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.

Yeah, absolutely. I remember I was so happy, but my mum was so sad. She had a little boy going. Yes, I was 16. And you're dead, right? Because although I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life at the time, at 16, it was a massive culture shock. And you're so right, you kind of get your army train ticket. They send you a train ticket. And mine was to Surrey per bright in Surrey.

The guards training depot in Surrey. And I'd kind of never been out of Yorkshire at that time, right. And so I'd been down there, an amazing adventure trip. But it didn't last long because, yeah, you get off the train and it's almost like you're the only one on the platform and then somebody else gets off a train and, you know it's a squaddy, a potential squaddy, right? And then all of a sudden you're this bellowing out from the entrance of the platform, as you said, right, come on out and you're in this bus with no markings on. It's not a glorious National Express bus, right? There's no markings on. It's plain white army bus. Right. Your life instantly.

Instantly changes from stepping off that train. But it's what I wanted to do and I did it. I joined and this is what I wanted to do. So it's like, suck it up, boy.

So which regiment, which division, which part the army did you join?

So I was part of the Household cavalry. Now, the household cavalry is split. For those that are not aware of the household cavalry, when they have ceremonial parades on tv, like when they're doing the jubilees and things, and when the queen or the king are in the carriages and those guys on the horses with the red tunics and the plumes on the head, that's the ceremonial side of the regiment I was in called them lifeguards of the Household Cavalry Regiment. But I actually joined the armoured division, which is the tank. So I joined the tank division of that. So I wanted to be a tank driver. Right. Not a horse rider.

So I wanted to be a real soldier. So I used to play with action men, right. And so I wanted to be an action man. So I joined the tank division of the household cavalry. Jo. Yeah, it was great.

I've seen loads of tv documentaries of following the early stage career of squadies going through basic training. Obviously, I was RAF. We used to live in hotels and have five star service and breakfast service every day. That's what the other two services say about us. We have it easy, don't we? Your basic training must have been significantly harder than our couple of weekends here and there.

Wow. Right? Yeah. Yes, absolutely. No, we never had any hotels. So my training was around nine months. It was about nine months. It was proper infantry training. We're talking everything from crawling through tunnels where you have to go underneath it, climbing obstacle courses and firing weapons and things.

Right. And you grow up very quickly. Right. Although you're 16, you grow up very quickly because of the discipline that's in it. And, yes, you're right, there's very many tv programmes that show the early stages of the army career, but they only show the training aspect of it. They don't show it when you get to the regiment because it's not all like it shows on tv. Right. Yes, it is a lot of beasting, it's a lot of discipline, it's a lot of training, but there's a purpose behind that.

But when you get to your regiment and you pass out, basically, it's like going to work every morning. Right. I mean, I was a tank driver, so I turned up to work when I passed out. By the way, when I did pass out, my first posting was in Germany. So, like, 17, I was flown across to Germany for three years based over there on the tanks. So it was almost like a guy waking up here in Leeds. That's where I am waking up, putting his overalls on and going to work at Halfords or quick fit on the morning to fix vehicles. Right.

So we woke up in the morning, went to the vehicle park and fixed our tank just a bit bigger. Right. But it is very different because there are rules. It's an establishment, isn't it? It's an establishment, but an amazing stepping stone. And I did quite a lot. I travelled the world with it. At 18, we went to war. We went to the first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, if you remember.

Storm in Norman. Right, so Operation Desert Storm went there with our tanks. I was a tank driver at 18 in the first Gulf War. And then when I came back from there very shortly afterwards, got selected to go on an expedition, a civilian type expedition to Venezuela. Sky TV went with us and filmed it on sky one quite a way back. Now we're talking 1991, Sky TV went. Yeah. So we were going down the Oranoco river and camping out next to the Oranoco and just doing all sorts of amazing things.

I actually got arrested there because people thought we were mercenaries, because we were stuck out like a sore thumb. Nobody dresses like Rambo in the desert, in the jungle, apart from us. Right. We thought that's how you dressed. So, yeah, amazing experiences, Jo.

In the army, there's a kinship and fellowship and a real bond between your mates, isn't it? And it becomes your family. And you talked about the arm is your mother, but your mates are your brothers, aren't they?

Yeah, 100%. And it really was that because you live with them, you sleep with them, you go out on the town with them, they're there. Twenty four, seven. You really don't have that time apart. And of course you don't get like normal life, you don't get on with everybody. But there's a part where you have tolerate that, but it really is that kinship. But you would still do anything for anybody in the army, right? Because that's the mentality of it. That's what it breeds into you and it's what it did.

But as I said, you grow up very quickly. And I think I joined at 16, but by the time I got to my regiment, I was 17 and a bit, if you like. But you kind of felt 20 or something. So if you're 20 in there, you'd feel 22. So there's always years ahead of you in the army because of what you have to grow up very quick and come on, how many people at 18 years old said that their company vehicle was a tank? Right?

So you were that tank driver running around, running over things in Kuwait.

I actually did, but yeah, I mean, Kuwait was a bit different when we went over there because obviously it was all very much different. But we did do know we went out for two or three weeks with the vehicles in Germany. We'd have to drive them off the planes, off the prairies and drive them down civilian streets. So actually I did clip a few cars and put my trucks over a few volkswagen beetles and squashed them a little bit. I'm sure the army is insured, right. But yeah, it is what it is.

It's all part of the tank driving game. Is it running over something? Sorry, didn't notice that.

Of course it is and you can't. But it is what it is. But yeah, we got a bit of a tongue in off for that one.

Yeah. At the age of 16, in a bit you're basically given. I was given when I was in the RAF, an SLR seven six two SLR. We were stripping it down, reassembling it in 10 seconds or something, racing to load the magazines up with, I don't know, 20 rounds, whatever they take. And then we're on the firing range shooting these things. And then we have the submachine guns and we had the lay down one. I can't remember what it was now or something. GPMG, probably a GPMG trying to fire as many rounds as you can into the target at the end of the.

Watching little splats of dirt coming up. And we're doing that 60 and a half. We could do this, we could do that, we could do the other. But we couldn't get married without our parents permission. But we could go and kill somebody or couldn't even vote. Crazy.

Exactly. Right. And that takes me back a bit when you say the SMR, because we'd obviously, at that point, when I was in, we transitioned to the SA 80. Right. Which is obviously a fantastic piece of kit. But you're dead right. It's almost like you're given this responsibility at a very young age. As soon as you walk in, this is your weapon.

This is your weapon. This is a rifle, these are live ammunition. And then, obviously, when I've passed out, you then go to Germany and this is your tank. Right. So I've levelled up from a rifle to a tank, right. This thing is like 70 tonne, 2 million pound piece of kit. And I've got my foot on the pedal, so there's a huge responsibility in there.

Obviously, the official secrets out of what you can and can't say. I don't know. What's it like inside a tank? Presumably there's no windows. It's all computer controlled and tv cameras. Is it?

It is now. It's all very technical now. I mean, I left in 1994 and the tanks have evolved massively now, so everything's very much automated. No, there are no windows, there are periscopes, but obviously you get in through holes. So if you imagine the top of the tank, the commander, the gunner and the loader, the operator, get in through the top of the tank, the driver gets in through the front and he's got a hole at the bottom and then it closes his hatch and then that's it. You look through a metal periscope. If you want to drive tactically, if you drive opened up, you've just got your head sticking out of this piece of metal. Right.

Which looks a bit weird, but even so. No, actually, it can be claustrophobic. It's very snug, put it that way. Everything's made to fit. It's not made for comfort, put it that way.

No, a tank is pretty solid, it's pretty armoured and it moves quite quickly. 40 miles an hour, saying when it's going to go, isn't it? It really does motor. But say you're safe in one side, but you're also quite vulnerable in another. Antitank weapons, helicopter launch, whatever it may be, you are potentially a sitting duck, as well as being safe in air, but sitting duck here. And it must be quite scary to be on a battlefield.

Yeah. But do you know what, and I say this in my talk, that I was living my best life. I didn't have a care in the world. That's not to be blase about things. It's just how I felt at the time. Because when I was in the Gulf, of course, we were in the tanks, we were in the theatre of war, right, and anything could happen. And there were B 52s going over, there were Scud missiles every now and again with the siren, and the sirens would go, Scud missiles. But it still never kind of really affected me.

I was inside this tank. We weren't always inside it, but I kind of felt a lot safer inside that than the infantry guy running alongside of us. Right. But, yeah, of course there are still threats from the antitank and whatever, and it only takes a grenade to throw a track off a tank. Then you've got to get out and put the track back on and that leaves you vulnerable. So there are still vulnerabilities to being a tank driver, but I think we are one of the safest ones. But like I said, I didn't think about that at the time. We just do it.

Right?

What's the crew? It's like four or five people.

So there's a driver, obviously, who sits right at the very front in his own separate cab. And then you've got the gunner that sits right at the very bottom and he has no way out. He can't get out until everybody else does. And then the loader is the one who loads the big gun. He's the Lord who puts all the big bullets in. He puts the big bullets in the gun. And then the commander. The commander sits on the top, on the top seat.

So there's four of us working as a team in there.

So you're living your best life, you're travelling around the world, you're with your mates, having a fantastic time, working hard, playing hard, drinking hard, no doubt, really enjoying yourself. And then life changes. What happens next?

It kind of didn't change straight away. And with many things, things happen gradually over time, don't they? But then we ignore red flags, don't we, in life? And then all of a sudden, the universe, if you like, then just goes, oh, there you go. I told you this was coming. And we ignore it. But the thing is, with things like this, if you're not aware of red flags, how do you deal with them? If your mind is not open to spotting red flags, you can't do it. And my mindset wasn't in observation mode. If you like two things like this. When I came out, I won't say I rebelled against the army, but I didn't want to be in an establishment anymore or like the prison service or the fire service or whatever.

I just wanted to kind of be free and do what I wanted to do. And I'd recently just got together with somebody at the time and so I kind of wanted to come out and start enjoying that life and see what that life was all about. We ended up being together for 17 years, actually. We then got engaged and got a house, got married and did all the white picket fence stuff as you would normally do. But I kind of never really had any aspirations. I was this different person to where I was in the army. Didn't have the dreams or the goals. I was just kind of like living well.

We're supposed to get engaged, aren't we? Or we're supposed to get married, aren't we? Or let's get a house now. And this is the order we do it and let's do that. And you'd save up for twelve months and go on that holiday that you'd booked twelve months earlier and that kind of stuff. Pretty normal. So, yeah, nothing really groundbreaking in that sense. So just pretty average life, if I'm honest, Jo, at that time.

I tend to refer to that as the conveyor belt of responsibility and expectations because you just get into this zone of conformity of doing what you do. You pick up responsibilities, partner, wife, house, children, job. And suddenly you find your life is very procedural, isn't it? You have a routine, you have to just get up and do stuff. And sometimes, as you say, that kind of masks sometimes what's going on underneath or the miscommunication or the happiness or lack of happiness or whatever it may be. You just kind of do what you do and it sounds like you've picked up those responsibilities. Absolutely.

And you know what I think part and parcel of it was that in the army, how can I say it, that it's really easy to understand. Everything's done for you, it's done for you. The decisions are made for you. You've just got to do. You just got to do it. And that's what I did. So I came out and, hey, I've got to make my own choices, but I kind of like made the choices based on what society and peers told you or the social expectations were. This is what we're supposed to do, right? My family is great and I love my family, but never pushed into anything to be great or have these big dreams or whatever.

So I just fell into that normality of life, if you like, and just plodding away. And it really was just plodding away. I had a painting decorating business and I would be happy just earning 90 quid a day just painting an old lady's bathroom or something today. I kind of, like, laugh at that. I don't know, in a way that, wow, I won't even do that today, right. Because of my learnings. But that's who I was. But I knew there was something more.

I knew there was something more, but I couldn't pinpoint it. And what I meant by that is from me. I knew there's something more to come from me.

Yeah. I'm just thinking, as you're saying, that in the army, you don't drive the tank every day. There are days when you'll be cleaning the toilets, there'd be days when you're shovelling snow, days when you're picking up stuff off an air, off an air Runway, air for Runway. There'd be days when you're doing all these other things. In a way, you get so ingrained into doing whatever the task is you're assigned without questioning it or expecting different. That's what it is. You say you paid for a decorating job. Mine probably said to you, this is what I do, I've got to get on with it.

And you don't question it, because the army, the services institutionalise you and your choices are limited as to what you want for dinner. You've got a choice of three main courses, and that's probably the biggest choice you have in the day.

Yeah, absolutely. And you're right, you are funnelled down this. You either do that, that or that, and you do it. But I think when it came to making my own choices, and it's like I was just clodding away with the decorating business and sometimes not even working for weeks. I didn't know how to do marketing. I didn't know any of. There were no social media back then and whatever it was on referral from word of mouth and things. Right.

But I wasn't even good at that. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fantastic painter decorator, by the way, but just. You might have the best business in the world, but if you shop windows down, nobody will see what you're selling. Right? Nobody could see what I was selling because I wasn't putting myself out there, because I didn't know how to. And did I want to, really? Did I just want the norm. Did I want the comfortable? Because I'd been in this establishment for five years, flying around the world and doing this kind of stuff, right? But I soon got very bored of it and kind of knew there was something kind of like just more to happen. But the big question mark was, was what was that? What was.

See, you'd lost the army mother, you'd lost your brother, mates where you lived and did everything together. And you had a similar humour banter and everything else going on, and the rigidity of you, like, all the conformity of doing kind of a framework of what you're told. And now you're there trying to figure your life out with choices that you hadn't necessarily been brought up to understand because you left school at 16 and you don't have a lot of free will at 16 either, do you? You're kind of living with your parents and again, you're fitting into school, whatever it is. So there you are, early 20s, not knowing how to make decisions for yourself, and no one's coaching or mentoring you. You're now going, Jason, go figure.

And I didn't. Go figure.

Yeah.

Like I said, I was still in this relationship where I was about to come out of the army. So I was serving my last year in the army where we kind of, like, just decided to get together. So as soon as we came out, I had the excitement of wanting to be in a relationship then. And that's all I wanted to put my. That was my biggest dream and goal, was to build a relationship and be in that. But over time, like I said, we were in this relationship 17 years and it kind of probably due to me, became stagnant because I felt there was more to come, or I wanted more, rather, from what was happening or how the relationship. It wasn't all about the relationship, by the way. There's a lot more going on, but more just from life, because I would see and I would watch these programmes like Dragons Den or watch these exclusive holiday programmes and think, I want to do that.

Not go on Dragons den particularly, but seeing people making money and having dreams and hearing the word dream and goal. And I used to love and I put myself into that while I was watching the programme. But then instantly you're back into reality and this stuff doesn't happen to me. So, Jace, get back into your painting world or get back into your life. And that's what I accepted.

So you say you were in a relationship for 17 years. That's 17 years effectively after you left the army. So you've been doing this kind of painting and decorating, bumbling along for a good period of time. So obviously things started turning darker at that point. So what things were going wrong? What's the first signs of it?

That's a question that I always get asked, and I can never put a date in the diary to it or to what exactly kicked it off. And it was one of those we highlighted earlier in the conversation, is that these things start to creep up on you, but if you're not aware of them in mind, I think it was because I was starting to feel there was more to life, there was more to experience out there, but didn't know how to do it. And I was starting to feel a lot of resentment for my life, although. And some people listening to this could go, well, look at what you've just done in the army, right? I mean, this kid driving a tank at 18 and flying to Venezuela, and now you've got resentment for your life. Well, not for that part of my life, but for the part of my life I was in now. I was starting to resent it and taught me really starting to get anxious. And it was the anxiety that was starting to creep in first. The anxiety was because I kept saying to myself, when I was watching these programmes like the Dragons Den or these exclusive programmes about going on exclusive holidays and things I really wanted to do, and I stopped watching that stuff because it started to get me down, because I knew people like me don't have this kind of stuff, right.

And so the anxiety, I think, would be the first thing that started to kick this off. And you know what happens, Jo, when you're not in control of your mind, or rather when you can't control your thoughts, the anxiety takes over. And it did. It skyrocketed. The anxiety started to kick in.

So did you have feelings of not being good enough or feelings of inadequacy or feelings of not lost about where you go next?

It was all that kind of, in a nutshell, absolutely. Was that I actually sat down with my head in my hands. The house was empty. I imagined myself at that time. I was 30 something, mid thirty s. My daughter was coming up to five year old. She's 18 now. Beautiful relationship that we have.

And she was coming up to five at that time. And as I said, I was starting to resent my life, where it was. I didn't want to be as well in the relationship anymore that I was in, because I felt trapped in it. And I started to picture myself, what would this be like now? Once my daughter's left home in 20 years time, am I still going to be here in this same scenario, 20 years time, when it's too late? And that kicked off my anxiety and it went through the roof because I saw myself. We talk about visualisations and manifestations and things that we create, what we put in our mind, right? And I was creating this scary vision of the future of me sitting there, this loner, sad, not loner as such, but still in the same dull, boring, resentment relationship. And I think that is what started to. That was the tipping point, I think. So.

Presumably, at that time, your relationship was at a point where both of you were not happy. There was tension breakdown, lots of probably arguments and shouting and not being happy with each other and no safe space, no one to comfort, no one to sort of pour your heart out to, no one to say, look, I need help. So again, you're being stoic and manly and kind of holding it all in, not having a solution of where to go next. That's with the anxiety and not knowing how to fix this problem.

Yeah, it exactly was that. Because life is really about having the coping strategies to deal with things when they happen, right? And although technically we all do have the coping strategies, but we're just not aware that we have them. And that's why it's great when we can reach out to people who have been through this stuff, right, that can show you this. I absolutely think that if I didn't walk away from that relationship, I'd still be in it today, that my wife would still accept the status quo, still go on as we were, just because of the fear of not knowing what else is out there and having the faith. But things started to talk to me. I don't want to sound all woo woo and all weird, but things started to talk to me. I'm talking about my feelings, my intuition. Although at that point, and by the way, I am on the spiritual side, but at that point, I didn't know what I wouldn't have related to it as been spirit.

Spirit guides or universal energies or something.

Right.

I just knew my feelings were coming through and it got to this overwhelming feeling of, that's it. I made the decision, I don't want to be in it anymore. I don't want to be in this relationship anymore. But it was at that point as well where I'd also started to build up the depression. Obviously, it's the anxiety, the depression. I was living with fear in my life as well. The fear of staying as is the fear of what's next, or I'm just going to go to the end of my life and this is it, right? So they were all escalating and escalating and getting to such a point where just one evening in the little home office that I had, I took up the courage and walked into the bedroom and told my wife that I don't want to be in this relationship anymore. Bang.

The volcano erupted immediately. That's it. Life changed from that moment.

So that was devastating for her at that point, was it?

Absolutely it was. Because I don't think she saw it coming. She knew we had the argument, she knew. She knew there was something a bit unsettling about me. Didn't even anticipate this coming. But as soon as that happened, that was it. I mean, she didn't waste time. She up and left and took my daughter with me.

So on top of the fear, the anxiety, the depression, she took my daughter away to her mother's, to her grandma's. So I had to live with the fear also of the unknowing of when or if I would ever see my daughter again. Because it was in that time of where. Mother's rules. Mother's rules. You do what I say because I'm her mother type of thing, right? Which, by the way, I can talk to people about this type of stuff because I went through all that procedure, through mediation and stuff, because she did threaten me with not seeing my daughter and stuff behind the scenes quietly worked all out and that never happened. I did see my daughter quite a lot, but if you imagine back then, if you don't know the situation, it's a scary time that I wouldn't ever see my daughter again. And she was the love of my life, so that really was the end for me.

So you're now living on your own. So you left school, joined the army, had your mother, had your mates with somebody virtually all the time. You get married virtually as soon as you leave the army, you're living with somebody for 17 years. You've probably not spent a lot of time on your own, living on your own without someone around you that you can call on. So you've got no real support network at this point. You've got poor mental health, you've got relationship breakdown, you got threatening access to your daughter. All those problems with solicitors and negotiation, that's a really tough gig, isn't it?

It is a tough gig, and that's not even the half of it, because during this build up towards the decision to not want to be in the relationship, I was starting to get careless and in a sense, I've already hinted to the fact that the business was going nowhere. And so to subsidise that, I was borrowing off credit cards and as you do, not to buy tvs or fancy holidays, but just to live, and then you get to the end of that credit card and then get another one and then transfer the balance and to the point where I had five or six of these and I think the debt got between 25 to 30,000 pound. So I had that now hanging above me. We then hit the housing crash that we got, so we had a house repossession also, phone cut off, car taken away, everything. So it kind of all just came. Kind of all just came. And that's when life came crashing down.

I heard you tell this story at an event a couple of weeks ago. Do you want to just walk me and the listeners through what happened next?

Yeah. So at that point I was running a small little business networking event. And it's something I always feel I love doing. I love being a people person and being around person people and connecting people, and I was connecting people in business, but not really getting myself in a business. So it wasn't really helping my situation. And I'd come back this one evening, I was living on my own now. My wife at the time had taken my daughter out and this was about a month on from this happening, and I'd come back. It was the 30 December in 2010, so just before the hurrah party season, right, New Year's Eve.

And I got off the bus and I looked at what I just saw, this icy house on the hill. You know, the image from Psycho, that 60s film psycho, and it almost had that vision of it. It didn't have any life to it anymore, that once had of family birthdays and my daughter in there being born and stuff. And I dreaded going back in and the anxiety walking up the garden path and I just closed the door behind me and I fell to the floor like somebody just dropped a sack of potatoes. And I instantly just started crying like Niagara Falls. And the house was so cold because of course I had no money and we were on an electric metre and I couldn't afford to put any, even a fibre on or anything. So the house was cold and I just dropped in the phone, felt the instant cold on the tiles and washed with tears. And all I wanted in those first few moments were to hear my daughter's loving words and feel her arms around me.

And I knew that wasn't going to happen. And I just said out loud, because I had these three companions that stayed with me for a while and that was fear, depression, anxiety, right. These people that. Not people, these companions that come knocking at your head at 03:00 in the morning, wake you up and then you go back to sleep and then you wake up and they're there. The companions are constantly there. And these companions just instantly said to me in unison, just do it. And I kind of, like, stopped crying just for a second, just looked around, because there's no other voices there. There's no other people in the room, these voices that just told me to just do it.

And I walked into the kitchen with a bottle of whiskey and tablets. I just said goodbye to my daughter and I took the tablets, went into the lounge, laid on the sofa with my favourite picture of her on my chest and said, I'm so sorry, darling. I love you so much. Brad let you down. And I just said goodbye and waited to die. Obviously, I didn't right now, but that was basically it. I checked out. I checked out on life.

What saved you then? What saved you?

I can honestly say right now, when I say my team, if people see me on stage doing this, I'll say my team. And I point up basically my spirit team, right? What saved me. But on that night, I wasn't aware of that. But on that night, I didn't have a spirit team because I wasn't open, I wasn't awake, I wasn't whatever then, to all this, but what has actually saved me, if we want to go into the 3d world of this, what saved me was that when I taken the tablets and the whiskey, I heard another voice. And that voice was almost like sergeant major. Like, it was firm, but it was one I could trust. And that voice just said, call the ambulance as soon as I taken the tablets and the whiskey. And I waited five minutes because I was pondering this voice, but I did.

So I turned the whiskey, I turned the tablets, heard the voice, called the ambulance, and I called the ambulance. Now, my phone had been cut off, but obviously you can make emergency calls when you can do nine nine nine. I did all the nine nine nine call. She told me to leave the door open, but I was in that mindset of just telling her, well, it's too late, I've done it. Okay, leave your door open. Leave your door open. We'll be there. Ambulance is now on its way and whatever.

So I hung up from that call as I walked in and said goodbye to my daughter and laid there with a picture on my chest and closed my eyes, waited to die. But then I cannot put a time on how long it was or how short the time was, but almost opened my eyes very like, just as you peek through, you know, when you first wake up in the morning and it's all blurry, and I saw this fluorescent thing just coming towards me, and I thought, am I dead? Is this what angels wear in heaven? I mean, do they wear fluorescent jackets in heaven? And it was a paramedic, the one that comes on the bike or the car first. And in his true Yorkshire accent, he just said, hey, have you been having a bit of trouble over Christmas? And that instantly woke me up. And I'm like, wow, it didn't make me better, but, whoa, what is going on? But to cut all the other finer bits out, I got taken into hospital, did all the tests and laid there and feeling sorry for myself afterwards. And it was about 03:00 in the morning. And my third and last set of voices that I heard was, you are here to help others, and we are here to help you. And it was at that point from hearing that when I made the decision, and it was the decision I made to change my life.

And what was the first step on that journey to change?

I didn't actually know at that point, because the only thing I was sure about was that I didn't want to die. The other thing I was sure about was my life needed to change.

Old house at Christmas time, no phone, no money debt, repossessions or whatever it was. So you're not in an ideal place to change, are you? I mean, okay, you're at the bottom. The only way is up, as they say. But somehow you need some resources to help you do that, don't you?

Yeah, absolutely. And this is why I know I've got the team behind me now, the spirit team, if you like. I just knew I had to change my life. So I woke up in the morning having only a few hours sleep. Nobody knew at this point I was in hospital or done what I did. The nurse came in and I said, can I call my parents? My parents come in, of course. They were so upset about it. They called one of my friends and they came and said.

And they looked after me over the new year period, took me out to the cinema. He then brought one of his friends, who I'd never known, who kind of twigged what was happening, because in the cinema, I was throwing up all the time. So I was leaving the film and going to the toilet and throwing up all the time. And then at the end of the film, while we just sat and stood in the foyer area, she then said to me, I think you could benefit from meditation. Now you're talking to a very, like I said, stoic sort of person who's been in the arm and it doesn't listen. I wanted to change my life and I wanted to change my life however it changed. So here's me going, I'm in whatever it is. And it sounded good to me at that point, right? It sounded good because whatever's taken me to the point at that point there in my life hadn't worked.

So I was open to it changing. And that last voice where said, we are here to help you and you are here to help others. Give me a sense of peacefulness, a sense of calm, a sense of reassurance that I've been looked after, that I wasn't meant to cheque out. And I can honestly say now, going back from now to then, I was meant to go down to my dark place. I was meant to take those tablets and feel the pain that I went through so I can relive this story to others and give them the teachings. So I just went with this and did all the meditation. And do you know what? The first session I went to, I loved it. I loved it because it was so different.

The smell of the nice sticks in there, them smelly sticks, and the calmness, the chiming of the bells and the calm. Boys, I've not experienced this before. And then one thing leads on to another. Somebody in that group then says, hey, we're going here, and would you like to do that? So what's actually happening is, which is one thing I teach is I was starting to purge my life. I was starting to purge the old person. I was. I was stepping out of that person into a new life and purging away from the toxicity and the negativity and the people and things that no longer served me and stepping into a new life. And I was enjoying what I was seeing.

So I went on a journey. And that journey was one of personal growth, development and education.

So how many years ago was this newfound purpose? Was that five, six years ago? A bit further.

All of the recovery started in 2011, the January of 2011. Moving forward, I found my passion for life again, but found my purpose for what I'm doing now. I would say only around five years ago, because you cannot put a date in the diary as to when you're going to be healed or when you're going to get it right. So you've just got to be open to the developments, the learnings, the growth. When people say, I've not found my passion or my purpose yet, I say, you don't need to. Your purpose will find you, right? Your purpose will find you. You don't need to do any of that work. It'll find you when you've done the healing, you know, the student will find the teacher, and the teacher will be there for the student, that kind of situation.

And that's what I did. And so I found my passion for life again, but then found my purpose around five years or so ago.

Yeah, it's quite common. It certainly happened to me that I was hunting around for a long while, trying to find my passion, my purpose. And as you say, you just got to be open to the idea and joy will find you. Somehow you suddenly realise that this opportunity occurs and you go, wow, I never knew this was here. And now it's me that you walk into that. I think it's being open to that joy, isn't it? Open to that joyful.

You're so right, Jo, because I think the problem is we're not awake, right? And what I mean by being awake is that we're so hooked into the busyness of life and our minds are so busy that there's no room to allow anything else in. It's like that filing cabinet. When you're trying to push that last letter in, it's sticking out the drawer. You got to clear the crap out to allow something else in. And so that's why we've got to purge our life, to clear space into our mind, to allow the new stuff to come in and be open to change. So that stuff, what I call stuff, that stuff is already in your life, but we just can't see it because we're closed off to it. But it's already there.

Yeah, I talked about it earlier and we discussed it. This burden of responsibility and expectation. You're carrying all this baggage with you, and it's really hard to drop one bag off and make a difference. I found that I had to drop every bag off, as you say, purge and build again, rather than try and cut back. Because if you try and cut back, you never cut deep enough. You never really solve the fundamental problems because you got all these little safety nets you hang on to, which don't allow you to fully change. I think what you're saying there, the purge, they're getting right down to your naked soul, effectively, to allow you to rebuild, because everything else is just chipping at the edges and makes no fundamental change.

It really is about that and stripping, if you like, being bare naked back to zero, starting over again. And it's kind of scary at the beginning, right? It really is. And it's easy, as people say, it's easy for you. Well, no, it isn't. Right. But it is a mindset shift. It's about the mindset, right. If you remember when I talked about I decided to change my life, Brad didn't know how.

But you've got to set the intention of deciding to do something and then just commit to it. But not being so hooked on the how. It's nothing to do with you. The how. What is to do with you is making the decision but taking intuitive actions. It's like the Taoists call it, the Wu way. The Wu way of life flowing with what is happening with you. Not creating actions and doing them because you think you must do them.

But it's going with the flow of what the universe is giving you. What is life giving you? Okay, what does this mean then? Not saying, why me? But what does this mean? How can I deal with it? Yeah, shit, that hurts. But how can I deal with this? And just going with life and flowing with it and taking action steps. I talk about a process, which is the dart process dart. And that is ultimately making the decision for the D, taking the action steps, being relentless and then trusting. There's a hell of a lot we can talk about within those four bullet points, but it really is that process that we have to do. Make the decision, take action, be relentless and trust.

Yeah, I get that completely. And I think you need to open your mind for that kind of mindship change because you can, if you're not careful, not let go completely. And that's kind of the thing. You got to have that faith. I've done some things in my life where the only way forward was forward. There is no back, is staying where you are is painful. So if. If it's painful, staying where you are and painful going forward, but beyond forward is a place of calm.

You have to go through that pain zone in order to get there. But knowing if you stand still, the pain never goes. That's the thing. I think I also realised I wasn't at nothing. I was actually at minus nothing because I had all of this responsibility, debt and other things pulling me back. And so when you purge stuff, you purge other things that are negative anyway. So actually, when you come out of this, you go from being minus thousands to zero. So you're actually, thousands abound better off because you're not carrying the baggage anymore.

And I found that very cathartic and empowering because I wasn't carrying burdens of debt, burdens of responsibility, burdens of things and stuff. And responsibility. I was able to do a rebirth.

Yeah, exactly. And you know what I can and do talk about the dark night of the soul and that's bit of what it is. It's a rebirth, it's an awakening and whatever. But one of the toughest things is letting go of people and situations. And we talked about superpower right at the very beginning. But I've got this innate superpower just to let go of people. Anybody that doesn't resonate with my energy or my vibration or I think it's toxic or is going to pull me back. It's like you're not in my life.

It's like I don't need that if it's not going to take me forward to where I want to go. But it's a journey. But you've first got to start by making the decision to whatever, everything in life. And I can challenge anybody listening to this podcast or any talk that will anybody listening to my talks. Everything we do in life, everything always starts with a decision. Everything, right? But everything's always started in the mind first. It gets created in the mind first. So if we can create that vision and hook in to the big y in our mind, then we can bring it into reality because we can very easily create negative situations, right? We've created those in our mind.

So why not flip that into empowering thoughts and say, well, wow, what would this look like? What if, what if I did achieve my goals and dreams? What if I did really make it? What would that look like? And flip that into our mind. So start the thought in our mind and then it will retrain our brain.

Yeah. Visualisation, destination, planning, painting a picture. What does fantastic look like, what does awesome look like and what are the steps to achieve that? A very standard coaching model, isn't it? How do we get from a five to a ten? What do I have to do to be a six little step? Isn't it here and there? And it's a momentum and a direction.

So, yeah, I get that it is the two most powerful words in the english dictionary for me are the words I am. Because whatever sentence we add at the end of I am is what we'll embody and what we will become. Right? So if I am always in debt or I am always attracting these relationships. Well, flip that around and say, well, put all the positives after that. No, your life will not change instantly overnight just because you're doing this. But bit by bit, you'll start to retrain the neural pathways in your brain and it'll start bringing into your reality. It really does work. This is the science, not the woo woo.

This does work.

Yeah. And I'm a great believer in I am. It's kind of a mantra I've had for a long time. Where I am helped me understand my own life and what was going on with me and trying to understand it. Sometimes you could search too much for the why. And what I learned was there was no answer, there was no equation, there was no fixing, there's no nothing. Once you say, I am, full stop, it doesn't have to say anything more than that. Just, I am.

I don't need to explain that. Once you can say I am, and then you can add other words like, I'm good enough, or I can be successful. I am this and I am that, and I think that's the empowerment. But I think when you try and search for meaning where there isn't meaning, you just go, I am. I can stop searching now. I can get on with life. And I think that's what got me out of a dark place was literally just that affirmation and being me and not having to question it. So I completely resonate what you're saying there.

It's letting go, believing truly that the next step is better than where you are today and that it can get better. Then you have power and you can take your own responsibility for how you develop your life from that point forward. And not everybody has the luxury or privilege of a reboot to start again. It's immensely empowering, and it sounds like you've had an immensely empowering experience by a life reboot where you find new purpose.

Absolutely. I am really feeling privileged to be in a position that I am now to have gone through what I went through, to be able to be able to talk about my story to people that are going through it right now. And I can pass on my learnings because our wounds are somebody else's healing. Right? So we can pass on our stories to help those people and also the wisdom and the coping strategies, because that's what we need. Right. We need the tools. So we pass on our tools to people.

Yeah. So, Jason, it's been a fascinating. We chat for over an hour, and I could carry on talking. I've got so many more questions, but I'll let our listeners connect with you and have a conversation with you directly. So how can people get hold of you? What's your passion? What do you do now? How can you help people? So what's your website? What's your LinkedIn?

So as many people's websites are, they're always upgrading. So mine's on there. So if you go on there, you might go on a week after, it'll be changed again. So my website's Jasonarcdale. Co. Uk. You can find me on Facebook as well as Jason Archdale. I'm on Instagram as Jason Archdale.

I'm on LinkedIn. Also on there, I'm sharing my Lego post of inspiration motivation. And I'm also a member and regional president of the professional speaking association for the Yorkshire region as well, which has been a fantastic turbo ride this year. Stage to tell my yep, so that's me. That's where you can find me. And happy to connect and talk to anybody, as you can tell.

So for anyone listening, that was Jason Artsdale. From battlefield to wellness. What a story. What a story. One moment he's driving over beetles in his tank, and the next minute he's struggling. But now he's out of it and he's found the light. As I say, his superpower is knowing you don't have to be okay. And there is a light.

So thank you, Jason. Absolutely fantastic. And a huge thank you to you, the listener, for staying to the end, for tuning in. If you're not already, please subscribe. Please keep updated on future episodes of the Inclusion Bytes podcast. That's B-I-T-E-S. Share the love, tell your friends, tell your colleagues. I've got a number of other exciting guests lined up over next few weeks and months.

This is episode 104, and I plan to keep this going for as long as I can. As long as I can. So if you'd like to be a guest, if you've heard some inspiration, listen to some of the back episodes. You'd like to be a guest, then please email me, jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. Finally, my name is Joanne Lockwood and it's been an absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today. Catch you next time. Bye.