Forging Resilience
Join us as we explore experiences and stories to help gain fresh insights into the art of resilience and the true meaning of success.
Whether you're seeking to overcome personal challenges, enhance your leadership skills, or simply navigate life's twists and turns, "Forging Resilience" offers a unique and inspiring perspective for you to apply in your own life.
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Forging Resilience
66 Matt Addison-Black: Cancer Wasn’t the End. It Was the Start.
What happens when everything you’ve worked for is ripped away in an instant?
Just weeks before beginning his military career, Matt Addison-Black was diagnosed with aggressive cancer. It had already spread to his stomach, lungs, and bowels. He was 22.
This conversation goes way beyond survival. Matt takes us inside the mental, emotional, and spiritual trenches of facing cancer at an age where most people are just getting started. We talk about identity loss, the quiet pain of watching friends drift away, and the surprising places where real resilience lives far from the battlefield.
He opens up about the bureaucracy he fought to stay in the military, the systems that helped him cope, and the moment he realised being strong doesn’t mean being silent. His ABCD method Ambitious, Brave, Curious, Determined became his anchor. But it was love, fatherhood, and purpose that pulled him through.
This one’s about what matters when everything is stripped away.
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Welcome to Forging Resilience, exploring for a different perspective on strength and leadership. Join me as we discuss experiences and stories with guests to help gain fresh insights around challenge, success and leadership. Today, on Forging Resilience, I'm joined by my friend, matt Addison-Black. Matt has faced challenges most of us can't even imagine, including passing one of the most tough selection processes in the British Army and surviving cancer. His journey has not tested his body, but also his identity, his values. In this conversation, matt, we're going to talk about the unspoken cost of service, some of the quiet battles, resilience behind the scenes and what it really takes to rebuild from from the inside out. So, matt, welcome to fortune resilience buddy. Thanks, aaron, good to see you. Likewise, my friend um. So, matt, yeah, over to you, mate. What, what brings you to be sat in here in front of me today, and what's relevant for our listeners with your personal story.
Speaker 2:So I think a lot of people, when I meet them and when I speak with them, they've got this sense that the army created resilience within us and that they've given us systems and tools to deal with adversity tools to deal with adversity and, for sure, through experiment, experiential learning. Definitely, some of that's true, but the challenges aren't always going to be about being in contact and people being hurt and injured. Um one in three of us in our lives are going to get cancer and I think that the resilience journey that I went on through that started decades before the army and the lessons that I have learned and pulled through that transcend military service and I hope are applicable for anyone going through a hard time, no matter what it may be.
Speaker 1:So where would you link those lessons, those early lessons that you alluded to there, in terms of resilience, creating your own sort of capacity to come back or adapt?
Speaker 2:back or adapt. I think everyone, um, everyone that, uh, we sort of speak to, is broadly of a of a mind that childhood experience is incredibly formative and it helps us inform or helps us understand who we think we are, how we put ourselves out into the world and how we engage with that, and that congruence between how you see the world, how you see yourself in the world, and how other people see you. Finding that congruence, creating those into concentric circles, is, I believe, one of the keys to sort of personal mastery. But it has taken me an incredibly long time to actually be able to to do that well into, you know, well into my thirties, before I was truly comfortable with being honest about who I am, what I've experienced, where I'm from, and trying, trying to find that balance.
Speaker 1:You mentioned at the beginning, mate. Um, now that complete is gone, pause myself. This is an example of something that might get edited out, so I lost my train of thought there, mate. But I just to take you back to the, to the part of the opening introduction. Um, in, in terms of gurkha selection, um, what, what makes that process so so challenging? Um, as somebody who doesn't understand or know the difference, for that matter, from being from the Navy and my ignorance towards the Army, there are two sides to it.
Speaker 2:You've got the selection that the boys do, as in the Gurkhas, or the young men from Nepal before they join the British Army, and then you've got what we go through as Army officers. So for the lads joining from Nepal, it's life-changing, it is an opportunity to change socioeconomic boundaries in a generation, and so on average, you get 10,000 to 20,000 applying each year, of which the British Army will take, when I was in, up to 120. And it's got all of the sort of assessments that you would expect. It's got psychological evaluations, it's got academic tests, maths, english, both in English rather than Nepalese, and then it's got a lot of very difficult physical components that would outstrip anything done by any other unit in the British Army.
Speaker 2:I've seen guys do 30 overhand heaves. I've seen guys do nearly 40 overhand heaves in their attempts to get in, and then the iconic bit at the end is what's called the Doki Race, which is um a five kilometer run, 400 meter ascent in the himalayas, um, so you're already at altitude with 25 kilograms of rocks when I was doing it that you carry in a wicker basket basket with a strap over your head, and that's the sort of that's the iconic bit of gurkha selection that officers, soldiers, anyone who has the privilege to wear the crosscut crease on a cat badge or on a TRF, has to earn and achieve.
Speaker 1:And is that something you actually did as well, mate? Yeah, okay, I didn't realize that. That's fascinating At the beginning. Also, you mentioned in terms of resilience, or you know, the perception is that the army gives us all these tools. Really it doesn't, from my own personal experiences as well. It's just continue to zip up your man suit or woman suit and crack on, keep on going, which I guess short term and in certain scenario works really well, but long term, and potentially outside of that environment, isn't as sustainable. Um, so so what? What other things did you do for yourself personally, especially, especially or specifically talking about your own challenges in life and with the cancer recovery, to, to, to build out a more, a wider, more hostilic toolkit I think that's a really good question.
Speaker 2:Um, it wasn't conscious to start with. I think to start with, it was having a chip on both shoulders and then on both knees and on both feet and in any other place you can have a chip. And, um, I think a lot of my life up until joining the army was being told you are not going to be able to do this, you are not going to be clever enough to do this, you're not going to be strong enough to do this. And by the time I got to Sandhurst, I'd had so much experience of being told what I couldn't do and doing it anyway, that when it came to having cancer and being told we're going to have to kick you out of the army, which was the one thing that I'd set my mind on, set my heart on, from a really young age.
Speaker 2:So, absolutely not. There's no way that's happening. There is no way I'm going to allow that to happen. And um, as a result that I just made no, not an answer. I know that's double negative, but that is not something that I'm willing to accept. And I was tenacious, maybe audacious, and miles out of lane in the lengths I went to prevent the army from discharging me.
Speaker 1:So what were some of those things then, apart from that yeah, basically rejection of their opinions because of your own strong, deep-rooted beliefs. Is there any other things that you were doing to help yourself come back from potentially such a life changing experience?
Speaker 2:Well, I think I didn't want to allow them to define what I could and couldn't do, and I certainly didn't want to allow um an illness to define what I could or couldn't do. Um, and so I petitioned everyone, um, up to um, up to uh lieutenant general, in the gurkhas, and to say, please don't kick me out, don't discharge me. I've got this, I'm going to beat this and I'm going to come back and be twice the man you need me to be.
Speaker 1:I can offer this in service, um, but if you let me go because of something outside of my control, you'll never get to see what I can, what I can hopefully give I get the impression that probably pissed quite a lot of people off, rustled quite a lot of feathers, yet at the same time probably bought you quite a few allies as well, if not the most important one, yourself doing it, doing it for you yeah, I um, the colonel, uh, one of the colonels that I was speaking to at the time strongly advised me to write a letter, uh, resigning my commission, um to uh, so that I wouldn't be a liability the academy.
Speaker 2:So I guess, for context, I was diagnosed with cancer four weeks before commissioning, at the end of St Est, and normally if you get to that stage you are going to commission. You would have to do something mental, not to commission, at that stage. And the army is really good at dealing with broken legs and dislocated shoulders during training and it's really good with or I say it's really good it's certainly got pathways to deal with traumatic injuries from operations. But what it wasn't in 2011, 2012, was set up to deal with something so out of left field and it didn't really know how to manage it and it didn't really know how to support it. And I guess the context is as well that it was in the middle of the um, afghanistan and the iraq campaigns, where people were having life-changing injuries all the time um, people were losing their lives. There was really significant stuff going on, and one offscudette uhadet with cancer was not a priority given the wider context of what the armed forces were doing.
Speaker 1:How did you find out that you had cancer, Matt?
Speaker 2:So when I was at Sandhurst I didn't want to play rugby. So I grew up playing rugby, loved it. It was my first love and I was quite good to do. But I realised at university that I wasn't going to be able to play rugby professionally and so I was like, cool, well, the other thing that I always want to do is join the army. So that's what I'm going to do. And a lot of friends and family had been through and were in and I sort of canvassed their advice and they're like look, don't play rugby at Sandhurst because most, or a lot of people who play rugby at Sandhurst get injured and that then can either delay you getting into the into the army or it can end it completely. It's like roger got it.
Speaker 2:So when I went to Sandhurst I'd done a couple of triathlons before. I was like, oh, I'm going to join the triathlon club. Good, fitness, is it a congruent with all of the fitness tests that we need to do, and it reduces the risk of injury. And that was fine in the first term, which was, as the may intake say, that it wasn't rugby season. When we got into the second term, my company commander gave uh, sort of summoned me to his office and, uh, he hit me with a pretty radical question. He said uh, oscar, are you a coward? What Are you a coward? I don't know. I don't think so, I hope not, but I don't really know how to answer that question, sir. So, right, well, I believe it's more cowardice if you don't play rugby for the army and if you don't play rugby for the army and if you don't play rugby, at the very least, for the academy. All right, roger.
Speaker 2:And so, having been cautioned against it, I went and went to play rugby for the academy and it went really well. For the first time at Sandhurst, having been a military virgin before I joined and therefore massively behind the curve in terms of understanding green skills, I was in a place where I was actually comfortable and happy and I was able to actually excel for the first time at Sandhurst, doing something that I knew from before and I was relatively competent in, and in one of the early games I got a boot in the bollocks and very sore. After the game went to the med centre, went to, saw one of the nurses, said look, got a hurting nut. And she had a look, said okay, a couple of paracetamol you'll be fine A week off and some high-tech trainers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, plaster and paracetamol, you'll be fine, a week off. And some high-tech trainers yeah, exactly, plaster and paracetamol, crack on. Okay, cool Medical professionals told me I'm all right, I must be all right, and I think it's impossible to sort of overstate the pressure that you're at when you're in the academy. It is an intensive course where everyone is trying everyone's already been selected to be in, and everyone there is trying to be the best version of themselves, to get selected to the regiment that they want and to set up their careers. It's a lot of pointy elbows and it's it's very competitive. So, even though over a couple of days that sort of of dull ache didn't stop, I'm like well, I've been told I'm right, so I'm just gonna crack on. And I did.
Speaker 2:And I cracked on for a series of months with a sort of a cocktail of ibuprofen and uh and uh, paracetamol and various other painkillers, and Parasita Moulin-Barre saw the paint colours just thinking, oh, it'll be all right. And finally one day we're about to go on the final exercise and I'm starting to get a bit worried now. This thing's the size of a tangerine, which I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to be. And what I thought I had is what a friend of mine at university had was, I thought potentially I had something called torsion. And as we're packing our kit up, I thought you know what? This just isn't right. I'm just going to get a second opinion. So I popped downstairs and spoke to a friend of mine called Freddie and I said, mate, a bit weird, but can I show you something? I just want a second opinion because I don't think this is right. And we'd been playing rugby together from the off, so he sort of knew that I'd been kicked in the balls a couple of months before, looked to me a bit funny. He was like, yeah, go ahead. So I dropped Trow and looked him up. Yeah, you need to go to the sickbay, pal Roger. That was what I thought. But I didn't want to be that guy, that sort of biffed off before the final exercise. And so I went up thinking okay, worst case scenario, this is probably a quick operation just to sort of you know, if it is torsion, which is what I thought it was to to relocate the testicle and, uh, put it back in the back in the right place. Might have to miss a term, um, and then back in. But um, as soon as the doctor saw me, everything changed and it was like an escalator belt of just processes that started coming out.
Speaker 2:Thereafter I lost all control, so that locus of control was completely gone Within 24 hours. I'd had a scan confirmed it was cancerous. I'd had a scan confirmed it was cancerous. The next morning I was in with my company commander saying sorry, I'm really sorry. I don't know why I felt the need to apologize to him, but sorry, I'm really sorry, I've been diagnosed with cancer. I don't think I'm going to be able to come on this final exercise.
Speaker 2:And then it was just a series of processes. So on the day that I was supposed to be walking up the steps to commission with my intake, I had surgery. I was, weirdly, I was actually gazetted with my intake. So I was made a second lieutenant because I passed all of the assessments that needed to be passed at that stage. And then I, ah well, we don't quite know what to be passed at that stage. And then they're like ah well, we don't quite know what to do with this bloke. Can't put him into the wounded what was called the Lucknow Pertunian, the injured Pertunian at Sanchez because he's a second lieutenant. Can't take him to Afghanistan because he's not done Brecon yet and he's just had major surgery. So what do we do with him?
Speaker 2:So I end up being sent up to Catterick, which is where the Gurkhas who'd been recruited that year are doing their phase one training for 12 months and couldn't stay in the officer's mess because they weren't sure if I was an officer. So the OC oc the officer commanding is a good friend of mine very kindly gave me, uh, his dressing room and I. I lived in there for a few months and that was. That was a really lonely, isolating period because the gherkas at that stage don't speak a lot of english and I was ostensibly a British officer walking and so they didn't know how to interact with me. But I wasn't in the mess. That was a really strange period.
Speaker 2:And after about two months up there just sort of doing my own rehab and trying to get fit and trying to work out what was going to happen, next I got a phone call saying, right Monday morning, back to Sandhurst, take your pip off back to a Sandhurst beret, cut the TRFs off your uniform and you are going to go back and do the last four weeks, roger. And at this stage I'm having blood tests every week to check tumor markers and there was a certain threshold. I can't remember what it was, but if the team of markers went over that threshold I was going to have to have chemotherapy. But they weren't pushing it. I was like, okay, cool, I'm just going to stay on the log, keep plodding away and this will be all right. I had an overwhelming sense of just keep doing what I'm doing, it's going to be okay. So I went back to Sandhurst, finished the last four weeks and the week of the commissioning where I'm finally supposed to walk up the steps.
Speaker 2:The bad thing happens and I get told right, okay, this cancer's now metastasized, it's spread to your lymph nodes and it's in your stomach, lung and bowels. Right, well, that's gone from being, um, a little bit of shit to like really shit. So we had a lot of a lot of conversations and I mentioned at the start that I I did a lot of petitioning of people to not discharge me and to keep me in, and that was when this really kicked into awareness, because up until then we thought operation holding pen back in, and now it was like, okay, well, we don't know if how serious this is going to be, because it had started off as stage two and it had now metastasized and was deeper into the system and was deeper into the system and I was so incredibly lucky that the regiment that I chose and fought to join rallied behind me and they said, okay, cool, we've got it, we've got you. And I think pretty much any other regiment in the army, I'm guessing, probably wouldn't have been quite so steadfast in this. But the Gurkhas really are a familiar organisation. We often talk about love being one of the core tenets of the relationship between Gurkha soldiers and Gurkha officers in a sort of in a philosophy way. And this was extended to me.
Speaker 2:And I then went back to my mother's house for three months and had chemotherapy. But because it has spread quite a lot, it was quite a radical nuclear blast. So quite often people have chemo once, twice a week and because I was young, they had a. Because I was young and I was fit, they had a relatively new blend or cocktail that they said I could run a trial for. I said, yep, okay. So for um, yeah, it was September, october, November, so three months or other. Um I did Monday to Friday, nine to five um on full nuclear blast. Uh, lost 20% of my lungs and went through that sort of full process, including a delightful Deidre on halfway through and whilst a lot of my civilian friends melted away.
Speaker 2:Because I think if you're not used to seeing life thrown into contrast, if you're not used to seeing life and death and to thinking about the possibility of your own mortality which, at 22, most people aren't it's scary and I think one of the reactions that happened was a lot of uh rejection from from friends during that period.
Speaker 2:Um, and it was never formal or sort of articulated, it was just the casual drifting away and silence and unanswered messages and um, the people that didn't do that were my new regimental family, who didn't know me from adam and I was so lucky I had I had brigadiers turn up and sit with me whilst I was having chemo. I had captains that I'd never met before coming and and this is whilst 1RJR were on a deployment in Afghanistan, so there were very few officers left in the country, but they would come and sit with me and see me regularly over the weekends felt, for my regimental family was unanticipated and thrown into even more stark contrast by uh the the opposite being shown by people that I'd been at school and university with do you think then, matt, part of that experience and and yeah, contemplating your own mortality at such a young age is is given fascination, that interest, that curiosity or desire for mastery that continues through the work that you do, mate?
Speaker 2:Yes, but I got it wrong for a long time.
Speaker 2:For a long time I went down quite a nihilistic route, um, and sort of I was quite fatalistic in the way that I approached the world and it took me a long time and a lot of sort of work to change that from nihilism to existentialism and trying to find that sort of that purpose and meaning behind it.
Speaker 2:And I guess, the way that I I remember talking to my mother about this because she'd had cancer when I was younger, before I did I remember talking to her about it at the time and uh saying her saying to me that, uh, we had it because we were strong enough to deal with it so that other people who wouldn't be able to deal with it didn't have to.
Speaker 2:And of course, logically that's nonsensical, because whether or not you have cancer or don't have cancer, or you have, whatever it may be, it's not I don't believe it's a choice, I don't think it's something that a deity in the sky has said this person can deal with and that person can't, and I'm going to give them that trial or tribulation. But I do think that, in terms of approach, that sort of self-determination and hardiness is quite important. And if you can frame it to saying, okay, well, this is within my control, this is what the challenge is and this is what I've committed to doing, then you can return that locus of control to yourself and you can find that desire to forge ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I guess by default, then you'd set up your own frameworks there to overcome that and learn about it later on in life.
Speaker 2:Yes, I wish that I could say that, coming out of this, I had a gold-plated solution for what resilience is and isn't. I didn't even start reading about the psychology of resilience and resilience theories until years later. What I did at the time was I coined for myself a way that I wanted to live, which was that I wanted to be ambitious, I wanted to be brave, I wanted to be curious and I wanted to be determined, and I'm a simple person, I'm a simple infant here, and so abcd was something I could remember, and I thought that they were good tenants that I could push forward with in a sort of pursuit of personal mastery love it, mate.
Speaker 1:Again you talked about that, that chip on your shoulder to prove that desire and drive. And I'm curious now, as you go through life, as certain things change jobs, new people, relationships develop what do you find yourself doing with that chip?
Speaker 2:I think the voice in the back of my head that told me for years I wasn't enough has grown quieter. It's always going to be there, but it's great. It grows quieter day by day, and I think that is a few different things. I think, um, the first big change was meeting my, my, my now wife, who was able to love and accept me for exactly who and what I am, and I no longer needed to pretend to be something I wasn't. I didn't need to show her a version of myself that I thought she wanted. I'm sure I did that at the start, but I don't need to do that now, sort of nearly nine years later. Um, she accepted me and loved me for who I am.
Speaker 2:I think my regiment family, um, after a while of getting used to me this sort of mad bloke that was bouncing off the walls, certainly for the first few years and leading the charge for every run ashore, I think when they were able to find the competence and the substance in my character, over and above the sort of bravado, and they were able to accept that, especially the Gurkha soldiers, more than the officers. For me that helped, and the most transformational one has been the birth of our daughter, where none of it matters anymore, none of it is about me anymore. It is now all entirely wrapped up in the life and love of this little wonderful human being that is my responsibility and who, ultimately, I'm now accountable to. So my own bullshit is no longer an excuse. It can't be an excuse any further, because life isn't about me, it's about it's about her yeah, I love that and it's interesting as you're speaking there.
Speaker 1:What comes to me is something which I'm going to try and tie together and weave in here is the, that authenticity piece, the acceptance of ourselves. And this is from a fatherhood perspective, as I reflect on being a father of two. The, the way that I respond here you go, the way that I respond to my kids, often in the past has been from a place of fear or conditioning, and so authenticity in this, yeah, is what I want to share is that things sometimes don't drastically change. In that sense it just means we can speak from a more grounded place or gently pause, like you. In that, that sense, it just means we can speak from a more grounded place or gently pause, like you, in that case, that, that that nagging voice in the back of your head, or turn the volume down on it to let our own guidance or self-speak, especially with kids, because they are just mirrors for for all sorts for us, um, little lessons in nappies, yeah, incredible, yeah little lessons in nappies.
Speaker 2:I like that. I might have to.
Speaker 1:I might have to borrow it they grow out of them um the lessons continue I mean, it's a great lesson, sometimes it's shit and sometimes it's not, quite literally.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. Yeah, Love it. Matt, I know that you speak with great depth. You've studied so much about psychology and coaching and I'm curious. I would love to give you the opportunity to talk about a framework that you would think, or a theory that you think you could explain to people in the next couple of minutes. That would really help them in terms of resilience and challenge. How might you take something complex and break it down for us to understand and potentially apply in in our lives as we navigate challenges?
Speaker 2:there are dozens of theories, uh, psychological theories on resilience. Um, the one that I think resonates most with me is self-determination theory, which is Desi and Ryan, and what they sort of propose is that if you've got autonomy, competence and relatedness, or autonomy, competence and congruence, that you can get past things. And I think breaking that down it's identifying what are you in control of, what are you not in control of and you can't. There's no point worrying about the things that you can't influence. Secondly, are you competent? So what are you actually able to do? So you've identified what's in your control. Are you now able to deal with that? Or do you need to do additional learning or training to acquire the skill set in order to be able to tackle what's? Or do you need to do additional learning or training to acquire the skill set in order to be able to tackle what's in front of you?
Speaker 2:And then, in terms of relatedness and congruence, does this all fit together holistically? Is this part of a bigger journey, or is this a problem in isolation? And I think, if you can step back from the problem and it's difficult to do and you and I, one of the things that the military has taught us is the ability to dislocate ourselves from the problem in front of us and I know for other people who haven't had that experience it will be harder. But if you can just step back and remove emotion from it and not look at it personally and say what am I in control of? Do I have the skill set to deal with it and how is this congruent, how is this brought together in a related manner so that I can digest it, I think you can take any problem that's in front of you and break it down into bite-sized chunks, and that I think is is the key to it.
Speaker 2:There's all sorts of stuff, um, yeah, from post-traumatic growth, broaden and build um loads of stuff. But I think I think it all starts with with logo therapy, which, um, which links, uh links to self-determination theory, which is find the meaning in it, find the purpose in it, and if you can do that, you can then identify how this fits together. Victor frankel when he, when he sort of developed yoga, yoga therapy he's a concentration camp survivor um, he had seen the very worst forms of human suffering and human attrition and human cruelty, and he was able to find meaning in that and develop a school of psychology to help and support other people.
Speaker 1:And I gotta admit I do subscribe to that quite heavily. Yeah, yeah, find the meaning. I think that that's not day one, week one, though is it? I think there's a lot of it's such a powerful skill set, and sometimes one that takes a lot of falling over and and and help to get there. I recognize there's a if I look at myself or some of the people that I work with. Yeah, there's a. There's a. There's a lot of work and attempts and compassion and awareness that go on before we get to do that with the help of other people, the teamwork that it always which is. Takes me back to something I've written right at the beginning, that that isolation that you must have gone through, um, where there's less you know, when you're sent off to catrick um must have been a lot to deal with, but there's no doubt you've already tied into the meaning there. The belief about who you were and what this was was already very strong. Hence the reason you made the recovery you did and fought for your place back in your unit.
Speaker 2:So the area where it was most likely to fall down was on Gurkha selection, which was so we get sent out to Nepal to do the language course and then we have to pass the Doki race, which I mentioned earlier, and I did that three and a half months after Kimo, ouch, ouch, and we were sort of given the Spartan. The Spartans would have quite come back with your shield or on it in terms of pass the, pass the test or don't come back. I feel quite bad about this in some regards, because there were 11 of us on the course and my aim on the doka race clearly was just to complete it. I wasn't aiming to to win it, I was just aiming to complete it and um, four of the officers not in the raw gherka rifles but in the gherka engineers Rifles, but in the Gurkha Engineers, gurkha Logistics, gurkha Signals when I passed it with about three seconds to spare, they didn't. And unfortunately we had some senior officers out to observe that test and that absolutely derailed them because I guess they were in the exact moment, given the position of this bloke's just passed a given X and you failed it without any tangible injury.
Speaker 2:Injury and that's where unforeseen consequences, um, sort of a thing, because that's something that it. It wasn't in my control how well they did. The only thing that was in my control was how well I could do but as a result of me achieving what I wanted to achieve, it is a very obvious example of where it made other people feel even worse by not being able to achieve what they set out to achieve, and I think that taking responsibility for that is quite important, because learning the impact and the ripple effects that our actions have, both positive and negative, is a really important step of understanding who we are and what we are in the world yeah, and I also guess it goes back to what you're saying about the self-determination theory that the logotherapy and finding the meaning of they'd obviously put a lot of meaning and they're all sent their own sense of self-worth to some extent was wrapped around.
Speaker 1:Passing that, that, that course or that race, that test.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is definitely the thing in the army. Of all the things that we did and, yeah, that's nine years in the British Army, five years somewhere else in uniform that is, without doubt, the thing I'm most proud of, but it didn't come without cost.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a little bit, Matt. As we start to wrap up, is there anything that you would like to mention or talk about before we close out?
Speaker 2:I think human beings are the most amazingly resilient thing in the world. I think what we can achieve when we set our minds to it is is boundless. From space exploration to climbing Mount Everest to running across the Sahara, humans have done the most amazing and impressive things, but it is also part of the human condition to suffer, and I think a journey that you and I've both been on for a good few years now is that we both want to help other people, um, if they are hurting. We want both want to help other people if they're suffering, and we've both trained ourselves, um, and followed academic pursuits and challenges to enable us to do so, and so I think the message that I'd want to leave is that, if you are in a position where you are struggling, reach out. There will be someone.
Speaker 2:It may be you, it may be me, it may be a professional somewhere else, or it may just be friends and family, but holding on to things yourself eats away at you, but holding onto things yourself eats away at you. Sharing. Sharing these things is essential, and I wish we lived in a world where we didn't need psychotherapy or coaching or psychology to help us, and that we just had the natural friendship groups and connections that we had potentially historically, but that's not the time we live in. So if you're hurting, reach out, speak to someone, because bottling it up does not make you strong, it doesn't make you hard, it just sets you behind where you could be if you aired the problem in the first place.
Speaker 1:Love it, mate. Yeah, really important message, really important message. Where might people find out a bit more about you, mate, or get in touch if they're interested in a conversation, regardless of what it's about, mate?
Speaker 2:You can go to veritashighperformancecom, which is a website that I offer keynote engagements, keynote speeches on the psychology of leadership, resilience, communication, negotiation and influence, or I would tend to offer executive coaching for people who are on a journey of self-discovery, where I hope to support, enable them in their own journeys of personal mastery. Love it, mate. Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to mastery.
Speaker 1:Love it, mate, matt. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us today, mate. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I'm glad we get to put this out to the world. I love the work that you're doing. I love the support and guidance that you give me and the challenge. So thank you for being part of my journey and part of my life, mate. It means a lot. It's an absolute pleasure, and thank you for forcing me today to feed the rat. Love it, cheers man. Speak soon. Bye.