Mental Fitness: 15 Rules to Strengthen Your Body and Mind

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Among his crew were a chef, a banker and a carpenter. Only one, Conrad Humphreys, had the navigational and sailing experience to complement Middleton’s skills of leadership and survival. It was a test of the captain’s resolve, not to mention the physical reality of 60 days at sea, during which he lost more than 10kg. Middleton describes it as one of the hardest things he’s done.

Mental Fitness: 15 Rules to Strengthen Your Body and Mind

My purpose in life is to be the best version of myself. And it’s a fascinating journey when you look at it like that. And you’ll never get there. That’s the point.” The lessons he echoes are crucial to not just a life demanding physical and mental toughness but generally any meaningful life. Here's what I took from each lesson: Every beat of a conversation with Ant Middleton is shot through with this unflappable conviction: conviction in his mindset, conviction in his way of working, training and communicating. When he fixes you with a piercing stare and speaks, you are mainlined to that will. His is not the soft approach of a social-media mindset guru. It’s enthralling, exhilarating thinking, dealt in concussive blows. Most people don’t think about their emotions,” he says. “When an emotion surfaces, nine times out of 10, people let it take over. Fear is the main one: fear of the unknown, fear of conflict, fear of failure. We don’t see the emotion for what it is.At the age of 38, he has lived more lives than most. He signed up for the army at 16, serving in the Royal Engineers in Northern Ireland and Macedonia, then joined the navy and the Royal Marines before entering the Special Boat Service (SBS), in a military career spanning 15 years. He has climbed Everest and captained a team of average men across 4,000 miles of the Pacific Ocean in a rudimentary rowing boat. He’s a Sunday Times bestselling author of two books and father to five children. He has been in prison. I was stood at the summit for three hours,” he recounts. “There was a climber hanging off the side of the mountain and he’d been there for 45 minutes. They were going to cut him away. Two other climbers had already fallen off the mountain.

Special Forces Operative Ant Middleton Ex-SBS Sniper and Special Forces Operative Ant Middleton

Pay attention to people you invest in relationships with and talk about things you actually care about.When Ant Middleton talks to you, you listen. Not because he’s screaming in your face, or probing you for psychological weaknesses. And not because he’s dealing out the physical “beastings” for which he has become notorious on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins. It’s because he wants you to be a better version of yourself. He wills it, even. And it’s hard to ignore.