Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood, and I'm your host for the Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had the conversation around the subject of inclusion, belonging, and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future, then please do drop me a line to jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. That's S-E-E Change Happen dot co dot uk. You can catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and the usual places. So plug in your headphones, grab a decaf, and let's get going. Today is episode 104 with the title from battlefield to wellness, and I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Jason Archdale.

Jason describes himself as a wellness coach and speaker. When I asked Jason to describe his superpower, he said to let people know it's okay to not be okay and that there is a light. I should warn any listeners that we will be talking about poor mental health and there'll be references to suicide. Hello, Jason. Welcome to the show.

Jo. Hello, pleasure to be here.

So happy for this fantastic. Jason, you've had some dark times. Tell us a bit about yourself, your story from battlefield to wellness.

Wow. I've had some bad. Yeah, some hard bad times. But life wasn't always this way, Jo. I was kind of a carefree, happy going looking lad when growing up in a small mining town in the north of England. I was always adventurous and joining the venture scouts and really didn't want to do much at school. So when I left, I went to one of those career conventions, like the last year at school, and everybody's there and you don't want to be this and you don't want to be that. But right at the back of the room, right at the very back, there was this banner, and the banner had a picture of a tank on it, and this tank was airborne.

And I said, that's it. That's where I wanted. I was 16. That's less than 16, just about to leave school. And so that's what I wanted to do. So about three weeks later, I marched myself down, not knowing how to march at that time, but marched myself down to the careers office and signed on the line. And within, I guess, a few months, I was, that's it. The army is now my mother, right? That's what they say.

I'm your mother now. So I was in the army and that was it. And lived a fulfilling, happy, and amazing carefree life in the army for around five years. So, yeah, it was an amazing experience, a great stepping stone, but never wanted to stay in for a very long length of time and then came out of the army and wanted to spread my wings into civilian life. Right. But life kind of took hold and took over. And I'm sure we'll talk a lot more about this throughout this conversation, Jo. But I didn't deal with life very well.

Life took hold of me and I went down the rabbit hole, spiralling down into poor mental health. It just took a grip and to the point. Unfortunately, I went over the edge to attempting my own life, obviously unsuccessfully. Hence why I'm here now, talking to you right now. Right. But I believe throughout all of this experience, there's many, many lessons, hence why I can stand here now or stand on the stage or speak to people now. This is my passion and my purpose, to be able to do this now and speak to people about my story, my story of darkness, but the story of recovery to wellness.

Now, let me just wind the clock back a bit there. So you're saying you join the army at the age of probably, what, 16 and a half or whatever, you do your exams in June, July, you have a couple of weeks off while you wait for the next intake, and suddenly there you are on the train, or however transport you got, and you got off at the station at the other end, and there's a load of people milling around waiting for you and say what you. Whatever the army equivalent is, and you get put on a bus or you get walking around the corner and suddenly you're going, oh, what? Life is different suddenly? It's a real shock. I joined the Royal Air force straight from school, right. So I had a similar experience. I got on the train, got off to Swindervy. I'm not sure what the railway station was. It's probably Newark.

And there was a bus there. We all got marched on. And you can sort of figure out who's in it and they march you in. And there's no kind of honeymoon period, is it? Basically, the discipline starts from sort of almost like the first second, I think they march you into the station barbers and brand you with a haircut before.

You do anything else.

Tell us about that day.