Soldier

There are two other aspects to my personality which aren’t necessarily typical of all campaigners but are definitely me.

The first is how much I need to be outside. It’s not just that I don’t like being in an office: I don’t like being inside. I read an interview once with Gaby Reece, the former volleyball player who’s married to the surfer Laird Hamilton. She spoke about how he would come in from the sea and have lunch with her and their children, and though he was fully engaged with them and what they were doing, after an hour or so she would see him start to twitch, because he’d had enough of being inside and needed to be back out on the waves where his soul belonged. The same is true of the ultrarunner Kilian Jornet who lives and trains in Norway: for him it’s the mountains rather than the ocean where he finds his grace.

I’m not quite as extreme as either of them, but I definitely get where they’re coming from. Nothing would depress me more than working in an office. I just couldn’t do it. I used to look at my dad putting on a suit and tie and going to work, and I remember thinking, ‘What’s all that about?’ I’ve never worn a suit in my life. If I do have to go into an office space even for a few hours I feel the energy being sucked out of me. I’m far more productive on ‘working walks’, tramping across a heath with my brain in neutral and letting the ideas come to me. Sitting at a screen is, for me, doing stuff that’s already been decided and now just needs to be executed. Deciding that stuff needs a different space entirely. This is not to be down on those who like offices. Lots of people do, because they have the personality types which do, and if that’s you then knock yourself out. Me? Couldn’t do it if you paid me.

The second is a very simple psychological action and reaction: I’m hardwired to do things when someone reckons I can’t. The quickest way to get me to do anything is to tell me that it’s beyond me. Even if I know that person’s not being serious and saying it just to wind me up, I’ll still bite. I’m like Pavlov’s dog. It comes from the same place as my competitive nature, wanting to be stronger than other people and get one up on them. I don’t think there’s a single defining moment in my life which made me that way: it’s always been there for as long as I can remember, a little bit of insecurity. Back in Preston I was always around the lads who got the girls and I never did. I wasn’t unpopular, I don’t think, but I wasn’t ever super-popular either. So if someone says, ‘You can’t do this’ and I reply, ‘Fuck you,’ there’s a lot behind that ‘fuck you’. That’s my way of getting not just even but one up. Whatever else other people may or may not be, I’m stronger, I’m faster, I’m tougher, I’m a better soldier.

That little bit of insecurity means I still have impostor syndrome sometimes. I’m doing some racing for the Praga car company in 2021, and when I first went down to Brands Hatch to meet them and try out the cars I felt a bit like, ‘What am I doing here?’ I’ve come a long way since I was that kid in Preston, but in some ways I still feel like that kid, and I clearly remember what it was like growing up there. If you’d told the ten-year-old me that in a quarter of a century’s time I’d be racing cars round one of the most famous circuits in Britain, I’d have thought you were mental. Yet here I am, and a lot more besides, and that takes some getting used to.

It’s not a bad thing to feel impostor syndrome now and then, though, not at all; as long as it’s mild, I guess, and as long as I don’t dwell on it and let it become debilitating. (You’d be surprised how many people, lots of them much more famous and accomplished than I am, also have it: people who you wouldn’t guess in a million years, they seem so confident and sorted.) It keeps me humble and sharp and hungry; makes me keep my eyes and ears open, attuned to learning as much as possible. The moment I think I’m Billy Big Bollocks is the moment I’m sunk.

I like to think of it as being in a big hall full of people doing martial arts. You can tell how experienced and skilful someone is by the colour of their belt. The white belts are the lowest rank, and then the grades go up through yellow, orange, green, blue, brown and black. Which one do I want to be? Most people would say, ‘Black belt,’ as that’s the best.* Not me. I’d rather think of myself as a white belt, with everything to learn and a lifetime of progress in front of me. Even in an area where I’m experienced, such as soldiering itself, where my actual level of achievement is equivalent to a black belt, my attitude is still that of a white belt. Everyone you meet can teach you something; you just have to be open.

And if this means parking your ego, so be it. Former Navy SEAL commander Jocko Willink says that ‘ego is like reactive armour. The harder you push against it, the more it pushes back. You might be afraid that if you subordinate your ego you will get trampled. But that normally doesn’t happen because subordinating your ego is actually the ultimate form of self-confidence. That level of confidence earns respect. To put your ego in check, to subordinate your ego, you must have incredible confidence. If you find you cannot put your ego in check because you are afraid it might make you look weak, then guess what? You are weak. Don’t be weak.’

This ties in with one of the four tenets of the Special Forces: humility. (The other three are the relentless pursuit of excellence, which I’ll discuss in the ‘Excellence’ chapter; a classless society, which comes under ‘Leadership’; and a sense of humour, which is vital in pretty much every walk of life. Army humour in general is pretty dark: Special Forces humour is black, really black. A few years ago a bunch of boffins in Surrey came up with one of the darkest substances known to man and called it Vantablack. That’s a pretty accurate marker of Special Forces humour.)

The more you achieve in the Special Forces, the more humble you’re encouraged to be. You don’t need to tell everyone or lie about your achievements to gain recognition. It’s like when blokes talk about sex: nine times out of ten the more they talk about it the less they’re having. Special Forces operations are clandestine, not just at the time they’re carried out but for many years into the future as well. Only a handful of people in the country even know where you are when you’re deployed. You can’t tell your friends and family. You certainly can’t go round shouting it from the rooftops. So it’s not a job for people who like or need to show off. If you want fame, fortune and thousands of people chanting your name, you’re in the wrong job.

The flipside of only a handful of people knowing where you are or what you’re doing is that every one of those people appreciates the skill and commitment which goes into it. So the satisfaction you have is of a job well done and the quiet approval of those who know what it takes. This encourages you to be humble (and if you’re not then you’ll soon get it pointed out to you).

With humility comes integrity, and this is something else that, even though others around you will be exhibiting it, must come from within yourself. It’s a tough job, what I did. It takes violence to stop violence. You have to take lives without hesitation if need be. As the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, ‘Be careful not to become a monster when tracking monsters.’ I joined the army because I believed and believe that it’s a force for good in the world: that its values are the right ones and that it protects and reinforces a way of life that’s worth fighting for.

But that fight can get pretty down and dirty sometimes. George Orwell said that people ‘sleep safely in our beds at night because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm’. In the movie A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessup tells Tom Cruise’s navy lawyer, ‘You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.’ I’ve been on that wall and I’ve stood ready in the night, and I’ve done so with pleasure as it’s something I loved doing, but at all times I tried to be a good person while doing it, abiding by the rules of war and keeping not just my professional standards high but my moral ones too.

Clearly as a soldier I went where the politicians sent me. Did Western intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq make those countries better or worse? You can argue the toss till the cows come home. If we did make them better, it was only partially: I don’t think anyone would argue that those wars were unqualified successes. But I and pretty much everyone I served with genuinely believed we could bring a better life to those people, and we did everything we could to try to effect that. We tried our hardest, I promise you that.

So, once you know yourself, how do you make yourself better?

Again, the answer is self-focus. Sometimes this can be hard, especially when you’re in a competitive situation with other people, as you often are in the army. Take P Company, the final course to become a Para. It’s eight tests over five days, it’s unbelievably hard, and on it hang the last five months of training. Pass, and that training will have been worthwhile; fail, and it will all have been for shit. I remember standing waiting for the start and looking round at everyone else. They looked so strong and confident, like this would be a walk in the park for them, whereas I felt weedy and was absolutely bricking myself. It wasn’t till later that I realised that, of course, they were all bricking themselves and I looked strong and confident. It was a good lesson: never confuse your insides with someone else’s outsides. You can’t do anything about the latter, but you can do a lot about the former.

I concentrate on my own performance, knowing that if I do that then most (though not all) of the rest takes care of itself. During lockdown, I know that many people found it hard to stay motivated and keep in shape, especially if they relied on going to gyms, which were closed. Physical fitness is a big part of my life, and only illness or injury stops me from getting my workouts in. I couldn’t afford to think, ‘Oh, it’s lockdown, everybody’s finding it weird, I’ll just sit on the couch and stuff my face with Mars Bars.’ It would have bled through to too many other aspects of my life, that sense that it was OK to let things go for a while. Physical inactivity would have massively impacted on my mental well-being, and not in a good way.

So I started every morning the way I always do: with five minutes in a wheelie bin full of water. Yes, you read that right. Five minutes up to my shoulders in cold water. Most people think I’m mad even to consider that: why not just run the shower a bit cold for a few seconds at the end? That’s not enough, not for me. Give me a wheelie bin with cold water. I can’t start the day without it. If I ever miss it I feel a bit out of whack and off-kilter for the rest of that day. Those five minutes rev me up and set me up the way I need to be. The cold water kick-starts my system, bringing the blood to the surface of my skin and priming me both physically and mentally.†

After that I work out. I had three main routines during lockdown which I could do at home, and which you can do too: all you need is a kettlebell and enough space to run 400 metres around your neighbourhood. The routines all began with warm-up and mobility exercises – stretching, basically – to get the body ready:

Routine 1: 200 press-ups, 200 squats, 200 sit-ups, 200 lunges, 200 burpees.‡ Feel free to break down the reps into manageable sets. I did this in sets of 50 at a time (50 reps of each exercise × 4), though especially with burpees you may find that sets of 25 are easier.

Routine 2: 20 burpees, 400-metre run; 19 burpees, 400-metre run; 18 burpees, 400-metre run; and so on down to 1 burpee and the last 400-metre run, equalling 210 burpees and 8km running in all. I used a 10kg weighted vest for this.

Routine 3: 100 squats, 90 press-ups, 80 sit-ups, 70 kettlebell deadlifts, 60 burpees, 50 dips, 40 kettlebell lunges, 30 kettlebell cleans, 20 single-arm kettlebell swings, 10 kettlebell snatches and 5 × 100-metre sprints. I used a 28kg kettlebell and a 10kg weighted vest.

You don’t need to use the same weight kettlebell or vest (or indeed any vest), or follow these routines slavishly. The important point is that you find what works for you and commit to it. I didn’t break off during these workouts to answer the phone, send a few e-mails or check my Instagram feed. I did them properly and with 100 per cent focus. As the saying goes, go hard or go home. (Granted, that loses a bit of its punch when you are already at home, but still …)

I also run two or three times a week: usually 15k on Mondays and Saturdays and 10k on Wednesdays. I plan these runs around my other workouts, so I often complete a workout in the morning then run in the evening. It’s just as important to rest as it is to train, and so I try to train for two days and rest for one, with Sunday always one of those days off and at least one more day in the week too.

I’ve never felt worse after a workout than before one. Some of the best workouts have been when I’m feeling tired or stale beforehand: some of my best runs have been when the rain’s coming down horizontal and the wind is threatening to tear trees up by their roots. I’ve sat inside lacing up my shoes thinking, ‘Nah, not sure I can be arsed today,’ and within five minutes I’ve always been, ‘Yeah! Come on!’ The buzz I get from doing these kind of sessions is indescribable. You get one body and one life, and I hate to see people let themselves get as out of shape as many seem happy to do nowadays. As Socrates (the Greek philosopher, not the Brazilian footballer) said: ‘No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.’

If people think this makes me obsessed – well, ‘obsessed’ is just a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated. I’ve always had a relationship with difficulty, always wanted to push myself. I bought myself a weights bench from Argos when I was 16 and my mates were busy copping off with girls in the park (the two things weren’t unconnected, obviously). I’d go running even when my mates sacked off and weren’t into it. I was never naturally strong or fit, but I enjoyed it.

And keeping on with working out like this means that I don’t become content or complacent. ‘Content’ is a tricky word, because lots of people equate it with happiness. I don’t think the two are the same, not at all. I’m a happy person in general, but I’m not content. ‘Content’ to me implies a settling for something, an unwillingness to keep striving and pushing for new things, greater things. Perhaps it would make my life easier if I were content: settle down, buy a house, have a family, get a steady job. But I’m not made that way. I wonder whether content people are subconsciously scared of failing, because the only way not to risk losing is not to put yourself out there in the first place. Even the most successful people have as many failures as they have triumphs. It’s the reason I went on SAS Selection after four years in the Paras, because I wasn’t content with what I had. I can’t remember who said this, but I remember the quote: ‘You can’t win world titles when you wake up in silk pyjamas.’

So find what motivates you, whatever it is, and go after that. Say you want to learn how to play the guitar, for example. I’m not particularly motivated myself to learn the guitar, but I will try to implement it into my life by forming a habit. I understand that sooner rather than later there’ll be a virtuous circle. The more I play, the better I’ll get; the better I get, the more rewarded I’ll feel from playing; and the more rewarded I feel from playing the more I’ll want to play. Feeling the reward of something motivates me. Getting better at things motivates me. Personal growth motivates me.

So I find motivation through discipline, and having and forming discipline feeds that motivation. It’s like with the workouts I mentioned above: I’m motivated to be healthy, and I’m healthy because I’ve been strict with myself with workout routines and so on. If you’re struggling with motivation, then try to imagine the feeling you’ll get when you complete the task in question, whether that’s clearer headspace, a new level of achievement or an endorphin kick. Imagine that feeling, but also know that there are no shortcuts to it.

Through discipline you can form effective habits, but the first effective habit of all is discipline itself. Discipline is the key to everything when it comes to optimising personal performance. Discipline is the little things you’ve got to do every day, the little choices you make every day. If you want to be successful, do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it and the way you say you’re going to do it. That way you’ll persevere. It’s every day, not just when you feel like it or for a month or so. The discipline is like being a soldier: you’re never off-duty. It’s tough to be persistent, and it takes persistence to be tough. Being tough isn’t about how many pints you can drink or who you can beat in a fight. It’s never giving up, it’s always keeping going when you’re hanging out of your arse, it’s about getting up one more time than you’re knocked down. It’s about never settling for second best, and never settling for what you are today, because tomorrow you could be better. Make yourself the best at everything that doesn’t require talent. Effort doesn’t require talent. Hard work doesn’t require talent.

As so often, there are plenty of parallels between sport and the military. Mark McKoy, the Canadian athlete who won the 110m hurdles at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, now coaches young sportspeople. ‘I tell my young athletes all the time: don’t tell me what you’re going to do. Show me. I know within a couple of days if you’re going to make it or not. I did a session once with two young tennis players. They said they wanted to train with me. I told them that they should meet me at 4 o’clock at the gym and I’d assess them and see what they needed. They showed up at 4.10. I just walked out. They don’t want it bad enough.’

Self is also about being true to yourself, no matter what it takes. Sam Warburton, who captained the Welsh and British & Irish Lions rugby teams, had a good example. ‘Some of the clubs I played for early in my career used to have initiation ceremonies, and the more outlandish and vile the better: one even involved putting a hole in the bottom of a black bag taken from a public bin and drinking the contents. That wasn’t just gross: that was dangerous. As a teenager I’d get so drunk at some of these events that I’d have to be scraped off the floor. I didn’t like doing this, but I was young and the other players were older and more experienced, so I went along with it for a while.

‘Then one day I just thought, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not drinking at these things. I got the piss ripped and called a shit bloke, but I stood my ground: and when I did, there were always other people who’d join me and say, ‘I’m not drinking either.’ They’d seen me stand up for myself, and that made them want to do the same for themselves. And in the end most people respect you for that, no matter how much grief they might give you at the time.’

This nod towards other people leads me on to one of the biggest things for me: drains and radiators. Basically, people can be divided into two categories: drains, who sap your energy and try to make you see things in a negative light; or radiators, who provide you with warmth and positivity. The divide is not always clear-cut – not everyone is an extreme at either end, of course, and sometimes circumstances can make people feel and act differently from their ‘normal’: even the most positive people can have down days – but it’s there more often than not. It’s at heart a ‘glass half-full/glass half-empty’ dichotomy, but it’s much more than that too. Radiators have an infectious energy which makes people feel good about themselves. Drains suck the life out of you, slowly but surely. You end a conversation with a radiator feeling better than you did to start with; it’s the opposite way round with a drain. Radiators look for silver linings in every cloud: drains look for the cloud itself.

How can you tell which is which? Well, most of the time it’s pretty obvious, and can start even before you’re in their presence: do you look forward to seeing someone or not? But if it’s not obvious, then see what happens when you suggest a course of action to someone. I had this all the time in the military: there was always an exercise to do, an operation to plan, a training block to complete. The course of action doesn’t have to be even anything tricky or risky, just something as simple as a weekend away or a new way of doing things at work. What’s their instant reaction? Do they say, ‘Yes, that sounds great’ or is their default to look for the holes and the problems? Radiators radiate positivity, drains display negativity. It’s not a question of whether or not what you’ve suggested is in itself a good idea, but the way in which people instinctively respond to it. Some people want to find ways of making things happen, others want to find ways of not making things happen.

Typical drain behaviour includes:

 putting you on the defensive by criticising you. It doesn’t matter what the criticism is – something you’ve done, something you haven’t done, who you are – just that it’s there right from the start;

 pointing out all the things you’ve done wrong;

 topping your problems with worse ones (usually their own) and your achievements with better ones (usually someone else’s) – if you say you’ve been to Tenerife, they know someone who’s been to Elevenerife;

 gossiping which involves snide remarks, schadenfreude and portraying the people being discussed in a bad light;

 making excuses for why they can’t do something – I’ve got the wrong trainers on, I’m tired, didn’t get much sleep last night, did too much in the gym bullshit.

Typical radiator behaviour is, logically enough, pretty much the opposite:

 looking for areas in which to praise and encourage you;

 pointing out things you’ve done right and successes you’ve had;

 listening to your problems with compassion and constructive advice;

 sharing good news about other people, and respecting things that really matter (emotions, health) more than the things which don’t (material things, wealth).

Something that bothers me is this: do drains know they’re drains? Surely if you did know you were a drain you’d do anything in your power not to be one (unless you have a personality disorder, I guess). After all, it’s not as if drains actually gain the energy they leach from their victims, because if they did they’d turn into radiators sooner or later. Or do drains see themselves as realists, providing much-needed reality checks to radiators and their unrealistic flights of fancy? If so, you can be a realist – and indeed you need to be – without being a drain. A drain will be negative about everything and sometimes be right, in that a given project won’t pass muster. A radiator will say, ‘I really like what you’re trying to do here, but I think this particular approach is wrong for x, y and z reasons: but let’s see if there’s any way we can fix those.’ There has to be some balance here. If all you ever want is love and affection, get a dog.

Of course, you want as many radiators around you and as few drains. This is not just an academic exercise: it’s vital to your energy levels, your self-esteem and your ability to maintain your best sense of self. Constant exposure to drains can make you doubt yourself and lose confidence in both your abilities and your judgement. Even the strongest-minded and most independent person takes cues from those around him or her, and you’d have to be either unbelievably tough or a hermit to remain totally immune to constant drain exposure.

But sometimes it’s impossible to avoid drains: they might be family members or colleagues. Even in the Special Forces, and certainly in the Green Army, they exist. If so, there are several things you can do to minimise the effect they have on you. First, and most simply, just reduce the amount of time and contact as much as you can. Second, refuse to engage when they start to become negative. Don’t get sucked down into arguing about negative things or give them the chance to take the conversation into spirals of bad energy. It takes two to play any game, and if you flatly refuse to get drawn in then that leaves them many fewer avenues for complaining and criticising. Third, maintain a sense of humour: allow yourself a quiet smirk when you see their well-worn tactics being wheeled out for the hundredth time. All these will help you plug the drain and make sure you don’t get infected too.