In Brief: Essential Insights for Post-Military Transition
29 Dec 2022 · 5 min
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In this brief podcast episode, Jordana Megonigal, CEO of the Recon Network, addresses listeners transitioning from military service and encourages them to treat the new year as a purposeful clean slate. She critiques the notion of carrying over unresolved problems into the next year and argues that the calendar turnover offers a symbolic opportunity to both look forward and deliberately leave behind past failures, shame, unhelpful relationships, and limiting identities. Jordana proposes a concrete challenge: listeners should create three lists—goals they wish to achieve in the coming year, obstacles or regrets they need to release, and items that must stay in the past—to clarify their vision and build confidence for career changes, new relationships, or other life transitions. Throughout, she emphasizes personal agency, the importance of intentional reflection, and permission to discard what no longer serves them, regardless of whether one views the new year as merely a number change or a meaningful reset.
Chapters
This is In Brief. Let's get to it. Hey there, this is the In Brief podcast where we take just a few minutes each week to dive into a topic that hopefully makes the post-military transition a little bit easier and gives you a new perspective to take into a new week. Uh, I'm Jordana, the CEO of the Recon Network. And this week, we're going to be talking about clean slates. So a friend of mine the other day, it's the end of the year, we're getting ready to go into a new year, but we're also kind of wrapping down the old year. And she posted on social media something that absolutely just set me off. And what she posted was, uh, everything from here forward is just looking like more of a problem for 2023. And she meant it humorously. I get what she was saying. She's kind of done. She's she doesn't want to worry about all these problems anymore. She wants to relax into the holidays and you know chill out before the new year happens. But for me, I just for some reason that just struck a nerve with me. I was wondering why would you ever consider taking problems from one year? And just throwing them into the next to wait for you, right? So I kind of flipped out and we had a little bit of back and forth about it. It was a little bit funny, but the reality was, as I was sitting here saying, why, why would you ever consider taking problems from one year into the next? Now, if you're not a person that really, um, sees the new year as a change, right? So there's some people who. Hey, it's just a new number and everything moves forward the same way it is. And then there's the other kind of person, which I kind of fall into this bucket of this new year signals a new opportunity. It's a time for us to leave things behind. It's a time for us to really reevaluate the things that we are doing and what we're not doing and what we want to do in our lives and set a vision for the future and all these other kinds of things. But The new year is a great time to not only look forward, but it's also a great time to stop looking backwards, right? At some point, you have to leave the past behind you, whether that's failures, failed relationships, or things that you could have done better, regrets and shame, all of those kinds of things. At some point, you have to leave them. where they were in the past, right? And the new year just kind of signals an opportunity not only to look forward, but to stop looking back, to stop living in those past failings or shame or challenges or what have you. So as we move forward, whether or not you're a person that, hey, it's just a number change or not, I've got a challenge for you. Okay. As you're looking forward into a brand new year. What are the things that you want to accomplish? And conversely, what are the things that you need to leave behind in order to accomplish them? Right? So if you have this vision that you want to start a new business, or that you want to start a new relationship, or you want to move or change locations, many of you guys are be will be changing careers. What has to go from your life so that you can move forward with that in confidence, right? Do you have to let go of maybe past shame or a regret of something that you did before? Do you have to really address something that may be holding you back personally that is not giving you the confidence that you need to move forward? Um, what are those things? So whether they're failures, shame, it might be relationships that aren't serving you. It might be an identity based on rank or income, whatever it is. Not everything needs to go forward with you. And if it doesn't need to go forward with you, it's okay to leave it behind. So this is your permission to cut things out if you need to. So what I want you to do, part of this challenge for this week is to spend a few minutes today, sometimes this week, really investigate where it is that you want to be. When this year is up, when 2023 is gone, where do you want to be? What are the things that are going to help you get there? And what are the things that aren't helping you progress and instead need to be left behind? Create those 3 lists, drop a few things on there, and really think about what it is you need to let go of, um, and let stay in the old year.
