How Veterans Can Regain Pride and Purpose After Their Transitions to the Civilian World

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul Podcast.

What's going on everybody? Welcome to the Warrior Soul Podcast, and this is the Friday Warrior Notes edition. My name is Chris Albert, and what we do here is we deliver tools, tactics, ideas, and talk about issues, and interview people who can help you to live your best lives. And every Friday, we publish the Warrior Notes episode, and what this is is an in-depth discussion on a piece of knowledge that can help you to live your best life. Today we're going be talking about how to regain your pride and your purpose after leaving the military.

And this is a subject that I'm hearing constantly about from veterans who've gotten out. The fact that they feel like they no longer have a purpose and they can't find the pride they once had when they were wearing the uniform anymore. And so we're going get into this. I want to tell you a couple of things guys. Number one, with this podcast, we're we're publishing interviews every Monday.

These are interviews with experts, with business leaders, with people who can help to inspire you to take action in your life. On Wednesdays, we're running q and a episodes. Any question you have about fitness, about life, about business or anything else, that's where we'll answer those questions. And on Fridays, these, in-depth Warrior Notes episodes, like I said, they're going to be discussing a particular subject matter. We do this because over the past decade and a half, we've been hearing a whole lot about veteran suicide.

There's been a lot of efforts to raise awareness about the fact that twenty two veterans are taking their own lives every day. And one thing that I noticed from the beginning was that even though there was a lot of effort to raise awareness, there wasn't a whole lot of effort to extend what we were doing there, to help Veterans actually to live. And I think that, you know, the last thing we want to do is just focus on keeping Veterans from killing themselves. What we want to do is we want to help them to thrive. We want to help them to regain their pride in themselves so they can become leaders, and so that they can help shape the future of this country.

And so if you find this episode helpful, you find this podcast helpful, please share it out there. And also, please write us a review up on iTunes. Let us know how we're doing. Really helps to spread word about the show, and it really helps to increase this movement. So back to the subject matter here.

Today, we're talking about how to get pride back. Like I said, this is something that I've heard so many veterans tell me, they tell me that, you know, now that they're out, they feel like they've lived out their purpose. And they feel like they no longer have anything that's driving them in the civilian world. And they no longer feel that pride anymore. And I think that's a that's a really dangerous place to be.

And the reason why it's a dangerous place to be is because when you start to feel like you no longer have pride in yourself, you start to feel alone. And you start to tell yourself stories in your own head. You know, one of those stories is the idea that you have in fact lived out your purpose, and that you no longer have any real reason to be on earth. And the reason why that's dangerous is because that's what a lot of times leads to depression, whether you're a veteran or not, leads to the idea that you're trapped in your current life. Right?

When you feel trapped, and when you feel like you have no control over your destiny anymore, that's when you start to feel hopeless. And when you feel hopeless, that's when depression takes root. And I can tell you as somebody who's been depressed many times in my life, it is a feeling of being trapped. And even if you're in a room with it with a bunch of people, you feel like you're the only one there and you feel so lonely. So when we're talking about regaining pride, and when we're talking about regaining purpose, we're also talking about overcoming depression.

And so when we're thinking about overcoming depression, and regaining pride and finding purpose again in our lives, we got to think about is what gave us pride in the first place? What gave us a sense of purpose? And if you think really hard about it, it was probably when you were doing something difficult, when you were being challenged. And I think the mistake we make when we're first getting out of the military is we we look at the civilian world as freedom. We look at it as a place where we could do whatever we want, and we don't have to deal with all the fuck fuck games and the a hole for sergeant and getting up for PT anymore, to get a haircut every Sunday.

We look at it as something that's easy to do. But the reality is the opposite is true. When you get out in the civilian world, you're no longer gonna have anybody out there to positively challenge you. You might have a boss. Right?

You you might have to do what your boss says. But your boss, a lot of times, isn't gonna challenge you in the way that your squad leader did, or that your first sergeant did, that your platoon sergeant did, or that anybody else around you in the whole military did. They're not going to hold you to that same standard. The only person that's going to hold you to that same standard is you. And so, the first mistake we make is in getting out and thinking that, hey, you know what, when I get out in the civilian world, I could just skate.

And even if you can, even if you can get by and you can earn a salary and you can put food on the table and and you're not putting as much effort in as you once did, it's still not gonna feel right. Why isn't it gonna feel right? Because you're going to be bored. You're going to be completely bored with your life. And when you're bored, that's when you feel like you have no sense of purpose.

That's when you feel like you don't have any pride. Nobody takes pride in skating. Nobody takes pride in just sliding through life. So if you want to regain that pride, if you want to regain that sense of purpose, my first piece of advice for you is to find something that's difficult to do. Now, that could be in your career, right, you could try to go for a leadership position.

That could also be through other things. That could be through athletics, maybe you join a jiu-jitsu studio and you start practicing martial arts. Maybe you dedicate yourself to trying to get a black belt. Maybe you sign up for a Spartan race, or one of these other obstacle course races that are out there and maybe you train for that. Maybe you start power lifting, or maybe you start doing yoga.

You know, everybody gets challenged by different things in life. But it's going to be important for you to find something that's going to stretch your abilities a little bit. That's going to not only exercise your body, but that's gonna exercise your brain. You know, something that you might fail at a few times before you you get the hang of it. And through going through that failure, through falling on your face a few times, what you'll find is that eventually, once you've overcome your failures and once you've strengthened yourself, you're going to feel some pride in having mastered what you dedicated yourself to.

And that's what you got to remember. The thing that gave us the pride in the first place in the military was the fact that we went through some hard things, and we went through them with other people, and we earned the titles that we were given. It's the same thing in the civilian world. If you want to find pride, you got to do something difficult. And a funny thing happens when you start dedicating yourself to something difficult.

You run into other people who are also trying to do difficult things. If you sign up for a jiu-jitsu studio, you're gonna run into other people who are just starting out jiu-jitsu, and you're gonna run into other people who've been in jiu-jitsu for a while. And guess what? You start to get yourself those same types of people that you would have found in the Marine Corps that would have held you to that higher standard. Right?

Every time I go into jiu-jitsu, and I get tapped out because I suck at jiu-jitsu, I'm learning from somebody. And I'm learning from them whether they're a blue belt, whether they're a purple belt, whether they're a black belt, they're teaching me something not only about jiu-jitsu, but about me. And so get out there and find something, and find other people that are going for the same things. And not only are you going to find a sense of purpose and a sense of pride from that, you'll also potentially find new brothers, new friends who can help you along your way, and who can challenge you to be your best. The next thing is this, you know, if you are really trying to find a sense of purpose and you're really trying to to to regain your pride, maybe do something where you can help others.

Right? That's one of the reasons why I do this podcast and why I do the things I do here at Warrior Soul. You know, I'm not rolling in cash because of this podcast. It's not it's not really paying the bills. But the reason why I do it is because it's something I take pride in.

I take pride in being able to spread good ideas through media. I take pride in being able to help people who I'll probably never meet and who'll probably never give anything back monetarily. And I like that. It helps me to get out of bed every single day. And when I wake up, and when I put the effort in to be the best version of myself, it's because I don't want to fail any of you.

So put yourself into a situation where you're helping others, and you're getting others to depend on you. That could be something you're volunteering at, you know, maybe you volunteer for a local veterans organization, maybe you volunteer for local youth organization where you help kids out, maybe you start a YouTube channel or a podcast for yourself, right? And it doesn't matter if you've got a million followers or or, you know, 5,000,000,000 followers or or even just a thousand people following you. If you've got anybody listening to you, if you're if you're putting positivity out there into the world and and anybody's listening to you at all, then that's a good thing. And that's something you could take pride and purpose in.

And when you do something like that, you not only want to help those people, you want to be an example for them. And again, that's where you start to find your pride, your purpose, your reason for training, your reason for staying fit, your reason for being good at your job, your reason for being good at life. Because you want to provide a positive example for others who are depending on you for your message. The third thing is this guys, define what you stand for. Make that black and white.

And we're always hearing about shades of gray these days, right? This isn't right. This isn't wrong. There is no good and evil. Well, here's the thing.

A lot of you know that there is good and evil. You've seen good, and you've seen evil. And I think one of the things that happens to a lot of us when we get out, we allow those lines to get blurred in our own lives. You know, maybe we're out there drinking every night. Maybe we're out there cheating on our significant others or our spouses.

And when you do stuff like that, you end up taking a little piece of yourself away. That thing you stood for. Right? That that that purpose that you had, that gets taken away. So what you need to do is you need to sit down with yourself for a good bit, maybe a half hour.

And you need to write down all the things you stand for, and all the things you're not going to tolerate in your life. And you need to make that black and white. And then that's the easy part. The hard part is every day, implementing that into your life. And making sure that you're living up to that vision.

Alright, making sure that you're living up to that standard that you set for yourself. Making sure that you're keeping yourself in shape, making sure you're being good to your spouse, making sure you're you're being the best father or parent that you could be, making sure that you're being the best you that you can be. So that's what I got for today guys. This is a real quick one. But those three things, making sure that you're finding something that can challenge you, making sure that you're you're you're finding purpose and helping others, and then defining your own standards and living up to them every single day, if you do those three things, I promise you, you'll find that pride, you'll find that purpose, and you'll make depression a thing of the past.

I want to thank you guys for listening to me today. And, just want to give you a quick note from the good people who do make this show possible. F bomb nutrition, they make delicious, awesome packets of fats. And I love this company because not only because of their awesome product, but because they're really good people. They're they're sending packages of this stuff out to troops on the front lines, out there in Afghanistan, out there in The Middle East and around the world.

And they're sending them out there so the troops can supplement them into their MREs. And these are packets of things like macadamia nut butter. And that's my favorite product they have, their macadamia nut butters. They mix them up with chocolate, they mix them up with sea salt, they mix them up with pecan butter. And our listeners, they get 20% off when they head over to www.dropanfbomb.com and they use the code Warrior Soul at checkout.

And if you're looking to support this podcast, there's a few different ways you can do it. Number one, you can head over to our store. We're known for our t shirts. We make some amazing skivvy shirts and some really awesome designs. And that's just up at warriorsoulagoge.com.

And then we like I said, we've got a bunch of really awesome pre designed shirts. If you are looking to raise money for it, maybe you've got a Marine Corps ball coming up. If if you're looking to raise money for your organization, we also print unit t shirts. And so if you're interested in doing that, just let us know by hitting us up at info@warriorsoulapparel.com. We we can create really any design you'd like us to.

And above all that guys, we've also got our online community. That's the Warrior Soul Fitness Academy, and that's a free online community that we put out there running fitness challenges every month. They're not one of these fitness challenges that you got to do by signing up for a program or or buying some supplements. It's completely free and we're giving prizes out every month for those who come in there and those who post the most workouts for the month. And it's a great opportunity for you to network with other listeners to hear what they're doing in their lives to make their lives better and to make your own life better by pushing yourself.

And if you're interested in even more than that, we've also got the Warrior Soul Agoge, which is our private training group through which I take people every week through live calls, put them on a nutrition plan, put them on a training plan, and push them to become their best versions of themselves. And if you're interested in any of that, you can find all that up at warriorsoulagoge.com. We'll be back at you next week and on this Monday we have an awesome interview for you guys with Mr. Phil Randazzo, a great American who created a free training platform for veterans so that they can educate themselves for the civilian world. And that's gonna be up on Monday.

So we'll talk to you guys very soon.