J R Martinez - Turning tragedy into purpose

[00:00:00] Welcome to Resilience Unravelled. Hi everybody and welcome to Resilience Unravelled, a podcast that examines all aspects of personal and organisation and resilience. A huge all-encompassing subject that covers the ability to thrive in life by harnessing your cognitive, emotional, physiological and contextual abilities.

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[00:01:04] Then search for Resilience Unravelled. So let's get started. Enjoy the show! Hey and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled. And it's an absolute tonight today to be chatting to J.R. Martinez. How is that J.R.? Did I get the pronunciation right this time?

[00:01:22] You got it right. Thank you. Fantastic, it's absolutely good. And I'm guessing by that fruity accent of yours, so you're a few miles away from me. So when will do you? Well it depends where are you? Well I'm in the northeast of England, so where are you?

[00:01:39] Yeah, I'm a few miles away from you but yeah, I am in Austin, Texas. Oh right, very good. You're not the first person who's interviewed from there, so there you go.

[00:01:51] It's becoming a popular place for a lot of people. I used to live in LA, I lived in New York for a while and then as I was looking for the next move,

[00:02:01] I was looking for the next move, I was looking for the next move, I was looking for the next move, I was looking for the next move,

[00:02:06] and then someone said hey you should come check out Austin. It's changed a lot since the last time you were here which was 15 this years ago.

[00:02:13] And we came back and checked it out and it's grown so much here. I mean there's a, it was known for a very long time, live music, you know,

[00:02:22] there's a barbecue, that's what Texas is known for. And now it's, there's entertainment here, there's technology companies here, the food industry has expanded.

[00:02:34] It's a very good outdoorsy city with a university here as well, a big university and so yeah it's a cool place, we like it and it's not as busy as the big cities you know,

[00:02:47] it gives us enough where we can kind of feel like we're in a city but at the same time we can kind of go back out to the suburbs and kind of stay in our bubble and live our life.

[00:02:56] Fantastic. I think everybody's got a real view of Texas, haven't they? Yeah. I remember going to Alaska and seeing a t-shirt with Alaska and then Texas on it and the phrase ain't it cute? Because I think famously everyone from Texas brags about how big Texas is isn't it?

[00:03:16] Well you know not only that but you know my wife's from New York, she's born and raised New York City and you know the one thing she says is that Texans and New Yorkers are exactly alike.

[00:03:30] And when she says that Texans are like, what do you mean? New Yorkers are like what are you talking about?

[00:03:37] And what she means is that they're both two very prideful places like people that are proud to be from New York, people that are proud to be from Texas and Texans will say you know, is there anywhere else to live?

[00:03:51] And New Yorkers will say why would you live anywhere else? You know so they both take a great deal of pride in Texas. I'm telling you they are proud of their state. They love their state. They love what it's about.

[00:04:04] They love what it stands for and they have no problem telling everybody else to get the hell out or don't come here unless we are. It's a challenge you know after COVID because everyone started coming here.

[00:04:17] What's interesting isn't it about the differences between our two nations because you're all very, very proud of your nations and we have a more self-deprecating sense of humor. We criticize our own country but will be tired anybody else that tries to criticize our country.

[00:04:30] Yeah that's what it's all about. It's just like family right? It's like you know when you celebrate as a family you come together and let's say you know let's say Susie or Tom they start dating somebody and they bring them over to hang out with the family

[00:04:44] and the family you know hey haven't seen you in a while so we start cutting up making jokes about each other and then all of a sudden now this other person decides oh I'm gonna make a joke too and you're like whoa whoa whoa.

[00:04:55] You just came to the party like you don't get to make those kind of jokes right? Like this is between family this is what we do

[00:05:02] and it's the same thing with you know I used to be in the military and the same thing with the military it's like that.

[00:05:07] Like we give each other such a hard time we banter back and forth and if you didn't know us you would think that we actually didn't like one another

[00:05:14] but we love each other but that's just the way we communicate that's the way we get along that's the way we show love and but don't let anybody else that's not in the military try to chime in and join the conversation. It doesn't work that way. Quite right.

[00:05:29] You'll be cut really quick. Well look we I need to be respectful of your time because that was a couple seconds late but tell us a little bit about yourself Jail. Tell us a little bit about your story.

[00:05:39] Well I mean there's so much to unpack but I think just sort of the quick version and then we can kind of take it from there depending on what avenue you want to explore but you know I was born in the United States I was raised here

[00:05:50] I was raised in some small towns and you know those small towns you know were great in certain aspects but in other aspects you know they were pretty challenging because I felt like I didn't see myself a lot

[00:06:01] I didn't you know I felt kind of felt like an outcast if you will and then after high school I decided to join the military and I deployed overseas and at 19 years old when I went to war and you know a month into my deployment I get injured

[00:06:18] and what happened was I was driving a Humvee in a city called Karbala in Iraq and the Humvee ran over a bomb and it exploded I was trapped inside I sustained burns over the course of my body 34% of my body was burned

[00:06:34] but the biggest thing at the time that was threatening whether I was going to be able to survive or not was the fact that I inhaled so much smoke from the fire

[00:06:40] and I was just literally in that Humvee just inhaling smoke and that obviously is not good for your organs but you know luckily I was able to survive it and you know came out of my coma three weeks later

[00:06:55] and I saw the reality of my body and the scars and that just created a whole other issue because I thought to myself there's no way that I can live life in this society in this culture looking like this

[00:07:07] and you know it took a lot of work a lot of self-awareness a lot of conversation with myself a lot of being vulnerable and learning what that really means and being honest with myself to get to a point to identify that wait I could be doing

[00:07:25] I can actually have a pretty cool life these are some cool things that I could be doing with my life let me really try to expand on these things and the more that I did that

[00:07:34] the more that I discovered the gift that I had and I got into speaking and I got into non-profit work and helping raise awareness for service members and their families I got into you know the entertainment space and I was on a couple of shows

[00:07:49] and then I was on a show a big show which I know over in England you guys have your version as well of Dancing with the Stars and so I was on that show and Len Goodman I know who has passed away

[00:08:02] but you know he's to commute back and forth and I got to go on that show and compete and actually won the competition my season and then you know since then wrote a book and have been traveling around the world

[00:08:15] just speaking and just talking about life and experiences and what has allowed me to get to this point in my life where I feel like I'm a pretty blessed man and I pretty much kind of came from you know some pretty heavy adversity if you will

[00:08:31] so as a brilliant story thank you for wrapping that up in a really interesting way thank you that's you should teach other people to do that let me unpack a few things though because you've given me loads to go at

[00:08:44] so you talked about the reality of your body I thought it was really interesting phrase and so you must and I don't know the extent to which you're injured you don't need to tell us unless you want to share this and tell it to you

[00:08:57] but that sensation of reality of body it must be a gut punch I mean how do you begin the process of coming back from that because that is the nature of resilience isn't it which is what we're here to say how do you begin to deal with that?

[00:09:13] Yeah so you know I get that question pretty frequently people talk about how did you become so resilient and the one thing that I tell people is like I had to learn this later in life but a few years after I was injured

[00:09:24] but what I identified was resiliency isn't just like a light switch you walk into a room and you hit the light switch and it's on and now you're resilient that's not how it works resiliency is something that has to be conditioned

[00:09:37] it has to be exercised it's a muscle and then your mind and you have to continue to like exercise that and what I had to realize is that I had been conditioned prior to that tragic day that changed my life forever

[00:09:50] life had been conditioned in me life had been challenging me and even though on a scale when you compare not that I like to compare adversities because I think that's the sort of a death trap but everything that I experienced as a kid

[00:10:04] and I experienced a lot of adversity even though it doesn't compare to the level of what I experienced at the age of 19 when I was fighting for my life it still were things that I had to overcome and deal with and it was adversity

[00:10:17] and so all of that was conditioning me was preparing me was allowing me to understand your capable of overcoming of doing the difficult thing so when I finally was presented with the most difficult thing that I've been presented with in my life

[00:10:31] I was able to remind myself hey wait a minute you've done hard things before right this isn't it's different hard but you've done hard things before so you can do this and I think that when you think of yourself at that age of 19 and 20

[00:10:45] when you know I don't know how it is in your culture but you know over here 18 you're off to university you're off to study or you're out in some cases you're off to go get a job and you know

[00:10:56] there's a lot of pressure where you should know what you're going to do with your life you should know what you're going to do at that point at 18, 19, 20 years old what you want to be for the next 50 years of your life you're supposed to know that

[00:11:08] and if you don't oh my god what's wrong with you oh and when people start asking like how's JR doing and they're like well you know he's just kind of faring it out you know like they look down on a kid

[00:11:23] that is in the world trying to figure out where they sort of fit in where they fit in what value they bring to the table and so that's already a challenge as an 18, 19, 20 year old now a 19 year old who is going through what I went through

[00:11:40] seeing my face in my body for the first time and seeing the degree of burns and scars that I was going to have for the rest of my life as you can imagine when I saw my face for the first time

[00:11:50] I just thought to myself I don't know who that person is I have no idea who that person is that's looking back at me in the mirror because I now didn't have a relationship with that person so I lost part of my identity

[00:12:04] of the way that I looked and even though I was alive and there was a lot to be grateful for in that respect I tell people like I still had to grieve the loss of the old me

[00:12:16] before I can ever get to a point where I can accept the new me and the reality as I say and so that is a journey that I've still been on and continue to be on Great, so I'd work a lot on identity

[00:12:30] so I'd like to unpack this a little bit more for me so go back and well there's two points we'll come back to identity in a minute the first thing is you talked about how you're conditioned through early life I mean you imply therefore that you've lost

[00:12:43] that you were thrown in you had to go at things and you lost you didn't win all the time and I think people misunderstand the nature of childhood and child rearing and making mistakes and laying and getting things wrong because that is a skill to learn isn't it

[00:12:59] you have to like your phrase you've done this before and that is the point if you've always dodged risk if you've always played it safe if everybody wins in a race for example no one you have to learn to process losing because in losing comes learning

[00:13:15] and if you learn that it's not really losing it's just you didn't win a cup but you've learned a bigger lesson so I like what you're saying now that makes a lot of sense to me now talk to me about identity dramatically changes who've lived

[00:13:29] with the wrong face all of their life so tell us what it's like just to wake up and have lost that sense of identity how is how are you what's it like oh man it's scary I mean there's no other real way to say it

[00:13:43] I mean it's like you're thrown I mean just imagine when you travel and you're just imagine if you're getting thrown into another culture another country you don't speak the language you don't know anybody you don't have any resources you get thrown into the middle of a jungle

[00:13:59] or a desert with no tools no resources how to navigate and survive I mean it's scary it's daunting and you start to go down this road where where your focus goes your energy follows and that works both ways both good and bad and my focus went

[00:14:15] defeating the narrative of I'm never going to be able to walk in public amongst normal people I'm never going to be able to be able to date anybody I'm never going to have a family like I start feeding that narrative that my life is over yet everyone

[00:14:31] else is happy that I'm alive and I'm sitting there thinking you guys are happy that I'm alive but am I the only one that's really thinking about how I'm never going to truly live there's a difference between being alive and actually living and you guys

[00:14:45] are focused on celebrating that I'm alive but I'm sitting here focused on I'm never yeah I'm alive but I'm never really going to live and it's scary to be in that position because you just don't know how the world is

[00:14:57] going to receive you who's going to show up for you how many people you'll potentially lose because people don't want to be associated with you and I know that sounds like a pretty dramatic way to look at it but there it's not like you grow up

[00:15:09] seeing a lot of people that are differently abled if you will it's not something we commonly see so of course I had no data to pull from no experience nothing to pull from and you know it you know and that's the thing is like so I refer

[00:15:27] a lot of service members in the US when they are injured they refer to the day that they were hurt as their alive day that's what they call it it was my alive day I don't call it that I call it my rebirth and the reason I call

[00:15:41] it my rebirth is because I truly believe parts of me died the day that I was injured and then left room for other parts of me to be born and the thing is is that when we talk about identity all of us are experienced

[00:15:55] or rebirths over the course of our lives it doesn't have to be a traumatic event like mine it can simply be as a parent you're so accustomed to taking care of your kids and they depend on you and you do do do for them

[00:16:07] and then they slowly get to a point now where at their age where there's the launch period and they're often to the world and they're producing for themselves and now you don't understand how to shift that and have that rebirth and change that identity

[00:16:21] and now you're still trying to be I'll do everything for you I'll take care of you and your kid is like mom dad all I need you to do is just pick up the phone and talk to me and maybe kind of guide me through this scenario

[00:16:33] or maybe say a prayer for me when I don't say a prayer for myself or people like companies that have jobs for extended periods of time and they're like oh my god I lost my job and it's like well did you what did you love about the job

[00:16:47] did you love the actual job itself or did you love what you got to do with the job so it's it's the act that you love it's not necessarily the space but you become attached to the space and now when that ends you can't see

[00:17:01] that okay that ends but there's and so constantly our roles are evolving and changing and in the moment it's daunting and scary but and you have to have that normal process that is normal process for people to grieve and I think that's a misconception where people

[00:17:17] think that you should just get over it's no big deal there's something good coming yes but we're all human beings and we have to grieve something before we can accept the new thing that's coming into our lives so so you look up you see this

[00:17:29] get a sense of identity goes through the green process but you've almost got an opportunity without going to into the Steve Austin Mild of what you can rebuild him that you know you could almost choose to justice in some aspects of your previous identity and to

[00:17:43] graph new things on you could almost choose to be a new sort of person was that something you considered or did or I wondered what you got rid of and started from a fresh well it's interesting because you know I had already kind of started

[00:17:57] a new identity if you will prior to my injury when I decided when I was 17 years old and I was a senior in high school and I just moved to a new place to a new town new school nobody knew me I didn't know anybody now

[00:18:13] J.R. stands for Jose Rene right so my name is Jose Rene Martinez I had been going by Jose my entire life and when I moved to this new city and got to this new school I decided I didn't want to go by Jose anymore

[00:18:29] I decided that I wanted to kind of have my own identity because my father's name is Jose Martinez my mother gave me the middle name Rene but I never like my father wasn't in my life and I was just like why am I

[00:18:43] representing his name he's not even in the picture and I don't like going by Rene and because in the US they interpret that as a girl's name so I got a lot of teasing about that so I just decided I'm going to create my own

[00:18:55] identity and so I decided I was going to go by J.R. and that's how J.R. came it wasn't junior it was J.R. Jose Rene J.R. and it was my image it was who it was a new start for me and so

[00:19:09] after I was injured it almost now took it to obviously a more intense level of where like I looked at it I said I get an opportunity to create a new image for myself I get a new chance to create the story the narrative change the narrative

[00:19:25] because for so long the narrative was people kept telling me you're a disabled veteran I'm a burned victim now if you heard those words you might focus on disabled you might focus on victim right that's what you might hear so every time I introduce myself

[00:19:43] I would tell people hi I'm J.R. Martinez I'm a disabled veteran I'm a burned victim now people are listening to the negative words and they're like oh poor him and they took time for me to finally kind of embrace that no I'm going to change

[00:19:57] this and I'm going to change the labels put on me or what people see me as because we need labels to understand things we need titles to understand things and have more clarity and sort of understand where the lines are

[00:20:09] but I finally got to a point I was like the hell with those lines my life has never lived within sort of a box or lines if you will I'm going to sort of break outside of that and I'm going to start telling people I'm just a veteran

[00:20:21] I'm not disabled I'm differently abled I have some limitations but so do quote normal people they have limitations too I'm not a burned victim I'm a survivor the moment that the incident was happening I was a victim every moment beyond that I'm a survivor I'm alive

[00:20:37] I'm thriving I'm creating a life for myself so once I sort of took that type of ownership it sort of had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder which maybe wasn't the healthiest way of going about it

[00:20:47] but I sort of had this like the hell with the world the hell with the world for limiting me and not really seeing what I'm truly capable of the hell with them I'm going to be the one now it's going to teach them

[00:20:57] and show them and at for and that's what I tell a lot of people that are in similar circumstances like you can't expect the world to just immediately understand who you are see you for what they you want them to see you as you have

[00:21:09] to go educate them you have to be the teacher and tell them and show them who you are and once you start to take that ownership people have no other choice to either one decide they like it and they want to be around it or two they don't

[00:21:23] like it for whatever reason and they move away guess what good for you you've now filtered out the people that don't deserve to be in your life so an awful lot of people go through your experience especially being the army a lot

[00:21:35] of other forces long long time and they can't come up pretty broken you see a lot of ex vets on the streets yep so is this a mindset thing a care thing just the does the military experience grind you down some sort of way because in the

[00:21:49] sense you haven't been in that long before this thing happens to you I wonder whether the institutionalization that forces control people might have this though might have affected you more if you've been in there longer so I would say

[00:22:05] a lot of what I see from not only my own experience but my peers and people that I've met in the military that have been there from extended period of time it starts way before the military and it starts with a society culture that is conditioning

[00:22:21] and I'm just going to speak from the male experience conditioning men to be tough and not to cry and not to really talk about their emotions or really pay attention to the emotions or their feelings like all that stuff you just disregard right like

[00:22:37] all that stuff is perceived as weak and then they start to use those phrases like oh are you crying little girl like everything is like immediately it becomes that and so we identify as young boys and then we just grow up with that ideology

[00:22:51] and unless you have somebody in your house that says hey it's okay no that's not the way we want you to grow up or look at you know being a boy or being a man you're just going to continue to just build into that image and say no

[00:23:05] you know I don't cry and I don't something that bothers me I'm not going to feel that I'm not going to talk about it right I'm not going to share I'm not going to show weakness and then when you join the military guess what

[00:23:19] it's only enhanced it's only amplified that approach of life you start to experience a lot of things you start to put yourself in scenarios that are life threatening you don't know if you're going to survive or not and you think in the moment when you're

[00:23:37] in a fight when you're out in combat when you're fighting for your life that you have time to sit here and process and cry and sort of grieve no because the interpretation is the minute that you do that now you've let your guard down now you

[00:23:53] you run the risk of putting yourself in a compromised situation and putting your team in a compromised situation so now it can cost you not only your life but it can cost the people around you their life so you're just constantly condition condition condition

[00:24:07] and then when you get out of the military I mean listen I love the military and it was great for me and it's great for a lot of people but they break you down they try to strip you of who you were prior

[00:24:17] to joining and they try to mold you to become what they need you to become in order to survive but when you leave when you exit the military there is no process where it's like now let's strip you of everything that we've taught you and we

[00:24:31] molded you to be and we kind of let you go out into the world with these other tools to help you integrate into that world because it's very different worlds and so now you have vats that come out of the military they're struggling they're triggered

[00:24:45] by things nonstop and rightfully so but they're not being taught or shown how to talk about these experiences how given tools to learn how to navigate them and I was no different listen I'm not going to sit here and tell you that my recovery was

[00:25:03] I just had this realization one day and then I went out into the world and took off and succeeded no I was angry I was drinking I was not a pleasant person to be around I would I'm not proud of this

[00:25:15] but I would I would drink and then I would drive home and I didn't know how I got home I mean I could have hurt and damaged someone else's life that was innocent and of course then mine but by the grace of God I wasn't I was saved

[00:25:33] and I never harmed anybody but here's the turning point for me the turning point was my best friend one day when I decided to really be a brat and be upset about something that somebody said

[00:25:47] my best friend told me to sit in the passenger seat of his car and he told me to cry this is another man that's telling me you need to cry and I was like I don't need to cry and I was like I'm tough

[00:25:57] and he's like no you don't you're not you need to cry you need to let this stuff out and before you know it I didn't even know why I started crying and he let's say this turned into like literally a two hour conversation

[00:26:07] of me just sharing all this trauma and things that I've been holding onto for so long and a lot of this stuff wasn't even about my injury overseas a lot of this stuff was about my childhood that I never dealt

[00:26:19] with and I was living with it just caring and just throwing pile and more junk on top of it and after that conversation where my best friend he's now my best friend he taught me what it meant to be vulnerable he taught me

[00:26:33] that it's okay to be vulnerable he showed me how to be vulnerable he showed me that I could be vulnerable and not be judged for it and not be looked at differently and that would still be loved and probably loved even more

[00:26:47] because I was willing to go to that place and my life changed after that conversation with him my life took off great okay now let me leap in because you've gone past about 30 things I want to talk to you about now so the first thing

[00:27:01] that you talked about you talked about your identity but when you talk about people who leave the military actually what you're talking about there is they've lost their sense of identity as well there's been no identity rebuilding so that's interesting and because so we see people whose

[00:27:19] identities stripped away some people have strong identities that work all the way through so that makes sense and I think there's I think we undervalue this idea of identity and don't understand what it's really all about it's linked to men in the social

[00:27:35] sense but you also you talked about this idea being vulnerable and I think vulnerable is an interesting word isn't it because it implies a weakness and implies being open to something but it's important that people see vulnerability as expressed in different ways because

[00:27:49] we don't all have to cry and we don't all have to sit in groups and talk things through that's a good process not in the matter with the process but it is important for people to be allowed to have their own mechanism isn't it there's almost like a

[00:28:03] thing down the personal development space hey this is where I'm at running out of masterminds and this and that and blah and this and blah blah blah blah but actually you know people can just sit home on their own and be quiet

[00:28:15] that's enough as well sometimes to deal with stuff sometimes people will go out and have a good time and enjoy themselves because they don't need to be vulnerable absolutely no I think listen there's no one size fits all right and I think anytime you think of anything

[00:28:29] in life with that mindset you're setting yourself up to be disappointed because you're going to have unrealistic expectations about whatever it is you're getting into and so yes everyone has a different process and for me when people ask me what are some

[00:28:43] what are some things that you do JR in your own personal life that allow you to navigate things that are challenging at this time in your life and I say it depends I do a lot of different things I'll go on a walk by myself

[00:28:55] I'll go on a drive or I'll sit in my office and I'll close my eyes and I'll just sit here and just connect with my own breath and I'll just kind of the mix the moment that I'm breathing I can feel that air coming up through

[00:29:09] my lungs and I can just remind myself man you're alive you got this you're okay and other instances I'll sit here and play music and it'll be a different genre every single time but it's a genre that supports where I'm at

[00:29:23] or in some cases I'll sit down and write in other cases I'll sit down and do a post on social media and talk and just kind of put it out into the world and just see what people say in return

[00:29:33] and you know you might find some connection there and so there's just I mean there's so many different things that you can do I've set around in circles and I've talked to different people in circles and we've all sort of shared and had that drum circle experience and

[00:29:47] practice yoga I mean there's a million things that you can be doing that are going to work for you but at the same time get you the results that you're looking for which is being able to get to a point where you can heal and actually

[00:30:01] work through a lot of these emotions but I think the key is is that we're so conditioned as well to look for distraction because we're uncomfortable with the things that our body is telling us the things that our body is reminding us that hey there's a trigger

[00:30:17] there's a trauma there because it's like that book the body keeps the score right we mentally our brains forget the things that we were exposed to the trauma the experiences we naturally try to forget those things so we don't have to like deal with them

[00:30:35] but the body is constantly reminding us and it's resurfacing in different ways where some people get your little pits in their stomach, some people get knots in their throat some people start to kind of get fidgety there's different things that people do

[00:30:47] so the body is reminding us hey there's something you got to work on there's something you got to pay attention to and we have a problem with just sitting still and paying attention to that and working through that we naturally have to look outward at other things

[00:31:03] to try to give us life so we can navigate through it we can move forward right and listen all those things are great but at some point in this journey and we're all on a journey no matter how long you're on this earth

[00:31:17] at some point in the journey you have to get comfortable sitting with yourself and really connecting with that thing and your body and saying why does this bother me why does this feeling surface every time this happens or that happens or I think this is going to happen

[00:31:37] why do I feel this and the more you start to connect with yourself and have that intimacy with yourself and vulnerability with yourself guess what happens you now start becoming that much more aware of trauma past experiences and now you start to break the cycle

[00:31:55] now good things are starting to happen so you've had this career it's been stellar, it's been fascinating obviously not a victim at all which is brilliant I think probably one of the most significant things are programs like dancing dancing with the stars it's not the show

[00:32:15] it's not the winning it's other people who have what you have seeing somebody else doing what you've done isn't it, it's that another person who's sitting in a hospital ward thinking look at me covered in 36% of burns somebody else was like that and did that

[00:32:35] so going through the process it's lovely and it's great but really in a sense that's the legacy of that show isn't it it's like we've got athletes who have disabilities going through it and we have people of colour and how gender diverse people who have gone through it

[00:32:55] and it's that thing about seeing people when you're young seeing people like yourself on screen on the big shows and by the way Strictly Ken first so we're clear on that it's not the other way around yeah no, I mean listen but that's fascinating isn't it

[00:33:11] it is and you know when I was in the military the thing that I fell in love with was this idea of service of being of service of helping others of doing for others I fell in love with that it felt good

[00:33:25] it felt great to be part of something of service and when I got out of the military that was the thing I identified that wait I can still serve it's going to look very different than it did before but I can still do this

[00:33:37] thing that I love so much and that's what I started doing so everything that I have done everything that I do I always do it from a place of I'm here to serve I'm here to give back that's the purpose that's the intention here

[00:33:51] and so needless to say like going on that show yes I'm representing a lot of people and that's the way that I serve however on the flip side of that the great thing about that show is it gives people something people that can't necessarily

[00:34:07] don't have the same challenges or experiences that I have but it gives them something else to focus on meaning they're not they don't have time to focus on oh my god look at the scars on his body because guess what I'm dancing dancing to music

[00:34:23] and music and dancing kind of naturally does something to the brain and to your body so now you start to focus on oh wow I don't even see his scars anymore I just see he or she has a good ability to dance

[00:34:35] or when they interview them after their dance oh they got a fun personality oh we kind of like this person now you're seeing that a person is so much more than what the surface is now you're getting to actually see the individual and

[00:34:49] now you can connect with that person because now you like well I'm like that person I'm like I like him I like to joke or I like music or I like to dance or I like I got this belief now I connect with this person

[00:35:01] that on the exterior we look very different but when you get to know each other you're like oh there's a lot of intersectionality between our lives and that was the thing that I think that I've discovered is that we don't have to have the same journey we don't

[00:35:17] and we don't I mean even if I talk to somebody else that's been in the military that has been injured guess what it was a different type of injury guess what the recovery was different guess there's so many things but at the end of the

[00:35:29] day what we connect on is how we are as human beings and what we're navigating as people that's the connection and so dancing and other opportunities that I've had have just allowed me to change the narrative and allow people to see me for more and then they see

[00:35:47] me for more and then they start to assume if I interact with another burn survivor that I see in my community then I have to assume that that person is more than just a burn survivor and now it changes the way you look at

[00:36:01] anybody else you come in contact with which to me as you said that's the real objective and that's the legacy and that's to me what I'm more proud of than anything. That's nice. So if people want to reach out to you find out more about you or

[00:36:19] just cover up more about what you do J. Where should they look? Well there's always the social media avenue which everyone spends a lot of time doing that I'm on all the platforms and I am J.R. Martinez is my handle

[00:36:33] but if somebody is not on social media and they want to do a little bit more of a deeper dive into my story and what I do you can always go to jrmartinez.com and there's a lot of information there so listen I love conversation

[00:36:49] and I do have a podcast the podcast is called Rebirth and it's all about talking to people that have experienced their own Rebirths and it doesn't have to be a traumatic event but listen I just love talking to people meeting new people, I love making new friends

[00:37:05] I feel like I got one now and thank you for having me on the show but for me it's just I just enjoyed this this to me is what life is all about listening and really expanding and exploring different things

[00:37:19] about ourselves that maybe we wouldn't have spent time exploring previously I think we could probably do 10 podcasts with you but we need to draw over the one tonight because it needs to be respectful of your time but maybe we could have part 2 sometime let's do it my friend

[00:37:33] and really dig into some of the issues I would love to do it anytime you let me know superstar thank you so much for spending time with us today we can talk to J.R. Martinez if you're over here and Martinez if you're over there

[00:37:45] and it's been a joy to speak to you and to talk to you and to meet you today it's been absolutely brilliant so you take care you as well thank you so much Russell have a great day Angie Hi thanks for listening

[00:37:59] hopefully that was a useful and interesting episode as I said earlier you can support our work by leaving a review which does drive enhanced exposure or you can donate on our site which is at QEDOD.com you can purchase our series of books all about

[00:38:17] Unraveling Resilience, Leadership, Management and Anxiety at QEDOD.com along with some other free resources available on the site we've also got a Patreon page and you of course can send us questions ideas thoughts conversations and fresh subjects at info at QEDOD.com hopefully there's something there for you

[00:38:43] catch you next time round