By Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick
Twitter: @drnic1
Host of Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist – #TheIncrementalist
On this episode I talked to Zachary Green, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and former Firefighter, author of ‘Warrior Entrepreneur’ book who has had an interesting career and some major events and adversity that he has had to overcome. Imagine being told by a lot of people including teachers that you would not amount to anything. Zachary refused to accept this notion and took this as a challenge rather than a description of who he was.
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We talk about the value that crisis in your life bring to your resilience and how early childhood experiences may not be good enough to prepare all of us for the adversity we have in our lives. As Zachary puts it, it is our crucible
And the crucible is that crisis in your life or everything you’ve done up to that point in time is not enough to get you to that next level. At the bottom of the crucible is the Abyss where death, darkness and failure lies and through the top of the crucible, when you prevail through that is you have to transform
Once he left the Marine Corps he joined the fire fighting service and identified a big problem for these emergency responders navigating dark poorly lit environments and from these created a brand new company out of the back of his car to create glow in the dark solutions to help – something that became a large successful company.
We find common ground in his assertion that entrepreneur of startup companies do not always make good leaders of those organizations and he has an interesting perspective of looking at new companies much like parents of children that ultimately need to survive without their parents and another critical juncture when his company despite success was failing.
One Year Death Anniversary
Perhaps in part thanks to his experiences and training he was able to face a near death experience when he came down with COVID19 bringing him and his breathing to his knees and as he put it the abyss and a near death experience. As you will hear he recalls with a visceral reality his being unable to breathe.
Listen in to hear his insights on coping with Mental Health and you may be surprised to hear that the stress on Entrepreneurs is so high that their rate of mental health problems exceeds that in veterans who are well recognized as having significant mental health challenges especially post PTSD. He suggest some incremental steps to resilience that include
- Regular Exercise
- Regular mindfulness or (transcendental) meditation
- Helping Others
And if you are looking for more suggestions you can buy his book here (and he offers a 50% discount with the coupon “PODCAST2021″)
Things that are bad are actually makes you better and stronger
About the Show
For years Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick, has served as a voice on the impact of new technologies on healthcare, earning a reputation as a leading authority on where the future of medicine is going. Combining powers of observation and real world experience, Dr. Nick has seen many predictions come true and makes the case that innovations in healthcare can be accomplished incrementally, not just by moonshot events. Tune in to hear Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist and his guests discuss what the future of healthcare looks like, how we will get there, and what it will take to improve healthcare for all.
This article was originally published on the Dr. Nick – The Incrementalist blog and is republished here with permission.