First Man In: Leading from the Front. Ant Middleton
you before it gets cold.’
I was furious. All my anxieties about what the others thought of me had been summed up in that one dismissive comment. Maybe it was Ivan I should be fronting up to, not Neil.
‘How do you fucking know it’s not me?’ I said.
‘Because you’re better than that.’
Now that really did hit me, harder than any punch I might be about to take behind the kitchen block. The thing was, I could tell he meant it too. And he was right. What was I doing? Trying to prove I was one of them by turning myself into someone I wasn’t? If they thought I was a soft lad, that was their problem. By trying to prove myself to them, I realised, I was actually submitting to them. I was letting them control me. But what was I going to do now? I could hardly leave Ivan to take a beating. I had to ask myself who I was. I was someone, I hoped, who was a bit smarter than the average green army recruit. I was someone who wasn’t going to let ego and temper ruin my career. I realised that the only way to deal with this while remaining true to myself was to try to prevent the fight from happening at all.
‘Why do you need to fight this guy anyway?’ I said.
‘You don’t get it, Ant,’ he said. ‘It’s not like it is where you come from. It’s alpha male. It’s who’s got the biggest dick. You’ve got to step up to the plate.’
‘We’ve just joined the army a few weeks ago,’ I said. ‘If word of this gets out or you tip up to parade with a black eye or a broken nose, they’re going to know what’s gone on.’
Ivan said nothing.
‘You’re risking your entire career to prove something to this idiot,’ I continued. ‘That’s not very smart. Do you really care about what he thinks of you that much that you’ll put everything on the line?’
He still said nothing.
‘You’re going to lose your career. You’re sacrificing everything you’ve worked for, for Neil Porlock. You’re letting him win, just by turning up.’
After that, it didn’t take long to grind him down. He stopped, turned around, and instead of a fight, we went and had a cup of tea and a biscuit.
I can’t help but look back on that incident with a bit of pride. Even at that young age, and in that tough environment, I was able to keep a grip on who I really was and sense that the alpha-male bully-boy culture was trying to mould me into someone else. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that I managed to maintain that strength of character. As you’ll soon discover, I eventually let the worst of the army get the better of me. I became someone who couldn’t have been further removed from that polite and gentle young lad.
It never ends, though. People always want to define you. Because these days I’m best known for the Channel 4 show SAS: Who Dares Wins, strangers try to define me all the time. They assume I’m this chippy rogue who deals with everything through violence. When they meet me, they expect me to have some hard, judgemental persona. I get people approaching me in the street and talking about my size. They imagine that I’m six foot eight, not five foot eight, and I always get, ‘You look bigger on TV.’ Or they say, ‘I don’t know what everyone’s so worried about, I reckon I could have it with you.’
They’re joking around when they come out with stuff like that … but also they’re not. Otherwise, why would they say it? I just laugh it off. I’ve got nothing to prove. I’m in competition with no one, especially now I’m in the TV world. I mean, it’s not as if I feel the need to compete with someone like Bear Grylls, is it? So I banter back with them. ‘Yeah, mate, you probably could have me. Don’t listen to all that TV stuff. They’ve got special lenses on their cameras that make me look bigger.’ I’m happy to do that. I don’t feel threatened at all. I know who I am.
But being an approachable guy doesn’t mean I’m a pushover. When I work, I work. I think it’s important not to mix business with pleasure. When there’s a job to get done, I want to get it done and to the best of my ability. And I want to do it my way. This might sound arrogant, but in my field I genuinely believe that I’m the best at what I do. So while I think it’s important to listen to others and not surround myself with Yes men, at the end of the day I’m the leader. I’ll make sure the job’s done properly, the way I want it done and to my standards. And I expect everyone else to be in that mindset. People know, when they work with me, that they need to snap into a different mode. There’s no messing about.
But then when I’m not working I’m a loving father and husband, and I like to think I’m a relaxed guy to be around. That no-nonsense persona is completely gone. It’s like I’m two different people. That’s why I think it’s crucial that you don’t define yourself as just one person. That, to me, is the sign of a fake. It’s the sign of someone who has this fantasy model of who they want everyone to think they are and just tries to act up to it all the time. When you’re true to yourself you know that you’re a different person in different situations, and you’re totally relaxed about it.
I believe you can only get so far by trying to put on a persona. People who do that always hit a ceiling. They find themselves thinking, ‘Right, I’ve got this far, now who do I have to be to get to this next stage?’ If you’re yourself, that won’t happen. You’ll find your own place. You’ll get the job done the way you want it done. If you try to be someone else, you’ll get lost, because the person who’s got you to where you are is a total stranger. He’s a fantasy. You don’t know who he is. So when new challenges arrive, you’ll have to suddenly come up with a different game plan, a different strategy, a different person to be. And that’s not a sustainable pattern.
If you’re yourself, you’ll get to where you’re going on your own instincts. There’ll be no need to constantly second-guess yourself, thinking, ‘Who do I have to be in this moment? How do I have to act? What do I have to say?’ You’ll be constantly rebooting yourself from scratch. You won’t be growing and learning, you’ll be panicking. You won’t be giving yourself the chance to optimise. When you start on the first square of the grid of being yourself, with every new square you strive to get to you improve who you are. Every struggle you go through will make you a better player. That’s what growth is. That’s what life’s journey is all about. It’s about taking who you are and making you a better version of yourself. It’s not about trying to be this person or that person. It’s not about trying to be like Neil or Ivan. It’s not about letting other people define who you are.
This is why I always tell people, don’t try to better your life, don’t try to better your work, don’t try to better your relationships. Don’t try to be rich, happy, successful. Don’t do any of that. You’ll be wasting your time. It doesn’t work. Nothing will change, and you’ll get disillusioned and burned out. Instead, you should work at trying to better who you are as a character. Be the best version of you that you can imagine, and I guarantee that all the rest of it will just fall naturally into place. Why? Because you’re arming yourself. You’re giving yourself the tools to be honest with yourself and therefore to be honest with other people. If someone in your life has messed up, you’re not going to sit there being too nervous to talk to them about it.
What’s not honest is always trying to be the person other people either want you to be or think that you are already. Back in Basic Training, because of the way I looked and spoke, everyone thought I was weak. I could have let that influence me and become weak. For a while I fought against it. There are always going to be people who want to define you by your worst qualities. They pick up on your flaws, zoom in on your most embarrassing and shameful mistakes, and decide that, deep down, that’s the person you really are. What makes this especially dangerous is that it’s so easy to believe. The trick is not to deny what these negative people are saying. If you do that, you’ll look dishonest and inauthentic, and you’ll lose the respect of anyone who does admire you. The best response is to accept what they’re saying, but know it’s only a small part of the truth. Everyone has flaws. Just be up-front about them.
Here’s a scenario you might find it useful to think about. Imagine that your