Martin Stapleton: Cheerfulness in the Face of Adversity | Royal Marine Commando & MMA World Champion

What happens when you stop trying to avoid adversity and start seeing it as part of the deal?

Former Royal Marine Commando, MMA world champion and elite performance coach Martin “Stapes” Stapleton returns to On a Mission, and as always, no subject is off limits.

Stapes has spent most of his adult life operating outside his comfort zone. From war zones and professional fighting to business, coaching and starting again, his life has taught him a lot about what we’re capable of when things don’t go to plan.

You don’t really discover what you’re made of when everything is going well. More often than not, you find out when it isn’t.

We live in a world where we’re constantly trying to make life easier. We avoid discomfort, fear failure and increasingly try to protect ourselves and our children from the very experiences that often teach us the most.

Stapes sees things differently.

We talk about the difference between surviving and thriving, why your identity can’t be built around what you own or achieve, what happens when you become addicted to chasing the next goal and why being willing to start again is something we should never be afraid of.

We also get into masculinity, mental health, politics, censorship, the media and Stapes’ belief that there comes a point where empathy can stop helping people move forward and start reinforcing the idea that they can’t.

There’s a lot in this one, but so much of it comes back to one thing.

Life is going to test every single one of us at some point.

We can’t always control what happens.

We can control what we do next.