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?

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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.

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. 

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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.

Support the show

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Kirsty Ward spent 11 years as an RAF engineering officer, working on aircraft and armaments where precision wasn't optional. She was also, by her own account, on track for early promotion right up until chronic ill health and burnout took the choice out of her hands. She's now the founder of InTah, helping high performers build careers that don't require self-sacrifice.

We get into two things worth sitting with. Firstly, the resilience trap. Kirsty reframes resilience in a way that challenges the UK stiff upper lip mindset. Resilience is not endless endurance. It’s the ability to recover, stabilise, and step back early enough to see the real problem before you burn through your health.  Mistake one for the other and you end up treating your own toughness as the problem, pushing harder because pushing is what got you praised before. She calls it using resilience as a stick to beat yourself with. The trap isn't weakness. It's staying in the fight past the point where staying was ever the right call and not noticing until your body makes the decision for you.

Second: the boundaries that actually hold. Not willpower, but diary blocks treated like unmissable meetings, and a baseline built before you need it because by the time you're asking for help, you usually need it immediately.

We also talk about what it's like to lose a job title that used to answer the question "who am I," and what success looks like once you stop borrowing someone else's definition of it.

To find out more about InTah or get in touch with Kirsty find her on LinkedIn or Instagram. 

Subscribe, share with someone who’s stuck in the resilience trap, and leave a review with the one boundary you’re going to set this week.

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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.

Support the show

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If you’ve ever tried to “take a break” and found it weirdly uncomfortable, you’re not alone. Sharon Pickering joins me to unpack why permission to slow down can feel heavy for leaders, founders, and high performers and why that weight often comes from identity: the fear of being judged when you stop spinning all the plates. Sharon brings a human factors perspective shaped in safety critical environments, including work connected with NASA, and we translate it into everyday leadership resilience.

We get practical about what actually breaks first when life gets busy: the basics. Sleep turns into lying awake with a whirring mind. Hydration disappears for half a day. Food becomes a rushed afterthought. Connection to yourself gets drowned out by noise and urgency, much of it self-imposed. We talk about the underrated skill of saying no, and how “always on” can deliver results right up to the moment it doesn’t, when something snap, crackles, or pops physically or emotionally.

From there, we challenge work life balance and replace it with work life harmony: a deliberate, shifting allocation of time, energy, and attention across work, home, relationships, and health. I share my RCM model for burnout prevention and optimised performance: Rest (and sleep), Connection, Consumption (digital and nutrition), Movement, and Management of stress. We also explore nervous system regulation, how modern “threats” look like notifications and emails, and why small experiments beat rigid routines.

If you want sustainable high performance without losing yourself, press play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who never switches off, and leave a review with the one basic you’re going to protect this week.

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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.

Support the show

Follow my social media accounts | LinkedIn | Instagram | 

Success can look loud from the outside. Full calendar. Big responsibility. People relying on you. A life that looks like it is working.

But what if it is quietly costing you?

In this episode of Forging Resilience, I sit down with returning guest James Porter, leadership communication coach and author of A New Way to Thrive.We talk about the quiet cost of success.

The kind that does not always look like collapse. 
It can look like saying yes too often.
Being needed.
Staying available.
Carrying things that were never really yours.
Coming home, but not really being present.

James shares honestly from his own life, including a season where stress showed up in his body through heart palpitations, and how blurred boundaries slowly became normal.

This is not a conversation about giving up ambition.

It is about asking:

What is this success costing me?

What am I carrying that I never consciously chose?

Where have expectations become obligations?

And what would it look like to design a life that actually works, not just one that looks successful?

James also shares the Living Rhythm Framework from his book, built around clarity, values, habits, structure and sustainability. 

This one is for anyone chasing big goals, holding a lot, or quietly wondering whether the life they have built still fits the person they are becoming.

Click here to register your interest in the The Thrive Mastermind. 

And to buy a copy of "A New Way to Thrive".

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 | 

Your life can be your work, your brand, and your public story. That sounds like freedom until you realise the camera can start telling you who you are. Aaron Hill sits down with Louis Cole, filmmaker and one of the original daily travel vlogging pioneers behind Fun For Louis, to unpack what it really means to grow up and evolve in public.

We talk about the early rush of YouTube’s Wild West years: accidental virality, inventing a job that did not exist, and the relentless daily vlogging grind of filming all day and editing into the night. Louis shares the less glamorous side too: losing identity inside a channel name, missing moments because you are hunting the next shot, and the way social media comments can wreck mental health if you let strangers set your self-worth.

From there we get into the hard modern questions: how to stay authentic without turning life into a highlight reel, what “grounded” content looks like when you are building a home in Costa Rica, and how to think about kids’ privacy and consent in family vlogging. Louis also tells stories from high-jeopardy travel, including being arrested in Mexico during a Central America school-bus adventure, and reflects on how fatherhood changes risk, purpose, and success.

We finish by looking forward: the shift towards TV-style YouTube viewing, sustainable living content, and the uncertain role of AI in content creation. If you care about online identity, creator burnout, resilience, and building a meaningful life with an audience watching, this conversation will stick with you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who lives online, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

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 | 

Pressure changes people. So does transition.

When teams shift, titles change, results matter, and the stakes keep rising, what does leadership actually require?

In this first official Forging Resilience Roundtable, I’m joined by two returning guests who bring very different lenses to the same question.

Air Commodore Robin Caine MBE brings the military perspective: fast jets, flying training, decision-making under pressure, human performance, and the importance of staying calm when there is chaos around you.

Rich Hunwicks brings the sporting perspective: over two decades in elite performance across rugby league, including England, Leeds Rhinos, Catalans Dragons, and the realities of building teams that can keep showing up when results are not going their way.

Together, we explore what military and sport get right about leadership, what gets misunderstood from the outside, and what happens when we try to lift a leadership style from one environment and force it into another.

We talk about calmness under pressure, humour in adversity, servant leadership, decision-making with imperfect information, the trap of perfectionism, and why the best leaders simplify complexity rather than add to it.

We also get into the less visible side of leadership: loneliness, fatigue, boundaries, support systems, and the discipline to lead yourself before trying to serve everyone else.

This is a conversation about leadership in the real world and the systems that help us perform without losing ourselves in the role. 

If you’re leading through pressure or change, this episode is for you or share it with someone carrying responsibility right now, and subscribe to Forging Resilience for more conversations on leadership, transition, and staying human under pressure.

Reach out to Robin or Rich via their LinkedIn accounts. 

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 | 

You can be disciplined, ambitious, and genuinely committed to other people and still be quietly running yourself into the ground. We sit down with Sharon Pickering, a human factors expert with experience in safety critical environments, to unpack why “permission” is such a sticking point for leaders, founders, and high performers. The tension is not laziness versus drive. It is the deep belief that we are only valuable when we are producing, carrying, fixing, or achieving, and the guilt that appears the moment we try to slow down.

We explore what Sharon sees repeatedly across teams under pressure: a powerful sense of responsibility that leaves people putting themselves at the bottom of the totem pole. From boardrooms to operating theatres, the pattern is the same. When you feel you must take care of everyone else first, rest and recovery start to look like indulgence rather than a core part of performance. Sharon shares a striking surgical story and what it reveals about shared load, communication, and the tiny moments that keep judgement sharp.

The practical takeaway is refreshingly small: micro recalibrations and mini transitions. Instead of chasing the perfect routine or spiralling into endless analysis, we talk about quick check-ins that take seconds, simple experiments that fit real life, and a dynamic “recipe” you can adjust as seasons change. If you want sustainable leadership, burnout prevention, and resilience that actually holds up under pressure, press play, then subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

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 | 

Ben Newton has spent his life leading in extreme environments military, close protection, fire service, industrial rescue. But none of that prepared him for the hardest thing: leading himself.

In this conversation, Ben and Aaron trace the thread that runs through every high-pressure role Ben has held and every identity he has worn. From a near-fatal anaphylactic episode on a rooftop in Afghanistan, to a nine-day cruise where silence finally caught up with him, to finding his tribe on a Brazilian jiu-jitsu mat before sunrise, Ben's story is about what happens when the character you've built starts to crack and what's underneath it.

At the centre of it all is a deceptively simple idea: lead yourself first. Not as a performance. Not as a discipline hack. As the only honest foundation anything else can be built on.

This one moves slowly and hits hard. If you've ever been the go-to person for everyone else while quietly losing ground on yourself this conversation is for you.

Reach out to Ben via Kaizen Summit, LinkedIn or Instagram.

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 |