Nick has over 12 years of military experience, including 4 years as an Australian Commando and 6 years as an SAS operator. His operational service included deployments throughout the Middle East and Southeast Asia, including Iraq and East Timor.

Since leaving the Army, Nick has established two companies as a founding Director, The Mill Gym and Omni GeoX; as well as a new fitness competition, the Tier 1 Games.

Nick has provided risk management, leadership, and elite-level performance consulting in austere environments worldwide, including with professional sports teams, multinational corporations, government, and non-governmental organisations.

Nick's charter is to build real-world resilience within individuals and foster a no-compromise culture of excellence. He’s driven by a deep passion for building elite-level soldiers and athletes through an uncompromising culture, mindset, and mental toughness. His philosophy is simple: hard work beats talent, and resilience is the decisive advantage in high-pressure environments.

By drawing from years of operational experience and an 18-year coaching career, Nick develops training systems that forge discipline, sharpen decision-making under stress, and cultivate the mental edge required to excel when it matters most.

Learn more about Nick and The Mill Gym:

Email: nick@themillgym.com

Instagram: @themillgym

LinkedIn: @nickcaldwell

Website: themillgym.com

Timestamps:

0:00:22 Introduction to Nick Caldwell
0:01:45 Career in the Aussie Special Air Service
0:05:32 Training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
0:07:10 Gaining the Confidence to Enlist
0:14:49 Nick's Goals that Pushed His Career Forward
0:17:50 Recovering from Burnout
0:21:23 Helping Someone Understand Their Recovery and Readiness
0:26:48 Training with HRP and Other Monitoring Devices
0:38:28 What Camps Does Nick Caldwell Run?
0:44:43 Not a 36 Hour Exercise Competition
0:49:55 Standard Pre-Screening
0:57:50 Woman in Courses of Self-Defense
1:02:11 "Keeping Yourself Safe in a Parking Garage" Scenario
1:10:04 Books that Nick Believes Everyone Should Read
1:18:37 Outro

Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon is a trained counselor specializing in the psychology of behavior change, with certifications in motivational interviewing, solution-focused therapy, DBT, CBT, and trauma counseling.

She’s the author of numerous books and accredited nutrition, sleep, stress, and recovery courses. She is our go-to performance psych, working one-on-one with many of our clients to sharpen the mental and emotional skills needed to handle some of the toughest training courses in the world.

In this episode, we’re talking to KSD about the coaching work she does with active and aspiring operators, focusing on the central themes and patterns she often uses to help people excel in their careers and become more capable and resilient.

Learn more about working with KSD: https://www.buildingtheelite.com/performance-psych-coaching/

Follow KSD on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stumptuous

Timestamps:
00:23 Introduction to Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon
01:12 Common Themes in Special Operations Selection
03:42 Getting Distracted by Misconceptions
08:11 Paradox of High Standards While Facing Setbacks
13:36 The Vulnerability of Overthinking
18:53 The Concept of Self-Compassion
25:11 The Value of Coaching Yourself Positively
30:25 The Concept of Fun - Do it Seriously, Don't Take it Seriously
38:09 Weaving Fun into Intense Training
43:07 Appreciation of Nature and Disasters
47:03 Training That's Too Strict Can Steal Joy from Life
49:58 The Concept of Competition
54:43 What Does Neurodivergence Mean?
1:00:46 Distinguishing Between Self-Deficits or Neurological Differences
1:06:22 Behavioral Red Flags within Military Tactical Populations
1:12:36 Strategies for Those that Fall into a Neurodivergent Category
1:16:16 What is Stimming and What Does It Do?
1:18:53 The Impact of Time Spent Alone Doing Something Meaningless
1:24:44 Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon's Book Recommendations
1:26:23 Outro

SOF selection is a proving ground, where your physical, mental, and emotional raw material will be laid bare, with nothing to hide behind. It's a place where you voluntarily walk into a brutal challenge to find out if who you think you are matches who you are.

It's a way of answering a question that few people are willing to ask.

Mo Anthoine, a British mountaineer, referred to this as "feeding the rat."

Think of the "rat" as that gnawing part of you that needs challenge, risk, and uncertainty. You feel better when it's been fed.

As Anthoine put it, "I think it's because there is always a question mark about how you would perform. You have an idea of yourself and it can be quite a shock when you don't come up to your own expectations. If you just tootle along you can think you're a pretty slick bloke until things go wrong and you find you're nothing like you imagined yourself to be. But if you deliberately put yourself in difficult situations, then you get a pretty good idea of how you're going. That's why I like feeding the rat."

Everyone has a rat to feed.

You only choose how you feed it.