Change is in the air for a lot of veterans and military families. Nearly 900,000 federal employee veterans and their spouses are in the crosshairs of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), being scrutinized by the media or being talked about at the highest levels of government. Thousands have already felt the sting of the widespread cuts. Unexpected changes — or even just the looming specter of them — can breed a lot of uncertainty and anxiety.

Blayne Smith and Brandon Young are two Army veterans who spent years working with veterans through Team Red. White and Blue, a nonprofit that improves the wellbeing of veterans by promoting healthy lifestyles. Smith, a former Green Beret, was the first executive director, and Young, an Army Ranger, was its director of development.

Today, they are the principals of Applied Leadership Partners, espousing practical leadership through their combined experiences. Their new book, “Perseverance > Endurance: Lead with Resilience. Grow Through Adversity. Win Together.,” comes at a time when a lot of veterans can really use the guidance they offer.

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“We define endurance as getting through a defined period of hardship, whereas perseverance is transforming amidst great change and uncertainty to achieve a goal you have set out for yourself,” Smith told Military.com. “Endurance is amazing; endurance is admirable. What do you do when you don’t know what the defined period looks like? How do you actually get through it, and how can you lead through the adversity that is defined by change and uncertainty? That’s where perseverance comes into play.

“You are not the same person that gets to Point B who started at Point A,” he continued. “You have had to transform. You have had to grow.”

In their daily work, they take big, complex leadership topics and distill them into practical, meaningful and actionable methods that are easy to understand. They build a framework for their clients’ teams, but it’s not just something for corporate C-suites or military leaders. The five factors of perseverance are something everyone can apply to their own sudden life changes.

“It’s about moving from grit to growth,” Smith said. “We don’t tell war stories for the story’s sake, but we give people pithy things like that to grasp onto. Ultimately, they need to really understand the process.”

1. Change

Something happened that was unexpected. The rug has been swept from under your feet, and you suddenly find yourself in a different situation. It could be a sudden layoff. A global pandemic. You may have been blindsided by it. Either way, things will be different moving forward. “Normal,” the authors wrote, “is not coming back.”

“Things change rapidly and we’re not sure what’s going to happen next; that really throws all of us for a loop,” Young said. “There’s a bit of a challenge to get through it, and it’s not always going to go the way you want it to. You may need to accept some hard realities, maybe change some things in the way that you work, maybe become a different, more capable person through the process.”

2. Uncertainty

The authors describe uncertainty as coming to a fork in a darkened path, unsure of which way to go. The flashlight can only illuminate so much in front of you as the batteries start to die. Moving forward or staying put: Each is a choice.

“Change brings about uncertainty and uncertainty tends to breed fear in people,” Young said. “It isn’t so much the reality of their day-to-day situation. It’s that they just have so little control and so little understanding of what is going to happen next or when it is going to be over. The uncertainty plays a big factor in people’s psyche and how they move forward or don’t.”

3. Acceptance

“The human brain craves certainty. When that gets disrupted, we default to our training, our experiences. We get expectations that are not met, and it forces us to then try and reconcile the world outside with the world within,” Smith said. “That’s where the acceptance aspect is so crucial, because there’s that dichotomy of control: What can I control? What can I not control? Then you make the decision to surrender the things that you cannot control, shrink the world down to what you can control and make one next good decision at a time.”

Leaders, they write, have to accept the world as it is, not as it was or how we want the world to be. Denial is the enemy, and once you begin to accept the situation, you gain clarity and agency — the ability to actually make the choices that can help your given situation.

“It can be very hard for any of us to look in the mirror and say, ‘What has been my role in getting here and what needs to be my role in getting out of it?'” Young added. “I think it’s just hard for people. If we make a series of not-so-great choices or we haven’t done quite what we needed and ended up in a bad spot, most of us aren’t very good at recognizing our role in it. Something’s going to have to change.”

4. Choice

“We accept our situations and acknowledge them for what they are,” Young said. “So what are we going to do about it? Are we going to make the choice to move forward, to make hard decisions and to change if we need to adapt? Maybe we’re making that decision on a daily basis. Things can be really hard, but ultimately it comes down to making a choice and doing what’s required.”

5. Growth

“What we have found is that when you think about growth and think about perseverance, life tends to give us what we need, not what we want,” Smith said. “And we need to be able to have a clear head about the different decisions we have to make.”

“If you do all that, the benefit, the perseverance payoff is growth,” said Young. “You can become a different person. You can adapt, acquire the skills, the mindsets, what you need to really become what the moment or what the situation is calling you to be. And I think when people understand that, it doesn’t become so overwhelming.”

“We want readers to know three things, and the first is that if you’re going through a period of adversity, you’re not alone,” Smith said. “No. 2, if you’re having a hard time, there’s a word for that, and it’s ‘normal.’ You’re normal. You’re responding to an abnormal set of circumstances; it’s challenging. And No. 3 would be: We can get through it. We can not only get through it, but we can grow through it. We can choose to allow this crucible moment to be a transformative experience for us where we will be better on the other side.”

For any veteran in need of help or leadership in a trying time, “Perseverance > Endurance: Lead with Resilience. Grow Through Adversity. Win Together.,” is a fantastic resource. The book offers simple, practical steps in each of the above factors that anyone can use to consider their options amid sudden, adverse change. It is currently available wherever books are sold.

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