in the area went substantially down. Um, and we got, you know, nine of the, the guys that were making these, um, IEDs at the same time. So that for me sticks out massively. There's a few others that I won't go into too much detail about.

• 22:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I understand. The M O, the M O D wouldn't be happy, but that, it's so cool to see where, um, when the special forces are deployed to cut off at the knees, an operation which obviously down the line will be hurting local Afghans. It will be meant to attack other British forces and, and other foreign sort of forces that are out there. So yeah, I can totally see why that would be something that you'd be proud of. Another one, again, this might be an M O D dance around. When were you the most scared during your service? Is there anything that comes to mind which you can tell us about?

• 22:45Speaker 04

  Um, probably when those bullets are flying.

• 22:49Chris Williamson?

  That's perfect.

• 22:52Speaker 04

  Um, do you know what? Like fear is like one of the weird, fear is like one of those weird things when you, when you're operating in that kind of environment. Um, and it like, it can, it can come and go at like the most randomest of times. And, and you generally, you know, you go overseas for six months at a time and, you know, after, after a while you almost, you almost, you, you change how you deal with things in your own head. You find like ways of just coping with whatever's going on. And I, I don't mean that in a negative way. And if, if anything, it's a positive way. Um, but you kind of just, like fear doesn't really appear as much as.

• 23:37Speaker 04

  I don't know, you could go through like a, because like soldiers are really good at coping with fear with humour. And a lot of some of the scariest moments that I would say are the scariest moments, right? If you took a normal person through them in that situation. Like you see the code very well with it with a lot of humour. And yeah, I can remember kind of a few times when, and this was going back to kind of my days in the parachute regiment in three power.

• 24:12Speaker 04

  You know, I remember one day when we just got opened up on and, you know, you're almost seeing, you're seeing like rounds hitting like walls and the floor around where you are. And, you know, whether it's, you know, the Taliban didn't have their weapon zero that day, or, you know, something else was looking after you. You know, you don't end up with a bullet in you, but you're so close to it. And there's, you know, there's a few situations like that, but again, it's like, we just got, you know, when that happened and we got opened up on in, you know, point blank range. We literally just ran around this corner and just all started laughing at each other.

• 24:57Speaker 04

  And it's, I don't know, it's like whether there's a lesson there that, you know, the best way of just dealing with fear is just with humour. And it's like, you know, it's like one of those reactions, right? Of something happens and like people instantly smile and it's like, you know, if you, if you look at that situation, you probably shouldn't be smiling. But you do, you just, you just seem to laugh about it.

• 25:20Chris Williamson?

  I know, I wonder what it is, I wonder whether fear and humour are somewhere along the same sort of line. But there's a bit of an archetype there, right? You know, the, the crazy soldier who is able to laugh off, but it was a scratch. You know, like that kind of like classic stiff upper lip British thing.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, like I've seen some like, I've seen lads get shot and they're just laughing and smiling and probably happier than they would be if they hadn't have been shot.

• 25:50Chris Williamson?

  What?

• 25:51Speaker 04

  Like not, not, not on impact, right? And I might have, you know, because like everything happens quite fast in, in, in fight and combat, right? You generally. You know, if you think how fast a round flies, and as soon as that goes out the gun, it's straight into someone's body. And that's a very quick um situation to happen. So then. Don't have time for fear to evolve. So you're thinking like, fuck, right, I'm gonna grab this guy, drag him into some cover. Sort him out, administer first aid, and then we need to, we need to extract him, extract him back to a, like a, a point where he could be picked up.

• 26:31Speaker 04

  And taken to, to um to safety and be seen by like a proper medical professional. Um. So like, there's no time there for fear to, to overcome, if that makes sense. Um. Um.

• 26:46Speaker 04

  So, yeah, it's like, but, yeah, I've seen kind of, you know, even, even guys that have. Lost limbs and I don't mean on, on impact that it's happened, but you know, you've got to be able to, to deal with it with humor and um. I actually remember one incident, um I won't go into too much detail about it, but um one of the guys ended up getting a shotgun through his knee. Um by accident and um like ruined him like probably, you know, you know, made a mess of this guy's career and um. I remember everyone just started taking the piss out of him, the guy that accidentally discharged the shotgun into this guy's knee.

• 27:27Speaker 04

  And I remember chatting to him, I, I, I think we were in a car driving, driving to London or something and I was chatting to him and he was like, I thought like. You know, how do you feel about it, whatever. And he's like, the best thing that, that happened was that people took the piss out of him. He was like, if no one took the piss out of me, then I, I would have felt that I've done something seriously wrong. But because everyone's just took the piss out of me and like made jokes and sent out, you know, memes and, and pictures on. Um on WhatsApp groups, like I feel, I just feel like better about the whole situation.

• 28:03Chris Williamson?

  There's examples similar to that that I had with Seth Godin. So I was recording with him a couple of weeks ago and similar to today with you, just having a nightmare with connections. He needed to change his and I needed to change mine and we're on a really tight time schedule as well. And he did, he had made such a classy move when we came back on. So after all of the connections had gone out and then we logged back on to the call and we were about to get going, when we first called him, before he even said hello, is everything sorted or anything, he just told me a joke, like a really shit dad joke, like awful, awful, like totally terrible. But any, any tension between me and a 20 times bestselling author and marketing Hall of Fame member Seth Godin, this absolute titan

• 28:47Chris Williamson?

  of internet fame was gone in a second. So I definitely think that there's, there's an interesting lesson to take away from that, like the use that humour has for all of us, especially to dissuade pressure and tension and, and fear, you know, before someone's about to go on stage to give a good speech, a big speech, or before you're about to go and do a pitch or a job interview or perform or, you know, do anything. I, I think that there's definitely an argument to be made that if you've got a couple of shit jokes in your pocket that you can just deploy on demand, I reckon that they would be really useful.

• 29:25Speaker 04

  But it's, it's so true, right? And it, you know, they do, they do say that like the cleverest people have the highest IQs. Oh, no, sorry, the funniest people. There's a, there's a correlation between like clever people and funny people.

• 29:38Chris Williamson?

  Funny people, absolutely.

• 29:40Speaker 04

  That's why I'm not there. But, but yeah, there is, there's, there's definitely, because like we're all the same person, right? We all eat, we all shit, we all do all that stuff. And you get, I don't know, you build that perception. It's like you might have had with Seth. And you put them on, you put people like that on a pedestal and it's like, it's like we're all just the same person. And, you know, we can all tell a shit dad joke.

• 30:09Chris Williamson?

  My dad, my dad absolutely can. Okay, so the book, the book's called Soldier and that's an acronym for a bunch of, a bunch of things that go underneath it, the first one being self. And you call discipline the first effective habit. Have you got any tips on how people can cultivate their discipline? Obviously, we're in the middle, in the UK at least, of a brand new lockdown and people may be thinking, this is a time where I can either let my habits go one of two ways. What can people do to cultivate that discipline?

• 30:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, like it's quite important now, right? During the second lockdown phase that, like I thought, you know, I had this thought during the first lockdown phase that, like, I'm not going to let this time just waste, just waste away and slip out under me. And, you know, all I can say that I've done, done during lockdown was watch some Netflix documentaries and, and box sets and that's it. And it's like important that people just focus on, on like what's important to them. And, you know, just without just going to, without digressing too far off that discipline thing. And I just said, like, last lockdown, I want to improve my fitness, my

• 31:16Speaker 04

  education and my family. And like, fitness is, is pretty simple, right? You know, you do whatever exercise routine, you go for a run, you pick up something that you're going to get better at.

• 31:28Speaker 04

  Education, it was like, right, I'm going to learn some new stuff. I started trying to play, play the guitar, started listening to more podcasts, audiobooks, started reading, started researching stuff that I'm interested in. And then family was like, like, speak to my family more often, make sure that they're safe. And speak to a friend at least one, once a day, like chat to people that, because you get off that conversation, you feel better, you feel better than you did when you went on. But yeah, like discipline, going back to discipline, it's,

• 31:59Speaker 04

  you know, like, I think, I always say it's like your choice to be more disciplined. And you can, you can, you can read books and listen to podcasts, podcasts and stuff for motivation, but essentially you've got to make the choice that, that you want more discipline in your life. And, and once you've made that choice.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  Then you've just got to implement things in there that give you discipline. And that might just be, you know, just setting an alarm clock. You know, if you're off work at the minute and you just don't set an alarm clock and you wake up at nine o'clock, just set that alarm clock for seven or eight or whatever it is and just get up with an alarm clock every day. And then try and make that alarm clock earlier. Like at the minute, I'm trying to get up at six, six thirty, because it's starting to get light. And just start doing stuff like go out for a walk and just commit to going out for a walk. And then, you know, commit to an exercise regime, commit to reading one book every like every month. Just start like trying to set yourself these small tasks. I read in a book once, um, and this guy was trying to talk about discipline and he said,

• 33:05Speaker 04

  you know, one thing he said, just if you put a plate in the, in the, in the, in the, um, in the sink, every time you put a plate in the sink or anything, wash it and just don't leave it there. And it's like these little like hacks or tricks or tips that you do every day, build discipline into your life. And that, those small ones then flow into the bigger ones that you, that you need discipline for, whether it's training for a marathon, whether it's researching for a job interview or, or whatever it is, these little ones feed into it.

• 33:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. How you do anything is how you do everything.

• 33:40Speaker 04

  I love that saying, Chris.

• 33:42Chris Williamson?

  One of the, one of the things that I used as a little tip for people, and it's timely for me to remind everyone who's listening of it again. The best heuristic I found to make sure that you stay on track during lockdown by having a plan is to ask yourself now, what would have had to have happened by the end of lockdown for me to look back on lockdown and consider it a success? Just after this podcast finishes, like just take a little bit of time and think about it. Or do it as we've been, Jay, continue to chat shit to each other. Just think like, what would have had to have happened by the end of this period for you to look back on it and it be a success? So for me, I have a target for the podcast. I want to hit a hundred thousand subs on YouTube before Christmas.

• 34:26Chris Williamson?

  If I do that, and if everything else continues to tick over, I'll be happy. That's one thing. Last time it was like, I wanted to build a website and, and start a newsletter and, um, record three times a week, like that was it. And it's easy for us to get caught up believing that we should do more, could have done more. When you don't have a tightly defined target, it always feels like you've missed. Because you're always going to feel like you could have done more, woulda, shoulda, coulda. And like I say, that's my, that's my best question for everyone who's listening, who's thinking about that. So next, next up is opportunity and you lay out a three-stage process for opportunities. Would you be able to take us through that?

• 35:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the three-stage process is encounter, recognize and exploit. So encounter is all about putting yourself in that position where you can

• 35:20Speaker 04

  encounter those opportunities. So that's like how you've got your life set up, right? And for me, you know, the biggest one was going into the military because I put myself in a position where I could experience other things and other experiences. And that, you know, that put me in a position to be around people that had gone on selection and been in the special forces. And, and that's when that, you know, although you volunteer for it, it's an opportunity. You know, and then the second one is recognize. So, you know, if I think of something in my life, so the Everest expeditions, right? They came from one, you know, encountering that opportunity. Two, recognizing what that opportunity was.

• 36:03Speaker 04

  And at the time it was supposed to be a K, an expedition to K2. And, you know, I'm massive on gut feel. If something feels good and it feels like it's going to change my life for the better, then I take that opportunity. But you have to, you have to almost, it's like a muscle, right? The more of these opportunities you take and they lead you down these like crazy and different paths. The more you, you're able to recognize them when they, they fall on, you know, on your doorstep. And then it's exploiting them, which is, you know, exactly what it is. It's right, where can I take this opportunity? Because we all know that when we take opportunities or when we, when we agree to things or whatever it is.

• 36:46Speaker 04

  They they always open more doors further down the line and then those doors open more doors down the line and before you know it, you know, you've met some other people, you've done some other stuff in your life and you've gone down a completely different path than what you'd set out to do.

• 37:03Chris Williamson?

  That's one of the things that I've been thinking about recently. Obviously, this little trip that I've taken out to Dubai, I decided the the Sunday after the Saturday that lockdown was announced, got a PCR test on the Monday for COVID, packed on the Tuesday and left on the Wednesday. I'm not always like a perfect bastion of immediate action, I suppose. You know, we get stuck in, everyone gets stuck in ruts and I'm I'm no different. But that single decision, the opportunity for me to be able to get away before lockdown came in, and then the single time commitment has had multiple downstream changes. It's literally the difference between me being here with it being like nine PM at night in thirty degree

• 37:48Chris Williamson?

  heat, off on a yacht party tomorrow on the biggest yacht in Dubai, or me being in the UK and doing the life that I had there. And I love the life that I have in the UK and it's very productive, but I've done it all this year. So, yes, recognizing opportunities and I think committing to them, the the exploit part is is really important. A lot of people will see something and not realize that it is an opportunity or not decide to commit to it. And it's trite to say it, but it's very true that we often, I would say that more of our regrets certainly lean toward things that we chose not to do rather than things that we chose to do. We as creatures err on the side of stagnation, I think, naturally.

• 38:32Speaker 04

  A hundred percent.

• 38:33Chris Williamson?

  Our tendency is to the status quo. I'm scared about that new cave next door. I'm scared about that new bush over there. I'm scared about that new tribe in the next valley. And you just roll that forward to the 21st century when we really don't have anything to be afraid of. I like COVID and and like mad political elections and stuff like that. But really, day to day, you're Safety, the water, the heat of being somewhere sheltered, all that sort of stuff. All of those fears have gone and they've become that worry around new experiences

• 39:10Chris Williamson?

  has been transmuted into people being concerned about all manner of small things that really don't matter. You know, think about like anyone's slightly anxious mum. It's like that person like, oh, have you got your coat on? Have you got your gloves? Have you got that, you know, that kind of approach? I think is just a maladapted evolutionary heritage coming through.

• 39:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, but like, you know, that's the, that's like a lot of people, right? In the world and it's, do you know that whole like wrapping people up in cotton wool? And, um, do you know, even just, you know, we all live it like you said, right? We all live in these buildings, these four walls. Like we, we don't know what it feels like to feel rain on our face at nighttime or be cold. Like we're rarely cold as human beings, right? Like we rarely have to walk long distances or fend for our own food. And, and, you know, it's like, it all creates a softer human being. And, and it's almost like what you're seeing now as a result is people get so offended

• 40:16Speaker 04

  because they've got almost this free time to become offended by some, by things. Whereas, you know, like if you had to fend for your food and get all this kind of stuff, it's like, it's like you wouldn't have that, that, that time available to be able to do that kind of stuff.

• 40:32Chris Williamson?

  Massively so, man. I realized this at the beginning of the first lockdown when, when COVID came about. Um, in the absence of a real crisis, we create our own. And in the presence of a real crisis, we re-center our priorities. The fact that. When everything's so comfortable and all of our problems are problems of surplus, not problems of scarcity at the moment. So think about the fact that we have too much information, too much food, too much spare time even to concern ourselves with this stuff. And all of those problems are now causing stuff, diabetes, people being overweight, technology addiction, so on and so forth. And yeah, we're mal-adapted to the environment

• 41:16Chris Williamson?

  and it's increasingly why you see people going back to a more paleolithic style of life, you know, people that choose, the minimalist movement now is a 21st century hark back to people trying to reduce the amount of clutter that's in their lives, trying to reduce that amount of surplus. So yeah, it's um.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  Well, you've only got to look at like the amount of people that are entering Iron Man, like Iron Mans and ultra triathlons and that kind of stuff these days. Cause like the human body needs suffering. Like it needs, it needs some kind of suffering because we've had it all our life, right? And you take all that suffering away and make an, make an easy life for yourself. And you know, everything's at the touch of a button and everything's so easily accessible. It's, it's not, you know, that's why, that's why you see like depression and suicide at such a high rate. Cause people just don't know how to suffer anymore.

• 42:14Chris Williamson?

  That's an interesting, that's an interesting insight on it. I think that you, you're probably correct there, that voluntary exposure to gradually increasing levels of discomfort will make you more tolerant to it over time. Um, there's a really interesting study that they did on children, babies, infants. Um, so I think that if you are a child who has, I want to say eczema, um, or some other skin condition, you are also predisposed to having peanut allergy. Uh, I think that it's one of the, it's one of the highlights, right? So what they did was they, they took children who had the eczema, uh, particular problem and.

• 42:58Chris Williamson?

  Voluntarily split them into two different groups. Group one was allowed to have rice puffs that had a very, very slight peanut coating dusting on them. And the other, the other group was kept free of nuts. The argument is that most parents that learn about eczema would hear that if your child has eczema, there is a increased risk of them being allergic to peanuts. Therefore they will keep them away from absolutely everything that may have nuts in it. And what they did was they tracked these children over time. And the end result of the study was that the children who had been voluntarily exposed to the peanuts had a 25% peanut allergy.

• 43:40Chris Williamson?

  And the children who had been kept free of all of the peanut dust had a 75% peanut allergy.

• 43:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's wacky.

• 43:50Chris Williamson?

  It's crazy, man. Voluntarily exposing yourself to things that are going to be difficult. Like, why, why are people doing cold showers at the moment? Is the ultimate doing something just because it hurts? There's some physiological adaptations which are good and you get a bit of a buzz off it. It's like having a big, a big fat cup of coffee that lasts for about 20 minutes, which is nice. But for the most, the most part, it's people avoiding that flinch. Now, like, why are you scared of getting in the cold shower? Like, really, why are you scared? And it's a very interesting, uh, internal battle to watch yourself go through. So you know, it's going to be cold, but it's not going to kill you. It's not even going to hurt you. It's just going to be a little bit uncomfortable.

• 44:29Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, I think that's definitely something that I would, um, I would try and encourage in as many people as I can. So we've got, we've got the word soldier, self-opportunity, leadership, danger, intelligence, excellence and resilience. Out of the ones that we got left, which ones are your favorite? Can we go into that one?

• 44:49Speaker 04

  So I think I would say.

• 44:55Speaker 04

  Call me off guard.

• 44:59Speaker 04

  Do you know what, like, I'd say that I'd say probably my favorite self. Um, more so because I'm quite, I can get quite deep on myself and um, I've become quite interested by human psychology and how we all fit into the world and um, like being able to pull out your true potential and and understand where like people fit into teams and that that we're not all different. Um, and in the book I talk about personality testing, um, in specific, the Myers-Briggs personality testing. And, you know, it's something that everyone should go and do just to find out, just to find out

• 45:42Speaker 04

  what their personality type is because I think a lot of people just float through the universe, just not diving deep on on what kind of person they actually are. So when you actually do a test and and get a result, it's it's a more, you kind of, it gives you a more realization of of what you're actually like.

• 46:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think it's quite uncomfortable for a lot of people to do self-reflection, especially if you're not used to it. And I I get that. I would probably guess that a lot of the people who are listening skew towards a very different sort of type of person. They're going to be incredibly introspective. They're going to do a lot of self-inquiry just because of the the sort of guests that I have on. But I, there is no amount of money on the planet that you could pay me to stop thinking about my internal monologue. Like, it's the single, the single most fascinating thing that I do.

• 46:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, agreed.

• 46:43Chris Williamson?

  I love working out motivations and I do it in other people as well. And when you get to a particular level of competence with yourself, you're able to help other people and that that feels really, really good. You know, that you you kind of, kind of like you were talking before about voluntary discomfort. So, okay, I'm going to go through a little bit of discomfort, thinking about some stuff that happened in my past that I don't like, or thinking about a thing that I really wish that I attribute I wish I didn't have, whatever. And after you work through that and you realise that it didn't kill you, you can then help other people around you to do it. Um, it's really, it's a beautiful use of time, man. I think, I think that's a good shout.

• 47:23Speaker 04

  Definitely. Like what I, what I really love doing on myself is trying to understand why I make decisions or why I do certain things and just going like, just doing the deep dive and, and trying to understand like why I'm so hell bent on being like fit and healthy and.

• 47:43Chris Williamson?

  A psychopath that goes up to the top of Everest twice.

• 47:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, like things like that. Like what is like, what is my absolute reason for doing that? And there's probably a load of different reasons, but I kind of, I quite enjoy having a very um, objective or pulled out point of view of everything and just try and even observe other people and just be like, right, why, why, why does, why does so many people sit in front of the TV and listen to the news and listen to the media and like live on it's every word as, as though that's the truth and, um, you know, just try and have a very abstract point of view on absolutely everything that goes on through the, through myself and through, through the world.

• 48:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think, uh, the rationalist movement which is going on at the moment, uh, lesswrong.com and the Slate Star Codex that I'm a massive fan of, two, two fantastic blogs. I think that a big part of that is people trying to bring a little bit of order to chaos because if you leave your life to be, um, guided by the paths of least resistance, you often end up in a place not only that you don't want to be, but that you didn't even mean to get to. You know, like you, you, you can very easily live a life that you regret without even realising that you're walking down the path. And, um.

• 49:01Speaker 04

  Not quite easily, yeah.

• 49:03Chris Williamson?

  Uh, that's, that's, that's something that everybody should be fearful of, you know, like.

• 49:06Speaker 04

  We're, we're made, we're made to like live this easy life, aren't we? Like, you will see, you will search out the easiest way of doing things every time, unless you're aware that you're doing those things.

• 49:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So underneath everything, actually, there's a little bit of a source code that people should lean into discomfort wherever they can find it. And the more that you can get used to leaning into it, you know, remember as well, the reason that you go to the gym. Is for the discomfort. The discomfort is a signal that you're doing the thing you're there to do. It's not the thing that you're supposed to, oh, this hurts in the gym, therefore I'll stop doing it. It's like, no, no, no, no. That, that is why you're there. So people are used to it, right? You know, Arnie used to talk about the, how much he loved the pump. And in the gym, people are aware that that's why. Okay, I did a thing, and the outcome of that thing was a little bit of discomfort, but that's what I'm chasing because it identifies growth.

• 50:01Speaker 04

  And the body rewards you for that as well, right? The body makes you feel good with endorphins.

• 50:06Chris Williamson?

  That just needs mapping onto other areas of life. I had Ali Abdaal on not long ago, who's a YouTuber that focuses on learning and productivity. And he nailed it. He was like, learning is supposed to be hard. If it's not difficult, you're not learning.

• 50:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:22Chris Williamson?

  Exactly the same as the gym. And the same thing goes for everything. So yeah, I think, I definitely think there's a unifying thread across a lot of other stuff. And the last question for you, man, what is the biggest insight that you wish more people knew about life?

• 50:36Speaker 04

  I think we just covered it.

• 50:38Chris Williamson?

  That one, discomfort.

• 50:39Speaker 04

  Just, yeah, just, just search out difficult things and the reward, you, you know, you'll soon get the reward that it brings you.

• 50:52Chris Williamson?

  I love that. I love that. And I agree as well. So Soldier will be linked in the show notes below. If people want to check you out to go and see some other stuff about you, where should they go, Jay?

• 51:01Speaker 04

  Uh, so mainly Instagram. Uh, so it's J double underscore Morton. Uh, also on Twitter and Facebook, but probably less active on those two. And I've got a website as well. Uh, just, it's j morton official.com.

• 51:14Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. Everything will be linked in the show notes below. What's next for you then, man? Obviously, final, final thing. You've got this period to sit at home and plan some mad adventures. Oh, well, you're doing some race. What's the race?

• 51:27Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, so I'm racing for a car team called Praga next year. Um, which is again, like fairly new to me, the whole motorsport thing. So at the minute, just trying to get as much seat time and as much learning and practice in cars and tracks around the UK as possible. Um, and then, yeah, so I'll start, I think my first race is next March.

• 51:50Chris Williamson?

  What's the car? What's the vehicle?

• 51:52Speaker 04

  It's called a Praga R1. It's a, it's a full aero race car, so you can't buy one and race it on the road. Um, it's, it's strictly a track car, but it's full aero. So, you know, if you think of F1, F1's got an aero system, which means that the faster you drive it, the more it sticks to the ground. Um, so this is the same in this car. The faster you drive it, the more grip you produce. Um, it's got a three 50 brake horsepower Renault turbo engine in and it weighs 600, 600 kg.

• 52:23Chris Williamson?

  Shit the bed.

• 52:24Speaker 04

  So yeah, it's, it's, it's a machine. Uh, it's like a little, little single cockpit, um, like a little single cockpit car. Kind of looks like a smaller Le Mans car.

• 52:36Chris Williamson?

  It's like a rocket ship that's had wheels attached to it.

• 52:41Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 52:42Chris Williamson?

  Exactly. All right, man. Well, look, good luck with that. Uh, I hope that you have a very good lockdown and, uh, thank you so much for your time.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  Cheers, Chris. Take care.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company for me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and the Ravenette.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze in there, that's one.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17 and a middle without parent.