Ant Middleton - First Man In

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 particular weakness is physical fitness. Someone has told you that you need to run five miles with a sixty-pound backpack on. If you were to turn around and say, ‘Yeah, yeah, no worries at all,’ nothing good’s going to happen. But what about if you said, ‘Actually, I’m going to struggle with that. Physical fitness is not my strong point. I will do it, I’ll get the job done, but I need to let you know this is going to be a bit hard for me. I might need a push along the way’? When you’re honest like that, I promise you that magical things will happen. People will think, ‘This guy’s comfortable with himself. He’s not trying to be someone he’s not. He’s a person who is steadfastly defining himself. He’s an honest person.’ And they’ll naturally want to help you out. They’ll want to say, ‘Do you know what, mate? I’ll give you a hand.’

People don’t get annoyed so much when you struggle, but when you fake it, that’s when their walls come up. They get defensive. Then you’re in conflict with that other person. There’s friction and the job is not getting done. People think, ‘If I admit my weaknesses, others will have less respect for me.’ But it’s actually the other way around.

But there’s an exception to all this. Sometimes it’s a good idea to let someone else define who you are. There are times in your life when someone will see something positive in you that you didn’t realise was there. This is exactly what happened to me when, at the age of twenty-four, I was going through Royal Marines training. I’d got to week fifteen of the thirty-two-week course, at which point a new officer came in at the top of the hierarchy. He was an older boy, and everyone respected him. He’d only been there for a couple of weeks when he summoned me unexpectedly to his office. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted: I was coming first in everything and keeping myself to myself, so there was no personal trouble with anyone else, at least that I knew about.

‘Middleton,’ he said, ‘you’re in danger of losing grip.’ Losing grip? No I wasn’t. I took a moment to make sure my face wasn’t betraying my irritated confusion. ‘I’m not quite sure what the problem is,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’re getting a bit too big for your boots or perhaps it’s just that you’re thinking about yourself too much. Well, whatever it is, I’m coming to the conclusion very rapidly that you’re not a team man. You need to understand something that’s crucially important if you want to achieve your full potential in this organisation. The Royal Marines aren’t here to provide you with a pyramid to stand on top of. You, Middleton, are a part of that pyramid. You’re just another brick. Do you understand what I’m getting at?’

‘I think so, sir,’ I said.

‘You don’t have to prove that you’re the best. That’s not what all this is about. I think you have a lot more to offer than merely being number one. You’ve got to think about the bigger picture. You might be leading all the scoreboards but you’re not actually leading . The kind of men we prize here are the ones who bring the others with them. I think you have that in you.’

There was absolutely nothing I could say. He was right. All I wanted was to be the best at PT, the best at exercise, the first man at map-reading, and so on. I used to study alone. If tests were coming up about fieldcraft or map-reading I’d be in my corner, getting my head down, making it clear that no one should disturb me. I’d assumed that that’s what success in the Forces looked like – dominating as many scoreboards as possible. My conversation with this officer was my first inkling that there was more to leading than simply being first. I realised I could afford to take a little bit of a back step and allow myself to be second or third at some things – to go for ninety per cent rather than one hundred.