Jay Morton - Building A Special Forces Mindset | Modern Wisdom Podcast 246

Everest is... 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 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 because it comes with a very high price tag, and you do end up with a lot of dross on the mountain which doesn't give it a very good reputation. It's six weeks of living at altitude. 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 at 6,000, 7,000 meters in the sky and you stand up and walk 10 meters, you're taking a couple of steps, stopping, breathing, taking a couple of steps, stopping, breathing. So like everything that you deemed easy at sea level is magnified in difficulty the further up you go. (whoosh)

Jay, welcome to the show.

How's it going, Chris? You good?

Very well. I'm in Dubai. Now 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 currently, Jay, you're balanced on an upturned bin, uh, in my hotel room.

(laughs)

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.

Too easy. Yeah, you never see what's in the background, do you, of what you've got -

Chaos.

... I was gonna say, man. Where you've just got to balance your phone and, and whatever's going on in the background, so yeah.

Absolute chaos, mate. It's just a-

And you're a northerner too, you're a fellow northerner, so don't do well in the sun.

Look, I- I've got two ginger parents, but thankfully...

(laughs)

I don't think I've fully inherited their skin. But you're totally right, man, when you're from Winterfell, you, you don't tan, don't tan exactly well.

Exactly. You just, you go white. You just seem to go white.

Yeah. And that leads me quite nicely into talking about the temperature, leads me quite nicely into something I wanted to ask, which is which is more difficult, the selection process for Special Forces or climbing Everest twice?

Um, I have to say climbing Everest. Um, selection, you know, six months... SA selection just seems to... It's drawn out over six months, right? And when you start, you're already a, you're already a seasoned 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, you want to prove yourself as, as a soldier. And I was, you know, 24 years old, like full of testosterone. Um, 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. Um, and I actually enjoyed selection for that reason. Um, because you meet, you know, you end up all, all... You know, you start with maybe 150, 170 people. Um, after the first three weeks, you're kind of down to 50, and then after the next six weeks, you, you're kind of down to maybe 20, 25 people. And these 20, 25 people have been through, through absolute shit. So you end up forming this like super tight bond where you're all really close and, 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, uh, next to the clock tower. You shake everyone's hand and then you disappear into whatever regiment and squadrons that you go to. Uh, and then the next day, you're kind of big boys rules into the, into the mix.