Mindset of a Royal Marine – Disney RM

Disney RM Fundraising

About Matthew Paul Disney

I’m 37 years old, I have dual citizenship between the UK and Australia, I’ve been here since 1990, I was in the Royal Marines from 2006 -2015 and left as a Corporal and was lucky enough to travel the world.  I started Disney RM in October 2018.

So what is Disney RM and what is the goal?

Well Disney is my surname and RM stands for Royal Marines.

The goal is partly accountability for pushing myself as far as I can, both physically and mentally and bettering myself from the day before, and then to hopefully inspire others to challenge themselves via the ripple effect.

Something as simple as taking the stairs instead of the escalator or taking on bigger challenges. My page is not there to see if anyone can trump my challenges or do something to the same level, it is more to give people that creativity or drive to push themselves no matter how big or small their goals.

1. Challenge myself to be a better me, to challenge myself physically and mentally.
2. Inspire other people.
3. Fundraising and putting the spotlight on other people and causes.

Lockdown challenges!

I took a back seat from doing security in the hospital and my way of coming to terms with that was to raise money for the NHS and key workers, especially with the shortage of PPE, so I decided to climb the equivalent of the highest peak in the solar system, Rheasilvia, on a 1m high man made mountain in my front garden over 7 days.

It needed to be different as I’d already done the height of Everest on a revolving staircase in February 2019 to mark the 10th anniversary of losing my friend in Afghanistan, so I wanted to better that feat.

I looked up the highest mountain in our solar system and then created a 1 metre mountain in my garden out of flag stones.  The first time I made it, I measured it to find out it was 8cm shy of 1 metre so I had to break it down the next day and try again. It took three days to build!

If I remember correctly the challenge height was around 3 times Everest.  The weather was very hot, and it was easier going in the evening. I was dressed in almost full mountaineering gear initially to add to the theme and I was becoming very delirious and was hallucinating at times.

The challenge did really well, I raised around £15,000 and the motivation was that I just wanted to show people that you can still challenge yourself and ‘become a better you’ even when your confined to your home or garden.

Mindset of a Royal Marine

Every single challenge that I’ve taken on so far I find that I come across dark places, and I’d be disappointed if I didn’t and I’d be questioning whether the challenges are really challenging. I’m a big believer that it needs to be challenging to be a challenge and for that you need to be put up against the wall mentally and be in a dark place and push through to get through to the other end.

Every challenge has done that with me. I use a skillset from the marines. We build that fortitude and the mindset to never quit, to never give up and the marines is as much about the state of mind than it is physical ability.  You can be one of the fittest people, be an athlete and join the Royal Marines but you still may not complete the training.

In training for the Royal Marines (which is the longest training programme in the world) you find yourself in those dark places and if a person breaks chances are it’s because they don’t have the mental resilience, the mindset and the robustness.

The great thing about the Royal Marines is that over the 32 weeks they prepare your mind and help build up and teach you the ways to become more strong-minded.  That is a very good trait to be able to have and is applicable to all things; to never give up, whether it’s your typical work situation and coming across a problem or not being able to do something and then always grinding on to problem solve and work out the solution.  It has handed me that resilience to complete the task in hand.

In the Marines, we learnt to adapt and overcome and to have the creativity to find out how to turn these bad situations around to work in our favour.

Christmas Day saw me run a marathon, carrying a 22kg, 2.5 metre rowing machine dressed as Santa’s Little Helper to raise money for the NSPCC.  I previously climbed the height of Everest on a treadmill which is when I started to raise money for them.

It is kind of a festive tradition that people don’t do much on Christmas day so I thought I’d do the total opposite and go and run a marathon, it made people laugh and I wanted to bring the rowing machine out of retirement.

Whats next?

I’ve got a challenge in the summertime, the Big Daddy Challenge, it will be my biggest challenge to date lasting over 100 days and it will see me doing something no one has ever done before. That’s all I can really say about it at the moment, keep watching!

Apart from that I have a Grand Finale challenge that will be absolutely disgusting.  It will only last a few hours but it will be very tough!

Huge thanks to Disney RM for sharing your challenges with the Ultrarunner Magazine.

Interview and Article by Rachel Grant, Ultrarunner Magazine.

Edited by Wayne Drinkwater