Battle Ready

by Ollie Ollerton

  That year he took on an absurd amount of travel work, much of it in jungles and mountains that required a higher than usual level of fitness. Believing himself to be benefiting from the drug, he felt more like his old self and experienced an enhanced level of well-being and energy as he worked in the jungles of Borneo and Laos. Come the end of the trial the results were positive: the speed and precision of his motor skills had improved by 19 per cent. He was convinced his recovery was down to the ‘lizard spit’, however it turned out he’d been on the placebo all the time. The challenge was to keep up the progress he’d made in his body now that he knew it was down to him and no outside agency; for 18 months he’d fed his brain with the message that it was getting better thanks to the Exenatide drug, but now that he knew that wasn’t the case he neglected to instruct it to keep healing itself and quickly lapsed back into the clutches of the disease, whereupon his symptoms got worse again.

  In 1969, Bruce Lee severely injured his back during a routine training session because he had not warmed-up sufficiently. He was told he might never walk normally again and could forget about practising martial arts. After a period of depression, restricted to his bed and able to do nothing, Lee resolved to reject the prognosis of the doctors and get to know his body better in order to try and heal it. He read up on nutrition, kinesiology, biomechanics and yoga, anything that might strengthen his goal of walking again. As a constant affirmation to combat self-doubt during his recovery, he wrote several specific goals on the back of business cards and placed them on his bedroom wall. One read: ‘walk on’, another that he would become the first Asian American action movie star.

  Given his condition, it might have seemed like a preposterously lofty ambition. Yet within a year of self-prescribed exercises, positive thinking and constant visualisation, Bruce Lee was healed. Of his self-imposed recovery, he wrote: ‘But with every adversity comes a blessing, because a shock acts as a reminder to oneself that we must not get stale in routine.’ Lee also went on to star in Enter the Dragon, the first big-budget American Chinese Kung Fu film, which instantly made him the most famous Pan-Asian movie star in the world (tragically, he died a month before its release).

  We can heal ourselves through clear intention, and careful management of the thoughts we seed our subconscious with. If you can visualise the way you want to feel by imagining it clearly, you’ll begin to feel as if it has already happened. And just by feeling like this your reality will start to change for the better.

  New conscious thoughts lead to new behaviours, begetting fresh experiences and new emotions. The problem is that traumas we may have experienced, like my chimp attack, make the strongest impressions on our long-term memories, forcing our brain to focus on them again and again, as if they are tattooed on to our Reptile Brain, our fear place. With every memory – good or bad – comes an accompanying feeling, which is why so many people live in continual pain, reliving old feelings that lock them into depression and cause addiction as a means of escape. The first step to flipping unhelpful, outdated thoughts and emotions, is to become an observer of ourselves and our thinking. Dispenza warns that most of us will cling to the familiar rather than embrace the unknown, however unpleasant the familiar might make us feel, holding onto those old thought patterns and emotions of guilt, self-loathing, whatever it might be.

  Remember that poor bugger Sisyphus in the Greek underworld, who as punishment had to push a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down, whereupon he had to start again. He was locked in the same action for eternity. In the same vein, if we don’t challenge ourselves with new experiences, fresh choices, and meaningful goals, nothing will change and everything in our body and brain will stay the same. Most of us live in near-constant ‘survival mode’ because we are fuelled by unconscious fear and are hardwired to expect the negative, which in turn triggers stress hormones and the fight-or-flight mechanism in the reptile part of the brain. In this state the brain becomes incoherent and out of rhythm with itself and the body.

  COMFORT ZONES

  We should embrace short-term discomfort for long-term gain. However we’re hardwired to take short-term comfort and this leads to long-term pain.

  Being Battle Ready is about dealing with things as and when they present themselves. This usually means dealing with a level of short-term discomfort, otherwise we tend to allow ourselves to become comfortable with the discomfort of yet another thing we haven’t attended to. An unpaid bill, an important email not replied to, the untidiness of our home or workspace. When these things get left we adapt to accept them and allow them to be the construct that is our lives. If your life is a list of ‘do it laters’ and mostly a disorganised mess, when something big happens it will knock you so far off track you won’t be able to sustain progression on a chosen path.

  We live in comfort zones because they’re safe, but that doesn’t mean they’re good for us (remember that Brisbane mansion with Sarah, and her poisonous ways?). As soon as we’re faced with the unknown, be it the chance of a new career, moving abroad, meeting new people, or leaving a relationship that has gone sour, our Mind, ever-guiding us toward safety, sends us the sensation of fear, apprehension and self-doubt to keep us stuck where we are. Imagine if this goes wrong . . . Better the devil you know . . . The Mind wants us to do exactly what we did yesterday and the day before; as far as it’s concerned, whatever we’ve been doing has kept us alive. The problem is that the Mind doesn’t give a monkey’s whether you’re happy or sad – you’re alive, and that’s all that matters. Job done.

  But it’s not done, is it? Because in your current ‘perceived’ comfort zone, you may feel half-dead, bored shitless or terribly unhappy; maybe you’re being bullied, drowning in the pub to muffle the existential nausea, or losing yourself in pornography to help paper over the void? Maybe you live in a golden cage and are married to someone who abuses you. A comfort zone might seem like a safe option, but really it’s nothing more than a Venus flytrap that keeps you stuck in the same place, all the while sucking the life out of you. Shit smells but it’s warm.

  Comfort zones are not comfortable at all, but stagnant places where you tread water. Maybe we should refer to them instead as familiar zones, for that’s all they are. A crack addict living in a squat strewn with faeces and used hypodermics is in a familiar zone, and his mind may even tell him he’s done well to find a spot out of the rain, rent-free, where he can not only use in peace but his dealer also comes to him. Result! The fact that he’s still alive is all he cares about, even if the quality of that life barely qualifies as an existence.

  The cliché tells us it’s ‘better the devil you know’, but that’s bullshit. The key to a satisfying life is pushing ourselves out of that stagnant place into somewhere fresh and new. As we’ll see in the next chapter, you can generate whatever you desire in your life, but only if you’re prepared to come out of your comfort zone

  Fear of change holds back the richness of our experiences. It’s peculiar, but most of us in our society play it safe while at the same time we celebrate free spirits, polar explorers, actors and Special Forces soldiers, all of whom take risks. Why do so many of us return to the same place for our holiday, year upon year? Because it’s predictable and we know exactly what to expect. But as we’ve seen, it is only when the brain comes across something novel that it becomes stimulated and produces fresh neurons and thought responses. No wonder travelling somewhere new and exotic is so memorable, for once we’ve got over the culture shock of spicy smells, people speaking a language we don’t understand, and survived, the brain allows itself to be inspired and we start absorbing everything around us with a fresh pair of eyes and a sense of excitement.

  People from the corporate sector who come on my training courses are placing themselves in an area of discomfort. They’re in unfamiliar and unpredictable surroundings, so their egos are forced to disappear. In these moments their thoughts, feelings and emotions become organic. This is a true reflection of raw character. They don’t get the
opportunity to design the perfect outcome that will make them look good and avoids any chance of them looking weak or inferior. For most this is a hard pill to swallow; however it is a life-changing one. Parallel with this they are tasked to work with others towards a common goal, some of whom they don’t get on with back in the regular office environment. All the comfortzone behaviour and ill-feeling of the workplace gets flushed away as people start thinking as a team due to an element of vulnerability and expressing themselves more truthfully. In this climate people start to bond. That’s why the military is so close because it’s void of ego; it’s about getting through the situation without any of these external comfort zone factors being relied upon.

  EXERCISE: COMFORT ZONE

  Make a list of comfort zones you consider yourself to inhabit.

  Now write five things about each one which are not positive. Ask yourself what you would need to do to turn these negatives into positives. Would you need to leave the comfort zone to achieve this?

  Comfort zone:

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  How can you turn these negatives into positives?

  Would you need to leave your comfort zone?

  BREAK POINT: SHORT-TERM DISCOMFORT FOR LONG-TERM GAIN

  A ‘break point’ is an intentional stopping-point in a computer program, designed to debug and get rid of surplus data before carrying on. In the Special Forces, a break point is used to Breathe, Recalibrate and Deliver in a pressured situation in order to engage the courage required to accomplish the uncomfortable. It’s the difference between blind panic and taking control of your environment before it spirals out of control; a window of opportunity before the negative default takes over and turns away from a positive breakthrough.

  Officer cadets at Sandhurst Training Academy are taught to ‘Take a Knee’ when approaching obstacles. The term comes from literally getting closer to the ground so the bullets whizzing over your head don’t hit you, and consciously putting yourself in a peaceful place where for a moment you can think calmly in order to choose the best option going forward. We always have options available to us, but most of the time we’re working under such pressure that we don’t slow down sufficiently to realise there is always a crossroads rather than the narrow path we’re fixed to.

  A break point is when you decide to step out of your comfort zone and grow as a person, accepting that where you’re going involves adapting to new territory. You know that your mind will tell you you’re going to fail and that it’s unsafe, but you’ll do it anyway. It’s about tolerating the short-term discomfort of change for long-term gain.

  Break points happen to us every day in less dramatic circumstances: do we pay that bill that’s been bothering us and take charge of our lives, or take the usual shortcuts? Do we talk to the person we’ve fallen out with at work, or let the disconnect fester into long-term mutual dislike? Do we make a conscious change and go the extra mile, or follow the same old path? I latched on to the term ‘break point’ when I was living in Australia. At the time I’d started to realise that for years of using drink and drugs and chasing adrenalin highs in war zones in order to feel alive, I’d been a fugitive on the run from the real me. Who am I? I wondered.

  My recovery began with the self-admission that I had a problem I needed to address. It wasn’t the world that was broken and needed fixing, it was me. I began to look inwards instead of listening to my egotistical mind chatter, which was overflowing in anger, self-loathing, fear and desperation. I’d drunk myself into a cul-de-sac of blackouts from three-day binges that barely masked the pain, only for it to return with bigger teeth. But as soon as I started looking inwards for the answers all these positive molecules seemed to grow and coalesce, creative ideas started flowing, and out of nowhere the idea of a company called Break-Point came to me.

  We all have moments of clarity where break points appear, the mist thins and we’re presented with a route of escape from the situation we’re stuck in. The trick is to realise that we have the power within us to follow these routes. I was caught in the web of a bad relationship, too scared to leave it because of the pain and toxic arguments that would follow: instead of experiencing that short-term discomfort for long-term gain, I was prepared to tolerate the flatline of long-term discomfort. We’re all tuned that way, with our work, jobs, friendships and marriages . . . we must understand the concept of a break point, to push through those moments of discomfort and then see a better future. An extreme example of this is my being attacked by the chimp; I could have accepted my fate and let the ape kill me or fought back and found a break point.

  Break Point is about changing the way we think as people. It’s the moment you decide nothing will stand between you and your goals and you’re prepared to step into the discomfort in the short term for the long-term gain. Like going to the dentist: some will tolerate long-term toothache in preference of the short-term pain of having the tooth extracted, which will end their suffering. In this space, you’ll never be creative, nor develop past the person you are currently because you’re caught in the fear of the survival blueprint. Until I changed my thinking, I had financial pressure, emotional pressure, relationship pressure . . . all these pressures, and I just couldn’t get anywhere in life.

  A break point allows you to look at yourself and question your situation, helping you realise that there’s more to life than maintaining this degree of unhappiness and that you can break free. Think how many people stay in bad relationships to preserve the happiness of their kids, when actually the kids would rather their parents were happy and single than two miserable people staying together for the wrong reason. We’re only here once. How old do we have to get before we realise that life is not supposed to be a punishment, and that we have the keys to open the cage we’ve unwittingly made for ourselves?

  I was committed to making my new business work because I was sick of working for other people and having no sense of meaningful purpose. When I was working as a project manager in Brisbane, I was so busy earning a living I didn’t have time to take charge of my own destiny. I was just existing. I believe life drives us where we need to be, and it sends to us whatever we need at that time to get the message.

  I CAME FROM A LAND DOWN UNDER

  On my return to England, I wasn’t in a good place, financially or emotionally. Ever the optimist, I knew the fact I’d come from Australia with no debts and had no job to distract me from setting up Break-Point was a great blank canvas to work from. If I went straight into working for someone else because of the need to earn money, I would lose sight of my own goals. I had to start thinking about me. I even went for acupuncture to stop drinking. I wanted so badly to kick the booze because when I drank, I had no ‘off’ switch and before I knew it, I was losing four days at the back end of a three-day binge and it felt as if my life was going down the toilet. All my focus went into changing me, and to change my outer world, I had to change my inner one. I decided to exchange short-term pleasure for long-term discomfort.

  There are three moments in my life where I’ve been saved from the brink of disaster. The first was the chimp attack, the next was when I was a juvenile delinquent and found myself in a remand home for two weeks, narrowly avoiding going to Borstal, and the third was in Iraq, when I was attacked by militia. Both the chimp attack and the attack in Iraq were times that I thought, ‘That’s it, this is your moment, you’re going to die.’

  One thing that these three events have in common was that none of them occurred during my time as a Special Forces soldier, whereas when these events happened, I was much more vulnerable and on my own. In the SBS, you’re never alone, you’ve got so much support, all the weapons you need, all the tools – it’s like being invincible. You can even call in an air-strike or naval gunfire from hundreds of miles away. And when you’re part of a highly trained four-man team diving into targets underwater where there’s no verbal communication, you’re almost making decisi
ons based on telepathy, it just flows.

  However, break point is also about the small stuff. You don’t need to welcome an attack by the militia or be attacked by a crazed animal to experience it. Once you learn to take care of the small stuff and allow this to be your modus operandi, the big stuff comes naturally. The way you do anything is how you do everything!

  EXERCISE: SHORT-TERM DISCOMFORT

  Make a note of at least three things today where you have stepped into the short-term discomfort for long-term gain. This can be as simple as cleaning the dishes before you head off to work, going for that run or doing daily exercise; making healthy food choices, or speaking out when you had a point. Any situation where you’ve felt uncomfortable but have just done it anyway, and it will have benefited you in the long term. Also make a note of when you could have done this and wish you had.

  Three short-term discomforts

  1.

  2.

  3.

  When you could have experienced short-term discomfort

  1.

  2.

  3.

  In the above three cases, what would have happened if you had gone through the short-term discomfort?