SAS: Who Dares Wins’ Ant Middleton admits he feels fear all the time – but says his terrors give him strength in extract from new book The Fear Bubble
HAVING completed the “holy trinity” of Britain’s elite units – the Paras, Royal Marines and Special Boat Service – you’d be forgiven for thinking Ant Middleton is fearless.
But the star of Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins says he feels fear all the time – but knows how to use it to his advantage.
In his new book, The Fear Bubble, Ant, 38, shares his strategy, and here – in an exclusive extract – he explains how YOU can do it too.
He also reveals how he became addicted to conquering fear, so much so that he looks for the excitement of the battlefield in his everyday life...
“LIGHT?” “Cheers, buddy.” I took a few rapid, light puffs of my cigar and heard it crackle into life between my fingers.
You could taste it was expensive. But was this really £400-worth of cigar? That would make it, what, five quid a puff?
I settled more deeply into the leather club chair and drew again, this time luxuriating in the experience.
Before the smoke dissipated, I took a sip of the rare single malt whisky my new barrister friend Ivan had also bought me, this time at the bargain price of £60 a shot.
“So, how are you enjoying your new life?” he asked me, his accent as cut-glass as the tumbler in my hand. His wry expression told me he probably wasn’t expecting an answer.
After all, wasn’t it obvious? To all outward appearances my new life was going brilliantly.
I’d seen my face on billboards, and my latest TV show, Mutiny, had been broadcast to millions of viewers and enjoyed critical acclaim.
If that wasn’t enough, I was in the middle of a sold-out tour of the UK, chauffeur-driven in a black Mercedes between luxury five-star hotels.
And here I was being wined and dined by a top barrister in one of the most exclusive and secretive private members’ clubs in the world.
PUSH HIS CHIN UP INTO HIS NOSE
As I listened to Ivan holding forth, enjoying my cigar, I found myself beginning to wonder what would happen if it all kicked off in a place like this? What if IS came through the door? A lone shooter or a guy in a bomb vest?
I scanned the people around me. They’d go into a flat panic. Every single one of them.
I know what I’d do. I’d head-dive into cover, down there in the corner, then I’d come around and try to disarm him.
I’d use the ashtray as a weapon. I’d crack it right over him. Right around the f***ing face. Smack.
Cave in his cheekbone then go straight into a backswing, push his chin up into his nose. God, I would love to see it kick off in here.
Why was my mind slipping into violent fantasies at the very moment I was being made to feel most coddled, in a private members’ club in London’s Mayfair over expensive whisky and cigars?
What kind of a man would imagine such horrific things?
Believe me, I didn’t want a terrorist to come bursting in with an AK47 and a bomb vest because I’m some psychopath. I didn’t want people to get hurt.
What I wanted was to be handed a reason to leap up and stop people being hurt. I wanted to be forced into action.
I wanted to be put in a position in which I had no choice but to perform or die. What I wanted — what I’d started craving almost like a drug — was fear.
This might seem strange, but that’s what my relationship with fear is like. I crave it. I need it. And as much as I need it, I also dread it.
YOU DON'T CONQUER FEAR, YOU USE IT
As I travel up and down the country meeting people on my tours, one of the questions I always get asked is a variation on this: “How did you get to be so fearless?”
The answer is, I didn’t become fearless. I don’t believe that’s even possible.
I feel fear all the time. Not only do I feel it all the time, I hate it. It’s not that I’ve learned to conquer fear or enjoy it. It’s that I’ve learned how to use it.
My experiences fighting in Afghanistan with the Marines and serving as “point man” as a member of the Special Boat Service, the first man in as part of an elite team that was charged with capturing some of the world’s most dangerous men, taught me that fear is like a wild horse.
You can let it trample all over you, or you can put a harness on it and let it carry you forwards, blasting you unscathed through the finish line.
More than anything else, I believe my ability to harness fear and use it to my advantage is the secret of my success.
There’s no way I would have come out of Afghanistan, or any other theatre of war, in a healthy psychological state if I hadn’t learned how to do this.
And there’s no way I’d have been a success in my personal or professional life if I hadn’t developed the ability to grab hold of the incredible power of human fear and let it take me where I wanted to go.
Fear is like a wild horse - you can let it trample all over you, or you can put a harness on it and let it carry you forwards.
I’ve now got to a place where I rely on fear. When it goes missing from my life I find myself becoming anxious and dissatisfied.
Without fear, there’s no challenge. Without challenge, there’s no growth. Without growth, there’s no life.
This method for harnessing fear has changed my life in ways that are almost unimaginable.
It’s transformed me from the naive, angry and dangerous young man I once was to the person I am today. The good news is that anyone can learn it. I call it “the fear bubble”.
Back when I was in the military, there were many times in the breaks between tours when I caught myself thinking I didn’t want to return.
The fear you experience on the battlefield is unbelievably intense.
I COULD SEE THE STEEL BARREL-TIP OF HIS AK47
There are many different levels of fear, but “life or death” is surely the worst of them all.
Most people never experience the feeling that when they step around the next corner there’s a decent chance they’ll take a bullet in the skull. I had to deal with that time and time again.
Many amazingly brave and tough operators didn’t find a way of processing that level of fear and horror.
So how could I ever solve the problem of experiencing intense fear on the battlefield?
Of course you’re going to be scared when the air is filled with bullets and the ground is filled with IEDs (improvised explosive devices). Surely this was an impossible task?
It then occurred to me that if I couldn’t get rid of fear completely, perhaps I could break it down into smaller packets so it was a little less all-consuming and relentless.
From now on, I told myself, I would be absolutely rational and clear-headed about when it was appropriate to feel fear and when it wasn’t.
Even when I was standing right in front of the terrorist’s compound, I decided, I didn’t need to be in that bubble.
After all, he was probably fast asleep with his thumb in his mouth and his d*** in his hand, so what was the point of feeling fear?
It was on the next operation that I had my huge breakthrough. We’d entered a terrorist compound at just gone four in the morning.
I knew there was an armed combatant just around the corner of a mud and rock wall that I was approaching.
If I couldn’t get rid of fear completely, perhaps I could break it down into smaller packets so it was a little less all-consuming and relentless.
I could see the smoke from his cigarette and the black steel barrel-tip of his AK47 in the green static blur of my night-vision goggles. I looked at the corner and told myself, ‘That is where the fear bubble is’.
And then I did something new. I visualised the bubble. I could actually see the fear, right there at the place where my life would be in danger.
Not where I was standing, ten metres away from it, but over there, where the threat actually, truly was.
And nor was that fear happening right now, at this moment. I would feel it a few seconds later, when I made the conscious decision to go over there and step into the bubble.
That visualisation changed everything. Fear was no longer a vague, fuzzy concept with the power to utterly overwhelm me like an endless storm.
Fear was a place. And fear was a time. That place was not here. And that time was not now. It was over there. I could see it. Now all I had to do was step into it.
I girded myself with a deep breath. And then I took a few paces forwards and walked into it. There it was. F***.
The fear hit me like a wave. I was so close to the enemy combatant I could practically smell the stale camel milk on his breath.
Now I was in the bubble, I had to act. I made the conscious decision to do what needed to be done. The moment he hit the dirt, my fear bubble burst.
RUNNING AROUND LIKE A LUNATIC
I stepped forward, around the body, as the relief and elation that I was actually still alive ripped through me.
That night I managed to break my experiences of fear down into episodes that lasted mere minutes — and sometimes just a few seconds.
Whereas I’d once treated entire six-month tours as enormous, life-sapping fear bubbles, I’d now reduced them to manageable packets and made my relationship with fear completely rational and functional.
I realised that while it was surely impossible not to feel fear, it was certainly possible to contain it.
By Ant's book
THE Fear Bubble: Harness Fear And Live Without Limits, by Ant Middleton, is published by HarperCollins on Thursday, priced £20.
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If it was a surprise how effectively this technique enabled me to manage extreme fear, it was an even bigger surprise to find that it actually made what had sometimes been a horrendous experience almost addictively enjoyable.
There was no greater feeling than popping one of those bubbles. Before long I was running around like a lunatic, looking for the next bubble.
Soon, rather than dreading the next moment of danger, I actually began craving it.
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