Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - From War Hero to Hollywood | J.R. Martinez - Army Veteran & Actor

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Lessons - From War Hero to Hollywood | J.R. Martinez - Army Veteran & Actor · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore how professional identity can be rebuilt when a career path is
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  suddenly taken away. Discover how adversity can reveal purpose through service,
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  understand why listening, more than speaking, creates meaningful impact,
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  and uncover how aligning work with passion and values leads to long-term fulfillment.
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  So the last thing I actually really wanted to get your feedback and your perspective on
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  is reinventing professional identity. Because people struggle with this at all stages in their
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  career. You are forced to do it, but a lot of people aren't forced to do it, but they're just
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  hating their life. And they don't know where to go. They hate the job that they're in.
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  You literally had to, because you were never allowed to go into the military ever again,
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  and you created the life of speaking motivational speaker. Now you sort of spread the message. You
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  help people sort of upskill themselves, understand how to deal with adversity, all these different
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  leadership topics that are great, but obviously that's not what you thought you were going to be doing
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  when you were young. So you come out of the hospital, how do you find out where you want to spend
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  your time? How do you reinvent this professional identity that was taken away from you?
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  So I follow my passion. That's for me, what's my passion? So six months after I was injured,
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  I was going through the motions, appointments every day, you know, doctors there, be all that stuff.
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  One of the nurses asked me, hey, will you go in and talk to this patient that six months ago was
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  injured and is now in a horrible place? Will you go in and talk to him? And I said, no, she said,
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  why not? I said, because I'm 20 years old. What am I going to offer to him? And she said, just
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  go in and talk to him and help things have gotten better for you. I was like, no freaking way.
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  And she kept insisting, insisting, insisting, and finally I was like, okay, fine, I'll do it, right?
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  Now hindsight, looking back at it, that was the universe telling me, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,
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  so I finally, I'm like, fine, I'll do it. Just to get her off my back, that was really
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  the reason I decided to do it. I opened the door to this hospital room. It's completely dark in
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  this guy's room and I'm like, it gives me that pit in my stomach. Oh, he's not in a good place.
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  And I was like, I can't leave. I'm, I open the door. He knows I'm standing there. What would that
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  look like if I just walked out? So I walked up to his bed and I introduced myself and it was in
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  that moment, man, that my definition of a conversation was redefined. I asked him about four or
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  five questions, right? Sort of the general stuff. Where are you from? How old are you? What unit
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  were you in? What happened to you? What do you like to do? Stuff like that, you know, surface stuff.
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  And also to do took it from there and just started talking. Then 45 minutes later, I was like,
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  Hey, man, all right. Cool. It was good talking to you. Hey, I'm going to come back tomorrow.
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  Are you okay with that? He's like, yeah, man, I'd love that. And I started to walk out of his room.
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  But before I could exit the room, I noticed something. Remember, when I told you when I walked
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  in the room, it was completely dark. As I was starting to exit the room, he turned the light on.
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  And then when I looked back into the room, he actually was out of his bed opening the curtain.
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  He was letting some light in their room. Again, it's not always these big reveals and signs
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  that we should be paying attention to looking for. It's simple things. That's a simple sign.
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  And what I did is not ignore it. And I said, huh, that was interesting. But I like the feeling
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  that I got. And so what I mean real quick, my definition of a conversation was redefined.
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  I learned in that moment that a conversation does not consist of you speaking for 50% and me speaking
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  for 50%. It means that if Scott's going to talk for 75% of the time, then I'm going to spend 75%
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  of the conversation listening. And if I only speak 25%, that's okay. I spent 75 listening.
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  So I exit the room. Instead of ignoring that, I go up, find the head doctor. I ask him if I can
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  visit patients every day between my appointments. He says, of course, that'd be great.
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  You have something that we don't have experience. You're living this. So yeah. So I went every day
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  and in the afternoon into the evening and visited patients, I would knock on doors, I would walk in,
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  I'd introduce myself, we'd start wrapping. And literally, I'd, I was just, I always just thought
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  of like a walking, talking guy to this recovery process. This is what I've experienced. This is
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  what, this is what, this is what's going to happen. This is what you have to do. That's all I did.
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  But the thing, as much as I felt like I was giving them something, the thing that I discovered,
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  they were giving me a few weeks into doing this, I discovered one evening when I was walking
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  back to my room. I had this really good feeling in my heart, man. And I just, I just remember smiling
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  is when I got to my room, I sat down, I just started thinking about, you know, the visits and the
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  conversations and the feeling and I just thought, they gave me the thing that I thought I lost.
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  The ability to serve. They gave me my purpose back. It's going to look completely different,
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  right? I'm not in the military anymore, but I don't need to be in the military to serve people,
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  to be of service. Okay, cool. So for me, it literally came down to my why is service to people.
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  I like to serve people. I like to give back to people. So when I got into the nonprofit sector
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  and I became a spokesman for a nonprofit to raise awareness for troops, it was about I'm serving
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  people. This is an opportunity for me to serve when I got into the speaking space. It's about my
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  way of serving people. When I got, became an actor on a soap opera called on my children, it was
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  an opportunity for me to serve people. I was always operating from I'm serving people.
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  When I got on dance with the stars, it was my way to serve people. When I wrote a book, it was my
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  way to continue to serve people with more of my story. As I've continued to speak, virtual,
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  I'm still serving people. So for me, it always goes back to for people that are like looking for
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  I'm not happy or this is a dreamy joy. Well, what does make you happy? And when you identify the
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  thing that makes you happy, also identify why does that make you happy? Because it's not to say that
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  you can't work in this job. It's just maybe you have to then realize that this job gives you the
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  opportunity to, for example, if I'm all about people, this is no knock on account. So I'm just
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  going to throw something random out. But if I'm an accountant, right? And I've talked to accounts
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  and a lot, some of them will say like, Oh, I just kind of mundane, just going to, you know,
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  blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
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  the same thing, right? There's some of her people say there's no adventure. Yeah, but for me,
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  I love serving people. So if I was an accountant or if I'm a teacher or if I the barista or the cash
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  year, I know everything that I do is about people. It's about serving people, impacting people.
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  So you could take JR, log me off right now, drop me in the middle of a coffee shop and say,
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  that's your job now. And even though I don't like the barista part of it, even though I don't like
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  pushing buttons on the cat on the register, whatever, I love the interaction with people.
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  And so for me, by me showing up in that way, it's going to allow everything else to
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  just essentially just take off. It's going to sort of paint this picture that, hey, what you're
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  doing is clearly right. So what is your passion is the biggest thing I ask people stop waiting around
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  for this like for, for, for, you know, for, for this big reveal the sign. It's like, what do you
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  enjoy doing? What do you love doing? And maybe your career doesn't give you the opportunity to
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  fulfill that thing. But in most cases, it does. You just have to identify what it is that you
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  actually love to do. And so that's why people have said from a virtual standpoint, they feel the
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  same energy that they would feel if I was in person. You and I, me, man, in person, you're going
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  to, you're going to get the same dude, the same dude. So for me, it's about, you got to understand
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  what it is that you're, what it is that you do. Why do you do it? What do you love to do? And then
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  from there, you just got to trust. You know, you just got to be willing to trust. I mean,
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  you know, you just got to be willing to trust man. Trust yourself and trust at the universe and
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  be willing to try something because you're never going to be able to get where you want to go and
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  identify some things about yourself. If you're not willing to exercise a certain part of that muscle.
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  And the biggest thing is I would just tell people, leave people with this is,
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  you know, as you move through life, if there's one thing you remember from from my story is that
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  I was willing to always lean in that I was always willing to listen whether someone who was listening
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  to me or I was listening to the universe of paying attention to what signs were being presented to
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  me, I was always paying attention. And so, but all of us have the ability to do it. All of us,
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  I've told you my life, like there's nothing so it's not like I was born to these really
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  scholarly parents and, you know, influential academia is like, no, like I'm just kind of a normal kid,
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  you know, you know, just low sports goofing around and being silly, but also I had to do some work.
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  And I still have to do some work in order for my relationship with my wife to evolve,
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  if it were to be what it has become and for hopefully to be what it's going to be, I have to also
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  be willing to do some work. So I have to identify there's things that she says or does that trigger me?
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  Why do they trigger me? Maybe it's more about me unless about her, but I can't communicate that to
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  her if I'm not willing to find out why that triggers me, why that bothers me? I have to be willing
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  to do the work myself and then I can convey that to her. If she then does does nothing with it and
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  doesn't care, well, that's a separate conversation, but I first have to be willing to do the work. I
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  can't just ever stop doing that. Why? We'll find the why.