Transcriber: NN Song Reviewer: Yanyan Hong
So here we are, brimming with ideas, inspired by new ones.
Each of us, I'm sure, making resolutions determined to try something new
or perhaps approach life a little differently.
I feel it's a little bit like New Year's Eve when we do something quite similar.
We jump out of bed on the first day of the year,
ready to start that novel or give up junk food,
or maybe even run five kilometres a day.
But then before we know it, it's the 17th of January,
which is apparently how long
the average New Year's resolution lasts before we lose momentum.
Run out of steam or just simply give up.
And as the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
And it's amazing just how many get lost along the way.
And before you think that I'm going to stand here
and preach to you about how every good idea that I've ever had has transformed
into something positive? Well, here's a few that certainly didn't.
At 14, I had a very promising career ahead as a footballer.
I was very fortunate to have the opportunity,
the talent and the platform.
I'd been signed by a professional academy from a very young age.
And having resolved to do all I could to make it.
I’m pushed close to that dream.
I let myself down. I ate the wrong food. I stayed up late. I even drank alcohol.
I hung out with the wrong crowd.
And I succumb to temptation along the way.
And on my 15th birthday, when I should have been out on the training pitch.
Ready to step closer to the dream.
I was actually waking up in a jail cell in my hometown of Blackpool.
I pledged to never go back to one of those places in my life ever again.
And I'm pleased to say that I haven't been.
But for sure I have lapsed many times since then.
I think perhaps most appallingly was the way that I behaved for
the first 6 to 12 months of my teenage daughter's life.
I just left the army at the time, I was working in maritime security,
protecting international shipping. Usually abroad in far away lands.
And each time I took on another job, I promised to my partner at the time.
That it’s more time with a family. And each time that I returned home.
Normally after months of absence, I felt like I let them down again and again.
And that's not good. That's not something that I'm proud of at all.
In fact, quite the opposite.
You see, I love the idea of being at home,
but it just never transformed into action.
And as a result, it created a spiral of disappointment and disaffection.
And in the end, it completely broke the relationship.
It also sent me into a dark hole of severe anxiety and depression.
Something which I still take medication for today, if the truth be told. Okay.
I don't want this to become a public therapy session of some sort,
and I'm sure that you don't either. But hopefully you get the point.
We've all promised to go to a friend's party.
You're guaranteed a work colleague that we call them back later or maybe assured
a loved one that we'd pop in and see them.
And for whatever reason, we haven't got around to doing it.
You see, it's very easy to have a lovely idea and to make
a show of good intentions without actually ever following them through.
Especially in today's world of mobile technology and social media,
where we can very easily stand somebody up with a miserable look,
an emoji or drop a quick message in the group chat.
The works got in the way again.
So what is it? What is it that makes us commit?
What is it that pushes those resolutions past the 17th of January?
And what is it that turns a simple idea into real positive, authentic action?
Well, that's something that I've been battling with for a very long time now.
In fact, last year I battled with this idea for a 149 days,
7 hours and 32 minutes to be quite precise. Normally.
Before sunrise and usually up to a quarter of a mile out at sea.
Try my best not to be pushed backwards by the wind as
I made my way around Great Britain on a paddle board.
In the middle of a global pandemic.
Yes, as you can imagine, one thing that I'm pretty good at is social distancing.
But the thought was sparked by asking myself. What the hell am I doing here?
It was mid-December. I was off the west coast of Scotland.
It was the early hours of the morning. I was sore. I was cold. I was injured.
And I was physically and mentally exhausted.
But most importantly, I was becoming increasingly concerned that
I was going to fail on my promise. A promise to a little boy called Ibrahim.
A promise to build a school on the Horn of Africa.
But you see, the promise to Ibrahim was built on
a promise that I'd made to myself many, many years earlier.
I was serving in the Army as a soldier at the time.
I was on my second tour of duty.
I was in southern Iraq. I was 20 years old.
And it was a day like many that I'd experienced before.
I was taking my team out on a routine patrol.
And as we made our way to the city center.
In the distance, I could see
a group of children that appeared to be playing to the side of the road.
And as I got closer and closer as our vehicles made progress.
Something wasn't quite right.
You get that sort of sixth sense in a conflict environment as a soldier.
And as we approached, I thought, maybe this is an ambush.
Something just isn't right. But then as we arrived at the scene.
It was neither. They weren't plain and it wasn't an ambush.
The children were actually in great distress.
One of the children inadvertently stepped on an activated an IED,
an improvised explosive device, a roadside bomb for a more general term.
I held that child in my arms. And. It was too late.
There was nothing that I could do.
And I've replayed that scene over and over in my mind for many years.
And as I was driving back to camp that night, I said to my interpreter.
Said, What were these kids doing next to that busy road?
Why were they not school？
And he looked at me in complete disbelief, bordering on disdain.
They will never go to school, he said bluntly.
There is no school.
I felt stupid. I felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed.
And lying in bed that night with
a thousand thoughts bouncing around my head.
I realized how lucky I was.
How my council estate upbringing that is used as an excuse many times was not
a hardship in any way at all.
And as I lay in my sleeping bag that night, I made a promise.
I promised myself that one day
I would do something to help children less fortunate than me. Access education.
There. And then in that very moment,
I couldn't crystallize what it was going to be or when it was going to happen.
But I just knew that it was a promise that I would keep.
And it may have taken a while, but I never figure.
I spent over a decade in the Army before moving into security and then
the world of adventure. I've dangled off mountains. I've slept in the snow.
I've jumped out of perfectly serviceable aircrafts.
I've also been attacked by pirates. But on the flip side.
It's allowed me to travel to some of the most extraordinary places.
It's allowed me to meet the most incredible people on this planet.
It's also allowed me to embrace some of the most diverse parts of our world,
including the Horn of Africa, where I first met Little Ibrahim,
a young Somali boy who had been displaced by the conflict in his own country
and had found himself as a refugee in Djibouti.
Ibrahim. He wasn't like kids that I speak to back home these days.
They often tell me their dreams are wanting to be an influencer, a YouTuber,
a vlogger, a blogger, an Instagram model, a social media star. But not Ibrahim.
He had a big dream, but it was very simple to one day go to school.
And when he told me that in that very moment. Two things happened.
Firstly, I realised that this was my chance.
This was my opportunity to complete the circle and make good that promise.
From that traumatic night in Iraq. 15 years earlier. Secondly.
I looked Abraham in the eyes.
We shared a fist bump, and I made a promise that
I was going to build that school. And he would attend it one day.
Actually, as you can imagine, that was a third reaction as well,
which was a few hours later when I got back to my hotel room.
I looked in the mirror and I said, What the bloody hell have you signed up for?
But I was determined to succeed. I was determined to proceed. Which meant.
It meant meeting the National Minister of Education and it meant meeting
the president of the country,
two men who both gave me the very skeptical looks of people who'd heard
similar promises from the West in the past before.
And then, of course, I had a monstrous amount of funds that I needed to raise.
Not to mention the logistical maze that I'd have to embark on to distribute
and spend those funds. Which is what eventually led to my paddleboard story.
Suffice to say, after five and a half months at sea.
Learning more about resilience than
I probably did in my whole military career.
I never actually made it all the way around Great Britain. I stopped paddling.
Not because I was exhausted or because I was tired or injured or cold.
But because of Scottish COVID regulations.
Which is quite ironic for someone who just spent half a year at sea
on their own, on a paddleboard.
And initially I struggled to see the funny side. After.
With 23 kilometers to go to a new world record after already paddling for two
and a half thousand, it was difficult to accept.
I was quickly able to put it into context because this was never about me.
This was about keeping a promise.
And despite the anti-climax, the funds came pouring in.
And of course, there were twists and turns
and still many challenges to overcome.
I struggle to understand the rules and regulations of import licenses,
trade agreements, the labor challenges in country. There was corruption.
There was COVID 19. But the long and short of it is.
Is that little Ibrahim now has a skill to attend.
And I've never felt better about keeping my word.
Which brings us back to the original question, why?
Why have I kept some promises and broken others?
Why do some of our ideas flourish when others falter?
Well, my take on this mish mash of promises kept
and broken is in how we define the word promise. Because there are times.
When we approach to using the word promise,
when what we actually mean is wish.
A wish is something that we'd like to happen.
A wish we might desperately want it to happen.
But we aren't prepared to take responsibility or accountability for
a wish. We wish we'd go to the gym more. We wish we'd work harder.
We wish we'd spend more time with a loved one.
There's nothing wrong with a wish, of course.
Unless we confuse it with a promise. Because when we use the P word.
We are making a commitment.
We become accountable to ourselves and to the recipient.
Promising to enroll on the education course,
promising to take your partner out to dinner, promising to write that new book,
or promising to build a school.
We have to take full responsibility for our promises.
We have to scope them in oak to ensure they are kept
because we haven't just made them to cause a smile.
But to engender complete and utter belief in their fulfilment.
I've challenged myself. My next promise is to help students in
the UK learn more about the STEM subjects using my adventures from around
the world. I'm going to start by including young people in all my future
expeditions in some capacity, and please feel free to hold me to that. But.
How about you? I challenge all of you. To take this formula.
And resolve to turn an idea into action. By making a promise and keeping it.
Regardless of what life throws at you on the way. It’s changed my world.
Over to you. Thank you.