OLLIE OLLERTON | Becoming Battle Ready | Modern Wisdom Podcast 169

Ollie Ollerton is an ex-Special Forces Operative, Instructor from SAS Who Dares Wins and an author. Life doesn't come with an instruction manual. We have to discover the effective ways to operate on our own, but sometimes we are given a little bit of guidance... Expect to learn Ollie's backstory including a life changing event when he was 10, how you can plan & sustain change in your life, how to decide on your goals & break them into daily actions, the importance of removing your ego, the value of serving others, and so much more... Sponsor: Finally shop for clothes which perfectly fit your physique. Head to - https://link.tailoredathlete.co.uk/modernwisdom (FREE shipping automatically applied at checkout!) Extra Stuff: Buy Battle Ready - https://amzn.to/35RmevO Follow Ollie on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ollie.ollerton/ Check out Ollie's website - https://ollieollerton.co.uk Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom #ollieollerton #sas #saswhodareswins - 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We're born into this world and everyone jumps into this skin and thinks that they're fuck experts. You know what I mean? We're given no manual, no nothing, and everyone straight away is a frigging expert. And that's a dangerous place to be. When you think that you know everything, that's a dangerous place to be. Because like you said before, I will, I will never stop learning. I will never fake perfection and I will always want to be making mistakes.

• 0:28Chris Williamson?

  I'm joined by instructor from SAS Who Dares Wins and author of Breakpoint and Battle Ready, Ollie Ollerton. Ollie, welcome to the show.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  Hello, mate. Thanks for having me.

• 0:41Chris Williamson?

  Absolute pleasure to have you on. So first things first, the question that everyone has come to find out, who wins 100 metre race between you, Foxy and Ant?

• 0:54Speaker 00

  You know what? Everyone, everyone would expect me to say, well, I will win, but I wouldn't win that race because I am more the endurance athlete as opposed to the short, you know, short, the likes of Ant, you know, he's, he's, he's got a, you know, punchy strength and so is Foxy. So, but then me and, me and Billy are more the sort of endurance athletes. So I'm gonna, I wouldn't win that.

• 1:22Chris Williamson?

  Got you. Okay. Well, go for, you can go for longer, but Ant can maybe go a little bit harder at a shorter pace. I get it. That's totally fine. So you were on with my warm-up act, Chris Evans on Virgin Radio this morning, which is good. So, man, I am super, super impressed with Battle Ready. I've got it last week and I've consumed it in the space of six days and it is phenomenal, bro. You should be really, really proud of it.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  Thanks, mate. And, and the bottom line is, you know, it's, it's feedback like that that makes me proud of it. Because up until someone else gives you, I mean, I got my first testimonial yesterday. And up until that moment, you don't know, you know, it's because it's life experience, you know, is it like, you've got no... Measure or you've got no, until someone actually tells you what it's done for them, you know, it's well, it's natural. We all have that self doubt.

• 2:15Chris Williamson?

  Posta syndrome comes in.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. No, exactly. But um, yeah, just the feedback from people is amazing and actually getting that testimonial, you saying that to me right now is just phenomenal. So I do believe it is um, an amazing book because it's, it's not, it's not a theory, it's life experience, it's what I went through, it's the process. I'm living proof of the, of the process that I've put in that book, you know, and I want to share that with everyone.

• 2:42Chris Williamson?

  Couldn't agree more, man. So why did you write it?

• 2:45Speaker 00

  I wrote it for that very reason. I mean, I went to Thailand, um, you know, after the, one of the most phenomenal things I did in, back in two thousand and eleven, uh, thereabouts, was I went, you know, I've, I've spent my life bouncing all over the world as a kid, joined the special forces, thinking this, that would be the be all and end all, that would tick every box, I would be complete, I would be fulfilled, and it wasn't, it wasn't. And then I stumbled across um, uh, something that was happening in um, Southeast Asia, and it was um, working with a, with a group that were, were busting kids out of child prostitution and um, uh, sex slavery, you know, selling kids into sex slavery and, and prostitution. So we were busting the kids out of that

• 3:31Speaker 00

  and, and putting them back on track and giving them a, you know, a proper, they were having a, a proper life where they were educated by sponsors and everything else. So what that did, I had no idea it would do that for me. That made me realise, I felt fulfilled, absolutely humbled, fulfilled, and amazed by that experience. Um, and that's when I understood the power of helping other people. Even when there's no real benefit to me, I mean, I, I was on, I wasn't on a wage doing that, I self-funded the whole operation. And um, just that money can't ever pay for what that gave me.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  Helping other people and when you look at human evolution, the species evolving, I think we're naturally meant to feel good when you help someone else because we're giving them a leg up. You know what I mean? It's it's it's a natural. We're meant to feel good about that. So that for me was the start of something that it was an epiphany. It changed my life. It made me understand the power of helping others. And now, to be quite honest, I mean, my whole business, everything breakpoint and everything we do is all based around helping other people. I actually feel selfish that I can help someone else. You know, when someone says thank you to me, I'm like, I'm the one that should be thanking you.

• 4:46Chris Williamson?

  At a big thirty thousand foot view, how do you describe your career up to Thailand for someone who doesn't know who you are?

• 4:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay, well, eighteen years old, joined the Royal Marines and had sort of a, I was disillusioned. I got into the military and it wasn't exactly what I thought. Again, that was that was that sort of typifies my whole military career. But then I was always chasing something, you know, better. It's it's it must be better. And that's why that's why I sort of pushed myself towards special forces. Doubt in my ability to ever achieve it, but I I did it. And it was always some, I was always chasing that dream. So basically, joined the special forces at twenty four years old. I was part of the SBS. So that's the Special Boat Service. So it's like the SAS, but we do everything.

• 5:40Speaker 00

  There's a lot of water involved and and stuff. So and then, again, not fulfilled. I then left in two thousand. I've always had this desire to create my own business. That's always been my motivation. So I kind of did a few things, but the trouble is, you know, you're so. When you leave the military, there's such a massive void and you really underestimate what you took for granted, you know, the camaraderie and everything. Um, so you can't, you come out to a massive void and then before you know it, the world that I said I'd never go back into or go into swallowed me up. And that was as a contractor, um, I found myself

• 6:21Speaker 00

  out in Iraq, two thousand and three to two thousand and seven. Um, and uh, probably that was probably a lot, you know, quite a horrendous time to be quite honest. It was uh, in a war zone for that long. It's not good for your mental state. So uh, I kind of got, um, you know, I was heavily, um, I had a, had a lovely relationship with alcohol. Ended up taking steroids at one point, the old alpha male world. And also I then got hooked on Valium, you know, it was a mess. It was an absolute mess. Um, but I was, I was, I was functioning, you know, it, it worked, you know, I made it work. Um, I came away from that, you know, my mental state

• 7:03Speaker 00

  wasn't great. And then I ended up, you know, again, I said, I'm not, you know, I need to redefine myself, find something new, get a normal job, and then realized pretty shortly I couldn't do normal. So, and then that's, that's when I came across the Gray Man, which was the uh, the uh, the operation to, to rescue kids from Thailand. Um, ended up going over there, doing that, sunk all my money into that that I owned in Iraq. And um, and then that ended abruptly because of a political situation, um, which was horrendous. But one thing I took from that, like I said previously, was the fact, you know, helping others was something that really meant something to me. I felt fulfilled. Um, and, and then I came back again. I was actually living in Australia

• 7:47Speaker 00

  at that point, um, back in two thousand and sort of twelve. And uh, I thought, right, you know, I'd been chased out of Thailand, you know, it was a rest on site. We had to escape over the Burmese uh, border.

• 8:00Chris Williamson?

  Shit the best.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, it was, it was pretty hairy. And then we got back to Australia. I was like, right, you need to grow up.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  You need to grow, you need to get yourself a real job. So, uh, and I tried it again and uh, I've got a really good job of working in oil and gas, but I was like a caged animal, you know, and it was like, um,

• 8:21Chris Williamson?

  What were you missing?

• 8:22Speaker 00

  I was just, I was just missing that adventure, the adrenaline, you know, I was still at that, I was still, you know, when I look back now, I was, I was quite a mess at that stage and, you know, from, and I know we're going to talk about this, but, um, you know, I did, um, from a, from an incident that happened in my childhood, which sent me on a path of absolute destruction, chasing mayhem and death all my life. I don't know how I've made it through, but, um, I was still living that, you know, I was still chasing this extremeness, this, this, you know, everything had to be an extreme. I was chasing danger, no consequence, no, no consequence, no, yeah, it was just, it was a mess. So I was still in that world.

• 9:01Chris Williamson?

  Seeing even the things that you did that were productive and growth oriented, uh, I think, was it canoeing or rowing that you got into real hard? You got into CrossFit super hard? You, you've just chosen reckless suffering, even in areas that are like growth, you know, you're like, I'll just bin myself in a CrossFit workout, bin myself on this rowing thing. I'll go all over Australia up against some freak savages from the fucking outback, you know, rowing, rowing against them. So you, you can definitely see when reading the book, there is a unifying thread, right? Between everything. It's always that, that search of, of adventure, of adrenaline, of suffering as well, in a way that seems to be quite cathartic to you,

• 9:42Chris Williamson?

  that it's like a release, right? Um, so you, you've touched on it there. Can you tell us the story from the circus when you were seven years old, 10 years old?

• 9:51Speaker 00

  No, it was actually, yeah, 10 years old. 10 years old, it was, um, bizarre experience, but, um, yeah, and a life-changing one. But, um, this is in Burton on Trent. Those that don't know Burton on Trent, it's like right in the middle of the UK, you know, it's like, there's no, you know, it's, it's, it's a land, we're land-based, you know, there's no sea for miles around. And, um, so it was a boiling hot day, 10 years old, someone came knocking on the door. It was my brother's, uh, it was my brother's best mate and, um, he came around asking if we could, asking if we wanted to go swimming. Mum was like, yep, couldn't wait to get it out, out of her hair. And, um, and then we, we set off and. As we got down to the swimming baths, we actually saw that the big top was setting up in town.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  And we're like, wow, the Chippewa Field Circus is in town, amazing. So excited young boys were like, I walked, tended to a run. And before we knew it, down at the big tops and saw the first guy down there said, look, can we have a look around? And he said, yeah, yeah, he said, we're just setting up, there's animals out, but they're on change, you'll be okay. And that's it, we went into the big top. And I can remember I got separated from my brother and his mate. And there, I don't know what drew me towards it, but on the other side, there was an opening. And I was sort of drawn to that opening. And as I got to it, the sun hit me in the eyes. I couldn't see for a moment. And then as my vision cleared, there it was, sat in front of me.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  About ten fifteen metres away was something that just amazed me. And I was absolutely compelled to go towards, and that was a baby chimp. And before I knew it, you know, I walked over cautiously and there it was, you know, for me, I bought up with Tarzan, Johnny Weisman, black and white films, you know. And for me, that was a little piece of Hollywood sat right there. It was amazing. And next thing I'm stood over it, ten years old. And it looked up at me with these beautiful eyes. And it was a moment we connected. And it sounds weird, I know. But we connected and it was, it was just surreal. Baby chimp goes down, picks up some food off the floor, starts passing it to me.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  And I'm like, wow, this is, this is a man, I felt like a miniature like David Attenborough. And you know, so I thought, gee, I'm not eating that, it's disgusting. So I was just going through the motions, turn it over my shoulder. And it probably only went on for twenty thirty seconds, but it seemed like a lifetime, you know. I was brought up with cats and dogs. This was a chimp, you know, middle of the, middle of the UK, a chimp. And all of a sudden, you know, it was a beautiful blue skies. And the serenity of that moment was cut like a fighter jet racing through the sky. As I heard this roar and I, I'll never forget it, I can still hear the roar to this day. Heard this roar and in the shadows, under a truck in the, you know, behind the chimp, I could see something moving.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  And um those shadows, that movement then became clearly what was about a fifty kilo. I don't know, I don't know what size it was, but I didn't get a chance to weigh it, but it was bloody big. And uh it was, it was the mother, it was the mother, you know, is the baby's, the, the chimp's mother. Um which then Mac ten started coming at me, you know, the outside was chimp movement. Yep, exactly, you know, just raging, absolutely raging. And I'm like a deer in the headlights, thinking, oh my god. And at the point I thought, you know, this is the moment you should move. Um, you know, this chimp just fired straight up into the air. Uh I was watching this thing, it was just rising higher and higher in the air. The blue sky turned to black as this thing landed on me.

• 13:35Speaker 00

  And then started going to town on me, pinned me down to the floor. Um I was pinned to the floor and it was like a drummer in a rock band, you know, his fist coming down on to me. It was, it was tearing chunks out of me. Um and it was just, it was, it was mental, absolutely mental. I'm lay there and I just, I can remember thinking. I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die unless I do something, I'm gonna die. And it was in that moment that I knew that I had to take a step into the, I had to take a step into further discomfort. For any chance of living that day, okay? So I managed to uh sort of move my body just a few uh inches.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  And I dislodged the chimp, I managed to get my knee up to my chest, I kicked the chimp in the uh, in the chest. And uh it just gave me a couple of feet just to get away. And then this chimp gets back to his feet. And he's coming at me, you know, final attack. It's got, it's got blood dripping from its teeth. It was my blood. Um and um and then it came at me and then a chain caught it round the neck just before it got to me. Um and I was stood there, you know, ten year old, absolutely in a state of shock. Um my arm was like a, a, you know, a, a bone that had been chewed by a dog all afternoon. It was just a mess, you know, it's like um.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  It was it was it had been ripped apart, uh, there was blood all over me and um it wasn't a it wasn't it wasn't a good thing, a good sight. Um, the whole place erupted and um and then they got me off to hospital as quickly as possible, uh, where they stitched me up and uh. And that was that really, that was that was the the uh, that was the attack that happened at ten years old, you know, and yeah.

• 15:20Chris Williamson?

  Mate, it sounds like something out of a movie.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  Mate, well, when I look back, you know, it's sometimes it's hard for me to actually understand. It wasn't until recently. And I talk about this in the book that I opened up that chapter in my life again. Um, but always looking back up until that moment, it was like a movie in my head, you know, it was, yeah.

• 15:42Chris Williamson?

  Have you got any um, have you got any scars from when it happened that you can still see that are visible?

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I've got my arm here, which you can't really see. I mean, that's the scar, that's the big scar there. I mean, it's ten, it's healed up a lot, but. That there has been the big chunk that's gone out of that that there. So um, I've lost no function in my arm, but um. But yes, I mean, the the the the scars really were the ones you can't see, you know, and but um. You know, I I always look back on that and I understand now, looking back, that. When something happens like that in your life, you can't just, we naturally lock away the intimate emotional detail. We we just do that, that's the way we're wired. But you you need to address that and and and to think you can have something like that happen to you and that not affect.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Your life, especially ten years old, is absolutely uh, is naive.

• 16:36Chris Williamson?

  Well, man, scars are proof that you're stronger than whatever tried to kill you. And that's that's that's true for both, true for both internal and external, you know. Um, well, I mean, I want to kind of jump right ahead to where you are now and. No one's growth's finished, right? You know, you're not a fully self-actualized human and you never will be. You'll be growing for the rest of your life. But the difference that you've made from the um dysfunctional way that you were moving through the special service.

• 17:05Chris Williamson?

  Then when you went into doing your more contract work, then in the Thailand, then being lost and all this sort of stuff. As you say in the book, this is a journey of growth that you went through. You've then managed to restructure that into what is, what reads essentially is an instruction manual. And it's like a, it's like an activity book for adults that want to do behaviour change and personal growth, which I think is really cool. So you've got bunches of exercises in here, all of them are ways that can serve you, that can help you to move yourself forward and things like that. But there's, before we get into it, do you know Jim Rendan's book, Upside? It's about posts. So I'll send you a link to it once we're done. And this struck me

• 17:49Chris Williamson?

  straight away, right? So it's about the new science of post-traumatic growth. And it reports that up to two thirds of trauma survivors experience post-traumatic growth, not post-traumatic stress. They are benefiting from the crisis in their lives by using them to become stronger. Rendan found that trauma can drive us to become better, to focus more on relationships, become more spiritual and become more grateful. And I've never seen more of a perfect example of that than the situations you've been through.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely brilliant. But I think it takes a lot of time before. I think a lot of people with trauma, they're, they're still trying to be the person they were before the trauma. And they're fighting to be, and that's where the conflict comes from. You know, they're, you're never going to be that person again. You're a different person. So it's about, you know, and I talk about this in a book, it's about being able to surrender to yourself to allow this stuff to flow. But the more, you know, our minds are a wonderful thing, but it's just a Pandora's box of confusion unless you actually understand what's going on on it on up here.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  And certainly that was, that was going on for me, you know, I'm, I'm 49 years old now. It took me until I was 43. I was 43 when I sort of did that bootcamp. It took all that time. You know what I mean? And I've not started living properly until I was 43. Absolutely not.

• 19:24Chris Williamson?

  Life doesn't come with an instruction manual, you know, like there is no, there's no instruction manual that comes with life and all of these approaches, you know, all the people that I've spoken to, people that you've quoted in the book, people like James Clear or Aubrey Marcus or John Boyd, you know, that all of these different guys that are masters of behaviour change, they're just giving us tiny little glimpses into what we can be and how we can operate. And, you know, this is why it is a never ending quest, but which is both beautiful and unfortunate, I suppose. So let's, let's get into it. There's four main sections in the book, right? And the first one is, what are some of the Barry, sorry, what it's the

• 20:06Chris Williamson?

  call to change. So what is, what is the call to change?

• 20:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, first of all, before we go into that, I wanted, I wanted to just say that, you know, I think you came up with a great analogy of the book there. But, you know, I've been talking, obviously, a lot, you know, I've been on radio, been on, you know, quite a lot of press around the book and stuff. And do you, do you remember the Haynes manual that you used to get for a car?

• 20:30Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  Right. Okay. So back in the day, when you used to get a car, you used to get a Haynes manual. And a Haynes manual was basically for the layman to understand

• 20:46Speaker 00

  the mechanics of that vehicle. It was for the, it was, it allowed the owner to do a fault diagnosis. It allowed them to be able to look at ways that they could fix the car, buy some extra parts, even with little or no experience, it would tell you what you needed to do to get the car working properly and get it back on track and make it the best version of itself. Now, that's what they used to do with cars. Now, I look at this book is exactly that. This is the Haynes manual for the mind, body and soul. You know what I mean? And you're so totally right in what you say. The thing is, we're born into this world and everyone jumps into this skin and thinks that they're fucking experts. You know what I mean? We're given no manual, no nothing, and everyone straight away is a frigging expert.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  And that's a dangerous place to be. When you think that you know everything, that's a dangerous place to be because like you said before, I will, I will never stop learning. I will never fake perfection and I will always wanna be making mistakes.

• 21:44Chris Williamson?

  I, I think uh, some people might think that they're experts, but far more people in, in my experience, just operate on their programming and presume that it's okay. And you know, it's, it's okay in that you're not going to get hit by fucking open traffic. But that's, you know, that's the limit. It's like you're just existing. The best that you can hope for, if you don't learn to deprogram all the biases and all of the social constructs and all of the things that the ego is giving you and all of the trauma that you've got from back in your life, even if you don't think you've got any trauma and all that sort of stuff, the best that you can hope for without deprogramming that is to become an effective slave to the way that your brain wants to operate.

• 22:26Chris Williamson?

  And that is no life. That is no life. And this is, this is the beauty to me of personal development and of behaviour change. And I hate the fact that America's fucking self-help community, wanky world has bad-mouthed or has, has um, how would you say? It's tarnished the image of what, of what is making people better, you know? And like I say, you've brushed across all of the big concepts in this book. So let's get, let's get into them. The call to change, what is it?

• 22:59Speaker 00

  The call to change really, um, you know, throughout the book, I'm, I'm talking through people through my personal experience and what I actually did. But really, the call to change is when we're humans.

• 23:12Speaker 00

  You know, when things aren't going right in our life, when we've got that internal conflict going on, you know, we're not happy, we want to be somewhere else, we're sick of the same repeat

• 23:22Speaker 00

  habit loops. We start comparing with other people. And that is a dangerous place to be because you, if you start comparing to someone that is so far above you, but you know, their vibration is so much different than yours, it's too hard a bridge to gap. You make it unrealistic and it basically that just turns into jealousy, that turns into, you know, all the wrong things. So really what you need to do straight away is level with yourself. Understand exactly who you are, where you are, not compare yourself to other people. And that is the foundation for growth. If you're doing it because you want to be like someone else, you want to, you know,

• 24:04Speaker 00

  you're jealous that they've got a nice house, a nice car, a nice this and nice that. It's the wrong place to start. So it's really about understanding exactly where you are. And for me, at that stage, you know, the call to change was, look, my, I am sick of this shit. I am sick of repeating the same cycles of life. I'm sick of wanting something and never achieving it because I'm always falling back into the same old habit loops. Negativity that stands in our way and enforces the habit loop. And it's really, it was just being honest with myself. It was being honest of where I am and understanding that I needed to change.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  You know, it's looking, for me, it was looking at, you know, all the things, all the factors that are affecting me. And like I keep, I've been saying repeatedly about this book at the moment. There was the, there was the option to pull the book at this time because of isolation.

• 25:05Speaker 00

  And we, well, I said, the book was written in a period of isolation. You know, and that's why I think at the moment, you know, that's what I had to do. What I did, I put myself into a boot camp, a mental boot camp. I had um been strangely gifted a house by my mama. I had a spare house in the UK when I came back to the UK. I had nothing else. Um, and basically I was in, I had such an, I was, I was like a blank canvas. And I was sat there thinking at that time. A lot of people would have said that's a shit situation to be in. But I looked at that as thinking, wow, how many people get to do this? I've got two months or whatever it was to be able to just sit there, have no distractions and focus on me.

• 25:50Chris Williamson?

  Serious man.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, when do you ever get that opportunity?

• 25:54Chris Williamson?

  Right now, right now, that's.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  Exactly, it's right now, but you won't ever get this opportunity again, you know? Sitting there thinking that the world's ending and all that kind of stuff, that's not serving you. What, what you can control is yourself. And the people that are sat there all day long at the moment, looking at their phones, checking Instagram or Ego Gram, I call it. Checking that all day long, that is not gonna, you're not gonna come out the back end of this. As the best version of yourself, far from it. So basically, that was, that was it for me. It was about understanding where I need to change, what I needed to focus on. And really just leveling with myself and going through a process. This was it for me, this, and this is a theme throughout the book.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Forget what's going on here when it comes to your emotions, comes to your feelings. When you come up with an idea, that's from the frontal cortex. You need to think about that enough so it loads into your subconscious. But basically, it's that same frontal cortex that comes up with the negativity when you actually come to execute the ideas. Now, if I use running, for example, I wanna be a, you know, I wanna, I wanna, I know that running every day is gonna make me fit. And, and next year I wanna run the London Marathon. You're not gonna feel like doing that. You're not gonna, you know, once you start thinking about it, your mind is wired to actually steer away from any kind of stress, any kind of discomfort. And people that wake up the next day going, oh, you know, I nearly started, but I just didn't feel motivated.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  You're not gonna feel motivated. You have to forget the emotion, forget the feeling, and you have to execute a plan that is based around a process. So that really, for me, that was understanding where I was, what I needed to do, and put in a process that was void of feelings and emotions, and stick to it and remain non-judgmental throughout. And that was really the start of it, and that was really the call to change. Identifying the issues, understanding what I needed to do, and lay out a plan of how that's gonna work.

• 27:50Chris Williamson?

  I get it, man. We do not rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 27:56Chris Williamson?

  The James Clearism. Um, what happens?

• 27:59Speaker 00

  Can I just say something, though?

• 28:00Chris Williamson?

  Hit me.

• 28:01Speaker 00

  Mate, I absolutely love, on your Instagram today.

• 28:04Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  The magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding. I love that.

• 28:09Chris Williamson?

  Shout, I've just taken that top off. I've just taken that t-shirt off. Shout out Built Up North for that t-shirt. Yeah, another great one from them. They also have another one that says, this is not the fucking cuddle club. So it's a CrossFit, CrossFit clothing company, but yeah, the magic you are looking for is in the hard work you are avoiding.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's brilliant. Yeah, love that.

• 28:28Chris Williamson?

  What happens if you don't choose a purpose for your life?

• 28:32Speaker 00

  One will be chosen for you. You know what? People, people understand that, people don't understand, you know, it's like, goals and purpose are very similar. You know, your purpose is, is basically, well, understanding your purpose is not your goals, actually. Your goals are on your way to find your purpose. But for me, it's, um, you know, when you understand your purpose and, and, people ask the question, how do you find your purpose? Now, when you've got a bit of experience, a bit of age on your side, you can actually go back through your life and, and it's quite easy to identify at what point you were happy, what, what made you, you know, what, what was a happy part of your life? What made you happy? What made you fulfilled? And, and that's really what you should be doing moving forward. You know, if there's something you don't like doing, then, then try to avoid doing it in the future. If you're young.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  You haven't got the benefit of that. So basically, you really need to go out there and start getting, you know, really stepping into that short term discomfort to get as many experiences as you can to understand what your purpose is. So really, um, you know, it's about understanding, finding your purpose first of all, and then it's about um, having a, having a system of goals in place. I've actually, yeah, uh, and, and basically it's, it's, it's, it's having those, but if you don't, people in self, you know, in this self-development world and people say, who's, who here's got goals? And you know, you get some people, yes, I have, you know, people that don't have goals, don't think

• 29:59Speaker 00

  they have, they do have goals. Regardless of whether you like it or not, our, our subconscious is a goal-driven, goal-getting machine, and it will focus on getting exactly what you focus on, what your dominant thoughts focus on. So if you haven't got a chosen goal, it will come up with something that you think about, you know, that's your dominant thoughts. And nine times out of 10, with 70,000 to 100 thoughts going around our head every day, you're going to end up with a load of crap that you don't want. Very much based on the facts as well, or amplified by the fact, we are negatively geared. And I'm sort of jumping ahead because this is the barrier.

• 30:39Chris Williamson?

  Hey, I've got it. Talk to us about the negativity default. I've got it. That's the next, that's my next question. Ollie, you're reading my notes. Stop reading my notes, man.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  We've got the same book.

• 30:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, we do. Fuck, that's exactly why. Yeah, the negativity default. I absolutely love it. So tell, tell us about that.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's really for me in that bootcamp, I wanted to understand, and like I said, said before about the Haynes manual, I don't, you know, a mechanic can't fix a motorbike unless he understands how it works, what's going on, and, and, and basically understands the workings of that machines, of that machine. From then, he can do a diagnostic, then he can fix the problem. For me, it was about understanding what's, why, why am I thinking negatively? How did I go from being a special forces hero to zero?

• 31:25Speaker 00

  To actually sub zero, how did that happen? And I couldn't understand how that, you know, I couldn't understand what happened in between and how I could fall down so far. And then I really, you know, I started looking at the fact, why do I think these negative thoughts? Why do, why does that happen? So I started to read a lot into psychology, but I really do think it wasn't about reading. It was about learning to understand myself and what was going on. I really looked into the back, you know, I looked to sort of into evolution of the species. And, and whether you like it or not, our primal instincts are the things that make us thrive today. So really, um, you know, you imagine a caveman, a caveman never came out of his cave and went, hmm, right, let's have a look.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  I wonder what amazing opportunities are going to come my way today. They were like, where's that fucking saber tooth tiger? Where's that monkey? But, you know, they were always looking for what was going to go wrong. Because that's the thing that kept them alive. Until today, we're still geared that way. Everyone can relate to the fact whenever something gets, when any kind of challenge that they doubt, they can, you know, is a bit of a challenge, they're always looking for what could go wrong. It's just our natural default. When it comes to evolution of the species, there's no actual benefit to being positive. Being positive and have a positive mindset is not going to save you from being eaten by a tiger. So really it's about understanding that our system is based on negativity. That's just the way we are.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  But once you learn to appreciate that and not think that you are just a singular person out there that is subject to a negative mindset. And that guy over there who, who seems to win every day at work, he is just gifted as a different person. You're all the same, he just thinks differently.

• 33:10Chris Williamson?

  That's one of the key realizations, I think, of overcoming a negativity default. It's to understand that the fact that you catastrophize risk is not some personal curse bestowed on just you. It is an inbuilt fitness enhancing system that our entire species has got. Because we are not supposed to expend any more calories than we need to, because. You taking a risk might make you a bit more alive, but a lot more dead, which is a very bad situation to be in. It's an existential risk. It means your genes don't get passed on. Everything in our evolutionary past up until 20,000 years ago benefited the people, the humans,

• 33:52Chris Williamson?

  that were the most risk averse. And now, because we've got, for the first time in history, a surplus of resources as opposed to a scarcity of resources, we're now just expecting our brains to catch up and be like, I don't need to be scared of the cold shower. I don't need to be scared of the high, the big roller coaster thing. It's like, no, no, no, no. All of your fucking ancestors did, so you're gonna be as well. And, you know, I, I think you're totally correct. Stepping into the programming, and you talk about this in the meditation section as well, so I'm gonna jump ahead. But there's a concept called the mindfulness gap by Corey Allen. And this is what you touch on, you give it a different name, but just giving yourself that second, you know, to think? And just think, actually, is this negative thought serving me?

• 34:37Chris Williamson?

  Is this, is this something worth being scared of? Last night, my dad, me and my dad were having a bit of a discussion. He started his first business. And I'm like, Dad, is this actually something that you need to be concerned about? Or is it just your natural risk aversion manifesting itself, you know?

• 34:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. And a way around that as well, I was, I was, I came up with a bit of a analogy, if you call it that, the other day. But when it comes to something, when it comes to, when you, when you actually understand that that is our default, okay? What you have to do, when you want to achieve anything in life, you have to understand, and this goes back to the magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding, you know what I mean? You are always gonna steer away from that short-term discomfort, which will then lead to, to long-term gain. And that's what a lot of the book is really based around. And my previous book, Breakpoint, the whole ethos of Breakpoint is around taking that short-term discomfort. But really, what you have to have, if you want to start a business, or if you want to start anything like that,

• 35:41Speaker 00

  you have to make sure that your goal overwhelms your circumstances. If I can give you a bit of an analogy on that, if I said to you, one day, I'm, I'm stood next to you, it's freezing cold, we're stood next to a lake, it's pretty much close to ice on the top, and I said, mate, jump in there. You'd be like, fuck off.

• 36:02Chris Williamson?

  How much are you gonna pay me? Yeah.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  No, exactly. But if I chuck the person that you loved right in the middle of that and they start to drown, would you give a fuck about how cold it was?

• 36:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Man, I've got, I've got, I've got, Ollie, I've got a quote from the book here, which is talking about shortcut syndrome. And this is one of my favorite, favorite bits. So I'm going to read you a passage here. So you're talking about why you hadn't learned to surf, even though it would be cool to do. He said, "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." Nailed it.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But the thing is, my, for all this time prior to, and the reason I've got a surf fan, the reason I've got two surfboards and a load of wetsuits is because my ego wants to surf.

• 37:10Chris Williamson?

  That's it. But you know, you, you, you hit the nail on the head when you say that it needs to ascend to the top of your purpose in life. And there's this quote from Ray Dalio, "You can have anything you want, but not everything you want." And choosing to do few things well, condensed down, I think it is, is another part of that. I'm sure that you, I back you, man. You're going to become a cool surfer at some point. But as you say, not right now. Um, so you touched on it before. Can you just explain the concept of a breakpoint, please?

• 37:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, breakpoint. And, and that is really the, you know what? That, that moment I got attacked by the chimp was the reason I started my company called Breakpoint. Because that was the moment I was stuck underneath the chimp. And it was the moment I was gonna die. Now was the moment I could have laid down there and just been torn, torn to bits and not be here today. But I knew that I had to, for any chance of surviving that day, I had to step further into the discomfort of that situation.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  For any chance of long term gain. And really, that was my first breakpoint. It's the moment you decide nothing's going to stand between you and your goals. And you're prepared to to take that short term discomfort. Because you know there's a long term gain on the other side of it.

• 38:29Chris Williamson?

  Saving the family member that's drowning in the icy lake.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly, exactly that point. But the thing is, and that, you know, you you don't have to go to the circus and get attacked after ha- after watching this. This uh this podcast, but what I'm saying is that happens with everything in life, you know, and that is why it relates to this book being battle ready. It's about squaring everything away. It's about cleaning the dishes. So it's not there the next day for you. It's about take care of every little thing, stepping into that short term discomfort to make life better. In the long term, and that's in every aspects of your life, it's making you battle ready. And that is the whole concept, but that is breakpoint. Breakpoint is the moment that you it's that sliding doors moment of opportunity. It's the moment that you get up in the morning, you know, I put a post on this morning. I don't know if you saw it, but it was in fact.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  I don't want it when they when I wake up at five in the morning, I don't want to get up. You know, after that, I don't want to sit downstairs and meditate. You know, I wa- you know, I prefer to just sit in, you know, have a coffee and, you know, open my phone up. And just allow that negativity and that all that nonsense to ooze in from from everyone else's lives and and etcetera, etcetera. I don't want to then put my trainers on and go outside. I prefer to stay in and just have a nice coffee and check my email. But the thing is, I have to step into that short term discomfort because I know. The growth and the benefit and the development are on the other side of that short term discomfort. That is breakpoint.

• 39:58Chris Williamson?

  Man, can you explain what is breathe, calibrate, deliver?

• 40:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. And breathe, calibrate, deliver is something that um you know, it's it. Those that have read it in the other book and stuff, it, you know, I relate it to my life in the special forces, but really, it's it's not just about the special forces. Although they are teaching this method now in some special forces units over the world. Basically, what happens when you get into a stressful situation? And and take again, you know, the lake, the freezing cold lake, as soon as you fall into freezing cold water, what happens? Your breathing goes mentally erratic, doesn't it? And the first thing they say if you fall into a freezing cold lake is you must control your breathing. And what happens at that moment, you know, in any stress situation, your breathing becomes erratic.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  And then what happens cortisol increases. And then that's what leads to the confusion. What you will then do in that moment, your survival instinct, uh, fight or flight or flight will basically say, get out of this situation as quickly as possible. And a lot of the time you're going to be running straight into further danger because you're confused. So basically what this, what breathe, recalibrate, deliver is, is in those moments, as you're moving into one of those stressful situations, take it for us stacking up on a door about to go in, you know, in the special forces. Anxiety on that door is immense because you don't know what's on the other side. Could be a wall of bullets, it could be a bomb, it could be anything.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  Um, but you know, there's going to be, it's going to kick off. Um, and, and basically it's about keeping that cortisol level down, you know, it's deep breathing, box breathing. So when I go, when I talk about breathe, recalibrate, deliver, box, if you're in a stress situation and try it when you, you know, uh, road rage, or when you're having an argument with your, your, your partner or whatever, before you react, breathe, you know, and it doesn't have to be, you know, sort of stand there and look, look like some Zen monk, you know, going into some kind of, uh, you know, it's just the fact, just breathe, just take a breath first. You know, breathe in for four seconds, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. That will then lower the cortisol. How many rounds?

• 42:14Speaker 00

  It depends on the situation, but if you've only got, if you've only got a short amount of time to do so, then basically I'd say do it four times, but if you haven't got long, just taking one breath and maintaining that breathing through will help straight away. As soon as you take that first breath, it will help straight away. It's just a minute pause. And at that same time, you're recalibrating. Recalibrating is like a triage of the situation. You're stripping away what doesn't matter, you get rid of the mind chatter, you get rid of the confusion. And then what, once you've aligned with what you need to do. You then deliver the action. So you breathe, recalibrate, deliver.

• 42:54Chris Williamson?

  I love it. I mean, if it's good enough for the SAS stacking up outside of a room that's filled with potentially a wall of bullets, it's good enough for, you know, Jonathan, who's stuck in rush hour traffic late on the way to work.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  Well, negotiation, you know, in sales, there's so many people, I've been in sales, you know, you, you, people sit in a meeting and then they walk out the meeting and they go, oh my God, I can't believe I just fucking said that. And the, and the guys in the office go, what a loser. I've just, I've just won that deal. And you've, you've actually, you've done the opposite of what you should do. You've took the shortcut and your mind's gone, get out, get out, get out. And if you'd have just not allowed them to dictate and just breathe, clear the confusion and then deliver an answer that's based on clarity and not confusion, you'll win 95% of the time.

• 43:46Chris Williamson?

  So what this looks like to me is a micro version of what we've been talking about in terms of deprogramming, right? So you have this stasis that your body's operating in over longer times, we call that nature. But in a short, in a shorter time, it's just the way that your physiology responds and reacts to situations. And especially for the people listening that are a little bit more cerebral, perhaps the people that are introverts, you'll think that you can armchair philosophize your way out of a situation. You'll be able to, or you'll try and think, I should think my way out of this anxiety. I should think my way out of this depression. It's like, there are certain things and certain thinking tools that you can use.

• 44:27Chris Williamson?

  But the bottom line is that if you got up and went for a 10 minute walk, did a little bit of breathing and had a big glass of water, 80% of the problems in your life would be fixed. And I promise you that it's a fact. Like a good night's sleep, a walk, a glass of water and a little bit of breathing will fix pretty much anything.

• 44:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, but the the opposite of that is people tend to to not go for the walk. They had to open a bottle of wine down that and then, you know,

• 44:55Chris Williamson?

  Check their phones, scroll through their phones, sit on the couch, eat some food that's high in glucose. Man, it's, you know, if if so many people, including yourself, who's literally been to the absolute elite of the armed service in the world, if you're saying it, I think people should probably heed the advice. I got a question, actually, that I've been wanting to ask you. Talk me through your morning routine.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, morning routine. Well, I'll talk you through my morning routine today, which is pretty much the same as I did in a boot camp. It's the same. I try. I don't do it every day. I've got to say that, you know, sometimes I thought and I talk about that getting back on track after you've, you know, you've lost your way.

• 45:34Chris Williamson?

  What do you think? What do you think's your compliance with your morning routine? Five in seven, four in seven?

• 45:39Speaker 00

  Um, well, there's no set, but I always look at the 80 20. You know, if I'm doing something 80, 80% of the time, then it's good. But, you know, I'm not so, you know, a lot of people actually reading the book and stuff like that must think, God, he must be boring to live with.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  But it's not, you know, I do, you know, I know my faults and I know, you know, sometimes up until about, you know, when I first went into isolation, I was letting that slip. I was eating really bad foods. So anyway, morning routine for me. Now, the morning routine is so, so important because

• 46:13Speaker 00

  by me taking myself to the day, I dominate every time. Okay. Or at least I'm in a good position to be able to take anything that comes my way. Now, if you're the kind of person that just, you know, is on the snooze button 24, so you know, and and just gets up at the last minute, you're basically allowing the day to come to you and it's more likely going to walk all over you. So for me, I wake up now at five o'clock in the morning. That's just a regular pattern. Um, and I I straight away, you know, I know that if I don't take action quickly, my brain's going to talk me out of it, roll over, come to my girlfriend and that's it all over. So it's really for me, get out of bed, straight out of bed. Um, I then go downstairs and I meditate.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  Um. I sit there, I do a guided meditation, something by, I, I, I use a lot of Bob Proctor's stuff. I don't know if you're aware of Bob's, I, I, I love Bob, I think he's amazing. Um. But any kind of meditation, for me, when I say meditation, um, you know, a lot of people think, oh, they're too scared to venture into it because they don't understand what it's all about. But for me, it's my focused attention at my intentions. So I use that time to sit there and it's, it's really about me being able to clear my mind of anything else that's going on. And every time my focus gets distracted, you know, I know how to get back. And that really helps me massively throughout the day because prior to learning that, and it's

• 47:42Speaker 00

  a hard thing to do, I had mind chatter going on and it was so, you know, just this mind chattering and stuff and it was just so confusing. So that is twenty minutes in the morning for me to be able to really focus on what I want to achieve, short term, in that day, in that week, in, in the, you know, and then my big goals as well. Um. So that time as well for me is about visualizing where I want to be. I've visualized like I've already been there. Twenty minutes of that, I then get up, I'll then either go for a run, seven Ks, uh, which is from my house, seven K run. Um. And then I've got the use of a very nice swimming pool at the moment. Um. So I then go uh, for a swim, I'll then, um, I'll then uh, later on in the day, go to the gym.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  So really for me, and, and also I've done my fitness and everything, this is me time. In my diary for the next year, I've put in my diary now, up until nine thirty, it's blocked out. And that is me time. No one can penetrate that unless it's something extremely important. Generally, up until nine thirty, I am not available because I'm working on me. A lot of people say, look, I haven't got time to do all that. This is the best work you can do and that's on yourself because the return on investment will affect everything in your life. So that morning routine for me is so powerful and everyone that's not doing it, start doing it because it will change your life.

• 49:04Chris Williamson?

  Man, if you win the morning, you win the day. There's a good analogy here about when you are in an aircraft with low pressure and what happens in an aircraft with low pressure is the oxygen masks come down and the advice that you're given, the instruction that you're given is put your mask on before you try and assist anybody else. And the reason for that is if you are suffocating, you are not all that you can be to help the people that are around you. And this is the basis of self-care. If you are not making yourself everything that you can be, you're not serving others in the way that you can too. And again, Aubrey Marcus, past Modern Wisdom guest, said, "You do not serve others from your cup, you serve others from the source which overflows around your cup."

• 49:46Chris Williamson?

  And again, if you don't think that you have the time to work on yourself, you're probably the prime candidate for someone who really needs to consider it and get a copy of Battle Ready and go through everything that's in there. So you quote Joe Dispenza, who's one of my favorites, and there's this brilliant stat where he says, "80 to 90% of our thoughts are the same as those that we had yesterday." How can people step in and break that cycle?

• 50:18Speaker 00

  Process is absolutely process. You've got to break that chain. You've got to break that habit loop and you've got to put a process into play that takes you away from that repeat cycle. Because again, coming back to evolution, as far as our minds are concerned, we want to keep on doing what we did yesterday and the day before and the day before that because as far as our minds are concerned, when it's in line with human evolution, doing what we did yesterday and the day before has kept us alive until today. It doesn't give a shit if you're happy or sad, whether it's a good situation or not, it just wants to keep on doing that same thing. When it comes to evolution of the species, it will be so happy if you just sat in a corner and procreated all day long and didn't

• 51:00Speaker 00

  go anywhere because that's dangerous. You know, but then that's absolutely the whole thing about this conflict. I talk about this conflict, this inner conflict. There's that, you know, that that's the driving force for us to to to for the evolution of the species, but we're there to to to create, we're there to to understand, we're there to to experience. And and really, it's about if you want to get out of that, this, you know, all this stuff all falls in line with breakpoint. It's the mo you've got to put a process into play that breaks that loop and understand as soon as you do it, you're not going to feel like it. But you've got to step into the discomfort initially,

• 51:43Speaker 00

  because what's that what that's doing is basically building a new neural pathway in your mind. You know, the negativity, the the loop, habit loop of what you've been doing is like a superhighway. And when you come up with something new, that is just that the neurons are firing, but it's very weak. But the more you focus on the new habit, those neurons start to get and turn into a, you know, like a country lane, then a superhighway. And then the negativity will always be there. But the thing is, you need to make the positive or the new habit, the new superhighway of change. And the only way you can do that is by stepping into the discomfort on a continuous basis, day in, day out. A lot of people say, oh, you know, I have to stop doing that because there

• 52:27Speaker 00

  were so many obstacles in the way. The obstacles are the way.

• 52:32Chris Williamson?

  Quality, I love it. So we've spoken about the fact that we have a call to change. We've spoken about some of the barriers, the way that you need to sustain change by having a process in place, you need to connect to a higher purpose, you need to actually be able to understand what's going on so that you can see the thoughts in your mind for what they are. But then we need to sustain that, right? We need to keep that going. And one of the things you've just touched on it there, people come up against failure. They find a challenging time, they come up against failure, they run out of motivation. So how can we ensure that the good habits that we've put in place, we don't, you know, run out of motivation, we don't feel like we're a failure?

• 53:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a there's a load of things there. But, you know, I said, I think I said it at the start of this, Chris, and it was like, you know, I'm sick of people faking perfection, you know?

• 53:28Speaker 00

  You've got to understand that, I mean, I personally, if I'm not making mistakes, I know now that I'm not trying hard enough. My goals aren't big enough or I'm not trying hard enough. And I understand that your way to success is is, is, is, um, is a series of failures. You know, but those for me, just reframe them, they're milestones of growth. Their only failure is if they knock you back and you're too scared to go forward again. You know, it's like a pinball going up. You know, you want the pinball to go straight up the center, but it doesn't, it gets knocked from side to side. And sometimes it even gets dropped all the way back. Even with the flippers, you can't bang it straight back up, it goes straight down again.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  But you've got to understand that on the way to your goal, you're going to get knocked to the left, knocked to the right. But you've got, you've got to have a goal on the other side that's pulling you through. But you've got to understand that, you know, those failures are going to reshape the way that you approach your goal. And even when you get to your goal, forget the goal, you're not supposed, you're not supposed to be satisfied when you get to the goal. And even if you don't make the goal, you're 75% in, it's a, it's a, it's a long way better than 0% in you were, you know, some time before. So really for me, it's about understanding that, yeah, keep on failing, keep on failing. I mean, a quote at the start of the book is about,

• 54:49Speaker 00

  um, no goal was ever great unless at some point you doubted your ability to achieve it. You know, and it's all about, you know, it's all about having goals. You know, it's so important to, to, to make sure that you choose a defined goal that you want, that challenges you, you know, that it can be broke down to bite sized chunks that you, you, you tackle each one of those bite sized chunks, you know, each one's a milestone. You get to that, that gives you the confidence to keep on going.

• 55:15Chris Williamson?

  You've got a, you've got a really cool, um, exercise, it's a clock, the clock thing, right? And as I was, as I was reading it, I made a little note on the side. Any large goal is achievable, given enough time and small enough steps. That's it.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:31Chris Williamson?

  You know, there is, there is literally, if you, if I give you an infinite amount of time, there's pretty much nothing that you can't achieve. You could walk to fucking Mars, you know? Like, given enough time and small enough steps, you can achieve literally anything. And I like the idea that you break down a large, grand goal. This is very imposing. This is very challenging. I don't know how I'm going to do it. And you go, okay, what's the next action? What's the very, very, very next thing? And this is how it links into the morning routine, right? You're like, look, I need to do all this shit today, but first I need to pull the covers off me. You know, then I need to get out of bed, then I need to brush my teeth, then I need to do the thing. Like, that's it. It is all that life is, is a series of actions that leads to accomplishments over time.

• 56:12Chris Williamson?

  And anything great, any great sportsman or speaker or artist, anyone is going to tell you the same thing. And you look at a piece, a great piece of art and you don't see individual brushstrokes. But by definition, that's precisely how that bit of art was made, right?

• 56:28Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. And that's it, that, that exercise in a book, I think it's such a powerful exercise. And I actually did that. My life was absolutely a robot, rock bottom at that point. So I basically, you know, I had a, I, I drew around a CD. I, I put clock hands through it, or not clock hands, just lines through it, like, you know, a 12, a 3, a 6 and a 9. And, you know, at 12 o'clock was my main goal. What do I want to achieve? And each one of, you know, some people might not have to do all the hands of the clock. You know, they might only have to do 6 and 9. But basically I went from 12 and then at 3, I put what I needed to do,

• 57:09Speaker 00

  where on it, where my first goal was and, and, and hands one and two, were the steps I needed to take to get to 3. And then you just keep on going on and on and on. But the thing is, all the way along, you know, you have the goal, you plant the goal into your subconscious. Once it's, you keep thinking about, and that's why I use the morning routine to think about that. I'm putting it into the subconscious because at times when times get tough, you need to forget the goal, especially if it is an audacious goal, which it always should scare the shit out of you. And basically, you know, if you focus on that goal, if it is a scary goal, when, when times are tough, your mind will just fall apart. You'll be like, that's too tough. But the thing is, that's when you need to get your head down and just keep on moving. We, we call it in the special forces,

• 57:53Speaker 00

  one meter square. You need to keep momentum and just allow, just concentrate on what's on that meter square. Don't go, don't go, don't freeze, don't go static, but just keep on moving towards the next goal. I climbed Mont Blanc last year, you know, and I, I, I'm always thinking of, you know, I think that was, that was powerful for me because, you know, we were walking up and it was like, I kept looking forward and I was like getting so demoralized because it just didn't seem to be getting any closer and closer to the top of that mountain. And I was like, you know, just forget, don't stop looking up there, you know, just stop looking up there. Look at your feet and just allow your feet to keep on moving. And then every time we stopped for a breather, I didn't look up, I turned around and I looked how far we'd come.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. What a fucking amazing view. And that filled me with absolute power. And then it was turned around and crack on again. But, you know, it's, and that's really analogy for how you should approach your goals.

• 58:45Chris Williamson?

  Do you think it's surprising for people to hear someone who from the outside looks like a very classic hard man driven, you know, the, the signature action man special forces. This guy's got an iron will and fucking balls of steel and a jaw made of granite and all this bullshit, you know, like,

• 59:09Chris Williamson?

  do you think it's strange for people to maybe hear this side, all of the self doubt, all of the worry, all the concern, all of the trauma that's been brought through?

• 59:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I do a hundred percent, but that's why I feel it's so powerful for me to be at a level with people and tell them the truth because people, you know, I, I can remember someone saying to us, you know, not too long ago saying, wow, you guys are cut from a different cloth. And I turned around to him and I said, no, we're not. I said, we're just the same as you. We're just ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And really it's so important for me in this book and my previous book to be absolutely 100% open and let people understand that we're just the same as, as everyone else. You know, and that really helps people. So that really inspires people and that is, you know, at the end of the day, my books, I don't care, honestly, you know, they, they obviously pay um a dividend, but the power for each of my books is what it gives other people.

• 1:00:03Speaker 00

  And I can't do that if I'm faking perfection.

• 1:00:07Chris Williamson?

  Man, it's great. So I've got one final question, which is, what would you say to someone who is in the same place that you were in seven years ago, lost in life, potentially with a sense of meaninglessness, pointlessness, addicted to some sort of drug, or dependent on some bad relationship, feeling like they've got no future, nowhere to go, no way to grow? What would you say to someone that was you seven years ago?

• 1:00:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, basically, I would, I would, I would tell them that they need to understand that what they're looking for is not out there. It's not external. You can, you know, I was bouncing all over the world trying to find something that wasn't there. You know, the magic and everyone, everyone has the magic, but it's within you. And as soon as you start to look within for the answers, you will be given the answers. Okay. So it's really about slowing down. And for me, you know, it's so important. A lot, you know, it's hard to come across in a book as if, you know, I'm some raging alcoholic. It wasn't the case, you know. For me, I understood

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  how, through my life experiences, and there'd been some crazy ones, I understood how powerful the mind is. So for me to add a chemical to that and disrupt that clarity and disrupt that power was absolute madness. It was like putting diesel in a petrol car. But for me, it's about get rid of all those external factors that are not benefiting your productivity. Get rid of the alcohol, get rid of the drugs, and especially if you've suffered mental health issues, PTSD, whatever it is, unless you cut away the smokescreen, you're never going to get to the raw nerve. So it's about making yourself as healthy, as clean, as much clarity

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  as possible. Drop down, get to a level playing field of absolutely where you are. Create a foundation of growth, not on a comparison of someone else. And really start to put a plan into play that has a goal that takes you out of being a victim of circumstance.

• 1:02:18Chris Williamson?

  Dude, Ollie, you killed it, man. We made it. We made it through.

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  Thanks, mate.

• 1:02:22Chris Williamson?

  I have to say, man, I said it before we got started. This book's fantastic. This I'm gonna keep and another copy I'm gonna buy for my dad. So dad, if you're listening, you're gonna have one of these landing in the house pretty soon. And I'm gonna make him go through it. I think it's a fantastic overview of behaviour change. I think you got a really good process in there and some of the stories, man, like some of the stuff. Your trip, we didn't even get on to your trip. You did ayahuasca. You went all the way out to see some shaman, all this mad stuff going on. So, yeah, I think it's phenomenal. I really, really hope that it changes a lot of people's ways that they operate and their lives for the better as well. So where should people head? They want to find out more about you, more about the book. Where do they go?

• 1:03:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've actually got a website. I mean, I think it's a lot easier that people go to my website, which is ollie, O double L I E O double L E R T O N dot co dot U K. Ollie Ollerton.co.uk. It's got all my projects, all my books, everything on there. You can find me on Twitter, social media, everything. And mate, please, if you want those books for your dad, whatever, I need to make sure they're signed for you with a nice message. So please tap me up for that.

• 1:03:28Chris Williamson?

  That would be fantastic. And I will repay the favour, mate. If you're ever in Newcastle, get yourself up here and we'll go to my gym and we'll get a good CrossFit workout in. How's that?

• 1:03:37Speaker 00

  Absolutely, mate. Love it. Thanks very much for your time, mate. I really enjoyed it.

• 1:03:40Chris Williamson?

  And you, man. Bye bye.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company informed 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.

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

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

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

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

• 1:04:16Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:04:20Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only appears on October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.