Why I Joined the Military
Hey readers!
In an attempt to expand my Substack to two articles per week, I’ve decided one of the two will be a personal deep dive into my life, the things that drive me, hurt me, help me, destroy me, and have built me up over the years.
My hope is that you can better understand the journey I have been on, the journey I’m currently on, and where I plan to go, not only with this newsletter but also with my new business.
My dream, forever will be to help you become unstuck in your journey because that is what I needed all those years ago. After over a decade, I feel I have started figuring it all out.
So why did I join the military?
Well, this story begins with a can of beans.
Goya beans to be exact.
Circa 2008:
I was working as a salesman for Goya Foods, a Hispanic food manufacturer and distributor, and I gotta say, I was doing pretty good for myself out in Long Island, NY.
At the time, I was going to night school for architectural drafting, while selling during the day, and after receiving my route, valued at $1.4-1.5 million dollars, I was seeing checks every week that amounted to 1,500-3,000.
Yup, that’s right. I was 20 years old bringing in tons of dough.
But if I’m making all this money then why did I leave it all?
I realized that no matter how much money I made, I was in a loop.
This loop would stay alive as long as I stayed where I was.
I realized I stopped being excited about my degree.
Although I made good money I wasn’t managing it properly, and when the opportunity to say goodbye came, and my recruiter told me, “travel the world and get my school paid for”…I couldn’t resist.
30 days later I was in a van en route to Brooklyn, then New Jersey, then Texas, for some intense heat at Basic Military Training.
And so I left because I realized I was in a loop and only I could get myself out of it. When I look back, it was the best decision I made at the time.
I wasn’t sure where I would end up.
I wasn’t sure what would happen.
I wasn’t anything…all I knew was that I felt I had started making decisions because I wanted to not because life was keeping me in a loop.
So, if I had to sum up why I left, here are the highlights.
1) I needed to make a new loop
Saying goodbye to family, friends, and the life you know is hard, but staying there isn’t always the answer. If you want to get where you are called to go then choosing to start a new loop often shows you that you weren’t in control all along and eventually, saying goodbye is the thing that gives you back autonomy.
Being a salesman sure had some upside but I’m not sure I would’ve experienced all I did or learned what I learned about the world, and in turn about myself.
Start a new loop if you start to feel like your current one is moving without your input.
2) Environment and its impact on growth
My childhood revolved heavily around church. Nondenominational Christian to be precise and although I haven’t been a practical churchgoer in a. While, I can’t help but know many of my values are impacted by my time at church. Growing up in New York had a large impact on my growth and my outlook on life, but u gotta say that no matter the diverse amounts of people and perspectives I faced, nothing catapulted my growth like the change in environment from joining the military.
I was fortunate to call Japan home for three years from 2011-2014, and so my journey around the world definitely started with a bang.
My years in Japan were nothing short of mythical, magical, and completely out of this world.
More amazing stories to come about that place but what I truly learned and realized was the growth I had as an individual living in a completely different culture.
My time there showed me that the world outside of NY was real and in many ways much bigger than the Big Apple. You see, New Yorkers tend to think that New York is THE place to be (conversation for another time).
Anyways, moving on.
3) Service to Country
To be honest, I never left home to “serve my country” or to fulfill some patriotic duty.
I was a young kid born in the mountains of the Dominican Republic with barely a house to live in or shoes on my feet, so my focus was always on growing my net worth, becoming financially stable, and so on. My loyalties to a nation weren’t truly sorted out yet, but I did know I loved everything America did for me and my family. Without it, I would be peddling in the streets of DR. Story for another time.
But, I put this one here because while I lived in Japan, I learned just how amazing America was and just how amazing serving my country was.
I re-enlisted.
And if you ever speak with service members most will tell you that some enlist the first time they say the oath of enlistment, but many actually enlist when they do it a second time.
That was me.
The second time I said the oath was different than the first because I now knew what I was getting myself into.
There’s a lot of honor, and pride we should take in saying an oath only 1% of Americans say, but many of us never truly understand what we were getting ourselves into. But, when we say it a second time, knowing full well what it entails, what the day-to-day is like, and what the real experience is, then the meaning changes.
It becomes a core memory where you just know how deep your commitment is.
In looking at my business of leadership development, I have found the moments I’ve shared in this article are all descriptive of moments when I made decisions to lead myself to places I wasn’t truly sure about.
When I left New York in 2010, I wasn’t fully certain, I just knew I needed a change.
When I got to Japan, I was happy to be in an amazing place, but I didn’t know how much of the world I would learn.
When I enlisted (re-enlisted) I knew I was starting to make decisions because I was creating a new loop in my life.
A loop that says, I’m willing to make a choice, to lead myself in a different direction.
So, Leaving my cans of beans in NY as a 20-year-old seems like an eternity away for me now at 35.
But honestly, I’m better for it.
And I hope that if you read this, and consider creating a new loop in your life, you consider these thoughts.