Have you ever had to struggle through hearing one of your best friends you used to serve with share how their life problems are stacking up against them? You can literally hear the resignation in their voice and the “screw it” mentality which only leads them to more isolation, anger, or depression.
Here are some lifestyle risk factors you can identify early to catch yourself or a battle buddy upstream when building resilience:
- Close family or friends relationship conflicts
- Balancing work/life stress while building an ideal career targeted human capital
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Losing friends via suicide when dealing with difficult circumstances
- Bad decision-making out of feeling lonely and looking for the wrong social support to meet the core needs
It’s easy to allow lifestyle factors like these to stack up against you to a point where it squeezes the purpose out of your life. Then you begin to bleed out the drive, motivation, and ability to maintain the clarity of purpose that drives you forward.
Or in military language staying in the fight long enough to win the WAR. The question is what is the FIGHT and how do you know when you win or lose the WAR?
You see, the FIGHT = your tactics, and the WAR = your strategy.
One thing we revealed in our recent qualitative research study is veterans suck at building social support systems around their purpose after the uniform comes off. In comparison, in the military, we had to endure the SUCK, and how you did it was leaning on your peers to get through it, providing encouragement, resources, insight, etc.
According to Dr. Daniel Goleman, best-selling author of Emotional Intelligence and podcast host of First Person Plural: Emotional Intelligence and Beyond:
People are wired to be motivated by what’s meaningful to them. Not only does purpose bolster wellbeing and engagement, it can motivate us to find ways to better manage ourselves and things around us.
What do we want you to take from this? Find areas of life that you feel resigned about, or in other words, you’re kinda just like “screw it” with – identify the risk factors and get in communication with people who can help you think through ways to get back tuned into what motivates you.
To learn more about how The Ambitious VET Network is pioneering how positive psychology education is being provided to the post 9/11 veteran community, visit https://bit.ly/3lDTbCp
By: Chris Hoffmann, Founder of the Ambitious VET Network