The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 32 - Ant Middleton on How To Build A Bulletproof Mindset

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. If you need advice on how to build a solid mindset, then Ant Middleton is certainly the man for the job. He’s been in some of the most dangerous, high-stress and uncomfortable situations on the planet which is why I felt compelled to ask him how he built a mindset strong enough to deal with extreme distress. Ant talks eloquently on how he believes the answer lies within discomfort, something we’re not often pushed towards in the modern world. But with life’s inevitable chaos constantly on the horizon, building a strong mindset isn’t just desirable, it’s necessary. Episode 74 - https://g2ul0.app.link/jOrYmdr9flb Ant: https://www.instagram.com/antmiddleton/ https://twitter.com/antmiddleton Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/StevenBartlettYT?sub_confirmation=1 THE DIARY OF A CEO LIVE TICKETS ON SALE NOW 🚀- https://g2ul0.app.link/diaryofaceolive

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. One of the questions I really wanted to ask you because of what's going on in the world with this whole pandemic and covid is i was thinking as i was like brushing my teeth or whatever this morning i was thinking there's a ton if my audience could ask you one thing probably would be around the fact that the world changed this year a lot of people's lives were uprooted they lost their

businesses their jobs whatever and then i thought you know ants probably well i for sure has have been in situations where you felt like whether whether it's on the battlefield or whatever that this was a fight that the where the odds were against you yeah and in those moments there's winners and losers and i you know you always talk about mindset what is the mindset that people need in these moments where the odds don't look like they're all they're very much in their favor their favor that you've seen from the battlefield where you've emerged victorious because, you know, you didn't indulge in victimhood or whatever. And you, yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, 100% makes sense.

For me, it hasn't. It's about embracing change. You know, majority of people, they live their life on autopilot or they live in the void, I call it, where everything around them is changing. You know, the world is constantly changing. Everything around us is constantly changing, whether it's, you know, climate control,

whether it's, you know, in the way that we think, the way that we're evolving, the way that the world is going, the way that animals are evolving, the way that the sea is encroaching or, you know, decreasing, whatever it may be, everything is changing around us and we are designed to change with it. So what we're actually doing is we're actually going against the grain when we become complacent, when we get comfortable, when we get into one sort of situation and we stay in that situation. We're working in the opposite way that the world should be evolving. We should be constantly changing.

We should be constantly evolving. We should be constantly moving forward. Look at my career. I've gone from the army to the marines to the special forces to the media to to books to authors to literacy to business it's like i'm con i love love change i love being put in a situation where i'm literally chucked in the deep end with dive boots on and I have to tread water. I love that because it's so challenging and it's so, so stimulating that you're forced to change. You're forced to think of something different. You're forced to do something differently. You're forced to change the way that you approach something because you've been put in a situation where it's been

forced upon you but when it's not forced upon you when it's not forced upon you um which the world does it forces it upon us but when it's not forced upon you when you when you get comfortable then you get you fall into this void you fall into this complacency you fall into to not moving along with the world but does that. But are those your demons again? Because I'm thinking, the reason why Ant loves to be chucked into the water with his dive boots on is because you relish challenge.

And this comes, maybe links to the victimhood point and a general problem in culture and society where people like comfort. Cotton wool. A lot of people are being brought up now with cotton wool. We're not designed to be comfortable. We're not designed to have cotton wool strapped around us it's society it's the restraints and the shackles of society that's forcing us to be like this

it's not who we are look how far we've come you know look out look at look at just through history how far we've come and i feel like that we're actually devolving now I actually feel that we've got to a point where we're going backwards where you know used to be survival of the fittest now it's survival of everybody you know I mean to survive you know used to be at the you know the top of the

food chain you know it's we're not designed to be comfortable we're not designed to be wrapped up in cotton wool we're not designed to be comfortable. We're not designed to be wrapped to act in ways that we're not designed to act in. It's forcing us to switch off to the most powerful tool that's in the universe, your minds. We're forced to just put it on fucking dormant. We're going against the grain of what we're supposed to do, of who we're supposed to be, on how we're supposed to act and how we're supposed to evolve.

So when you've got this going around like this and then this stops, there's this synchronicity that's not working in partnership with each other. You know, without us on this planet, this planet wouldn't be as evolved as it was. Without the planet, then we wouldn't be evolved as it was you know and what what's actually happening is is you've got this this this these two forces that are grinding against each other rather than

working together with each other in synchronicity i i i was reading this crazy thing the other day and i think i've talked about this maybe once before, but it shows that the life expectancy in the UK and the US fell for two years in a row. And I think it was like last year, the year before, whatever, for the first time ever. And they look at the numbers as to why the life expectancy has fallen for the first time ever. And it's because of like the opioid crisis,

people who are getting addicted to drugs. And then they say, so why are people getting more and more addicted to drugs? And they say, well, because they're lacking meaning in their life. And when people lack meaning meaning the science has shown whether you do it to animals you take away their meaning i i've talked i think in the last podcast and i i hate to repeat myself but i also don't care about these rats and i fucking because i write about my book i'm so fascinated by it they put a rat in a cage and take away everything from

it and they give it the option of drinking heroin water or normal water it becomes a drug addict they then introduce a partner, some stimulation, some running wheel, some other things, and they give it heroin water or normal water and it doesn't choose the heroin water. It doesn't become a drug addict. Just by inserting meaning into its life, it avoids the heroin.

And then you think, okay, so what's going on in society? You think, well, people are lacking challenge and meaning because we're trying to create a culture maybe where challenge and meaning are a bad thing. And that's actually having an adverse effect because as you say very eloquently like that's not who we are you know i love how you just put that steve because you've just put my thoughts into a scientific sort of into scientific form um because again i'm not an intellect i'm not a bookworm you know it's like i have psychiatrists come up to me and go where did you study and well but no honestly what books you do and i'm like no no this is all every single little

ounce of me is through life experience i come from the university of life you know and what i've just said there's it's strange that and i that's why i love talking to people like yourself because i've put that as in how i'm thinking i haven't read anything from it and you've just put it into a whole sort of scientific. And that's like, that's exactly that. It's exactly what I've just said. And you've just put it into something that's been proven. And that's the way that I think, that's the way that I perceive life.