Short audio preview

Hearing Chris Moon describe himself being "blown up" was a bit disconcerting at first. The man had a hook where his right hand should have been, and a sliver of aluminium where his right leg should have been (albeit barely noticeable under his tan suit).

It felt unseemly to be matter-of-fact about an injury that, for most of us, would be a source of great bitterness and self-pity. Yet, as Moon told the London Business Forum (LBF) at the British Library Conference Centre, "attitude is a matter of choice". You can adapt to even the most profound changes - even severe handicaps - if you make the conscious choice to do so, and take the right steps in the right direction.

The event began with a video that summarised Moon's story, beginning with his kidnap in Cambodia at the hands of Khmer Rouge guerillas and ending with his recovery from a land-mine blast in East Africa. It was a dramatised account of his experiences, in which he was played by an actor, but every now and then he would appear in person to reiterate the view that by shifting your perspective on life you can deal with most of the problems it throws your way.

"Why do people fear change?" he asked during the speech that followed. "Firstly, there's an element of the fear of the unknown... we want to be comfortable." Also, change usually requires a lot of effort and hard work. "It's always easier not to do something." And there may even be "a loss of territory and control during a period of change... We all want our own train sets, don't we?"

We may even be uncomfortable with change because it puts us "in the spotlight," he suggested. "It may actually cause us to be looked at, to be scrutinised."

Moon experienced all these things, he said, when he lost his limbs. He gave us a gory description (in a surprisingly jovial way) of how he was injured. But the more harrowing part of his story was his initial convalescence, when people began to look at him differently and he experienced moments of deep pessimism and self-doubt.

For example, just after he was discharged from hospital, he took a stroll along the Thames that brought on a sudden and strong fear of open water. "I couldn't possibly swim across that," he told his companion, lamenting the fact that he had once been a strong swimmer. "If I were to fall into that water now, I'm terrified that I'd drown."

Fortunately, the friend was able to offer some timely wisdom. "Look, you've had this change in your life. It means you need to think differently and there's no point in focusing on that," he said. "Just step back, be a bit more open-minded and see the bigger picture." When Moon asked how he could possibly hope to cross the water, the friend's riposte was: "Well, for a start, start using a bridge."

Of course, the underlying - and more supportive - message was this: "Change your attitude."

Ultimately, Moon said, what got him through most of his scrapes was a strong network of friends. Indeed, without one particular friend in Mozambique, his life would not have been saved at all, since his evacuation plane was grounded by a corrupt air traffic controller demanding a $10,000 bribe. The friend threatened said official with a Kalashnikov.

"The people who tend to cope with [major handicaps] best are... people who have values that are really concerned with others," Moon argued. "Why is that important? Think about it: if you become really sick and unwell, and you're the centre of your own universe then you're going to start to live in hell, aren't you?"

Adapting to change means developing healthier mental habits. We know people can adapt to the most awful things, Moon pointed out, because many perpetrators of atrocities in Cambodia's Killing Fields have said: "It wasn't me, it was the organisation... I had to do it because I was a soldier and if I didn't do it, they'd do it to me." There is no reason, he argued, why we shouldn't rationalise our response to adverse change in the other direction - in a positive and moral way.

Throughout his speech, Moon reinforced the importance of "belief". For example, he told the story of a pig that belonged to a next-door neighbour in Cambodia. The animal was tethered to a small peg in the back yard that it could easily pull free. However, "every time he pulled it, and [the rope] went taut, he stopped," Moon said.

"It wasn't because he was stupid, because all the research indicates that the pig is the most intelligent of all farm animals, and it wasn't because he wasn't capable; he was quite strong enough. [So] why didn't he go and eat the vegetables?" The answer was that the pig had been tethered to the same peg ever since it was too small to escape. He did not eat the vegetables "quite simply because he did not believe that he could."

Amazingly, there is evidence to suggest humans are even more prone to inhibiting beliefs, Moon said. For example, when he eventually returned to Mozambique, to record a documentary on landmines, he found the country's traditions had often led people to die under the belief they were cursed.

"We went to a village where I'd worked many years before," he recalled. "Just a few days before, there was a man who had a curse or a juju put on him by the witch doctor." The cursed man was examined by a UK doctor, but no disease or injury could be found. Nevertheless, within a few days, he was dead. "I think he died because he believed that he would," Moon said. "This is a very well-documented medical phenomenon in that part of Africa - lots of western doctors have witnessed it."

So, if we are capable of "believing ourselves to death", could we apply the same energy to self-affirmation, with positive results? Moon was certain we could. "I dare to suggest that most of us can do far more than we think and that, frequently, the biggest limits in life are those we impose on ourselves," he said.

The key to successful adaptation, he argued, is to challenge yourself continuously - to determine the boundaries of your new comfort zone and then gradually extend them. In terms of Moon's long-term goals, this meant running the London Marathon within a year of being "blown up," and then moving on to other, greater endurance challenges.

Yet the principle can also apply to short-term goals, he explained. For example, during the Marathon Des Sables, a gruelling 250km run across the Moroccan Sahara, it once got him "14km beyond the point where I knew I could go no further".

The toughest day of this race required the competitors to traverse 24km of sand dunes, and Moon managed only 10 before he began to suffer from sun-stroke. He stopped to rest and take on water, but could not summon up the belief that he would ever finish the stage.

His only option, he said, was to apply a simple formula: "See beyond the immediate suffering." In other words, focus on how much you have already achieved, not on how far you still need to go. The positive way to look at his predicament in the desert, he said, was to ask himself how much further he could reasonably go, if he could not manage the full distance.

"I said, 'Well, I can take one step, I can take one step... So I took one step and then I took a few more because I was at the top of a sand dune [and] after taking a few steps I knew I could take a few more, so I built my belief up from nothing." Moon also gave himself a "personal pep talk" to restore his sense of belief and eventually succeeded in completing the stage.

"The reality for all of us is that we can go one step beyond our limits by breaking things down into manageable chunks, then saying: 'Right, I believe I can do that,' and then having a positive internal dialogue," he suggested. "Who was it who didn't finish that race? It wasn't the most unfit, it wasn't the most disabled, it wasn't the most sick, it wasn't the most injured. The people who did not finish that race were those who either couldn't be bothered and didn't want to or those who did not believe that they could."

There's one more prerequisite for successful change, Moon concluded, and that is a good sense of humour. During this year's London Marathon, while crossing Tower Bridge, he overheard someone say to their running partner: "Oh God, we've just been passed by a slightly fat guy with one arm and one leg. If you don't tell anyone I promise not to!" The obvious response, he said, was to shout: "I'm getting old too!"