Modern Wisdom - #246 - Jay Morton - Developing A Special Forces Mindset

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

Jay Morton is a Former SAS Operator and Two-time Everest Summitee. Becoming a soldier means dealing with fear, coping with pressure and performing with excellence. The SAS is the best of the best and today we learn the key lessons from Jay's 14 year career. Expect to learn how humour can help with fear, whether climbing Everest is harder than the SAS Selection Process, the coolest operation Jay was a part of, how to take advantage of opportunity and much more... Sponsor: Get Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (Enter promo code MODERNWISDOM for 83% off and 3 Months Free) Extra Stuff: Buy Soldier - https://amzn.to/2IgecoX  Follow Jay on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jay__morton  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, hello people in Podcast Land, welcome back. My guest today is none other than Jay Morton, former SAS operator and two-time Everest Summity. Got him on today to talk about his new book, Soldier. Becoming a soldier means dealing with fear, coping with pressure and performing with excellence. The SAS is the best of the best, and today we learn the key lessons from Jay's 14-year career. So expect to learn how humour can help with fear, whether climbing Everest is harder than the SAS selection process,

the coolest operation Jay was a part of, how to take advantage of opportunity like a soldier and much more. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Jay Morton. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Jay Morton. Jay, welcome to the show. As a game, Chris, you're good. Very well. I'm in Dubai. How could I not be well? I do need to hold my hands up for everyone that is watching on YouTube. Yes, I'm wearing a vest. Yes, I caught a little bit of sun today. Tiny little bit, just a bit flush, right? But I haven't seen sunshine for like six months. So give me a break. I've also got you, current EJ, you're balanced on an upturned bin in my hotel room. And I'm doing this after tethering to my phone on roaming data.

So God knows how much this is going to cost, but it's more than worth it. So thank you very much for coming on, man. It's too easy. You never see what's in the background, do you have what you've got? I've got the same, man. Where you've just got to balance your phone

and whatever's going on the background. So yeah, absolutely chaos. It's just an ordinary two. You're a fellow in order so don't do well in the sun. Look, I've got two ginger parents, but thankfully I don't think I fully inherited their skin. But you're totally right, man. When you're from Winterfell, you don't tan. Don't tan. Exactly. You go white. You just need to go white. Yeah, that leads me quite nicely into talking about the temperature. It leads me quite nicely into something I wanted to ask, which is more difficult,

the selection process for special forces or climbing Everest twice. I have to say, climbing Everest. I'd have to say, Clan Everest, selection, you know, six months, a set selection just seems to, it's drawn out of a six months right. And when you start, you're already a season soldier, like for me, I've done one tour of Iraq and two tours of Afghanistan. So you almost get to that stage where you want to prove yourself as a soldier. And I was, you know, 24 years old, like full of testosterone. So like you go on selection with a bunch of other lads and you're all, you know, you've

got this unified kind of cause that you're all trying to, that you're all going for at the same time. And I actually enjoyed selection for that reason. Cause you meet, you know, you've, you end up all, you know, you start with maybe 150, 170 people. After the first three weeks, you kind of down to 50. And then after the next six weeks, you kind of down to maybe 20, 25 people.

And these 20, 25 people have been through absolute shit. So you end up forming this like super tight bond where you're all really close and all really clicky and then you get to the end of selection after that six months. You get given your stable belt and your beret and you get like a picture took and next to clock tower. You shake everyone's hand and then you disappear into whatever regiment and squadrons that you go to. And then the next day you kind of big boys rules into the mix.

Throwing into the line's done. Yeah, and I remember I remember turning up day one. Like I was 24, like it's quite a young age to pass election. And like the rest of the guys in my troop were all kind of, I mean some of them were touching 40 years old. So there's a 24 year old, turned them into this SAS troop with a load of 40 year olds, even like the guy who came in two years before me.

He was like, you know, two, three years ahead of me. And like they're all like big guys, like big kind of men with like gray hair and stuff and massive hands. Massive hands. Like, you know, we had Billy was one of our one of our senior sergeants at the time. And, you know, he was like a, you, ex, ex kind of football who were going from London and just covered in like school tattoos and, and like flames of his arm and so forth. Very welcoming. Tert, like, yeah, we actually went to Norway on our first exercise and I ended up spending

it, spending the whole six weeks living in a tent with him. So we got on quite well. Very cozy after a while, yeah. Yeah. As it turns out, he was the nicest guy there. That's awesome, man. Yeah. And how does that relate to Everest then? Yeah. So like Everest is, Everest is like quite a big, it's a big misconception for some people. Because a lot of people think that because of the amount of people that go up and the caliber of people that go up, it's an easy thing to do.

And coming from someone who's done a lot of difficult things in their life, Everest is by no means an easy feat. It just seems to attract people who can afford it. It comes with a very high price tag. So it kind of attracts a certain caliber of people and you do end up with a lot of a lot of dross on the mountain, which doesn't give it a very good reputation. But Everest is more, it's six weeks of living out at live in an altitude. So if you think like, altitude just basically takes away energy from you. So if you stand up and walk 10 meters at sea level it's fine, right?

You don't think about it. But if you're, you know, six, seven thousand meters in the sky and you stand up and walk 10 meters, you're taking a couple of steps, stop in breathing, take a couple of steps, stop in breathing. So like everything that you deemed easy at sea level is magnified and difficulty, the further up you go, to the point of on your summit push,

when, if you think of you summit push, it's quite just to give a picture of kind of the severity of it. You do like in a client, you get up to base camp, you do an acclimatization which takes five days or six days, you come back down, you rest at base camp, which is at 5,600 meters, and then you kind of sit there and look at the weather windows. And you always get one weather window to summer, which is clear skies, you know, minimal winds.

You sometimes get two weather windows, and you rarely get three. So it's this balance of all your weather systems and speaking to the light people around the camps and finding out what's going on. Because like you've invested all this time, right? You've invested like the last three weeks of living outitude, eating,

shit food, you know, chitting into a hole in the ground every morning. A frozen hole in the ground. A frozen like, it's like clockwork every morning. And you know, your only entertainment is the game of cards that you play at night in the tent. And by this time, you're sick of lunch and meat and rice. So you invested all this energy and time into

making the right decision and getting to the, you know, getting high up and submitting in the right weather window, because if you don't, that's it, you know, you only get one shot of submitting. And you kind of set off at Camp 3 on your summit push. So you'll leave Camp 3, which is 7,000 meters, and there's four camps till summit. So you go Camp 3, 7,000 meters, leave there at 5am on oxygen, you climb up

to Camp 4, arrive at Camp 4, say 4pm. So that's a full day to get there. Camp 4 is 8,000 meters. So you rest there in a 10, 4, 6 hours. You try and get some sleep, you get some hot water on, you cook some food, and then you leave that night at 8pm to summer for first light. So 6am, 7am in the morning. And then you've got all that day to come all the way back down to camp 2, which you get to camp 2 at say, like I got there about 9pm. So, 50-hour day at ridiculous altitude. Yeah, so you start five a.m. It's like two days basically, just constantly, but mostly minimal water. That altitude, your body doesn't work the same.

So you don't digest food. So I was literally living off like the little energy sachets that like cyclists and triathletes and that use. Which obviously then ended up with that, just all over my hands, just like sticky and it just leaks out into your pocket. It's over time you put your hand in your pocket, your hand gets stuck. You not drink as much water just because you constantly need into moving kind of beyond camp four up to the summit. it's, you, you, bodies kind of that drained and tired and exhausted.

It's simply just that one foot in front of the other, that slow kind of monotamous, like t-t-t-t-t. And then you kind of, you just see everyone doing it, everyone kind of puts their elbows on the legs in like, because you're on like a steep hill and just gives it like a few couple of puffs of breath and just composes themselves before they set up again. And then you get to the top and then coming down is even worse, because it's steep ground.

And that you've got this massive people that are coming down at the same time. So you're trying to work your way through all these people for the next, for the next 17, so you summit 6am. I'm not good at math, I'm not at 6am, get back down for 10pm. So what's that? 16, 14 hours of walking downhill, where your toes are just hitting the front of your boots for 40 hours to the point you

You know you start walking sideways Like I've been exhausted and tired and like fatigue and So many times in like the military career, but like you never that fatigue and exhausted that you are on Everest. It seems like a big part of that is the camaraderie that you had in the support structure from when you were doing special forces selection. I guess as well, like if you've in thin air and it's really cold and you're on a thin ridge, it's like first off you spread out,

second you've got to save your breath to be able to focus on the few bodily functions that your physiology is still able to do. Whereas as you said during your special forces you're really able, you've got this sort of unity that binds you all together and makes maybe the suffering a little bit less solo? Yeah, a little bit. I think, you know, for a start you're at sea level, so that makes things way easier. Yeah, like, I guess, when you're at sea level and you're doing the things that you're doing in the special forces, you always know where the end is, and the end's usually quite comfortable. So, say you're deploying an the end is and the end is usually quite comfortable. So say you deploy in an operation that is anything from you know 10 hours, 12 hours on a night

raid or you go out for a week and live in a building and put an op in or whatever it is. And you always know at the end of that you take enough food, you take enough water, you know you're warm, you're taking enough, you know, sleeping equipment or enough jacket, some warm clothes, then you're going to be semi-comfortable, right? There might be a little bit of hardship, you might be walking in with some weight and some kit, you do the job, you extract or whatever it is. But you know at the end of that week, it's really unless the job or mission changes,

you're gonna come back to base or wherever it is that you live with it, you're in the UK, you come back, you probably, you know, having beers with the boys at the weekend or whatever, or if it's, if you're overseas, you know, you're coming back to a camp, you're decitting, you're gonna have a steak and eggs in the morning, you're gonna get back in the gym.

But it's like, on Everest, it's like, you set off on that summit window and that rotation on that summit window seven days. So you leave base camp. You leave base camp with a rucksack and you come back in seven days with that same rucksack. And you're not coming back to staking eggs and beers with the boys and a warm shower. You literally, I mean you know you come back to a hot water, you know hot bucket of water and a little bit of leftover like shampoo that you're just. It's slightly bigger, slightly bigger hole in the ground to have a poop in. Yeah well everyone's just been like filling it in whilst you've been gone. I heard you're falling. Oh, no, no, no, no, please make it stop.

It's not like that hotel room in Dubai. I tell you, it's lovely out here. So we're talking about your new book today, which will be out when this episode is live. What does respect is earned mean? So kind of the book is just, know it's it's to just say like this is my 14 years of military experience and the special forces and the powers and I've just put all our knowledge and experience into the book and it's essentially that right it's read this book and respect is earned it's like do the hard stuff through my military career and it's like, that is how you gain

respect. I understand. Let's go through the four tenets of the special forces. I thought this was really interesting. Yeah. So you've got relentless pursuit for excellence. So that is, you know, if you think of like the values that you live your life by the special forces as those, and first ones relentless pursuit of excellence, and it should be something that we should be searching for every day within a special forces,

whether it's whatever we're doing, whether it's shooting, or always trying to get better at shooting, whether it's surveillance, OPs, whatever it is that we're doing, we need to always be searching for that level of excellence. And obviously you never get to that level that is excellence, but that constant progression of just keep chipping away

at whatever it is you're doing, whether it's in the gym, whether it's at home, whether it's whatever it is to just be a better human being and better in the job that you're doing. And that's kind of the first one. The second one is honour and humility. So kind of humility is a massive one in the special forces. You know, it's, I mean, even like, I remember bumping into a load of

SPS lads when I was in the Paris and the first thing that came across was, you know, you had these guys, they were men, they were like 40-odd years old, like big dudes and that, but they were like the soundest guys ever. And they came and found us, looked after us, we played volleyball and they bought us a load of beers and, you know, just that, it doesn't matter what you do in your career and where you've been, it's like you still have that humble approach which will keep you hungry and will keep you always wanting to improve. And then honours, as it says, it's having honours in what you do and honours of the people that you work with and and honor of the job that you're doing. And then discipline, discipline goes without saying.

It is, you know, it's one of the most important things that a soldier needs to have is discipline. You know, it's no hidden secret that, you know, soldiers It's no hidden secret that soldiers are people that, or if you're on a job or on a task you're getting up early, you're doing things that aren't necessarily comfortable things to do, or aren't very natural things to do, and that requires a lot of discipline, a lot of self-discipline to be that best cohesive team unit that you can be. I've had a mind slip, what's the fourth one? I haven't got the written down mate, so we can leave it at three. I'm sure I think, what is the fourth one?

There is, yeah, we'll leave it at three. Three, it is, now that's right. The fourth one's obviously not that important. I also changed it. This is the new, this is the J Morton version of the fourth and it's I didn't realize that the SIS was split up into four squadrons with four troops within each. Can you just take us through how this works

and the personalities that you explain about that? Yeah, so you've got kind of different teams within any special forces unit and then those teams are broken down into individual skill sets and kind of the skill sets are air, so anything that is in the air, so helicopters, mainly kind of parachute and being a subject matter expert in parachute and boats, anything that's to do with water, and then you've got mobility which is land vehicles, so motorbikes, quads, off-road vehicles, four by fours, all that kind of stuff. And then you've got mountain, which is what I was, which is anything to do with the mountains. So above the snowlines you've got kind of Arctic warfare and stuffing kind of the Scandinavian countries, that kind of filters over into kind of a more, like a rope work, kind of, like a rope access kind of thing to try and not put too much detail on it, if that makes sense,

to try and keep it as bland as possible as that. That's it. I understand. What's the coolest operation that you can tell us about? You know, like, I don't know, like, coolest is probably like not the word I'd use, but like, there's a few that really stick out and a few things that I kind of ticked off whilst I was serving that, again, I can't talk about, but there was one job on an IED factory. It was a daytime raid on an IED and then provides the explosive device. So it's like a homemade bomb that the enemy would use against us. So it could be anything. So it would be anything that is homemade and the main way of using it would be sticking it in the ground, covering it

with dirt, you walk over it, it blows up. And we hit a factory that was making these on a mass scale. I kind of don't want to go too much into the detail like Chris, because it's I understand you basically have operational secrecy. Yeah. Yeah, we basically had nine guys on it and it was anything it almost reminded me of like a crazy Western movie when we kind of landed the helicopter next to the compound. I was with a team of Afghans and we come running off the back of this helicopter and a few of the guys in the factory just like legged it from the factory.

And the chances are just like run. I was like first man out there's only like I think there's only a few of us few of his British and then these Afghans just started firing over my head and I literally just I could feel like bullets just Wizzing past me literally just literally turned out and said stop firing start firing, start firing. We finished shooting one of us. It was like a crazy western film. But now that sticks out as one of the best jobs I did,

probably because the impact it had on the local air in terms of the IED, the numbers of IEDs that were hitting British troops that were operating in the area when substantially down. And we got, you know, nine of the guys that were making these ID's at the same time. So that, for me, sticks out massively. There's a few others that I won't go into too much detail about. Yeah, I understand. The MOD wouldn't be happy, but it's so cool to see where when the special forces are deployed to cut off at the knees, an operation which obviously down the line will be hurting local Afghans, it will be meant to attack other British forces and other foreign sort of forces

that are out there. So yeah, I can totally see why that would be something that you'd be proud of. Another one, again, this might be an M.O.D. dance around. When we the most scared during your service, is there anything that comes to mind which you can tell us about? Probably when there was bullets or flags. That's perfect. It's just what like fears like the weird fears like one of those weird things when you're operating in that kind of environment. It can come and go at the most randomest of times and you generally go over, see for six months at a time, and after a while you almost, you change how you deal with things in your own head, you find ways of just coping with whatever's going on. I don't mean that

in a negative way, if anything, it's a positive way, but you can't just, like fear doesn't really appear as much as, I don't know, you could go through like a, because like, soul just a really good coping with fear with humor. And a lot of some of the scariest moments that I would say are the scariest moments, right? If you took a normal person through them in that situation, you see the code very well with it with a lot of humor. And yeah, I can remember kind of a few times when, and this was going back to kind of my days in the parachute regiment in three parter.

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

And it's just a, I don't know, it's like whether there's a lesson there that you know, the best way of just dealing with fear is just with humor. And it's like, you know, it's like one of those reactions, right, of something happens and like people instantly smile and it's like, you know if you if you look at that situation You probably shouldn't be smiling, but you do you just you just seem to laugh about it I know I wonder what it is. I wonder whether Fear and humor are somewhere along the same sort of line But there's a bit of an archetype there, right? You know the the crazy

Soldier who is able to laugh off, but it was a scratch, you know, like that kind of like classic stiff-up lip British thing. Yeah, like, like I've seen some, like, I've seen lads get shot and they're just laughing and smiling and probably happier than they would be if they hadn't have been shot. What? Like not, not on impact, right? And I might have, shot. What? Like not not not on impact right and you might have you know because like everything happens quite fast in in fight and combat right. You generally you know if you think I fast around flies and as soon as that goes out the gun it's straight into someone's body and that's a very quick situation to happen. So then, don't have time for fear to evolve. So, you're thinking, like fuck, right? I'm going to grab this guy, drag him into some cover, sort him out, administer first aid, and then we need to extract him back to a point where he can be picked

up and take him to safety and be seen by a proper medical professional. So there's no time there for fear to overcome if that makes sense. So yeah, it's like, but yeah, I've seen kind of, you know, even guys that have lost limbs and I don't mean on impact that it's happened, but you've got to be able to deal with it with humour. I actually remember one incident, I don't know good too much detail about it, but one of the guys ended up getting a shotgun through his knee by accident. And like Ruinedin, like, made a mess of this guy's career. And I remember everyone just started taking a piss out of him

because that accidentally discharged the shotgun into this guy's knee. And I remember chatting to him, I think we're in a car driving driving to London or something. And I was chatting to him and he was like, I thought, like, you know,'d just feel about it, whatever. And he's like, the best thing that happened was that people took the piss out of him.

He was like, if no one took the piss out of me, then I would have felt that I've done something seriously wrong. But because everyone's just took the piss out of me and made jokes and sent out you know memes and pictures on on WhatsApp groups. Like I feel I just feel like better about the whole situation. There's examples similar to that that I had with Seth Golden so I was recording with him a couple of weeks ago and similar to today with you, seven a nightmare with connections

he needed to change his and I needed to change mine and we're on a really tight time schedule as well. And he did, he made such a classy move when we came back on. So after all of the connections had gone out and then we logged back onto the call and we were about to get going, when we first called him before even said, hello is everything sorted or anything?

He just told me a joke, like a really shit-stad joke, like awful, awful, like totally terrible. But any, any tension between me and a 20 times best selling author and marketing hall of fame member Seth Godin, this absolute titan of internet fame was gone in a second. So I definitely think that there's an interesting lesson to take away from that, like the use that humour has for all of us, especially to dissuade pressure and tension and fear. You know, before someone's about to go on stage to give a good speech or before you're about to go and do a pitch or a job interview or perform or, you know, do anything, I think that there's definitely an argument to be made that if you've got a couple of shit jokes in your pocket that you can just deploy on demand,

I reckon that they would be really useful. But it's so true, right? They do say that the cleverist people have the highest IQs, I'm not sorry, the funniest people, there's a correlation between not sorry, the funniest people. There's a correlation between like clever people and funny people. Absolutely. That's why I'm not there.

But yeah, there is. There's definitely, because like we're all the same person, right? We all eat, we all shit, we all do all that stuff. And you get, I don't know, you build that perception, it's like you might have had with Seth and you put them on, you put people like that on a pedestal and it's like, it's like we're all just the same person and you know, we can all tell us, shit dad joke. My dad, my dad absolutely can. Okay, so the book, the book's called Soldier and

that's an acronym for a bunch of things that go underneath it, the first one being Self and you call Discipline the first effective habit. If you've got any tips on how people can cultivate their discipline, obviously we're in the middle, in the UK at least, of a brand new lockdown and people may be thinking, this is a time where I can either let my habits go one of two ways.

What can people do to cultivate that discipline? Yeah, that is quite important now, right? During the second lockdown phase that, like I've, you know, I had this thought during the first lockdown phase that, like, I'm not going to let this time just waste, just waste away and slip out under me and, you know, all I can say that I've done during lockdown was watch some Netflix documentaries

and and and box sets and and that's it and it's like important that people just focus on on like what's important to them and you know just without just going to without digressing too far of that discipline thing. I just said like last lockdown or I would improve my fitness, my education and my family. And like fitness is pretty simple, right? You know, you do whatever exercise routine, you go for a run, you pick up something that you're going to get better at. Education, it was like, right, I'm going to learn some new stuff. I started trying to play the guitar, started listening to more podcast audio books, started reading, started researching stuff that I'm interested in. And then family was like, speak to my family more often, make sure they're safe, speak to a friend at

least once a day, like chat to people, because you get off that conversation, you feel better if you feel better than you did when you went on. But yeah, like discipline, going back to discipline, it's, you know, like I think I always say it's like your choice to be more disciplined. And you can, you can read books and you can listen to podcasts and stuff for motivation, but essentially you've got to make the choice that you want more discipline in your life. And once you've made that choice, then you've just got to implement things in that that give you discipline. And that might just be, you know, just setting it alarm clock, you know, if you're off work at the minute, then you just don't set an alarm clock and you wake up at nine o'clock, just set that alarm clock for seven or eight or whatever it is and just get up at the alarm clock every day and then try and make that alarm clock earlier. Like at the minute I'm trying to get up at six, six, six, three, because it started to get light and you

start doing stuff. Like go out for a walk and just commit to going out for a walk and then commit to an exercise regime, commit to reading one book every month, just start trying to set yourself these small tasks. I read in a book once, and this guy was trying to talk about discipline, and he said, one thing, he said, if you put a plate in the sink, every time you put a plate in the sink or anything, wash it, and just don't leave it

there. And it's like these little like hacks or tricks or tips that you do every day build discipline into your life. And that those small ones then flow into the bigger ones that you that you need discipline for, whether it's training for a marathon, whether it's researching for a job interview or whatever it is, these little ones feed into it. Yeah, how you do anything is how you do everything. I love that thing, Chris. One of the things that I used as a little tip for people, and it's timely for me to remind everyone

who's listening of it again, the best heuristic I found to make sure that you stay on track during lockdown by having a plan is to ask yourself now. What would have happened by the end of lockdown for me to look back on lockdown and consider it a success. After this podcast finishes, I can take a little bit of time and think about what I do is being. is like, just take a little bit of time and think about it. I'll do it as being, Jay, continue to chat shit to each other. Just think, like, what would have happened by the end of this period for you to look back on it and it be a success? So for me, I have a target for the podcast.

I want to hit 100,000 subs on YouTube before Christmas. If I do that and if everything else continues to take over, I'll be happy. That's one thing. Last time it was like, I wanted to build a website and start a newsletter and record three times a week. That was it. It's easy for us to get caught up believing that we should do more, could it and more. When you don't have a tightly defined target, it always feels like you've missed because you're always going to feel like you could have done more,

what it should have could have. And let's say that's my that's my best question for everyone who's listening who's thinking about that. So next next up is opportunity and you lay out a three-stage process for opportunities. Would you be able to take us through that? Yeah, so this the three-stage process is encounter, recognize and exploit. So encounters all about putting yourself in that position where you can encounter those opportunities. So that's like how you've got your life set up, right? For me, the biggest one was going into the military, because I put myself in a position

where I can experience other things and other experiences. And that put me in a position where I can experience other things and other experiences. And that put me in a position to be around people that have gone on selection and been in the special forces. And that's when that, although you volunteer for it, it's an opportunity. And then the second one is recognized. So if I think of something in my life, so that the Everest expeditions, they came from one encounter in that opportunity to recognize in what that opportunity was. And at the time, it was supposed to be an expedition to K2. And I'm massive on gut feel.

If something feels good and it feels like it's going to change my life for the better, then I take that opportunity. But you have to almost, it's like a muscle, right? The more of these opportunities you take and they lead you down these like crazy and different paths, the more you you're able to recognize them when they fall on, you know, on your doorstep. And then it's exploiting them, which is, you know, exactly what it is. It's right. Where can I take this opportunity? Because we all know that when we take opportunities, or when we, when we agree to things or whatever it is, they always open more doors further down the line. And then those doors open more doors down the line and before you know it, you know,

you've met some other people, you've done some other stuff in your life and you've gone down a completely different path than what you'd say out to do. That's one of the things that I've been thinking about recently. Obviously, this little trip that I've taken out to Dubai, I decided the Sunday after the Saturday that lockdown was announced, got a PCR test on the Monday

for COVID, packed on the Tuesday and left on the Wednesday. I'm not always like a perfect bastion of immediate action, I suppose. You know, we get stuck in, everyone gets stuck in routes and I'm no different. But that single decision, the opportunity for me to be able to get away before lockdown came in, and then the single time commitment has had multiple downstream changes. It's literally the difference between me being here with it being like 9pm at night in 30 degree heat, off on a yacht party tomorrow on the biggest yacht in Dubai, or me being in the UK and doing the life that I had there. And I love the life that I have in the UK

and it's very productive, but I've done it all this year. So yes, recognizing opportunities, and I think committing to them, that the exploit part is really important. A lot of people will see something and not realize that it is an opportunity or not decide to commit to it. And it's tried to say it, but it's very true that we often,

I would say that more of our regrets certainly lean toward things that we chose not to do, rather than things that we chose to do. It, we as creatures are on the side of stagnation, I think, naturally, our tendency is to the status quo. I'm scared about that new cave next door. I'm scared about that new bush over there. I'm scared about that new tribe in the next valley. And you just roll that forward to the 21st century one.

We really don't have anything to be afraid of. I like COVID and like mad political elections and stuff like that. But really, day to day, your safety, the water, the heat of being somewhere sheltered, and all that sort of stuff, all of those fears have gone, and they've become that worry around new experiences has been transmuted into people being concerned about

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

Yeah, but like, you know, that's the, that's like a lot of people right in the world. And it's, you know, that whole like wrapping people up in cotton wool and, you know, even just, you know, we all live it, like you said, right, we all live in these buildings, these four walls, like we don't know what it feels like to feel rain on our face at night time or be cold, like we're rarely cold as human beings, right? Like we rarely have to walk long distances or fend for our own food and you know it's like it all creates a softer human being and it's almost like what you see in now as a result is people get so offended because they've got almost this free time to become offended by things. Whereas, you know,

like if you had to fend for your food and get all this kind of stuff, it's like, it's like you wouldn't have that time available to be able to do that kind of stuff. Massively so, man, I realized this at the beginning of the first lockdown when COVID came about. In the absence of a real crisis, we create our own. And in the presence of a real crisis, we resenter our priorities, the fact that when everything's so comfortable and all of our problems, our problems of surplus, not problems of scarcity at the moment.

So think about the fact that we have too much information, too much food, too much spare time, even to concern ourselves with this stuff. And all of those problems are now causing stuff, diabetes, people being overweight, technology addictions, so on and so forth. And yeah, we're maladapted to the environment and it's increasingly why you see people going back to a more paleolithic style of life, you know, people that choose

the minimalist movement now is a 21st century, a hack back to people trying to reduce the amount of clutter that's in their lives trying to reduce the amount of clutter that's in their lives, trying to reduce that amount of surplus. So yeah, it's um, well, it's, you've only got to look at like the amount of people that are entering Iron Man, like Iron Man's and ultra triophones and that kind of stuff these days, because like the human body needs suffering. Like it needs, it needs some kind of suffering because we've had it all our life right and you take all that suffering away and make an easy life yourself. Everything is a touch of a button and everything is so easily accessible. That's why you see depression and suicide at such a high rate because people just don't know how to suffer anymore. That's an interesting insight on it. I think that you're probably correct there. The voluntary

exposure to gradually increasing levels of discomfort will make you more tolerant to it over time. There's a really interesting study that they did on children, babies, infants. So I think that if you are a child who has, I want to say, X-ma, or some other skin condition, you also predisposed to having pina allergy. I think that it's one of the highlights, right? So what they did was they took children who had the X exma particular problem and voluntarily split them into two different groups. Group one was allowed to have

rice puffs that had a very very slight peanut coating, dusting on them, and the other group was kept free of nuts. The argument is that most parents that learn about X-MA would hear that if your child has X-MA, there is a increased risk of them being allergic to peanuts, therefore they will keep them away from absolutely everything that may have nuts in it. And what they did was they tracked these children over time. And the end result of the study was that the children who had been voluntarily exposed to the peanuts had a 25% peanut allergy. The children who had been kept free of all of the peanut dust had a 75% peanut allergy.

Yeah, it's lucky. It's crazy, man. Voluntarily exposing yourself to things that are going to be difficult. Why are people doing cold showers at the moment? It's the ultimate doing something just because it hurts. There's some physiological adaptations which are good. You get a bit of a buzz off it. It's like having a big, a big fat cup of coffee that lasts for about 20 minutes, which is nice. But for the most part, it's people avoiding that flinch. You know, like, why are you scared of getting in the cold shower?

Like really why are you scared? And it's a very interesting internal battle to watch yourself go through. So you know it's going to be cold, but it's not going to kill you. It's not even going to hurt you. It's just going to be a little bit uncomfortable. So yeah, I think that's definitely something that I would try and encourage in as many people as I can. So we've got the word soldier, self-opportunity leadership, danger, intelligence, excellence and resilience.

Out the ones that we got left, which ones are your favourite? Can we go into that one? I think I would say... Come, I've got. Do you know what? I'd say that I'd say probably my favourite self. More so because I'm quite... I can get quite deep on myself. And I've become quite interested by human psychology and how we all fit into the world and

like being able to pull out your true potential and understand where people fit into teams and that we're not all different. And in the book I talk about personality testing and specific the Myers-Briggs personality testing and you know it's something that everyone should go and do just to find out just to find out what their personality type is because I think a lot of people just float through the universe just not diving deep on on what kind of person they actually are. So when you actually do a test and get a result, it's a more, it gives you a more realisation of what you actually like. Yeah, I think it's quite uncomfortable for a lot of people to do self-reflection, especially if you're not used to it. And I get that. I would probably guess that a lot of the people who are listening skew towards

a very different type of person, they're going to be incredibly introspective, they're going to do a lot of self-inquiry just because of the sort of guests that I have on. But there is no amount of money on the planet that you could pay me to stop thinking about my internal monologue. Like, it's this single, the single most fascinating thing that I do. Yeah, a great. I love working on motivations, and I do it in other people as well. And when you get to a particular level of competence with yourself, you're able to help other people, and that feels really, really good.

You know, you kind of, kind of like you were talking before about voluntary discomfort. So, okay, I'm going to go through a little bit of discomfort thinking about some stuff that happened in my past that I don't like or thinking about a thing that I really wish that I attribute I wish I didn't have. Whatever. And after you work through that and you realize that it didn't kill you, you can then help other people around you to do it. It's really, it's a beautiful use of time, man. I think that's a good show. Yeah, definitely. Like what I really love doing on myself is trying to understand why I

make decisions or why I do certain things and just go in like just doing the deep dive and trying to understand like why I'm so hell bent on being like fit and healthy and a psychopath that goes into the top of Everest twice. Yeah like just like things like that like what is like what is my absolute reason for doing that? There's probably a load of different reasons, but I kind of quite enjoy having a very objective or pulled out point of view of everything and just trying to even observe other people and just be like, why does so many people sit in front of the TV and listen to the news and listen to the media and live on its every word as though that's the truth. Just trying to have a very abstract point of view

on absolutely everything that goes on through myself and through the world. Yeah, I think the rationalist movement, which is going on at the moment, lesswrong.com and the slate star codex that I'm a massive fan of two fantastic blogs, I think that a big part of that is people trying to bring a little bit of order to chaos because if you leave your life to be guided by the path of least resistance, you often end up in a place not only that you

don't want to be, but that you didn't even mean to get to. You know, like, you can very easily live a life that you regret without even realizing that you're walking down the path. Not quite easily, yeah. That's something that everybody should be fearful of, you know, like. We're made to like live this easy life, aren't we? You will see, you will search out the easiest way of doing things every time, unless you're aware that you're doing those things. Yeah, so underneath everything actually, there's a little bit

of a source code that people should lean into discomfort wherever they can find it, and the more that you can get used to leaning into it. Remember as well, the reason that you go to the gym is for the discomfort. The discomfort is a signal that you go to the gym is for the discomfort. The discomfort is a signal that you're doing the thing you're there to do. It's not the thing that you're supposed to,

oh, this hurts in the gym, therefore I'll stop doing it. It's like, no, no, no, no, that is why you're there. So people are used to it, right? You know, I only used to talk about how much you love the pump. And in the gym, people are aware that that's why. Okay, I did a thing, and the outcome of that thing was a little bit of discomfort,

but that's what I'm chasing because it identifies growth. That just needs the body reward for that as well. Yeah, the body makes you feel good with endorphins. That just needs mapping onto other areas of life. I had Ali Abdalan, not long ago, a YouTuber that focuses on learning and productivity. And he nailed it. He was like, learning is supposed to be hard. If it's not difficult, you're not learning.

Exactly the same as the gym and the same thing goes for everything. So yeah, I think, I definitely think there's a unifying thread across a lot of other stuff. And the last question for you, man, what is the biggest insight that you wish more people knew about life? I think we just covered it. That one discomfort. Just, yeah, just, just search out difficult things and the reward you, you know, you'll soon get the reward that it brings you.

I love that. I love that and I agree as well. So soldier will be linked in the show notes below. If people want to check you out to go and see some other stuff about you, where should they go, Jay? So mainly Instagram. So it's J. double underscore more turn. Also on Twitter and Facebook, but probably less active on those too. And I've got a website as well. It's J more on official.com. Fantastic. Everything will be linked in theanofficial.com. Fantastic. Everything will be linked in the show notes below.

What's next for you there, man? Obviously, final, final thing. You've got this period to sit at home and plan some mad adventures. Oh, you're doing some race. What's the race? Yeah, so I'm racing for a cartoon called Prague and actually, yeah.

Which is, again, like fairly new to me that will most sport things. So at the minute, just trying to get as much seat time as much learning and practice in cars and tracks around the UK as possible. And then yeah, so I'll start. I think my first race is next March. What's the car? What's the vehicle? It's called a Prague R1. It's a it's a it's a full-air race car, so you can't buy one and race it on the road. It's strictly a track car, but it's full-air-o. So, if you think of F1, F1's got an aerosystem, which means that the fast-eat driver, the more it sticks to the ground.

So this is the same in this car, the Fast E driver, the more grip you produce. It's got a 350 brake horsepower Renault turbo engine in and it weighs 600 KG. Shit the bed. So yeah, it's a machine. It's like a little single cockpit, like a little single cockpit car. It kind of looks like a smaller Le Mans car. It's like a rocket ship that's had wheels attached to it. Exactly. Exactly. All right, man, well, look, good luck with that.

I hope that you have a very good lockdown, and thank you so much for your time. Cheers, Grace, take care.