Marine Mindset

It’s not every day you get to talk to a former pro rugby player who became a Royal Marine Commando before working in private security and landing a career as a mindset author.

Introducing Gareth Timmins, the interview subject for today’s Musing.

As you’d expect, becoming a marine isn’t just a case of signing up and jumping in. There’s a gruelling selection process that, so the legend goes (26,000 apply each year, only around 400 make it), 99.9% of people don’t accomplish.

Hence the title of Gareth’s first book: Becoming The 0.1%. A mindset guide that’s one of the UK’s best-selling books on the culture of the Royal Marines.

Think less who’s going to carry the boats and more how to become the person who wants to.

Tackling issues like identity, masculinity, vulnerability and resilience, Gareth’s mindset and writing set out both to quash the categorisation of marines as “mindless killer[s]”, to quote him as we will throughout this piece, but also to offer a window into the perceptions and toolsets that propelled him throughout an irregular life path.

Against The Tide

“The stoic mindset is dead and buried,” he tells us on a Wednesday morning on a call from Pontefract. Gareth’s approach to mindset doesn’t dovetail with the current zeitgeist’s infatuation with indefatigable resilience. Through his subsequent work since leaving the Marines, achieving his bachelor's in Forensic Psychology and now pursuing a PhD focusing on rapid-decision making in high-pressure situations, he’s interfaced with countless athletes and high performers.

The mindsets espoused by – to use a catch-all term – influencers, are “selling everybody short. I know for a fact [they] don’t live up to what they’re pushing out there.” The holier than thou approach works for many, exhibiting a lifestyle that’s difficult/aspirant is an algorithmic hack to cut through the humdrum feelings present in many people. This comparison does all of us a disservice.

“Day to day, normal people deal with more complexity than athletes in their stress. This leads to anxiety because there are far more variables. It’s not more stress [than an athlete’s], there’s just more complexity.”

In Gareth’s brand new book, The 0.1% Academy: Master The 7 Mindsets to Maintain Peak Performance., he outlines multiple outlooks that can be utilised to navigate varying challenges. This is the idea of mindset fluidity, as opposed to anchoring ourselves to a singular world view as a vehicle for holistic performance.

It’s commonplace to view high performers as machines who simply get shit done. In reality, the notion of resiliency shows up in different ways when mastered, stepping backwards or forwards dependent on the stimuli in front of us, regulating our emotions and tuning into what’s needed for what’s in front of us.

Rather than delving into a singular mindset as an anchor to maintain position in the violent waters of life, a more effective route to performance is to straddle multiple of them. If we only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

In the pursuit of mastery, we can’t limit ourselves to just one tool.

Breaking Point

This undulating approach to performance was covered in last week’s musing on rest ethic. Periods of exertion require the counterbalance of restoration. To compete with the big dogs, though, athletes in particular often push themselves to train in ways that verge on masochistic. Gareth tells us of national teams who forced their competitors to “get on a treadmill alongside [a] teammate, and not get off until one of you collapsed or broke down.”

It’s easy to sensationalise our favourite champions without registering the next-level training and unwavering discipline it takes to get them there.

Similarly, lambasting ourselves for not managing to run as fast or far as an athlete is a mistake. Our own lives require understanding compassion. We need to pivot, recognise the bad days, and still muster a way through. Gareth speaks of “overcoming the chimp; the negative self-talk,” as an essential component of making progress. Not exactly the route-one response you’d expect from a former Marine.

“Negative self-talk is hardwired. You can’t switch that off. You have to condition positive self-talk.”

Not the easiest routine, particularly for us Brits, to engender, but Gareth’s core focus on this as being a skeleton key that allows us to unlock inner potential is a vital reminder for adults who lean towards perfectionism and flawlessness.

Universal Struggle

“Writing the books was the ultimate test of imposter syndrome,” he tells us. He might write three fantastic pages one day, but the next would bring “a couple of pages of shit.” This battle took 18 months of persistence and, even as publication day loomed, he had “these awful thoughts of ‘Am I a nutter? Are they gonna think I’m self-absorbed?’”

Ultimately the meaningful strides we take in life come from out-conditioning the negative self-talk and believing that we have something to offer the world at large. Around publication, his mum said to him “This stuff doesn’t happen to us.”

“I said, why doesn’t it? I hated that. We walk on the same earth but we’re in two different worlds.”

Wait for permission to live life on our terms and we’ll struggle. “We’re always waiting for markers that we’re ‘ready to go’ to give us external confidence or validation. It never comes and, as a result, we stay in our comfort zone.”

“The best piece of advice I could give to someone who’s underperforming is simply: you’re ready. Yes, you’ll encounter obstacles, potential setbacks and failures, but that’s systemic of being outside of your comfort zone and that’s a good thing. Success is not for the others, it’s for everyone.”

Variation of Victory

The human experience can be… disorienting. Even with the right approach and goal, the outcomes we novelise tend to materialise less satiating than we’d like. “I’ve always had the anti-climax of success… when I achieved what I set out to do. I’ll have a brief sense of euphoria… then the next day I feel really underwhelmed.”

So, broadening our stimulus in pursuit of goals leads to longer-lasting success. “We place all this weight and fulfilment on the end, but once you reach that end, the only obvious place to go is down.” This is one of the key perspectives in his newly published book.

This understanding of our mental vulnerability extends into the oft-venerated quality of resilience that’s placed on a pedestal. “To continue saying everything’s alright, to keep cracking on, and not speaking about emotions because it’s considered weak, denies what it is for us to be human. We demand nothing but strength from resilience, that’s where it’s dangerous.”

As a result, Gareth is keen to reframe our notion of resilience as “cognitive endurance.” Understanding that we will feel weak, drained and fatigued at times – even when we prioritise performance. Pointedly, he stresses the importance of taking breaks when things are going well.

Many of us look at holidays as a salve to remedy the compounding stress of daily life. It’s almost become a badge of honour to neglect time off.

But to make the most of rest, we need to schedule it in when we’re feeling good. Not just when we’re at burnout’s door. “Keep yourself in the green, [not the] red. Don’t wait until you’re at your wit’s end to take a break. At that point, it’s too late.”

Mouth & Mindset

There are two more things to suggest. The first is ZAAG, which Timmins is enjoying a daily dose of. “I take it, I feel great. It’s funny because I normally get run down from time to time. I haven’t had the physical manifestations [of the] stress and fatigue over the past months. I’ve been taking ZAAG and feeling fine.”

The other step you can take is to dive into the comprehensive tome enshrining Gareth’s fluid mindset approach to life. “The book will give you advice, inspiration and encouragement to get off your settee and start developing traits of an elite mindset. It humanises people that we believe possess elite mindsets – those viewed as somehow untouchable. People like Simone Biles, Bradley Wiggins and Bill Gates.

It forensically breaks down success and performance but also gives you an invitation to believe in yourself. Not to wait until you’re ready… you already are.”
And we love that.

You can get your ZAAG trial pack here.

You can get Gareth’s new book here.