"Thank you
for your service"
I never got completely comfortable with the way that people would just walk up and say that to me.
Of course, they meant it kindly, but it still made me a little uneasy. What do you say to that, anyway? "You're welcome?"
There was a lot about active duty service that I didn't ever get fully comfortable with - probably why I separated and moved on.
Still, it was a once in a lifetime experience, and I have absolutely no regrets at all.
That's me: U.S. Marine Corporal Evan Dorren, on deployment in Iraq with the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment in 2007. A kindly Iraqi gentleman was nice enough to let me rest on his couch for a moment, mid-patrol.
About a year after this photo was taken, I was EAS-ing in Camp Pendleton, San Diego. I was about to enter the civilian job market, searching for the first real "grown-up" job in my whole life.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you:
It’s rough out there.
The economy and job market have not exactly been flourishing these past few years. The civilian workforce is still struggling to absorb millions of displaced workers in the wake of the recent economic downturn, many of whom are highly experienced and educated.
This is not the ideal moment to be entering that world for the very first time in your life.
Told you I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it.
Maybe your plan is to EAS and then use your G.I. Bill go to school. That’s a fantastic idea; it’s exactly what I did when my time was up. But don’t forget to ask yourself this: What are you going to school for?
Well, you’re going to school so that you can learn new skills, be more a competitive candidate, and get a better job, right?
But first things first: You have to outprocess and check all the boxes (literally) on your separation package to get that gleaming, shimmering, “holy-grail” of all U.S. Government documents:
The DD-214!!!
(cue the harps and chorus of angels).
Before you get it, there is a lot of very dull, boring, yet necessary outprocessing for you to do.
TAP, TAMP, and other military transition assistance programs are a nice thought, but they are not enough. If you’ve already been through one of these programs, you know exactly what I’m talking about; if you haven’t yet, you will.
Half of the men and women I knew who attended a transition assistance workshop were so scared by the end of it, that they re-upped for another four years.
There’s nothing wrong with staying in, by the way, if it’s truly a good fit for you and you stay in for the right reason.
Fear of being unemployed is not the right reason.
So, while TAP and TAMP won’t adequately prepare you for life as a working civilian or student, fear not!
Your military experience has given you a significant edge : An insight that 99.99% of your civilian counterparts have no idea even exists!
Remember boot camp?
Ahhh, yes. The sights, sounds, and - who could forget - the smells of the squadbay.
Waking up every morning to “LIGHTS-LIGHTS-LIGHTS!!!”
Brasso.
Go-fasters.
The recruit crud. Drill Instructors. Stripping the mattress off your rack and performing Inspection Arms with it.
“The One” (My platoon actually had three “The Ones” in it.)
Crawling across gravel on your elbows. Eating 2,500 calories worth of food in 45 seconds. Chugging a gallon of water every hour. Shouting “aye-aye, SIR” at a tree until your drill instructor got tired of hearing it.
Good times, weren't they?
Some people loved it so much that they went back to the drill field later in their careers to do it a second time.
Looking back, the whole concept of basic training is pretty amazing. There’s really nothing that quite compares to it in the civilian world.
Boot camp takes a group of rag-tag teenagers and turns them into a capable, high-functioning, cohesive, disciplined unit. Over, and over, and over.
It employs a wide variety of motivational techniques to get us to do what the drill instructors want, without hesitation, and without question. For 13 weeks, they shaped our reality by completely controlling our physical, emotional, and intellectual environment from the very moment we stepped off the bus and onto the yellow footprints.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could use similar techniques to harness that power for your own purposes?
LIGHTS-LIGHTS-LIGHTS!!!
Success in the “real world” comes in an avalanche to those few people who discover how to shape their environments themselves, instead of letting the outside world do it for them.
Why?
Just as basic training creates an environment in which the Military gets what it wants, a company creates environments in which employees will work toward the company’s objectives, not their own.
Similarly, although the job of an educational institution is to provide opportunities for students to learn and grow, the top priority, when all is said and done, is doing what is in the school’s best interest, which may or may not align with the best interests of the student.
Bottom line: If you’re not consciously shaping and controlling your own physical, emotional, and intellectual environment, then you are putty in someone else’s hands.
So how do YOU shape
your own environment?
I’m pleased to present:
Get What You Want, LOVE What You Get.
...and if you’re thinking “oh, great, a ‘self-help’ book written by some former-active-duty-guy-turned-hippie,” I’m going to stop you right there; it isn’t.
Between you and me, I don’t care for most “self help” or “personal development” literature. My goal in writing Simply Successful was to create a resource for people who felt the same way.
There’s no staring into the mirror and saying, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and… people like me!”
There's no mystical hocus-pocus; no "secret formulas" for achieving success.
It’s just practical, real world information that is helpful to you now.
I’ve assembled a truly one-of-a-kind resource containing the winning strategies, techniques, and - most importantly - philosophies for those aspiring to be phenomenally successful in every aspect of life.
I kept the good stuff, threw out the bad, and put in simple terms that even “The One” in any platoon would be able to understand.
Remember how much easier boot camp became after about two weeks, once you made the mental shift and things just started to “click?” That's exactly what we're going for here.
There is nothing stopping you from applying that same approach to your own success in whatever your next adventure may be.
I can tell you right now, from personal experience, you’re not going to be happy living small.
You won’t like being ordinary, and unexceptional.
You won’t enjoy feeling average.
It’s simply not in your nature.
But don’t waste your time (or money) scrambling, searching for the “fast track” to success in the civilian world.
Start building your own fast track.
I’ll show you how.
*Spoiler alert: It's about the mindset.
See you on Page 1.
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