by Jason Fox
My personal thrashing began as a sixteen-year-old, when I signed up to become a Commando on the Potential Recruits Course – now known as the Potential Royal Marines Course (PRMC) – in 1992. When it comes to taking the first steps to building resilience, there’s no better place to look than the Royal Marines, which boasts one of the toughest military training courses in the world. Much of that reputation is down to the Commando Spirit: a code of conduct drummed into every potential recruit when they arrive for their first day of Basic Training, a thirty-two-week programme comprising an education in all the skills required in combat.
For any potential Marine hoping to build resilience, the Commando Spirit is a vital educational tool and has four cornerstones that must be learned if they’re to make it to the end of training:
1) Courage: get out front and do what’s right.
2) Determination: never give up.
3) Unselfishness: opposite number (oppo) first, team second, self last.
And finally,
4) Cheerfulness in the face of adversity: make humour the heart of morale.
During training, these four ideals help to instil physical and emotional robustness in everyone open to learning them. In conflict, they provide the Marines with an armoury of psychological and physical weapons, each cornerstone emboldening them to overcome the toughest challenges war can chuck their way. I know because they helped me to survive some pretty hairy situations. Without the Commando Spirit, it’s unlikely I would have progressed into the sharp end of military life and survived the hardships that threatened to overcome me during combat situations. Had those values not been instilled in me, it’s also more than likely I would have been crushed by the emotional fallout to my elite career once I’d been medically discharged with PTSD.
From the off, every recruit is bombarded with the Commando Spirit. Posters and signs are pinned everywhere at the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines near Lympstone in Devon. Slogans are painted on gym walls. Reminders are written in books, mentioned in talks and shouted out during the series of lengthy runs across muddy ground in the pissing wet as everybody struggles with the weight of full combat kit. At no point is a recruit allowed to forget the importance of the Commando Spirit. Those ideals are essential to building resilience, and very quickly they become the foundation for everything that follows, both in real-life combat and peacekeeping. Anyone who isn’t able to take them on is rooted out during training and given the boot, because understanding how to implement the Commando Spirit is as important as learning how to fire a weapon or maintaining the required levels of personal admin, such as appearance and preparedness. Starting towards a resilient mind requires everybody to familiarize themselves with all four elements – no exceptions, no excuses.
Just as importantly, I was also taught that the basic application of courage, determination, unselfishness and cheerfulness in the face of adversity could prove equally effective beyond my experiences in the Royal Marines, and the Commando Spirit was a key that would help me to unlock the resilience required to succeed in any challenge, no matter its size or scale. Everybody has the capacity to develop these attitudes, but the first step is to understand how the military instil them at the start.
#1 COURAGE
GET OUT FRONT AND DO WHAT’S RIGHT
How the hell do you teach courage? It’s an age-old question that the Royal Marines have answered with a simple methodology: they take every individual hoping to make it as a Commando and shove them out of their comfort zone. When I was starting out as a sixteen-year-old recruit, some of the lads around me wilted under pressure, but a hell of a lot more survived. Those that did, including me, toughened up as a result, and as a style of teaching it was one that everybody could learn from because the results it generated were so powerful.
Prior to signing up for Basic Training, my military experience was fairly limited. Dad, having been a Marine himself, was big on teaching my brother and me the basics of map-reading, so I had a vague idea of how to handle myself outdoors. I was a strong lad and I loved sport, so physically I was pretty fit too. As for the rest of it? I didn’t have a bloody clue. When I was dropped off for the first day of my new life, I was a naive and scrawny teenage dweeb and I was immediately exposed to some very harsh lessons about life in the Marines, as were the rest of the troop I’d joined up with.
Having barely settled into our new surroundings, we were thrown into the deep end on a daily basis, where the bare minimum expected of us was to not drown. I guess the trainers at Lympstone believed we must be fairly tough individuals, given that we’d signed up to become Marines in the first place. They understood that everyone had a certain level of courage in them and they were determined to discover just how much we carried. I was challenged physically and psychologically during a series of tests that increased in intensity and technical skill. Often, at the news of our latest daunting adventure – such as a long run while carrying full combat load – the natural reaction was to think, I can’t bloody do that! The training staff’s response to any flashes of self-doubt was to say firmly, ‘Yes, you bloody can do it. And you will – at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.’ It forced everybody to rise to the challenge. The ones that couldn’t hack it usually left soon after.
Those departing lads were then faced with the same two options that greet all of us during moments of adversity: 1) they could either quit their plan to become a Royal Marines Commando or 2) they could figure out what went wrong before cracking on with fixing it. Those that opted for the latter were given a positive parting line: they were told what to work on and where they could improve, and were invited to try out again six months down the line. (Today, individuals who don’t pass the PRMC are invited to attend a Skills Week, where they join recuits-in-waiting for a taste of what to expect at Lympstone. Together they work on various drills and techniques that might later come into play in training.) Mindset was key, though. Individuals in that position needed to adopt the attitude that they hadn’t failed; they just hadn’t achieved, and there was nothing to stop them from succeeding next time around if they acted on the advice imparted to them. (I’ll discuss the ideas behind maximizing the benefits of defeat in more detail during Phase Ten.)
Every duty or task in Basic Training seemed to land with a subtle lesson. Personal admin duties, where I had to iron my shirts and shine my boots, became an education in maintaining high standards under pressure, rather than just a regiment-wide requirement to look pristine on parade. (We were told that if a soldier failed to care for their personal admin during a war, they tended to physically deteriorate pretty quickly.) Speed-marches across the hills, executed with a heavy bergen rucksack on my back, proved I could exceed any physical limits I’d previously imagined for myself. The motives for pushing us on in that way were obvious to everyone groaning and hurting in their bunks after another day working in the rain and mud. We were pushing past what we thought was possible.
We were being toughened up.
Unsurprisingly, I became used to pain, but I was helped by the fact that everything was being done in bite-sized chunks – small steps. Yes, we were getting forced out of our comfort zones, but not in a way that was designed to destroy us. For example, we weren’t thrown into nine-mile time trials on day one. Instead, we built up to it, bit by bit. At first glance, our initial physical training sessions resembled a Mr Motivator workout – a series of push-ups, sit-ups and other movements that felt like easy work for the first ten minutes, the whole troop moving as one in white kit and plimsolls. Our casual attitude stopped the following morning when everybody realized they were unable to move without groaning in pain. Before long we were vaulting over the gymnastics box and embarking on periods of Battle Physical Training where we would carry logs across muddy fields and scale assault courses. All of it was considered gradual progress. All of it was bloody agonizing.
The first time I was asked to jump over the gymnastics box, I felt a little intimidated – and confused. Why am I being asked to do t
his? It seems a bit silly to me … I thought. My attitude to the task was amplified when an older lad from my troop, in his twenties, made his first attempt. Having launched himself into a pretty powerful run-up, he aborted his jump at the last second (or maybe he forgot what he was supposed to do; I’m really not sure). There was an audible yelp as he slammed into the box and crumpled to the deck. Everyone in the gymnasium either winced in sympathy or laughed as the bloke rolled around on the floor, holding his crotch in agony. It later turned out that the impact had twisted his balls, which was a pretty serious injury and forced him to leave the course a day or so later. I sometimes wonder what type of military career he might have had were it not for that shocker of a training session. But the lesson of the gymnastics box was pretty obvious to anyone watching: without bravery, failure is inevitable.
Injuries were par for the course, though. People were constantly twisting their ankles on long runs through the mud, or breaking bones on assault courses. I remember that all of us suffered horrific rashes when training on Woodbury Common in Devon. The area had gained a fair level of notoriety in the Royal Marines because part of the work at Woodbury required the recruits to crawl through vast expanses of gorse, the prickly ‘Bastard Bush’ that scratched a person to pieces as soon as they touched it. The pain was made worse when the Bastard Bush’s victims inevitably fell foul of a horrific condition known as Woodbury Rash, an angry infection that burned and itched for ages.
The results of these unpleasant tests were noticeable. I became a little bit more robust with each step and training soon taught me that my physical and mental breaking points were much higher than I’d previously believed. After around fifteen weeks of work, I felt bigger, stronger, harder to kill. I’m a bloke now, I thought. Every step had caused me to grow. I’d learned how to be courageous, and this became increasingly evident on the infamous Tarzan assault course, which included a fourteen-minute dash up cargo netting, along death slides and over a number of other gruelling obstacles on the Bottom Field at Lympstone. It was an intimidating challenge of body and mind that caused an emotional malaise whenever we were about to embark on another run of it, and the troop had fondly nicknamed it ‘the Bottom Field Blues’ – a feeling of dread at the pain to come. But we did it anyway because we’d built ourselves up to the job. We were ready.
The same step-by-step philosophy has also been applied when moulding elite athletes into championship form. Prior to a track and field season, short-distance sprinters endure background training, a physically exhausting period where they run for longer distances than their event, at high intensity. For example, a 100m or 200m racer will run leg-buckling 300m sprints over and over, usually until they’re on their hands and knees and puking their guts on to the grass. The idea behind this brutal regimen is that it gives an athlete the strength to run their highest speeds for lengthier periods of time during a race. They develop race endurance and build up power step by step until their standard distance feels comparatively easy.
At first, repetition shows the athletes what they can overcome. But background training, like Royal Marines Commando training, also teaches an individual about their mental and physical limits. A nagging knee pain on the 200m corner might unsettle a runner during their first race of a campaign, but if they’ve felt it over and over in training they’ll recognize the sensation as being temporary rather than season-ending. A coach will often tell his or her athletes to push on in those moments because it allows a competitor to better understand their body in times of stress.
All of us can learn from the step-by-step approach. All too often we fail due to overreaching in the early stages of a project. People arrive at the gym for the very first time and throw their back out because they want to lift heavy weights like an experienced trainer. Start-ups fail because the owner immediately wants to go toe to toe with an established brand and they find themselves floundering in the battle. Had they adopted a step-by-step approach, those individuals would have gradually increased their technique, courage and resilience in the same way that Royal Marines recruits perform a series of stamina-training sessions before attempting the gritty speed-marches. It’s also why addicts take one minute, one hour, and one day at a time when recovering from personal behaviour issues. Or why professional footballers begin their league campaigns with pre-season training rather than moving straight into the first game of the season unprepared.
Through training and exposure to stress, bravery can be built up in pretty much the same way. Novice skiers or snowboarders often find the trickier, expert-level black runs intimidating having first spotted them from a chairlift. But by improving their technique on the easier blue and red runs, those same riders are able to build the skills and confidence required to take on the more challenging terrains of a mountain. Similarly, anxious singers, actors and musicians can develop the nerve required to perform in front of crowds by starting out in smaller rooms with friends and then working up to large venues with paying customers.
As the Royal Marines have learned, the considered, step-by-step approach is essential if we’re to see long-term progress. But it works in flashpoints, too. Sometimes an event is thrown at us and we feel intimidated. The very thought of taking it on can swamp us to such an extent that we short-circuit, or freak out. As a result, we’re unable to manage the pressure and we fail. But the truth is that it’s within our power to negotiate the biggest tests, even though we might feel as if we’re breaking under the weight of a particular challenge. We just have to cut it up into smaller pieces.
One trick I’ve used to help with that process is to focus on the here and now, rather than the bigger picture: I concentrate only on the One Metre Square around me, figuratively speaking. For example, an operator in serious emotional discomfort shouldn’t consider the long-term stresses of the battle they’re embroiled in or what their teammates are doing. Rather, they should adjust their attention on the immediate metres and seconds around them. Are they under cover? What are they in contact with? Where do they have to move to next? Considering what might happen in the wider conflict is too big, too overwhelming, and only intensifies any distress being experienced. But by focusing on the moment, that same operator can function effectively.
I’ve been on missions where a boat we’ve been travelling in has capsized during a heavy storm. In the immediate moments after being dunked into the water, it didn’t help to fret about the final destination or how quickly we were going to get there – our vessel had been upended. The size of the waves crashing around us was irrelevant, too. Instead, it became vital that I dealt with the issues that were instantly accessible: the stuff I needed to do in order to survive. Where is the boat? How quickly can I swim to it? Is there anybody around me who’s in serious trouble? I brought those factors into my One Metre Square and dealt with them only, shutting out everything else as best I could.
In many ways, the One Metre Square theory is a method of breaking down a huge body of work into smaller, more manageable chunks; it pulls a very big and scary situation into a tangible space and moment. Handily, it works in a number of contexts. Maybe our challenge is to write a bestselling crime novel. To consider the book as a whole, on day one, with its 100,000 words of text, chapters, characters and storylines, can be a pretty intimidating experience. The thought of deadlines and the workload might cause us to spin out and stall. Instead, we should bring everything we need to get started into the One Metre Square. These might be:
What is my main character like?
Who is the ‘big bad’ in this story?
What is their conflict?
We do the research. We make the notes. We build the world we’re going to write in. Then we can move into the next metre square, concentrating only on what has to be done there and then. And the next. And the next …
I’ve found this to be an effective way of focusing my thoughts during a challenging event. The stress quickly recedes into the distance. Often, when looking back, I’ve been amazed to see how much prog
ress had been made.
The boat has righted itself.
I’m back on the oars.
The crew is dealing with the next massive wave. And the next. And the next …
#2 DETERMINATION
NEVER GIVE UP
My determination was challenged every day as a Royal Marines recruit. With every new test of my resolve, the Lympstone instructors pushed me harder.
‘Yeah, we’re asking you to do something that’s fucking hardcore,’ they seemed to be saying. ‘And the only way you’ll be able to finish it is with determination. If you don’t have determination then you can fuck off, because nobody’s forcing you to be here …’
Weirdly, that idea of self-management was inspiring. There was no safety net and it was true: nobody had ordered me to be there, crawling through the muck and the wet as blank rounds and smoke grenades exploded around my head. I was there because I wanted to be, and if I dropped out I’d only have myself to blame. Later, that way of thinking continued into Selection, where self-determination was a vital characteristic for anyone hoping to fight at an elite level. There were times when I’d get up at 4 a.m., the rain hammering down outside; I could hear it on the tin roof and windows, and nobody in the group was under any illusions as to the pain and misery awaiting us once we started working. Inevitably, one of the lads would then yawn, roll over and quit.
‘Fuck it, I’m not going out.’
The others would cajole him. Come on, mate, you can’t quit now. You’ve come this far. But the damage was done. He was finished. As I left him to it, I’d often think along similar lines. Oh, mate. Quitting looks so easy. I could chin it off too. The negativity had become contagious. Then I’d remind myself of my motivations for being there or I’d imagine the spoils of success. That visualization process was enough to ensure my work got done.
