I bet you typed into Google something that someone has said about this weird bloke who calls himself The Caveman! So, thank you for doing it because you found me, and let’s be fair, you would never have found me any other way!
I am Carl Jones, the Author of The Caveman Principles (hence the name), a Keynote Speaker on Stress, Burnout and Resilience, delivering a number of talks that are highly tailored to an event and a trainer, who provides both in person as well as online training through my company, Elevated Training Ltd. I am sure that you have heard this type of introduction before, so I am going to take you on a different route as to how the name came about and why it fits me.
Without wanting to bore you, let me take you back to when I was 24 years old, in October 2000, when I was sworn into the office Police Constable. This was me, about to embark on my dream job. I was incredibly naive and very, very keen. I am sure the world looked at me and made the same comment, that I now do to others. “Is it me, or are they employing teenagers now.” But oh my word, that a growing up experience, the fear and gullibility was quickly rinsed from my collar. Before I knew it, I was a hardened, street ready uniformed cop that through experience, knowledge, and consistently challenging myself of wanting bigger crimes to handle, became a good, hard working cop. I got great results, for doing what I thought was the best job in the world, and I loved it!
Until 2011. Yes, eleven years into my career, I attended what I expected to be another ‘domestic dispute’. But on this occasion, when I went to arrest the male, he pulled a gun on me. For the first time in my entire life, I was seeing not only a handgun but the hollow barrel end of it, and it was 3 feet in front of my face. Some may say that this is when The Caveman name started. After being shot at 6 times, and dragging the man out of his house in handcuffs did I stop to think. Everything happened on autopilot, and only when the dust had settled did I realise that they were blank rounds. Still I got sent to Number 10 and was award a Police Bravery Award.
Fast forward years of pain and turmoil, not knowing what was wrong and going down so many rabbit holes trying to figure thing out, I did I pop back up for air in 2015. This was the year I thought I had nailed everything down and understood enough to write my book, The Caveman Principles. But as with all sayings, this was just the beginning, and I did not know, what I did not know!
Four years of torment and torture later, I was diagnosed with PTSD and had to leave my beloved job and career, otherwise I would not be here to write this post. That passing of time, of truly understanding emotions, linked to the caveman response and adding the experiences and knowledge of the pain that stress and trauma can taunt its victim with, I believe the Caveman you now know was when he was born. A world of danger, upset and constant attention grabbing living where no one appears to have any self care, giving it up over our short sighted work integrity belief, I noticed it was now a terrible place to live.
Being the Caveman in today’s world is fascinating. The core behaviours that were learnt, honed and over hundreds of centuries, used to prevent our death are now being ignored, and people no longer want to associate themselves with our cave dwelling ancestors. But this ignorance is causing all of our troubles today.
We have Stone Age Hardware, but we are trying to run 21st Century Software.
It works, provided we do not overwhelm the system, but when it clogs up, as it always will, we face the issues and problems that we have convinced ourselves will never happen. We are so short sighted, or we have short memories, I am not sure which.
Enter the work that I do. Re-teaching people that we are ‘human’. Going over the basic human behaviour so that we can understand why we act the way we do, and then we can make sense of the world and why we are like we are.
In answer to who the Caveman truly is, this short text will give you the flavour and a basis of an understanding of why I am needed more today than any other time. 2026 is turning out to be the turning point of peace and security in our safe haven. I hope things turn around, but alas, I fear that damage has already been done and we will all need to start leaning into our Caveman core.
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