Why Prioritize "Being" Over "Doing" Anything After Life in the Military.

Why accomplishment doesn't equal satisfaction for Veterans and how a better state of "being" tops "doing" anything.

Your way of being is more important than what you’re doing. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve taken away from the The TRANSITION Interview Series while reflecting on my own transition.

The doing and the artifacts of that doing are only derivatives of how you exist in the world and who you truly are for your family, your profession and your life.

After 12 months of observations, conversations, and thinking about the experience of civilian life after the GWOT, I'll admit it's been more than beneficial to my own experience and taught me a lot about a community I care deeply for.

I started The TRANSITION having observed an abundance of support when it comes to the vocational side of military separation, your "how to write a resume, interview prep, and grad school application" type services. However, an absence of dialogue when it comes to the experience thereafter, the years that follow, the mental health part, the years where I see the most Veterans struggle.

A year later, I’m realizing The TRANSITION has served an unintended purpose for me personally. When I left the Navy myself, I put as much effort as I could into maintaining who I was through the things I was "doing." Checking the boxes you're supposed to check, climbing toward the next horizon line (both figuratively and literally), doing anything that would demonstrate that the Navy SEAL part of me was intact. 

In retrospect, I didn’t know who I was post-military and it was rather uncomfortable to consider those questions. 

I realized I could avoid that topic if I stayed focused on accomplishing more.

Eventually, the satisfaction that followed accomplishment, be it physical or professional, became challenging to recognize. When it was recognized, it vacated quickly, leaving me apathetic and a desire to accomplish something harder.

Ultimately, all the "doing" yielded a painful state of "being."

Somehow, writing helped me break that cycle. Writing, especially writing well, involves ambiguity, delayed gratification, and the understanding of what we know is true in our subconscious and putting it into the conscious. 

It's art. 

There are no defined rules, finish lines, and no diplomas. Writing, as is true for all art forms I suppose, calls on one's state of "being", much more so than "doing." For me, this was a new kind of challenge.

Ironically, as I look for the presence of themes in the 12 articles that precede this one, it seems each makes an argument for the benefits of "being" vice “doing.” Not a single time in my conversations on Veteran mental health have I found an advocate for "doing" any one single thing.

In practice, however, a pullback from "doing" presents a challenge. 

On active duty, we're measured almost exclusively by the pace and importance of what we're "doing." Eval paragraphs, award citations, and promotion boards are really just records of one's "doing." The system is objective (at least conceptually) and encourages the completion of the task at hand, the mission. 

As we discussed in Brian Meese and Scott Parker's interview pieces, one of the hardest parts of leaving the military is that it requires a new definition of mission, likely a more complex one. 

We have missions within our missions as fathers/mothers, husbands/wives, employees, athletes, entrepreneurs, and the list goes on, and that, to me, presents a case for the prioritization of "being" over "doing."

Invest in the "being." How does life feel in those periods of time between accomplishments? 

Two weeks after you walk the graduation stage with an advanced degree? 

The week after finishing the ultramarathon? 

Once the buzz of the promotion wears off. 

Accomplishment is never a bad thing. It's a great and should be celebrated. But if you're anything like me and the many Vets I've talked to this year, focusing only on the "doing" will not elevate your "being." 

In fact, the opposite is likely true.

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The art for this post was created by Sarah Rossetti “Invader Girl” and can be found at

https://www.invadergirlart.com/