Your Next Mission is Staring You in the Face (w/ Staff Ouderkirk)

Stafford Ouderkirk just retired— for the second time. 

The first time around, he retired from the military. 

The second time— this time— he retired from TekSouth, a military contractor. 

Teaming with Crosswinds and the efforts of Warriors on Mission was a perfectly natural fit. For years, Staff and the warriors he worked with relied on the help of military contractors like the company he retired from the second time around.

While working at TekSouth, he realized he had a unique opportunity to serve the soldiers whom he had been— in the same way he had been served.

“It’s all give and take,” he says. “We always help everyone in any way we can.”

On this podcast, we talk a lot about several themes…

• Serving others
• Finding your own health + healing in the process of serving others
• Sometimes your biggest breakthroughs happen as you help others break through for themselves
• The fact that everyone is looking for the "next thing" to do, but that next thing most often comes in serving the person standing right in front of you-- no matter how big or small the need is, no matter how efficient or inefficient the process happens to be.

It’s all part of how Staff has lived for the past 60+ years. And, it’s how he intends to keep moving forward. 

He reminds us that “You never know who you’re helping when you serve someone.”

And, “A lot of people are looking for a mission. You don’t have to look far. There’s always someone right in front of you whom you can serve.”

Those two points comprise some of my top takeaways from this talk… 

Warriors on Mission = connect veterans to their next mission. The most common obstacles we see are 1) isolation and 2) unresolved hurts / unprocessed pain of the past. Finding that next mission matters because 1) you have a purpose, and 2) there are people who are going the affected (for the good!) by you living that mission. Those people include your family, your friends, and fellow service members…

Learn more at http://Warriorsonmission.org 

Warrior Hope book = https://thecentersofhope.org/product/warrior-hope-basic-training-for-living-on-mission/ 

Warrior Hope online course = https://thecentersofhope.org/online-courses/ 

Hope for the Warrior Family book = https://thecentersofhope.org/product/hope-for-the-warrior-family/ 

The Centers of Hope = https://thecentersofhope.org 

Stream Invisible Scars (PTSD) or Honoring the Code (Moral Injury) here: https://thecentersofhope.org/films/