The Journal Prompt

Insightful Journal Prompts Delivered Weekly.

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Welcome back to The Journal Prompt, your weekly companion for introspection and personal growth. 🌿

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In This Week’s Issue (11-minute read)

💬 Quote of the Week

🖼️ Framing Your Reflection

✍️ Three Insightful Journal Prompts

Framing Your Reflection 🖼️

“This isn’t about mission - this is about power. And I am not going let this General’s ego take away something that’s important TWICE - once at the beginning of my military career, and now again, at the end.”

These were words I said to myself at a pivotal moment in my final months serving in the U.S. military.

Let me be clear - my devotion to country is (present tense) profound.

When I was in the Marine Corps, I carried a pocket U.S. Constitution everywhere I went (the same worn copy now sits on my desk).

I have “We the People” tattooed just below my left clavicle - put there to serve as a daily reminder of the call to personal responsibility for making this country better.

Below is my daily routine when I was at my infantry battalion:

• 0330: Wake Up

• 0345 - 0545: Read and study warfare

• 0600 - 0715: Workout with my unit

• 0730 - 0800: Meetings prep and Day Overview

• 0800 - 1800: Teach warfare and plan training

• 1830-1915: Dinner

• 1930 - 2030: Study warfare

• 2130: Sleep

So how does a Marine this devoted, this obsessed with service, end up sitting on his couch, blood boiling, as a superior officer delivers what felt like a betrayal?

Yet there I was, sitting on the couch in my Virginia home, just a few miles away from the Pentagon, as a superior officer told me over the phone…

“I know you’re wife is pregnant, and that the family is moving back to Florida, but General X has been very clear - we can’t let you go with them. We don’t want to set a precedent that people can end their term here early and get away with it.”

My response? A mechanical, "You got it, sir."

I can feel you cringing. I cringe too, two years later, remembering how I defaulted to the programming: "Mission first. Unit first. Personal priorities last."

The fundamental belief at the root of my answer. “In order to be an exemplary leader, the mission and unit must always come before any personal priorities”.

As I hung up the phone, my wife’s ice-blue eyes cut through me like a white-hot katana.

First came the look. Then came the heat.

She ripped into me…

“Why can’t you your pregnant wife, two adopted teenage daughters, and 8 year old boy first?! Are you not a leader in OUR family? If you’re not doing $%^& there, why are they more important than us?!”

Standing my ground, I fired back….

“It’s not called sacrifice because it feels good! And if everyone thought that way, and only looked out for themselves, nobody would ever serve to protect their People!”.

Then she dropped the truth atom bomb that would crack my foundation:

“Can’t you see it’s just about power. They want to control you and you’re just their SLAVE!”

Second trimester hormones aside….her words detonated something in my mind.

What if this wasn't about Duty at all?

What if this was about Control wearing Duty's uniform?

As she walked away to cool off, memories flooded back like incoming tide.

When I got back from my deployment to Iraq, I wanted to tryout for Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC). And despite being the top lieutenant in my battalion, I was told no. The reason? The unit needed me “in my role”.

Several weeks later, all the lieutenants had to request the new jobs we wanted in the battalion.

I got the one job I literally BEGGED not to get because it would tie me to an office chair. The reason? They unit needed “someone with my skills” in that job.

And after I became the best at THAT job, I asked about MARSOC again…..and I’m sure you can guess the answer.

But even in those instances….I understood the rational of my leaders. They put me in the toughest roles because they believed I could handle it, and they legitimately thought the unit would not be all it could be if I was elsewhere.

But this? This was different.

And the puppet master behind it all? The same General X who'd nearly expelled me from the Naval Academy years ago because I didn’t voluntarily rat out classmates who had beers with their parents at an End of Year celebration dinner…..beers that the parents literally handed them.

I stayed in school only because every single leader in my chain of command all the way up to her stood up for me and recommended against expulsion. But I didn’t come out unscathed - I was stripped of my rank, and of a top summer training opportunity I had worked all year to get.

Fast forward 7 years, and there I was again….

I was part of a special Congressional program that required a 2 year assignment to the Pentagon. And I was trying to end my assignment six months early in order to participate in a government program that helps veterans transition into the private sector.

The difference this time, I was NOT in an essential role.

Because I was the youngest and lowest ranking person to ever be accepted in the special program, I drew the short straw and was put in a role that everyone knew did not matter (it had been vacant for 9 months and no one noticed until it came time for assignment).

Nevertheless, I crushed it. I built systems to automate that job. I then volunteered to fill another vacant job, and automated that one too. And I constantly asked General X’s department for re-assignment so the organization could get use out of the Master’s in Public Policy that they had just paid me to get.

And I wasn’t the only one on this boat.

General X was trying to hold us ALL in our spots because she didn’t want to establish a precedent that people can “just leave early because they feel like it.”

That’s when it clicked.

If this was about the best outcome, General X would treat each individual with nuance - approving some and denying others, based on how mission critical their job was.

But why was General X applying it to someone she routinely forgot even existed in her department?

My wife was right - this WAS about power and control.

Then and there something snapped. The rage that followed wasn't just anger - it was awakening.

I had finally come to a moment where I was forced to question a belief I never thought to question - that those above me always had the best interest for the whole at heart.

This blind faith had nearly cost me everything - my role as a father, my duties as a husband to my sick, pregnant wife.

As I sat there, all those years of warfare studies suddenly found a new purpose - I began plotting how to use the system's own rules against it. But that's a tale for another time.

I’ve never shared this part of my life publicly.

I wanted to share it with this community because maybe some of you are in that same boat right now.

Maybe the reason your life isn't moving forward is because your identity is anchored to ideas that need to die.

If your idealogical map, especially around the core tenants for how you see the world, is not leading to the life you want….the map is wrong.

Question everything - especially the things we hold most sacred.

It's better to destroy a belief that's outlived its purpose than to let it destroy you.

Three Journal Prompts ✍️

🔍 An Un-Learned Lesson

Examine a time where you had deep beliefs about something, but then Reality put something in your path that unequivocally disproved your beliefs.

Did you really learn that lesson, or did the recency of the pain subside and an old pattern of thinking make its return?

🧠 Your Belief Prison

What is one of your strongest held beliefs about the world? Where did you pick up that idea? How do you know it’s true?

Would you agree with it if you heard it fresh today? Is there a cognitive bias at the root of my thinking?

🔭 Irreconcilable Differences

What is something you want to become in the future that’s incompatible with beliefs that you hold today?

As we dive deeper into understanding ourselves, let’s remember that we are not alone.

Writing is healing and healing can hurt - reach out to friends and family. They are there for you.

Sending Good Vibes,

Ivan from The Journal Prompt Team

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