The mindset that helps you survive hard things can also be the mindset that slowly breaks you. Erin sits down with Ben Williams, former Royal Marine commando, author, and startup founder, to talk about the moment grit stops feeling like strength and starts feeling like a mask you cannot keep wearing. Ben shares what it looked like when achievement kept moving the goalposts, stress piled up, and disconnection turned into burnout, depression, and a brutally honest rebuild.

We get practical and reflective about the liminal space, that in-between stretch where you are no longer who you were, but not yet who you are becoming. Ben explains why modern life pushes us to rush from A to B, and how that urgency shows up in careers, fitness, relationships, and even the way we cope. We also unpack suffering versus struggle, fixed mindset versus growth mindset, and the subtle inner narratives that turn everyday pressure into something personal and crushing.

From jiu-jitsu as a humility practice to therapy as a place to take the load off, Ben offers a powerful image you will remember: putting the rock down and sitting next to it. He also speaks about building healthier veteran pathways into startups through FirstFound, and why rejecting hustle culture is part of sustainable high performance. If you are navigating transition, leadership pressure, or mental health challenges, this conversation gives you language, perspective, and permission to be human. Subscribe, share this with someone in a liminal season, and leave us a review with your biggest takeaway.

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Forging Resilience supports Save A Warrior

Save A Warrior works with veterans and first responders facing complex PTSD and the reality of suicide.

Through this podcast, we’re supporting their work.

If you want to get behind it, you can do that by buying a bag of Major Stoke Blend coffee.
All profits go directly to Save A Warrior.

Good coffee. Real conversations. Work that matters.

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Mental toughness is having no feelings, right? That idea sounds impressive, but it quietly breaks people. We sit down with returning guests Matt Addison Black and Helen Lunnon Wood to untangle what mental toughness, resilience and grit actually mean when the pressure is real and the standards matter, and what gets lost when these words turn into buzzwords.

We talk about the social media version of Stoicism and why it often gets repackaged as emotional repression, then replace it with something more useful: perceiving emotion, processing it, and still making rational decisions. Helen challenges the “bounce back” story and explains why resilience is often slower and more honest: sitting with what went wrong, learning from it, and returning without brushing it under the carpet. From there we dig into values and identity alignment as a practical compass for high performers, plus the subtle ways avoidance can look like productivity.

Matt breaks down grit with a clear academic lens and highlights the most neglected ingredient: hope, not as blind optimism, but as agency and locus of control. We bring in the Stockdale lesson on optimism, explore stress as a signal until it becomes chronic allostatic load, and share tangible tools: naming emotions, breathwork, deliberate recovery, celebrating wins, and “mental modelling” to make better decisions under pressure. We also widen burnout beyond the workplace, and finish with a sharp look at risk tolerance through aviation’s “fit to fly” judgement.

If this helps you rethink how you push through, subscribe, share it with someone who needs a healthier definition of toughness, and leave us a review. What part of your life needs a more deliberate course correction?

Help us improve! I'd love to get your feedback...

Forging Resilience supports Save A Warrior

Save A Warrior works with veterans and first responders facing complex PTSD and the reality of suicide.

Through this podcast, we’re supporting their work.

If you want to get behind it, you can do that by buying a bag of Major Stoke Blend coffee.
All profits go directly to Save A Warrior.

Good coffee. Real conversations. Work that matters.

Support the show

Follow my social media accounts | LinkedIn | Instagram |

Mark Ormrod knelt on an IED on Christmas Eve, 2007. Two legs gone above the knee. One arm gone above the elbow. The UK's first triple amputee to survive Afghanistan.

This isn't that story. Not really. It's what came after.

Mark talks about the Royal Marine recruiting line he heard as a teenager "it's a mindset." He didn't understand what that actually meant until rehab. Prosthetics. A blank sheet. Nothing left to fall back on.

He also talks about the year before that. Homeless, nearly jailed, working nightclub doors, living off cash in an envelope. Less than twelve months after being an elite commando. He got out of it by remembering who he already knew he was.

Mark's chasing something bigger now a black belt, a business, "the ultimate version of himself." But even he admits he doesn't fully know what that means yet. Neither do most of us.

This one's about mindset, humility, and the slow, unfinished work of figuring out what you actually need.

If you care about resilience, high performance, mindset coaching, military leadership lessons, and navigating major life change, this one will stay with you.

Subscribe, share it with someone who needs a reset, and leave us a review with your biggest takeaway.

Follow Mark on his Instagram account or find out more about him via his website.

Help us improve! I'd love to get your feedback...

Forging Resilience supports Save A Warrior

Save A Warrior works with veterans and first responders facing complex PTSD and the reality of suicide.

Through this podcast, we’re supporting their work.

If you want to get behind it, you can do that by buying a bag of Major Stoke Blend coffee.
All profits go directly to Save A Warrior.

Good coffee. Real conversations. Work that matters.

Support the show

Follow my social media accounts | LinkedIn | Instagram |