J R Martinez - Turning tragedy into purpose

Resilience Unravelled

Keywords

Resilience – Grief – Identity – Loss - Image – Changing the narrative – Labels – Vulnerability – Connection – Purpose – Rebirth Day

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled J R Martinez shares his journey from the battlefields of Iraq to ABC’s ‘Dancing with the Stars’. J R talks about how he joined the military and went to war at 19 but was injured after just one month, suffering 34% burns and inhaling so much smoke it was thought he might not survive. He was in a coma for 3 weeks and, when he came out of it the reality of the injuries and scars to his body left him thinking there was no way he could live in society. Eventually though he realised there were a lot of things that he could still do and he turned tragedy into purpose, sharing his story and expanding his career into acting, advocacy, non-profit work raising awareness for injured military personnel and writing his memoir.

Main topics

• Why resilience needs to be conditioned and exercised.
• How our early life conditions us for the difficulties we meet later
• Grieving for the loss of an old life so you can accept the reality of a new one
• Losing your sense of identity
• The difference between being alive and living
• How we can all have a ‘rebirth day’ when roles evolve and change
• Choosing to jettison parts of your old identity
• Creating a new image and changing the narrative
• Negative words and embracing the labels given to us by other people
• How society and culture conditions men to be tough and avoid talking about emotions
• Why vulnerability needs to be expressed in different ways
• Seeing the individual, not the injury
• How connecting as humans beings can change the narrative and the way you look at anyone else you come into contact with

Action items

You can find out more about J R at https://jrmartinez.com/ or through his Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn