Uh, what did that sign say, and, and what do you take away from that lesson?

So, so this is prominently displayed at the entrance to the, the Land Command Battle School Battle Wing Tully, this, this, uh, jungle training, uh, establishment, so it's the first thing you see when you walk in.

It says that, "The oath to serve your country did not include a contract for normal luxury and comforts enjoyed within our society.

On the contrary, it implied hardships, loyalty, and devotion to duty regardless of your rank.

This battle school is here to remind you of that oath." And remind you it did.

[laughs] It was, um, it's a, a, a wonderful experience And to your point, I, I look back on that fondly precisely because it was difficult.

But it was something that I, I think was quite purposeful.

How does picking up other people's dog poo make you happier?

purpose what does that mean for our kids how do they generate it how can we facilitate it but before that let's talk happiness and resilience Is it an output or an input, this happiness? Are you happy because you're resilient or are

you resilient because you're happy? I really love this question.

It was something that I guess was at the heart of why I wanted to write this book.

My view is that you can't be happy without being resilient.

I think resilience is absolutely a sine qua non to happiness.

You need to be resilient.

to deal with all this crap and all these stressors and all the stuff that goes on in your life, in our beautiful, very challenging lives.

Maybe that's a good framing question, framing sort of moment for how do you build pleasure purpose in our kids if these statistics are true? How can we enable kids to realise this concept of happiness? I think a

Mm.

You know, I have to do the ironing.

Yeah, that sucks, but hey, hang on, I am in a position where [laughs] I'm physically capable of doing that.

I can put clothes on my back.

I can afford electricity.

I have electricity.

I mean, all of these sorts of things are actually on a global scale really cool.

[laughs]

How does happiness work?

This is an excellent question, and my goodness, Kate, if I could answer that perfectly, I reckon I'd sell a lot more books.

But what I've tried to do is, um, I think the official word is plagiarize, maybe aggregate or borrow from some of, uh, humankind's greatest thinkers over the last couple of thousand years.

And, and I reckon there's a few things that we can draw from that.

Um, first up, there's a number of philosophical takes that provide real insight into how happiness works, and one of the biggest ones is the recognition that real happiness, long-term happiness, is probably, uh, sort of linked to having some kind of challenge or meaningful struggle.

And the, the Greeks called this eudaimonia.

It doesn't translate perfectly, but the word kind of means thriving or flourishing, that that real long-term happiness comes when we've got the pursuit of something difficult.

Do you have to confront the idea of your own mortality to be happy? [laughs]

What would you say is the most proud moment or your experience of your Army career? Or significant?

Yeah, that's a really good question.

At an individual level, it was certainly sort of getting into the SAS and sort of, I mentioned those steps before, but finishing and being successful on the selection course, that was a real... kind of pinnacle moments.

And again, one of these things that I'd worked for for a long time, coming from a basis where I wasn't particularly fit or sporty and sort of building up these really slow incremental steps and stairs, you know, to get to a position where I could attempt that course.

That was...

Pardon me, at an individual level, a very proud moment.

But certainly from a professional level, the two years I spent as commanding officer, it was not the most fun job I'd had in the military.

Do you want to tell us about, obviously, the decision to transition out to civilian work?