Conflict of identity? Remember the mission.

The latest episode in our Resilience Unravelled series has now been released, Resilience Unravelled – Conflict of identity? Remember the mission.

 In this episode, Dr. Russell Thackeray talks to James Boardman a former Royal Marine Commando Sniper and Physical Trainer who served for eight years including some time in Afghanistan as part of a 6-man sniper team. He left the Royal Marines in 2011 to pursue a family life but struggled to come to terms with being back in a normal life, away from the military. Conflicting identities caused James to turn to drink and within three years he was divorced, on the verge of loosing his house, and struggling to find a path. Minutes away from attempting suicide James managed to pull himself away from this environment long enough to see a new path. In 2013 he started his first business, a fitness Bootcamp which he grew to a £100k a year business in its first year. In 2017, he started The Man Coach with the sole purpose of helping men become Elite Operators in life.

In this podcast, James talks about how he helps men to rebuild their lives and have a better state of mind through the way they live their lives emotionally, physically and mentally. He calls this an Elite Operating Mindset, an alter ego by which we set our standards to build the character, values and principles needed to perform in life for the four pillars of health, relationships, personal development and business. James originally started working with his clients on their fitness and nutrition but many seemed to fall off the programme. He started to consider why this was happening and realised that the chaos of life – responsibility, conflicting identity, direction – was what was stopping them.  He decided to change his tactics and concentrated on the key root of the problem, the level of control, consistency and clarity of where men were going.

James was in the Royal Marines for eight years and everything he talks about comes from his experiences. The mindset and processes he has are from what he has gone through and what he has used to get where he is today. He really loved being in the Marines but he left because he wanted to be a full-time Dad and role-model. He thought going back to normal life would be easy but he struggled with a conflict of identity. When he left the Marines he was a Sargent who was respected, was part of something, had purpose and mission and knew where he was heading.  When he left, everything from the last eight years was lost. He became a teacher at a college and there was a huge difference between teaching motivated recruits and 16-19 year old students. He didn't really settle in and considered rejoining the Marines but that fell through and within three years of leaving he was divorced, seeing his kids for half a week and suffering financial difficulties.  Things came to a head and one night he thought about ending his life. Instead he went out for a run for three hours and spent the time reflecting on his life. When he came back he had decided he wanted to turn things around.

Male identity can be a real problem. Many men get their sense of identity through their work. James feels you should replace identity with purpose, to ‘remember the mission' and have an emotional connection to an outcome. He feels motivation is an emotion like happiness or sadness that comes and goes and is not substantial enough to drive change. We need to decide what is our mission in life and create a ten-year vision within the four pillars of health, relationships, personal development and business. James also thinks we should work towards a 1% a day improvement so instead of acting emotionally and making changes for a few weeks and then stopping, we should try to reach long term control, clarity and consistency –1% a day over a year gives you a 365% improvement! Along the way there would be big wins and changes but resilience is also built so we have control of a situation and can deal with having one bad day.  The next day we just realign with the mission, we Learn- Grow – Repeat.

James had to rethink his purpose. He became involved in a dispute with the College he was working for and started doing some part-time work as a Personal Trainer. The dispute went through a grievance procedure but the relationship was unworkable so he left with a settlement. He saw it as an opportunity to change so although he knew nothing about working for himself he set up his own Bootcamp business. Six months into his journey he remembered what had happened before and saw how far he had come and how much further he could go in six years. He realised that he had allowed himself to let go of his life as a Royal Marine and that he had taken what he needed from that and become stronger, was happy with who he was and that he had moved on with his life.

James feels that people try to become best version of other people rather than themselves. It is easy to be influenced by social media and celebrity and take traits from each. When you have clarity you understand what success is to you and what is enough. The more you fail, the more you understand yourself and become more secure in who you are. What comes out of failure can be better.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about James here. Our previous podcast episodes and upcoming guest list are also available. Our full blog archive is also available.

You can get in touch with James at The Man Coach  where you can access a free five day challenge and James’s Daily Rise to Thrive Facebook Show, his It's a State of Mind Podcast and The Man Coach YT Channel

Jame’s book It's a State of Mind Book is available at Amazon.