Experiences Create an Outlook – Interview with Mark Ormrod

In this episode, Christina speaks in-depth with Mark Ormrod. Christina first came across Mark in a Clubhouse room when he was talking about mindset, she found herself believing in and agreeing with a lot of what he was saying. Christina then got into contact with him and asked if he would come onto the Christina Talks podcast to share his story and why he has the attitude and mindset he does.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

When Mark was 15 and coming to the end of compulsory education he realised he needed to make some choices. He had some friends that were older than him who were already in the military, so he decided to sign up to the Royal Marines.

Mark has no qualms about saying how difficult that first year was, both physically and mentally and whilst Mark recognised he wasn’t the fittest out of his fellow soldiers, he realised he had an incredibly strong mindset. He was resilient in the way others weren’t.

At 19, Mark was deployed to Iraq. He was trained and prepped for this but it felt quite anti-climactic. He was then given an opportunity to leave the marines and he decided to do so, partly due to the birth of his daughter and his relationship breakdown.

He moved to South Africa and retrained as a bodyguard but struggled to get work, he believes this was due to his age, he was still only 21. He took work as door security at nightclubs but found that he was in trouble a lot of the time and wasn’t doing well financially, this led him to re-join the marines.

He started training to be deployed to Afghanistan and he could already tell by the type and intensity of training this was going to be different to his previous tour.

He had been in Afghanistan for over 3 months securing an area and helping civilians with supplies as well as protecting them. On Christmas eve his section were sent on a foot patrol, they had no intelligence saying it would be more dangerous than any other patrols they had previously been on, it was just routine. Five hours in they were about to finish the patrol when Mark lent on and detonated a hidden explosive device. He had split seconds to make a decision and in his mind he thought he was being attacked, in his mind he knew he needed to turn around, after attempting to move several times he realised that his body wasn’t moving. As the dust cloud disappeared around him he discovered that his legs had separated from the rest of his body. He started assessing his other injuries and just couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing.

His unit managed to get him back to camp but he then blacked out. He was put onto a helicopter and they thought he was dead. Incredibly a few moments later a medic realised he was in fact alive and they tried a new technique to get fluids into him. This saved his life.

Mark has an incredible outlook on life since he became disabled. He believes we should all be grateful for what we do have rather than focusing on what we don’t, there is always someone who has it better than you and there is also always someone who has it worse. But, it’s also important to remember that it was a journey for Mark to get to this mindset. He has had some very dark times since he sustained his injuries.