Journey to Resilience: Learning from Life’s Lessons – How Life’s Hardest Moments Build Our Strongest Selves

Self Development #14 - Why We Need Adversity to Truly Grow – and What it Means to Step into Fear

Nov 08, 2024

In 1984, at just 16 years old…

I found myself hanging off a cliff, with only a thin rope and sheer determination keeping me from a drop that could’ve ended everything.

I’d fought hard to be there, a young military cadet finally accepted onto the Joint Services Mountain Training Course (JSMTC), ready to prove myself. But all my confidence vanished as something went dramatically wrong.

That day, my life changed.

For the first time, I felt the full force of my own vulnerability, my heart racing with the fear of a hard lesson: resilience isn’t made in comfort, and courage isn’t born without risk.

This cliff’s edge was but one of many tests of strength and grit I’d face in the years before and after, each shaping my understanding of resilience.

So why am I sharing this now?

Because in a world that celebrates instant rewards and softens the edges of life’s challenges, we risk losing something vital. Without real, raw experiences, we miss out on the kind of growth that only adversity can provide. And as we strive to shield our children from hardship, we may be robbing them of the strength that only stepping into fear can cultivate.

This first chapter of my book is but the beginning of a much larger story - an 80,000-word journey nearly complete - and I want to bring you along as I finish it. Should I release these chapters as episodes on Substack, revealing each hard-won lesson piece by piece, or take this journey to traditional publishing?

Read on and if you enjoy it, leave a comment at the end.

Share your insights, your questions, and even your own stories of resilience.

So join me on this edge, and experience what it’s like to stand in the heart of the unknown. This is where my journey begins.

Let’s discover together what true resilience really takes.

The Mountains 1984: The Edge of Everything

The world flipped. My vision spun with it as the back of my helmet slammed into the cliff. I was momentarily stunned. The snaking rope bit hard into the back of my neck, a cruel reminder of the gravity-defying situation I found myself in after slipping during my first ever abseil.

Suspended in air, my world was upside down - legs pointing skywards after failing to keep them locked as I reversed over the overhang. I craned my neck, or tried to - upward, no downward - until a chilling view met my eyes. Several hundred feet below, the foot of the cliff was a jumble of rocks, the worn remnants of time's relentless erosion.

If I fell, I’d join that silent, scattered debris.

I screamed for help, the sound ripping from my throat in a raw, primal bellow that echoed off the cliff walls. The terror consumed me whole, my voice a testament to the direness of my predicament.

Just a year prior, whilst working as a 15-year-old on what was euphemistically known as the “black economy,” I had witnessed the tragic deaths of Irish racer Norman Brown and Swiss rider Peter Huber at the 1983 British Motorcycle Grand Prix at Silverstone. I’d been less than 30 feet away when they collided, one slamming into a wall of sleepers, the other flying through the air, his helmet tearing off as he landed face-first on that rain-slicked track. It was instantly, graphically clear there would be no survival.

The horror of that day - the suddenness with which life can be snuffed out - hit me with full force, and the memory pulsed through me as cold sweat ran down my spine, each drop a reminder of the precariousness of my position. Panic surged, tightening every nerve. This memory haunted me, even as I clung desperately to the thin rope that held me above the cliff’s edge.

‘I'm going to die,’ I thought, my mind a tempest of fear and disbelief.

The rope, my only lifeline in this treacherous descent, pressed sharply into my aching hands, its synthetic fibres offering little comfort against the pull of gravity. Every tug and twist of the nylon etched the intensity of the ordeal into my skin.

Peering up - or was it down - I saw my Colour Sergeant's face appear over the cliff edge. His voice, steady and strong with his south London accent, cut through the chaos in my head, 'Keep calm, son.'

Then, with a swift, unannounced kick to my boots, he righted my world, swinging my legs downwards and me upright.

Relief flickered, but vanished as the rope crushed against my windpipe, cutting off my air.

My vision darkened as I struggled to stay conscious.

My hands, aching and bloodied, fought to keep me tethered to life.

Suddenly a sharp burst of pain tore through my back as I was yanked upwards and scraped over the cliff's edge, my sergeant’s grip and my entire patrol's effort hauling me back. He freed the rope from my neck, his gruff voice cutting through my panic with a steady, unyielding tone:

‘Take a minute’.

He pulled me back up to my shaking feet, stared into my eyes, fixed wide open in fear, spinning me around and rewrapping the rope around my body.

This was the traditional Swiss style of abseiling, a method demanding your complete engagement and precision - no safety harness.

I was in such a state, I didn’t realise what was coming next!

‘The only thing for it is to go again, or you'll never go’, he declared firmly. ‘Keep your legs straight this time and walk backwards...go now.’

I heard the words but they failed to register - I looked at him blankly, standing rooted to the spot.

He patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘You have to get straight back on the horse lad, go now’.

'Are you kidding me!' I thought, ‘I’m dead for sure'.

The doubled up rope was threaded between my legs, around my right thigh, up and over my shoulder and down my back, before being placed into my bleeding right hand.

I held it low, clasping the rope too tightly, and cramp began to bite.

With a horrifying sense of déjà vu washing over me, I once again stepped backward towards the overhang and into the abyss.

My heart was pounding against my chest, a frenetic drumbeat of life, as I grappled with the surreal nature of my predicament.

I felt a blind funk but incredibly, was more scared of appearing weak in front of my sergeant and my patrol. Amidst the adrenaline and fear coursing through me, my mind raced, a torrent of disbelief and silent curses.

‘How the hell did I end up here?' echoed in my thoughts, a question that seemed both surreal and oddly pointless as I dangled precariously.

It was absurd, it was terrifying, and yet here I was, hanging by a thread over the edge of everything.

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