The transition from military service to civilian life can be both exhilarating and daunting. We’ve dedicated years and missed many precious moments while serving the country, developing a strong sense of duty to our units and each other, honor toward the values supporting that which we defend, and leadership among our peers and colleagues across a cross-section of agencies. Now, you’re exploring a new landscape coupled with unfamiliar routines, career paths, and social dynamics.

For many veterans or people in transition, the challenges during a reorganization can be high. Some challenges include changing jobs or roles, reintegrating into a civilian community or neighborhood, and reorienting oneself and one’s family toward a renewed sense of purpose beyond previous experiences and military service. It’s definitely a period of self-discovery, exploration, and personal and professional development.

And while it can require one’s full attention, the good news is that much of those past skills and knowledge gained and in military service are more valuable than ever. Consider, you’re disciplined, dedicated, and resourceful; these advantages will ensure you smoothly transcend into your new chapter.

This post looks at how the principles we gained of servant leadership, authentic leadership, and Aparigraha (a yogic concept of non-attachment) empower you, facilitating purpose, self-actualization, and accomplishment post-transition.

Internal Leadership: Following Your Choices with Aparigraha

Effective leadership begins with self-leadership. Granted, the military instilled and stressed many mundane aspects to living within that environment. Those tasks were important skill-building roles for the demanding opportunities that were to come later as we progressed in rank and position. The cumulative effect of those tasks confirmed the importance of discipline, responsibility, decision-making, and strategic thinking. The time has now arrived for you to consider your community and yourself as you apply those skills to deliver your future, your higher self now:

  • Self-Reflection and Letting Go: Sometimes, you need to make time for time. Give yourself space for introspection. You have a lot to consider, preeminently your personal core values. Think about the kind of impact you want to make in the world. And, while the military (in many cases) gave us a ‘job’ (sometimes not our first pick), you have this golden opportunity to assess and direct your passions and skills. Take time to journal, meditate, and dive into a few personality assessments for self-discovery. By identifying your core purpose, and releasing yourself of many military attachments and identities, you’re engaging in Aparigraha. This act of letting go gives you the space to embrace new opportunities while exploring facets of yourself that support your true purpose.
  • Skills Inventory with Non-Attachment: Look back on the skills and experiences you gained during service. What leadership roles did you excel in? If you were a team member, what inputs did you provide to shape the direction of the team, it’s eventual outcomes? Were you sought after because of your problem-solving abilities? Was your technical expertise deep enough to rewrite the manual for equipment and or processes? Dig deep to explore and transfer skills toward your civilian career opportunities, entrepreneurship, or any number of fields you find connection and aspiration. From finance, logistics, project management, to include culinary arts and fitness, many military skills translate exceptionally well to a host of industries. Again, by liberating yourself from the many military titles or roles (Aparigraha), you’re focusing on the transferable value you bring.
  • Broader Field of Vision and Goal Setting: We all experienced and at times, may have questioned others regarding their five- or ten-year plans. While there are a number of decent tools to help, consider using a values-based goal-setting framework. This framework helps you delineate your core values first (e.g., service, innovation, collaboration). Then, you’ll embark on set goals for yourself that align with your values. values. This is all about you. This fosters an organic and deeply meaningful, resilient approach to goal setting compared to the rigidity of SMART goals. This approach isn’t necessarily linear because it gives you the opportunity and comfort to evolve as you learn and grow, with underlying nuances of openness toward new possibilities (Aparigraha).

Organization is the Garden.
​The Leader is Sower.
Harvest the Success.

Leading Authentically through Integrity and Purpose

Authentic leadership is all about you. It’s about your leading yourself using your true self. There’s nothing gimmicky in this because you’ll be leveraging and capitalizing on your strengths, experiences, and values. It’s nothing more than what you’re capable of: Inspiring and connecting with others. Let’s explore a few methods to cultivate authentic leadership:

Liberate LIMFACS: Your dedicated service played a significant part of your identity. But it doesn’t entirely define you going forward unless you want it to. Equally, it doesn’t command nor order your future. Embrace the unique skills and experiences you acquired while discovering and promoting new facets of yourself. Being called by a military title is unique when measured against the whole of society, and that uniqueness has personal and professional salience because it required disciplined effort to attain. Yet, outside of the military or government setting, its uniqueness suffers because the title is tied to a hierarchy you now have power to transcend at will. This parallels Aparigraha because of the letting go, the release from the limitation of your identity being coupled to military service. You are on your own terms.

Vulnerability as a New Strength: Don’t hesitate to share your story of transition. (I’ll be the first one to admit that I am.) And I know many veterans face similar challenges. But I also know that sharing experiences fosters connections with others, and may possibly inspire them on their own journeys. This vulnerability becomes a form of authentic leadership, a means of paying ‘it forward.’ Our individual and collective vulnerability, wearing ‘it’ on our sleeves gives witness as relatable, liberating limitations, attachments and perceptions to a perfect or stoic image (Aparigraha).

Value-Driven Decision Making: Live your values in every aspect of your life. This is challenging, no doubt. But, over time, every decision (no matter how significant) not only builds external trust and respect with others, but more critically with yourself as you flex your values. Others witness your evolution as you embody and personify the values you carefully cultivate. Your steadfast commitment to personal integrity and service will externally signal to your community highlighting your authentic leadership style. 

Others Before Self: As many of us can attest, servant leadership emphasizes the needs and growth of others. Due to this external approach and perspective, servant leadership reinforces and aligns with the meaning of service many veterans possess. So, let’s move to the drill pad to consider a few ways to integrate servant leadership principles:

  • Sharing Your Knowledge:By releasing much of the knowledge obtained and learned, these insights help others navigate their own transition process. This sharing embodies servant leadership because it focuses on the needs of others, the mission of sharing and the whole, before oneself. In terms of Aparigraha, the motivation hovers toward the circulation and growth of knowledge, and more tangibly, the growth of the veteran community. It’s this non-attachment to a static was of being toward something with a higher vibrational intensity.
  • Fostering Community Connection:This may not seem on par with Aparigraha, but rest assured there is commonality. Firstly, look for and share with veteran support networks and organizations. Doing so lends a sense of belonging and camaraderie within and among connections. Secondly, developing strong support systems releases one from the limitations and attachment of going it alone and isolation, to embracing the cumulative power of community. These two aspects align quite well with Aparigraha in that servant leadership helps fellow veterans) and letting go of isolation.
  • Sharing Success via Collaboration:As veterans, we often excel in team environments as that has been ingrained since MEPS, and perhaps prior in sports. Engage your collaborative skills building strong and resilient relationships with colleagues and affinity groups to nurture positive workplace dynamics. This leadership approach helps the entire team and facilitates a more fulfilling professional experience. In terms of Aparigraha, by sharing skills and successes you’re promoting the greater good of the team while enhancing your strengths and values. This approach couples Ahimsa in that sharing is reinforced by a concern for others to uplift everyone’s previous static thoughts and limiting beliefs.

The whole future lies in uncertainty:
​Live immediately.” 
– Seneca – 

Aparigraha: Letting Go for Growth

I realize that we’ve only taken a cursory view of Aparigraha. However, here in this section we’ll look a bit deeper into this yogic philosophy. Loosely, but approximately close, Aparigraha means non-attachment or non-possession. This non-attachment or non-possession can be applied to an extensive array of tangible and intangible connections. From a book, to a feeling, to a memory or thought Aparigraha holds salience through letting go, giving it back ‘to the universe’ so to speak. This giving back or letting go of unnecessary or previous attachments, is helpful as some of those attachments may no longer be helpful or relevant, some may have hindered personal growth. This aspect of change facilitates innovation, not just of a product, or some novel artifact, methodology, or process. On a much grander scale, and more personally profound, Aparigraha informs potential opportunities. Let’s take a look how Aparigraha may support your transition:

  • Redefining Identity: Releasing Limitations: Letting go of the idea that your identity is driven or undergirded by your military service can be liberating and exhilarating. Embrace new possibilities and explore different facets of yourself. This aligns with the concept of Aparigraha, encouraging you to shed the limitations of a singular identity that you may have previously embraced, but are now capable of redefining yourself for growth, on your terms.
  • Lighten Your Life: Forgo Excess: Realizing that your schedule and demands are based on the inputs you determine as important, now’s the time to reflect on adjusting the regimens in your living space, possessions, and routines to deliver your vision. This process of reduction creates free space to explore and grow determined by what is in your context’s best interest moving forward. By unshackling unnecessary attachments (Aparigraha), you create capacities, new opportunities, and experiences that are value-driven, purpose-aligned.
  • Focus on Values: Ease off External Validation: I might catch some flack here, but bear with me. Aparigraha speaks toward aligning your values and contributing to something bigger than yourself while de-emphasizing externalities and objects that hinder your forward progress and development. By becoming enmeshed with many competing external forces, this act creates a static state blunting your positive impact. Fair enough, focus on those impacts that truly matter to your brand, your critical life elements (such as family). In this regard, servant leadership underscores the importance of purpose, and knowing which elements ultimately serve you for your highest good.

​
Beyond Ease: Scaffolding a Self-fulfilling Life

The transition from military service is a significant life-impacting change, because you’ve freely given your life in the service of something bigger than self. However, it’s also an fantastic occasion to realize new passions that you may have been unable to previously pursue. It’s also a time that you may opt to contribute your skills in impactful ways. With these ideas in mind, consider these additional thoughts for scaffolding a life beyond service, touched by Aparigraha:

  • Volunteer and Setting Free Self-Interest: We all know the importance of ‘paying it forward.’ We’ve done that through our service, paying it forward for the next generation of servicemembers. Volunteering allows you to give back to your community, develop new skills, and potentially network with people in your desired field. Volunteerism doesn’t ask you to accept all invitations as you are free to accept those that align with your values, your vision, your brand. Your selection and embodiment of those opportunities that stretch your preconceived notions of limitations undergird Aparigraha and servant leadership because you’re actualizing the greater good.
  • Incorporate Continuous Learning: Set Free Stagnation: Never stop learning; never stop growing. The availability of free and minimally-priced courses, workshops, and masterclasses abound to stay up-to-date on preferred and chosen industry trends and personal interests. While courses for credit or audit exist, simply establishing a personal reading challenge based on the number of days to read, the time you decide to read daily, or the number of books to read during the year broken down by quarters (such as six books per quarter) and then calculating how many pages to read to complete your goal. This style of learning focused on your topic of choice gives you the space and freedom to pace your interests as you dig deeper into yourself, building the habit day-by-day to free yourself from stagnation. The understanding of Aparigraha emphasizes knowledge because this continuous learning releases static thoughts and exhibits novel frameworks to proceed both personally and professionally for growth.
  • Minimalism & Mindfulness: Practices for Aparigraha: After years of service, we acquire many artifacts that give us particular moments of reflection. Accruing such artifacts is not necessarily helpful (such as the many pressed uniforms I ‘still’ have in my closet). Through incorporating minimalism and mindfulness, we give ourselves the emotional space to encourage and continue the distance between previous roles and identities to a new vision you fashion. Minimalism suggests that there is a process of selecting objects that foster your vision, while separating yourself from the energy of objects which no longer serve you and your future. You let go as you determine best, so long as your release pivots you shaping space for experiences and personal growth (Aparigraha). Each context is individual leaving you to design, scaffold and implement your vision as you determine best from your frame of outlook. Coupled with minimalism, mindfulness plays a vital role in Aparigraha. As the Greater Good Science Center at UC-Berkeley put it, “Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens.” Essentially, this goes toward the ethical and normative quality of mindfulness because it treats our emotions as they are, accepting them as they are; just thoughts. It’s your space liberated of opinion. We listen to them, honor them, and graciously accept them without reliving the weight of their experience, the weight and heaviness those sensations used to carry and encumber us. Let it go. Release. It’s not you. Not anymore.

Leading Your Way to Your Future

You’ve honed a host of skills from military service – leadership, discipline, teamwork, and problem-solving. These are invaluable assets in the civilian world. By leveraging your strengths, the principles of self-reflection, servant leadership, and Aparigraha, you’re far more capable to direct your transition with purpose, fulfilling a future you design. Embracing Aparigraha, servant leaders nurture a leadership style motivated toward empowerment, shared success, and collective well-being. This stance provides the lift over the acquisition of personal gain or validation, delivering an authentic and satisfying leadership experience.

It’s not just the leader who gains. When Aparigraha is practiced multi-dimensionally servant leaders promote an environment where trust, collaboration and innovation are built and perpetuated, reinforced. Through the daily practice, teams and colleagues feel and reciprocate value, the sense of empowerment, and motivation to contribute their best selves not just for themselves, but for the good of the team (and the whole support system) they represent. This compounded synergy ultimately leads to heightened performance, increased personal and professional satisfaction, and a more positive organizational culture.

The path of servant leadership fueled by Aparigraha is not without challenges. Letting go of attachment to previous roles and identities, outcomes, and recognition can be a continuous process. Bear in mind that many of those previous attachments were built over extended periods of time, becoming reinforced through habit. However, the potential rewards of letting go are significant. By integrating the principles previously touched on, leaders have the capacity to cultivate a meaningful and impactful leadership style that inspires and empowers others while fostering a thriving and successful organization. As we’ve explored Aparigraha and its servant leadership connection, we touched on its potential for a transformative approach to leading others. Through service, empowerment, and collective success, leaders promote positive and productive work environment not just for the good of themselves, but the benefit of their teams.

​- Sven