62: Battle Studies: Applying Ancient Combat Knowledge of Human Nature to Modern Leadership and Life

0:00:00 - Opening 0:09:35 - "Battle Studies", a work by Ardand Du Picq. Discipline, preparedness, stress. Comparisons with Ancient Battle tactics. 2:09:21 - Closing and Final Take-aways. 2:15:50 - Support, Workout stuff. Cool Onnit http://www.onnit.com/jocko, Amazon https://www.amazon.com/?&tag=jocko20-20&camp=216797&creative=498533&linkCode=ur1&adid=1DKYGWXQBV0KNEZ3MZZX&, JockoStore http://www.jockostore.com stuff, with Jocko White Tea http://www.jockotea.com and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes) https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/psychological-warfare/id1183222322. Extreme Ownership (book) http://amzn.to/2jonHTx and The Muster002 http://www.extremeownership.com 2:51:09 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 62 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  The smallest detail taken from an actual incident in war is more instructive for me, a soldier, than all the theories and gomities in the world. They speak, no doubt, for the heads of states and armies, but they never show me what I wish to know: a battalion, a company, a squad in action.

• 0:39Jocko Willink?

  Concerning a regiment, a battalion, a company, a squad, it is interesting to know the disposition taken to meet the enemy or order for the march toward them. What becomes of this disposition or this march order under the isolated or combined influences of accents of the terrain and the approach of the danger? Is this order changed or is it continued in force when approaching the enemy? What becomes of it?

• 1:11Jocko Willink?

  Arriving within the range of the guns, within the range of the bullets? At what distance is a voluntary or an ordered disposition taken before starting operations for commencing fire, for charging, or for both?

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  How did the fight start? How about the firing? How did the men adapt themselves? How was the charge made? At what distance did the enemy flee before it? At what distance did the charge fall back before the fire or the good order and good dispositions of the enemy or before such and such a movement of the enemy?

• 1:56Jocko Willink?

  What did it cost? What can be said about all these with reference to the enemy?

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  What about the behavior?

• 2:09Jocko Willink?

  I.e. the order, the disorder, the shouts, the silence, the confusion, the calmness of the officers and men, whether with us or with the enemy, before, during, and after combat?

• 2:23Jocko Willink?

  How has the soldier been controlled and directed during the action?

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  At what instant has he had a tendency to quit the line in order to remain behind or rush ahead? At what moment, if the control were escaping the leader's hands, has it no longer been possible to exercise it?

• 2:50Jocko Willink?

  At what instant has this control escaped from the battalion commander? When from the captain, the section leader, or the squad leader? What time, in short, if such a thing did take place, was there but a disordered impulse, whether to the front or to the rear, carrying along pell-mell with it both leaders and men?

• 3:17Jocko Willink?

  Where and when did the halt take place? Where and when were the leaders able to resume control of the men? At what moments, before, during, or after the day, was the battalion roll call, the company roll call made? The results of these roll calls, what were they?

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  How many dead? How many wounded on the side? And on the other side? The kind of wounds of the officers, non-commissioned officers, corporals, privates, etc.? All these details, in a word, enlighten either the material or the moral side of the action, or enable it to be visualized.

• 4:00Jocko Willink?

  Possibly, a closer examination might show that they are matters infinitely more instructive to us as soldiers than all the discussions imaginable on the plans and general conduct of campaigns of the greatest captain in the great movements of the battlefield.

• 4:18Jocko Willink?

  From Colonel to Private, we are soldiers, not generals. And it is therefore our trade that we desire to know. Certainly, one cannot obtain all the details of the same incident. But from a series of true accounts, there should emanate an ensemble of characteristic details which in themselves are very apt to show in a striking, irrefutable way what was necessarily and forcibly taking place at such and such a moment of an action in war. Take the estimate of a soldier obtained in this manner to serve as a base for what might

• 5:01Jocko Willink?

  possibly be a rational method of fighting. It will put us on guard against a priori or pedantic school methods. Whoever has seen turns to a method based on his knowledge, his personal experience as a soldier. But experience is long and life is short. The experiences of each cannot therefore be completed except by those of others. Proofs have weight.

• 5:43Jocko Willink?

  And that, right there, is an excerpt from a letter by a French officer in the French Army named Arden Dupic. And he was in the French Army in the mid 1800s, which had him then fighting in the Crimean War, 1855. He was in Syria during the sectarian violence of 1860 and 1861. He saw service in Algeria from 1864 to 1866.

• 6:24Jocko Willink?

  And finally, he was a regimental commander during the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, where he served as the commander for 33 days of his regiment from 15 July 1870 until 18 August 1870, when he was... Severely wounded by shrapnel and eventually died to those wounds.

• 6:52Jocko Willink?

  So

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  there's something that I really like about this guy, Arden DuPique. And that is that he likes what I like.

• 7:04Jocko Willink?

  He is interested in what I am interested in, and that is primarily human nature.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  People.

• 7:15Jocko Willink?

  And human beings and how they act under stress and under fear and in the face of death. And then, more important, how do you lead in those situations?

• 7:31Jocko Willink?

  And he recognized

• 7:34Jocko Willink?

  that war. While just like today, it certainly involves tactics and strategy and technology and politics, but war at its core is about people.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  Men.

• 7:54Jocko Willink?

  Human beings. And therefore, the general and the captain and the sergeant and the lieutenant, in order for them to master war,

• 8:08Jocko Willink?

  they first have to master their understanding of human nature.

• 8:16Jocko Willink?

  And that is what he looked at. And that is what we will look at tonight. And obviously,

• 8:26Jocko Willink?

  when you look at human nature in the context of war, it does not change when you put it in the context of life, the rest of life.

• 8:39Jocko Willink?

  Now, as we know, combat is like life, but amplified and intensified. So when you see the emotions and the human nature in war, it's much clearer, it's much easier to see than it is off the battlefield in regular life, in the business world. But when you know the undercurrents,

• 9:00Jocko Willink?

  It makes you that much better of a leader. And DuPique, like many other great military leaders, especially ones that I seem to

• 9:12Jocko Willink?

  like, he was a little bit of a rebel, spoke his mind, kinda like, kinda like Hackworth, kinda like Patton, he called it out when he saw things going wrong. He called it out when he saw slack.

• 9:28Jocko Willink?

  Slack that would lead to poorly trained and therefore poorly prepared troops.

• 9:36Jocko Willink?

  So luckily, he wrote a lot of his work down. This is a work called Battle Studies, and unfortunately, he didn't finish it because he was killed. But he got a lot done. And it is a lot of lessons to be learned in here. So with that,

• 9:59Jocko Willink?

  let's go ahead and go back to the book.

• 10:06Jocko Willink?

  Now, this is his critique. Remember I said he was a little bit of a rebel? So this is a talking about Frederick the Great on maneuvers. And here's what he said. "The great mistake in inspections is that you officers amuse yourself with God knows what buffooneries and never dream in the least of serious service. This is a source of stupidity which would become most dangerous in case of serious conflict. Take shoemakers and tailors and make generals of them, and they will not commit worse follies. These blunders are made on a small as well as a large scale. Consequently, in the greatest number of regiments, the

• 10:46Jocko Willink?

  private is not well trained. In Zaramba's regiment, he is the worst. In Thaddeus, he amounts to nothing. And no more in Keller's, Irleach, or Hager's. Why? Because the officers are lazy and try to get out of a difficulty by giving themselves the least possible trouble."

• 11:08Jocko Willink?

  Calling out the slack. And that was a bunch of, obviously, a bunch of regimental commanders that he's saying these guys are not good at what they're doing. And they're not

• 11:17Jocko Willink?

  jutting after with their guys and getting them trained up and ready to rock and roll.

• 11:22Jocko Willink?

  So this is where he kind of lays out what I was talking about and his view of war being primarily about man.

• 11:34Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Battle is the objective. Battle is the final objective of armies and man is the fundamental instrument in battle.

• 11:44Jocko Willink?

  Nothing can wisely be prescribed in any army. It's personnel, organization, discipline and tactics, thing which are things which are connected like the fingers of a hand without exact knowledge of the fundamental instrument, man and his state of mind, his morale at the instant of combat.

• 12:06Jocko Willink?

  It often happens that those who discuss war, taking the weapon for the starting point, assume unhesitatingly that the man called to serve it will always use it as contemplated and ordered by the regulations.

• 12:22Jocko Willink?

  But such a being throwing off his variable nature to become an impassive pawn, an abstract unit in the combinations of battle is a creature born of the musings of the library. So legit. So you're saying like, oh, you think these guys are going to go out and just do what you tell them to do? That's, that's a fantasy that you can only find in the library.

• 12:47Jocko Willink?

  You won't find it back to the book and not a real man. Man is flesh and blood. He is body and soul and strong as the soul often is, it cannot dominate the body to the point where there will be a, where there will not be a revolt of the flesh and mental perpetuation in the face of destruction.

• 13:10Jocko Willink?

  The human heart, to quote Marshall DeSaxe, is then the starting point in all matters pertaining to war.

• 13:23Jocko Willink?

  Boom. Think about that.

• 13:28Jocko Willink?

  And it's the same thing with leadership overall. People. That's what you're doing. You create cool technology. You make a great product. You want to build a business. You've got to understand people. You've got to understand human nature.

• 13:45Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, the best masters are those who know man best. The man of today and the man of history. You've got to understand history. This knowledge naturally comes from a study of formations and achievements in ancient war. Boom. Look at what's going on in the past. That's one of the, that's one of the reasons that I read books in the first place. Cause I want to understand what happened in the past. Understand how those human beings reacted to these situations. I want to know that. I want to know that.

• 14:19Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. We shall learn to distrust mathematics and material dynamics as applied to battle principles. We shall learn to be aware of the illustrations drawn from the range and the maneuver field. So the range where you go shoot a gun and no one's shooting back at you. Right? Oh, we're going to shoot the gun and no one's going to shoot it back at us. Oh, hey, if this guy can shoot 10 rounds a minute and hit his target on the range, that means I can take him out on the battlefield and he'll be able to shoot 10 rounds a minute and hit his target. Wrong answer. You don't know that. That's actually wrong. He's going to shoot 100 rounds a minute. He's going to miss his target on all of them because he's going to be freaking out.

• 15:00Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book.

• 15:03Jocko Willink?

  There, oh, and the maneuver field is where you go out and you march around. And this is a training field too, right? You go out and you march around a training field or you go around. Even when you try, you know, I see some military units, they simulate combat and it's so cheesy. It's gotta be hard. You gotta have chaos in there. Back to the book. There, experiences with the calm, settled, unfatigued, attentive, obedient soldier with an intelligent and tractable man. Instrument in short. So that's what, that's what, that's what you have in the training situation. All those things. Calm, settled, unfatigued, attentive, all those things is what you really get.

• 15:43Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book and not with the nervous, easily swayed, moved, troubled, distraught, excited, restless being not even under self-control. Who is the fighting man from general to private?

• 15:59Jocko Willink?

  There are strong men, exceptions, but they are rare. And he mentions that throughout here. Of course, you're gonna get guys that are super calm and super courageous. He mentions that throughout this. But from general to private, get a guy that's not gonna be the same on the battlefield as he is in training.

• 16:20Jocko Willink?

  Let us then study man in battle, for it is he who really fights.

• 16:29Jocko Willink?

  Man does not enter battle to fight, but for victory. He does everything that he can to avoid the first and obtain the second. Boom.

• 16:41Jocko Willink?

  Now we start getting a little psychology here. A man surprised needs an instant to collect his thoughts and defend himself. During this instant, he is killed if he does not run away. Fight or flight. The surprised adversary does not defend himself. He tries to flee. So there you go. That's why, you know, one of the tenants of SEAL Combat is surprise. Surprise and violence of action. We are gonna surprise you because everybody, when you get surprised, it's, now you're defending yourself. And in many cases, running away. That's your best action.

• 17:21Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Man taxes his ingenuity to be able to kill without running the risk of being killed. This is so fundamental. Think about that. Man taxes ingenuity to be able to kill without running the risk of being killed. That's what all modern weapons are for, right? Can I shoot this guy from 500 yards away? That's what I want. You know, we make guns now that shoot around corners. We drop bombs from the sky. We wanna kill without the risk of being killed.

• 17:47Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. His bravery is born of his strength and is not absolute.

• 17:54Jocko Willink?

  Before a stronger, he flees without shame. So, and he points out, this is what's, what's cool about DuPique is he's done this massive amount of historical studies and he cites all these situations. And he's like, you know, when you're in a bad situation and you're facing a stronger enemy, you can just count on the guys are gonna run away. Like, guys are not gonna stand up here. How many times have you seen that in a street fight?

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:19Jocko Willink?

  Right? As soon as, as soon as the big friend steps in and says, wait a second, you've got a beef here with my buddy? Oh, no, no, got no problem here. Echo Charles, I'm good. I didn't realize there was a big yoked Hawaiian over here getting ready to kick my butt.

• 18:34Jocko Willink?

  So, he's saying that bravery is born of strength and everyone's strong, everyone's brave when you got 12 people with you and you're gonna fight one guy, everyone's brave. When you reverse those roles, doesn't always turn out that way.

• 18:51Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, Collective Man. A disciplined body of troops formed in tactical battle order is invincible against an undisciplined body of troops. Boom. But against a similarly disciplined body, he becomes again primitive man. He flees before a greater force of destruction when he recognizes it or when he foresees it. Nothing is changed in the heart of man. Discipline keeps enemies face to face a little longer, but it cannot supplant the instinct of self-preservation

• 19:30Jocko Willink?

  and the sense of fear that goes with it. Fear. There are officers and soldiers who do not know it, but they are people of rare grit. The mass shudders because you cannot suppress the flesh. This trembling must be taken into, taken into account in all organizations. Discipline, arrangements, movements, maneuvers, mode of action. All these are affected by the human weakness of the soldier which causes him to magnify the strength of the enemy. This faltering is studied in ancient combat. It is seen that of nations apt in war, the strongest have been those who not only best

• 20:15Jocko Willink?

  have understood the general conduct of war, but who have taken human weakness into greatest account and then taken the best guarantees against it.

• 20:30Jocko Willink?

  Powerful. Now, what's really interesting is when you start, you know, when you think about some of these true combat stories, you know, this guy's around in the 1860s, right? Some of the stories that we've talked about on this podcast, what makes them so phenomenal is that you can see US Army soldiers, US Marines, just completely defying what he's saying here. Does he know it's a bit bigger, stronger force? Cool, we're game. We're surrounded by Chinese army at the Chosens Reservoir? Okay, cool, we're gonna fight them. Are we gonna run away? No, we're gonna, we're gonna go. And we're gonna stand. So that makes these modern warfare situations even more impressive.

• 21:16Jocko Willink?

  Because you realize that the general, as he says, the mass shudders, the mass shudders. So most people, they shudder with fear and it breaks them down.

• 21:29Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, even for me, and I've talked about this, you know,

• 21:34Jocko Willink?

  you know,

• 21:37Jocko Willink?

  like, people always want to ask about SEAL training. And it's, okay, you're cold and you're wet and you gotta do a bunch of pushups, right?

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Can't sleep that much.

• 21:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, and you can't sleep a bunch, you know? Okay, but they're also feeding you a bunch and it's fun, right?

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 21:52Jocko Willink?

  But you compare that to, you know, that, that stuff doesn't even, it's, it's not, it's nothing. And my favorite example to compare that to is, you know, a guy, when we were in Ramadi, you got the guy that's the lead turret gunner going out on a patrol in a Humvee. So he's up above the Humvee, exposed to the enemy and, and that guy, wait, on the way out the gate in Ramadi, you drive by this vehicle graveyard where there was 100 vehicles that were blown up and destroyed by IEDs. And ID is going to hit the first vehicle. I mean, most often, right? So there's that guy. He's going to be up there. And we're, and I'm watching this guy go out on operation after operation. Mark Lee is primary turret gunner on many operations. That's why I remember it really clearly.

• 22:38Jocko Willink?

  But same thing, like there's no way that he, that those guys, and that's one, of course, you got every guy in the vehicle. You got the army guys that are out there, the Marines. These are guys that I've seen, all of them. Looking at this situation, knowing that death is a high possibility. I won't call it a problem, dude. That's a high possibility. But you know what? Roger that.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:01Jocko Willink?

  It's rock and roll.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  You know, when you say how Bud's training is easy, do you think? I mean, obviously that had some effect, but you know how you go through Bud's training? And that's kind of the, the thing like, dang, got through Bud's training that, you know, I'm tough kind of thing. And then after you go to combat, do you look back on Bud's training? And that's what's making it seem like it's easy?

• 23:25Jocko Willink?

  I just thought it was fun for me. I, I, and the funny thing is, it's not like Bud's, I mean, I was not a great athlete. So it was hard for me to pass the timed evolutions. And I failed some timed evolutions. And they have a special way of making people fail things. I mean, at the time, we would do four mile time runs that were five mile time runs, but we didn't know that. We just had to run as hard as we could. And, you know, we had swims that there's a, like, you know, a, a strong ocean current going the opposite direction. You know, everyone in the class would fail. Like I failed a swim like that. Everyone in the class failed except for two, two swim pairs.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  The swimmers.

• 24:03Jocko Willink?

  The two guys that swam in college or whatever. Those two, those, those four guys passed, everyone else failed, right? Yeah, I failed that. So I'm not saying Bud's was easy, although there are guys that are great athletes and they have an easy time with the physical part too. And then there's guys that have an easy time with the mental part, which is probably where I fell into because I was having a good time.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:24Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, you know, uh, but I think, yes, I think once, I think once you get to combat, because there's, you know, there's times where guys that obviously are SEALs and made it through BUDs, they don't want to be in combat.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:37Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's, that happens.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, because in combat, just to begin with, never mind firefight, never mind, just, just starting off. Your mindset is I could die today.

• 24:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Just starting off, regardless of what, what happens or doesn't happen, I could die today. In, in BUDs, you would think, even though BUDs, guys die in BUDs.

• 24:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but very, very.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  That's what I mean. So it's like, chances are I'm not going to die today.

• 25:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  You know?

• 25:01Jocko Willink?

  Very slim, very few people, usually when people die in BUDs, they have some kind of a pre-existing condition. Where they have some kind of a heart trouble that didn't get picked up, or they have some kind of brain trouble and all of a sudden the pressure of water or whatever.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:14Jocko Willink?

  They, they unfortunately get killed in these horrible situations, but it's very rare.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:20Jocko Willink?

  Very rare.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  You compare it to a combat situation.

• 25:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Right. When you get off the, what, the plane?

• 25:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  You're like, okay, you know, that, and that's just starting out.

• 25:29Jocko Willink?

  Just.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  That's, that's like a, a hundred percent chance that that's on your mind.

• 25:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  The whole time. I mean, it's a factor, you know what I mean?

• 25:37Jocko Willink?

  It is definitely a factor.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  So yeah, I would imagine thinking back, oh yeah, bud, it's not that hard.

• 25:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I remember thinking about this, the, uh, the guys that came and relieved us in Ramadi, select the next task unit that came over, who were a bunch of great guys. And it'd been a long time since SEALs had been in sustained urban combat like that and suffered pretty significant casualties like we did in TU Bruiser. And those guys, I was friends with, good friends with a, a number of the guys in there. And, and so were Leif and the other, you know, all the guys, we had friends that were back, you know, back in those, in that tasking that was coming to relieve us. And it's taking what you're saying and multiplying it times a lot.

• 26:22Jocko Willink?

  Because when we went to Ramadi, we weren't really sure, you know, oh yeah, there's a lot of bad guys there and we'll get after it, but. It's different when you get there and then you start going on operations and you realize, yeah, this is, this is, this is gonna be a long deployment. And the chances of us making it through this deployment without suffering any casualties is actually zero. It's zero. Like, this is not gonna happen. And when those guys came over, again, a bunch of great dudes. You know, I talked to them when we got home. And then they got home. And one of the guys, a good friend of mine, and he, he came in to work with me in the, in the training department. And, you know, we would have that, we had that conversation a couple of times where,

• 27:06Jocko Willink?

  you know, Mikey Montsora got killed, you know, September 29th. And those guys were now coming on deployment a week, maybe two weeks later to come over and start getting a turnover from us. We went home October 21st. So, you know, when I talked to my, to my buddy that was the, the senior enlisted guy, you know, he, he, I said, man, what was that like? And he goes, we were training so hard. You, you know, there was no, they were just a hundred, a thousand percent training. Cause we'd send them back, hey, make sure you're in good shape. Make sure you can run. Make sure you can do buddy carries. Make sure, so they're, they're running on the beach, doing buddy carries all the time. They were training so hard because they're thinking to themselves, you know, this is it. This is gonna be a, a, a different kind of deployment.

• 27:51Jocko Willink?

  And we're actually gonna probably have one of those guys from that follow-on deployment on the podcast. He's a stud. So, we'll get him on here in the near future. All right. Going back to the book now. The discipline of the Greeks was secured by exercises and rewards. The discipline of the Romans was secured also by the fear of death. They put to death with the club. They decimated their cowardly or traitorous units. They clubbed them to death. Clubbed them to death. In order to conquer enemies that terrified his men, a Roman general heightened their morale, not by enthusiasm, but by anger.

• 28:36Jocko Willink?

  He made the life of his soldiers miserable by excessive work and privations. He stretched the force of discipline to the point where, at a critical incident, instant, it must break or expend itself on the enemy.

• 28:54Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's, that's crazy. And it's actually, there's a great little clip on YouTube of a marine. I think it's, I think it's a sergeant major in the Marine Corps, but he's giving a little talk to his boys before they roll out. And he's just, he's awesome. And he's saying, why do you think we don't feed you good? We want you to be pissed off. We want you to be pissed off. You go out there and kick their ass. It's, that's what they're, this is saying, only, you know, the marine is being somewhat facetious and playful about it. This guy's not. They made life hard for these guys. And again, you can see that even that's, there's a line, there's a dichotomy. Like you could go too far. Now you're going to get some kind of rebellion. You get it where it's either going to break the guys. Or if you do it perfect, they'll take that rage and they'll use it against the enemy.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Kind of like they do with dogs.

• 29:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Like if you've ever seen fighting dogs, yeah, for sure. They do that.

• 29:44Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, but discipline alone does not constitute superior tactics. Men in battle, I repeat, is a being in whom the instinct of self-preservation dominates. Even at certain moments, all other sentiments. Discipline has for its aim, the domination of that instinct by a greater terror. Okay. So you've got, you're going to be scared. Discipline, the goal of discipline is to shut down and dominate that fear instinct. Back to the book, but it cannot dominate it completely. I do not deny the glorious examples where discipline and devotion have elevated man above himself.

• 30:28Jocko Willink?

  But if these examples are glorious, it is because they are rare.

• 30:35Jocko Willink?

  If they are admired, it is because they are considered exceptions and the exception proves the rule. So obviously we have heroes. I have guys, I, my tasking it were that level of heroes. That overcame every instinct of self-discipline or of self-preservation to do their job.

• 31:00Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, the determination of that instant where man loses his reasoning power and becomes instinctive is the crowning achievement in the science of combat. So what he's saying there is understanding that what that where that line is with people is the crowning achievement. If you know that, if you know where that line is, that's the crowning achievement. In back to the book in general, here was the strength of the Roman tactics. In particular cases, such successful determination makes Hannibal's and Caesar's. They understood their men.

• 31:37Jocko Willink?

  Combat took place between masses in more or less format, deep formation commanded and supervised by leaders with a definite mission. Leaders understood the mission. The combat between masses was a series of individual conflicts juxtaposed with the front rank man fighting alone. If he fell, if he was wounded or worn out, he was replaced by the man in the second rank who had watched and guarded his flanks. This procedure continued up to the last rank. Man is always physically and morally fatigued in hand to hand tournament where he employs all of his energy. These contests lasted but a short time.

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  With morale, with like morale, the least fatigued always win. So conditioning, literally, we're talking about combat conditioning right there. That's what we're talking about.

• 32:34Jocko Willink?

  During this engagement of the first two ranks, the one fighting, the other watching, close at hand, the men of the near ranks waited inactive at two paces distance for their turn in combat. So imagine this echo, I'm in the front and you're behind me, two paces, and you're going to watch me fight. So that's what he's talking about right here.

• 32:59Jocko Willink?

  At two paces for their turn in combat, which would come only when their predecessor were killed, wounded, or exhausted. They were impressed by the violent fluctuations of the struggle of the first rank. They heard the clashes and the blows and distinguished perhaps those that sank into the flesh. They saw the wounded, the exhausted crawl through the intervals to go to the rear. Passive spectators of danger, they were forced to await its terrible approach. These men were subjected to the poignant emotions of combat without being supported by the animation of the struggle.

• 33:41Jocko Willink?

  They were thus placed under moral pressure of the greatest of anxieties. Often, they could not stand it until their turn came. They gave way. So that's just a crazy way to think about combat. You're standing behind me, I'm fighting, I get clubbed in the head, they stab me in the chest, I'm dead.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm up.

• 34:02Jocko Willink?

  And actually, no, that didn't happen fast. Let's say it took two minutes, right? And you're standing there watching me, you're like, oh, go, hey, and then all of a sudden get killed.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then I'm up.

• 34:10Jocko Willink?

  And then you're up.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Dang. Yeah, that's, when he says like the most anxiety, yeah, the most thing, imagine you're four guys back.

• 34:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, you're four guys back, and I can totally confirm this, in combat, the time when you're, when you're waiting to go.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:28Jocko Willink?

  Is the worst. Like, we get to a pre-staging point, and now you're waiting to go, you're, okay, you've got all this stuff going through your mind, what if this happens, what if that happens, what if this guy moves, what if they do this, you've got all this turmoil going in your mind, and you're not even, we're not talking about this situation where you're watching your guy get stabbed in the throat.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  I know, yeah.

• 34:44Jocko Willink?

  Right? And just standing there watching it, waiting for him to go down so you can step up, and by the way, you know, like, you know me, and so if you see me get crushed, and when we train, I'm crushing you, you know you're walking into your death, right? Because, you know, Jocko, he's good with the sword, oh, he just got stabbed in the neck. Now I gotta go take his place against Billy Badass, my enemy, and I don't stand a chance.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's rough.

• 35:07Jocko Willink?

  So that's why he's saying a lot of these, a lot of times, these people turned and gave way. So this is a little bit different. Listen to this. Back to the book. The best tactics were those that made easiest a succession of efforts by assuring the relief by ranks of unit in action, actually engaging only the necessary units and keeping the rest as support or reserve outside of the immediate sphere of moral tension. So don't put those guys right there where they can see all the stuff going on. Back to the book. The superiority of the Romans lay in such tactics and in the terrible discipline which prepared and assured the execution by their resistance against fatigue, which rude and continually continual

• 35:52Jocko Willink?

  tasks gave them and by the renewal of combatants in combat, they secured continuity of effort greater than anyone else. So, did you notice this part? Their resistance against fatigue came from rude and continual tasks. So these guys were just getting ground all the time. Basically, they lived a hard life, working, basically working out. I'm sure it was, wouldn't be what we consider like a met con, but they were hard. And because they were tough and they were hard, they're physically stronger and more physically conditioned, they did better. And, and you know, Dan Gable, I think it, I think, I forget the exact quote, but you know, the great American wrestler, Dan Gable, conditioning is the ultimate equalizer.

• 36:35Jocko Willink?

  If you get tired, you feel this in jujitsu all the time. If someone gets tired, or MMA, someone gets tired, it's game over. It's game over. You can, I can crush anybody when they're tired. You give me, you give me anybody and you force them to do 100 burpees and 75 kettlebell swings and, you know, as fast as they can, and let me in the ring with them, I'll kill anybody. You know what I mean? Cause they already got worn out.

• 37:05Jocko Willink?

  This is actually, this is, like I said, he does a lot of, I didn't go into a lot of these, but this is Caesar's account of a battle against the Pompeians and at the Battle of Farsalus. So I'm not going to read the whole thing, but it's pretty, there's some pretty cool points in here. Again, it's pretty cool that, you know, you know, I like first person accounts of things, right? Let's get a first person account from Caesar up in here. And what's cool, well, it's, he writes, he refers to himself in the third person for whatever reason. I'm sure there's some reason for that, but that's what he does. Here we go.

• 37:50Jocko Willink?

  Caesar, "In the meanwhile, our soldiers at the given signal advanced with javelins in hand, but having noticed that Pompeii's soldiers were not running towards them and taught by experience and trained by previous battles, they slowed down and stopped in the midst of their run in order not to arrive out of breath and worn out." That's pretty legit. They're like, oh, these guys aren't, these guys aren't running towards us. We don't need to run towards them. Save our breath. "Some moments after having taken up their run again, they launched their javelins and immediately afterwards, according to Caesar's order, drew their swords. The Pompeians conducted themselves perfectly," a little compliment to

• 38:30Jocko Willink?

  the enemy. "They received the darts courageously. They did not stir before the dash of the legions. They preserved their lines and having dispatched their javelins, drew their swords. At the same time, Pompeii's entire cavalry dashed from the left wing as had been ordered and the mass of his archers ran from all parts of the line. Our cavalry did not await the charge but fell back a little. Pompeii's cavalry became more pressing and commenced to reform its squadrons and turn our exposed flank."

• 39:02Jocko Willink?

  As soon as Caesar saw this intention, he gave the signal to the fourth line of six cohorts. This line started directly and standards low. They charged the Pompeian cavalry with such vigor and resolution that not a single man stood his ground. All wheeled about, that's what happens when you flank people. All wheeled about and not only withdrew in full flight, but gained the highest mountains as fast as they could. They left the archers and slingers without their defense and protection. These were all killed. At the same time, the cohorts moved to the rear of Pompeii's left wing, which was still fighting and resisting, and attacked it in rear.

• 39:48Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, Caesar had advanced his third line, which up to this moment had been quietly, kept quietly at its post. These fresh troops relieved those that were fatigued. Pompeii's men, taken in rear, could no longer hold out and all took to flight. Caesar was not in error when he put these cohorts in a fourth line, particularly charged with meeting the cavalry, and urged them to do well since their effort would bring victory. They repulsed the cavalry, they cut to pieces the slingers and archers. They turned Pompeii's left wing, and this decided the day.

• 40:26Jocko Willink?

  Caesar lost, in this battle, 200 soldiers, but nearly 30 of the bravest centurions were killed therein. Of Pompeii's army of 15,000 perished, and more than 24,000 took refuge in the mountains. As Caesar had invested in the mountains with entrenchment, they surrendered the following day.

• 40:49Jocko Willink?

  That's one of the things that Du Pique points out. He does a lot of comparisons, and we'll get to some of them, in the differences between ancient combat and modern combat. And one of the big things that he points out is, in ancient combat, the winner would take very, very small amounts of casualties, and the loser would be exterminated in many cases. And what's different about modern battle, you know, World War II, World War I, the victor and the...

• 41:21Jocko Willink?

  Loser, they're both gonna take really bad casualties. In fact, sometimes they take almost the same amount of casualties. In fact, sometimes the loser of the battle takes less casualties or takes takes more casualties. The winner takes takes more casualties, but they had more people, they had better maneuverability, they dropped bombs, whatever. So that's a really different thing. And that gets into the mental state because think about if you if you and I were fighting in a battle.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 41:51Jocko Willink?

  And we knew that if we lost, we would die. You're gonna fight harder.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:57Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna be more aggressive. And when and if the battle started to turn, you were gonna run to try and save yourself.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:06Jocko Willink?

  Whereas, you know, in modern warfare, we take prisoners, you know, you can survive and you can live to fight another day. So you know what? Hey, we're starting to I'm just gonna surrender. I'm gonna give up on the, you know, you're not gonna fight with that same kind of vigor.

• 42:22Jocko Willink?

  Now there's a comment in here. The order to await the charge given by Pompey to his infantry was judged too severely by Caesar. Caesar certainly was right as a general rule. The enthusiasm of the troops must not be dampened. And the initiative of the attack indeed gives to the assailant a certain moral influence. So clearly, if your boys, your team is aggressively getting after it, it's not a good idea to to pull the reins on them. They're they're they got the momentum. They're going, they're fired up. Let them go. Let them rock and roll. Obviously, you don't want to let them run to your death, but you want to maintain that momentum to the best of your ability.

• 43:11Jocko Willink?

  Now, talking a little bit about morale in ancient battle, and this is some of the stuff again, that I I have been saying back to the book. It was customary among good troops to have a clash, but not the blind and headlong onset of the mass. The preoccupation of the rank was very great, as the behavior of Caesar troops at Pharsalus shows in their slow march.

• 43:35Jocko Willink?

  At the moment of getting close to the enemy, the dash slackened of its own accord. Because the men of the first rank, of necessity and instinctively assured themselves of the position of their supports, their neighbors in the same line, their comrades in the second, and collected themselves together in order to be more the masters of their movement and to strike and parry. So that's not an order that was given. Those guys instinctively, they're getting close to the enemy, they slow down, they check their flanks, they check that they're good to go, they check that their buddies are behind them. Now we're gonna go forward. Because, and I think that's important because it says, in order to be more masters of their movements. They're slowing down so they're ready. Back to the book, there was a contact of man with man.

• 44:19Jocko Willink?

  Each took the adversary in front of him and attacked him because by penetrating into the ranks before having struck him down, he risked being wounded in the side by losing his flank support. So these guys tried to stay in ranks because even if I'm going against you and I chop you down, if I now step into your ranks, now I'm exposed, my flanks are exposed, so I can't do that. We gotta stay online. This is something we still do in the military today, we gotta stay online. Each one then hit his man with his shield, expecting to make him lose his equilibrium. And at the instant he tried to recover, himself landed the blow. The men in the second line, back of the intervals necessary for fencing in the first,

• 45:05Jocko Willink?

  were ready to protect their sides against anyone that advanced between them and were prepared to relieve tired warriors. It was the same in the third line, and so that's what we already talked about. And by the way, this is cover and move. This is ancient cover and move. If I need some help, you're gonna be right there to cover for me. If I'm fighting a guy in front of me, you're covering my flanks. That's what it is. It's ancient cover and move. Back to the book, everyone being supported on the other side, the first encounter was rarely decisive. And the fencing, the real combat at close quarters began. So after that initial, now's when we get. Now is where it gets gritty. If the men of the first line were wounded quickly, if the other ranks were not in a hurry to relieve or replace them, or if there was hesitation, defeat followed.

• 45:50Jocko Willink?

  This happened to the Romans in their first encounter with the Gauls. The Gaul with his shield parried the first thrust, brought his big iron sword swooping down with fury upon the top of the Roman shield, split it and went after the man. So the Gauls had some big swords, big guys, and they figured out a little tactic, technique, and procedure. Oh, you got that little round shield? Cool, I'm gonna hack it right in half. And that's what they did. The Romans, already hesitating before the moral impulse of the Gauls, the Gauls, their ferocious yells. So this is the Gauls, their ferocious yells, their nudity, an indication of a contempt for wounds.

• 46:34Jocko Willink?

  So the guy that you're fighting is naked, or like not wearing armor, which says, oh, I'm ready to bring it.

• 46:43Jocko Willink?

  You wanna beat me in a street fight? Be naked, I'm not gonna fight you. I'm not happening. Fell then in greater number than their adversaries and demoralization followed. Soon, they accustomed themselves to this valorous, but not tenacious spirit of their enemies. And this is pretty cool. Back to the book, when they had protected the tops of their shields with an iron band, they no longer fell and the roles were changed. They made a little adaptation. Oh, you're gonna hack the top of our shields? Cool, put an iron band in there. What do you got now, Gaul? Bring it.

• 47:24Jocko Willink?

  If the weapons were nearly alike, preserving ranks and thereby breaking down, driving back and confusing the ranks of the enemy was to conquer. The man in disordered, broken lines no longer felt himself supported, but vulnerable everywhere, and he fled. Think about that psychology. Soon as you start seeing the lines breaking down, you don't feel like you're getting supported anymore? Boom, I'm out. It is true that it's hardly possible to break hostile lines without doing the same with one's own's, but the one who breaks through first has been able to do so only by making the foe fall back before his blows, or by killing or wounding. He has thereby raised his courage and that of his neighbor.

• 48:11Jocko Willink?

  Common sense, right? If I see my buddy take that guy out, I'm getting more fired up.

• 48:17Jocko Willink?

  He knows, he sees where he is marching whilst the adversary overtaken as a consequence of the retreat or the fall of troops that were flanking him, he's surprised. This is just group mentality, gang mentality. Is that right? Group thought? Group think? I start seeing my guys getting crushed, I'm gonna get scared.

• 48:37Jocko Willink?

  He sees himself exposed on the flank. He falls back on a line with their rank in the rear in order to regain support, but the lines in the rear give way to retreat, to the retreat of the first. If the withdrawal has a certain duration, terror comes as a result of the blows which drive back and mow down the first line. If, to make room for those pushed back, the last lines turn their backs, there is a small chance that they will face the front again. Space has tempted them. They will not return to fight. Then, by that natural instinct of the soldier to worry, to assure himself of his supports,

• 49:16Jocko Willink?

  the contagion of flight spreads from the last ranks to the first. The first, closely engaged, has been held to the fight in the meantime, under the pain of immediate death. There is no need to explain what follows. It is butchery.

• 49:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you can see how important it would be to understand those dynamics of what's gonna happen and to apply your tactics in a manner that, as I said, as DuPique says in the beginning of the book, apply your tactics or formulate your tactics with that understanding of human nature.

• 49:59Jocko Willink?

  Little interesting note here, sword to sword combat was the most deadly. It presented the most sudden changes because it was the one in which the individual valor and dexterity of the combatant had the greatest and most immediate influence. So that sword fighting is what takes the most skill, right? So I assume that means if I've got a javelin or if I've got a spear, it takes less skill. You get man on man with the sword, that's where things count. That's where your skill level counts the most. Yeah, because you can kind of maneuver more with it. Yeah. It's like a big club, you're just kind of, oh, I hope I land it. And you know, we know from doing jujitsu that you can get really good. And if you go, you know, anybody that does jujitsu goes against someone that doesn't do jujitsu, they annihilate them.

• 50:44Jocko Willink?

  So imagine the, the training that you do with a sword when you knew that how much it was going on it. You're just killing guys.

• 50:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Back to the book, man always has had the greatest fear of being trampled upon by horses. This is a section talking about cavalry. That fear has certainly routed 100,000 times more men than the real encounter. So the reason I put that in there is because jujitsu is saying, hey, people are scared of horses, they're scared of getting trampled by horses. And that fear of horses has done more to win battles than the actual horses.

• 51:23Jocko Willink?

  You know, we, we did some, you know, for us, the US military, we're going against a gnarly enemy, we, we can put the fear into them too. We have close air support come in and start dropping bombs or even flying over. We did, we would have, you know, if we didn't have a specific target, but we knew bad guys were around, we would shoot like fields, start dropping bombs in fields.

• 51:48Jocko Willink?

  Like deterrent fires, hey, get these guys, hey, put us some deterrent, there's a field over here, yes, we got no friendlies in that area. Do you see anything? No, drop some bombs in there, send some shock waves on these bad guys.

• 52:01Jocko Willink?

  Same thing. You're scared of the horses? You're scared of a AC 130? Or an A10 coming down and getting after it? Or a Cobra gunship or an Apache? Yeah, those things are fearsome machines of death. And when the enemy knows those things are around, they're gonna run. They're gonna hide. Can't always run or hide from an Apache or a US gunship. All right, back to the book. If we have spoken especially of the infantry fight is because it was the most serious on foot, on horseback, on the bridge of a vessel, at the moment of danger, the same man is always found. So he's saying, look, we're talking about infantry and we just talked a little bit about horses, but

• 52:45Jocko Willink?

  it doesn't matter what the fighting situation is, the same man is always found. Anyone who knows him well deduces from his action in the past what his action will be in the future. So understand that human nature.

• 53:05Jocko Willink?

  And here we start talking about,

• 53:10Jocko Willink?

  again, it's this same theme. Back to the book. Let us repeat now what we have said at the very beginning of this study. Man does not enter battle to fight, but for victory. He does everything he can to avoid the first and obtain the second. The continued improvement of all appliances of war has no other goal than the annihilation of the enemy. Absolute bravery, which does not refuse battle even on unequal terms, trusting only to God or destiny is not natural in man. It is the result of moral culture. So that's, that's pretty, that's pretty poignant, right? Cause I've seen some absolute bravery.

• 53:52Jocko Willink?

  And there's thousands of individual stories of absolute bravery in our culture, in our US culture. And that's because of our moral culture. That's where it comes from. Back to the book, it is infinitely rare because in the face of danger, the animal case of self-preservation always gains the upper hand. Man has a horror of death. In the bravest, a great sense of duty which they alone are capable of understanding and living up to is paramount. But the mass always cowers at the sight of the phantom. Death.

• 54:32Jocko Willink?

  Discipline is for the purpose of dominating that horror by still, by a still greater horror. That of punishment. Or disgrace. So he's talking about you, you know what? And Tony said this, and this is a common team guy thing to say, you know? I would rather die than look like a pussy. And, and it's like, oh yeah, ha, ha, ha. No, actually it's true. That's, that's, that's an actual feeling. It's an actual thought, for sure. And that's what he's saying. People would rather die than be disgraced, and that's powerful. But there always comes an instant when natural horror gets the upper hand over discipline and the fighter flees.

• 55:17Jocko Willink?

  Stop, stop, hold out a few minutes, an instant more, and you are the victor. You are not even wounded. If you turn your back, you are dead. He does not hear. He cannot hear anymore. He is full of fear. How many armies have sworn to conquer or perish? How many have kept their oaths? An oath of sheep to stand up against wolves. History shows not armies, but firm souls who have fought unto death. And the devotion of Thermopylae is therefore justly immortal. So the Spartans, the 300 Spartans, there's a reason why that is an immortal story.

• 56:02Jocko Willink?

  Because it's rare. And it's not a whole army, it's 300 Spartans. And obviously, we've seen examples of guys doing the same kind of thing, but that's why they're heroes.

• 56:19Jocko Willink?

  To ensure success in the rude test of conflict, it is not sufficient to have a mass composed of valiant men. The mass needs, and we give it, leaders who have firmness and decision of command proceeding from habit and an entire faith in their unquestionable right to command as established by tradition, law, and society. So it's like step number one, you need good leadership. Step number one, you need good leadership. A bunch of valiant men is not going to be enough. You need good leadership, step number one. Step number two, we add good arms. We add methods of fighting suitable to these arms and those of the enemy and which do not overtax the physical and moral forces of man.

• 57:04Jocko Willink?

  So you've got to give them good weapons and the weapons have got to be easy to use and suitable for the enemy that you're going against. Next, we add also a rational decentralization that permits the direction and employment of the efforts of all even to the last man. So we have decentralized command.

• 57:26Jocko Willink?

  I believe Leif and I wrote about that. Yep. It's one of the fundamental principles of combat leadership. Next, we animate with passion, a violent desire for independence, a religious fanaticism, national pride, a love of glory, a madness for possession, and iron discipline which permits no one to escape. Action secures the greatest unity from top to bottom between all elements, between the commanding officers, between the commanding officers and the men, and between the soldiers. So those are a series of things that you can have that can fuel this, right? A passion, a violent desire for independence, religious fanaticism. These are things that people fight for.

• 58:09Jocko Willink?

  National pride, a love of glory, a madness for possession. Think about that. You need one of those elements.

• 58:19Jocko Willink?

  Have we then a solid army? Not yet. Unity, the first and supreme force of armies is sought by enacting severe laws of discipline, supported by powerful passions. But to order discipline is not enough. A vigilance from which no one may escape in combat should assure the maintenance of discipline. Discipline itself depends on moral pressure, which actuates men to advance from sentiments of fear or pride. But it depends also on surveillance, the mutual supervision of groups of men who know each other well. You've got to have relationships.

• 59:01Jocko Willink?

  You've got to have relationships and then the relationship has to have inherent in it, this attitude of like echo, if I see you slacking, I'm going to call you out on it. Hey, bro, we don't do that here. That's not how we roll. You need to get your game on. And that's you get this mutual supervision of each other, based on pride. Back to the book, a wise organization ensures that the personnel of combat groups changes as little as possible, so that comrades in peacetime maneuvers shall be comrades in war. From living together and obeying the same chiefs, from commanding the same men, from sharing fatigue and rest, from cooperation among men, men who quickly understand each

• 59:44Jocko Willink?

  other in the execution of warlike movements, may be bread, brotherhood, professional knowledge, sentiment, and above all, unity. So what are we talking about there? You're building this strong bond between the people that are inside this unit. That's what you want to do. And how do you do it? You train them hard. They live together. They work together. They listen to the same boss. They command the same people. That's what you do. And that's when you look at, you know, you look at military units, that's what makes them good. You go through that. You go through that hard training. You get to know your people. You build those relationships.

• 1:00:24Jocko Willink?

  The duty of obedience, the right of imposing discipline and the impossibility of escaping from it would naturally follow. And now confidence appears. And you know what this sounds like? It sounds like a gang. And I often said about Task Unit Bruiser, that I was in charge of a gang. Awesome gang. An awesome gang that did good things for the world, but they were a gang, gang mentality, for sure. You didn't wanna, you didn't wanna, you didn't wanna get called out by the gang. You just didn't want that to happen. When someone was messing up, when someone was doing the wrong thing, someone was cutting corners, Task Unit Bruiser wasn't gonna be, they were gonna be on you. They were gonna be on you. I never had to say anything. Guys, I didn't even barely

• 1:01:09Jocko Willink?

  see it. But I'd hear about it. Hey, this guy was doing this. So we tightened him up. Good to go. Good to go. Back to the book. Then we have an army. It is no longer difficult to explain how men carried away by passions, even men who know how to die without flinching, without turning pale, really strong in the presence of death, but without discipline, without solid organization, are vanquished by others individually less valiant, but firmly, jointly, and severely combined.

• 1:01:49Jocko Willink?

  So, you know what you see this in the business world? You see this in the business world where, where you meet people in this world that are really passionate about what they're doing? They're really passionate. They're really into it. They've created something. They're really into it. They wanna succeed. They're busting their ass. They're really passionate about it, but they don't have the discipline. And if you don't have the discipline, the passion is not enough. You have to have the discipline too. And I'll tell you this, the passion, the discipline without the passion is also equally weak. Maybe not as weak, but it's equally weak.

• 1:02:25Jocko Willink?

  It's close.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  We'll say close.

• 1:02:29Jocko Willink?

  Unity and confidence cannot be improvised. They alone can create mutual trust, that feeling of force which gives courage and daring. Courage, that is the temporary domination of will over instinct, brings about victory. Unity alone then produces fighters. But as in everything, there are degrees of unity. Let us see whether modern is in this respect, less exacting than ancient combat. These are cool, these are very cool examples right here. And I, I, sometimes I'm like, hey, should I really read that whole thing? And then I think, oh yeah, I'm gonna read the whole thing.

• 1:03:12Jocko Willink?

  So this, but these are just very cool because you're gonna get a direct comparison of ancient combat psychologically and modern combat psychologically. And to understand, one, it's good to have a frame of reference of the other.

• 1:03:27Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, in ancient combat, there was danger only at close quarters. If the troops had enough morale to meet the enemy at broadsword's length, there was an engagement. Whoever was that close knew that he would be killed if he turned his back. Because as we have seen, the victors lost but a few, and the vanquished were exterminated.

• 1:03:52Jocko Willink?

  Thus, this simple reasoning held the men and made them fight, if it was but for an instant. So we already talked about that, you know, you think you're gonna die, you, you're either gonna fight or die, you're gonna fight, you're gonna at least give it a shot.

• 1:04:07Jocko Willink?

  Neglecting the exceptional and very rare circumstances which may bring two forces together, action today is brought on and fought out from afar. Danger begins at great distances and it is necessary to advance for a long time under fire at each step with the, in which each step becomes heavier.

• 1:04:29Jocko Willink?

  The vanquished loses prisoners, but often in dead and wounded, he does not lose more than the victor. So I already talked about that. Ancient combat was fought in groups close together, with a small space and open ground and full view of one another, without the deafening noise of present day arms. Men in formation marched into action that took place on the spot and did not carry them thousands of feet away from the starting point. The surveillance of the leaders was easy. Individual weakness was immediately checked. General consternation alone caused flight. Today, fighting is done over immense spaces, along thinly drawn out

• 1:05:12Jocko Willink?

  lines, broken every instant by the accidents and the obstacles of the terrain. From the time action begins, as soon as there are rifle shots, the men spread out as skirmishers, or, lost in the inevitable disorder of their rapid march, escape the supervision of their commanding officers. A considerable number concealed themselves. They get away from the engagement and diminish by just so much the material and morale effect and confidence of the brave ones who remain. This can bring about defeat. So, modern combat, and again,

• 1:05:53Jocko Willink?

  we're in 1860s. You start charging, and the line's broken up, and the commanding officer can't. So if you're thinking, maybe you want to just live through this one, you might just get down a little trench, get down a little depression, get behind a tree, and sit there and wait. But if we're all in line, in ancient combat, there was nowhere to go. The commander could see you, and your buddies could see you.

• 1:06:18Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book.

• 1:06:20Jocko Willink?

  But let us look at man himself in ancient and modern combat. In ancient combat, this is cool. In ancient combat, I am strong, apt, vigorous, trained, full of calmness, presence of mind. I have good offensive and defensive weapons and trustworthy companions of long standing. They do not let me be overwhelmed without aiding me. I with them, they with me, we are invincible, even invulnerable. We have fought 20 battles and not one of us remained on the field. It is necessary to support each other in time. Cover move. We see it clearly. We are quick to replace ourselves, to put a fresh combatant in front of a fatigued adversary.

• 1:07:04Jocko Willink?

  We are the legions, 50,000, who have held out against the furious avalanches of the Khimbri. We have killed 140,000, taken prisoner 60,000, while losing but 200 or 300 of our inexperienced soldiers. So that's sort of a mentality back in the day. And when I say back in the day, I'm talking ancient times, way back in the day. Now here's the modern soldier, well, at least 1860 soldier. Today, as strong, firm, trained, and courageous as I am, I can never say I shall return.

• 1:07:44Jocko Willink?

  I have no longer to do with men whom I do not fear. I have to do with fate in the form of iron and lead. Death is in the air, invisible and blind, whispering, whistling. As brave, good, trustworthy, and devoted as my companions may be, they do not shield me. Only, and this is abstract and less immediately intelligible to all than the material support of ancient combat. Only I imagine that the more numerous who we are, who run a dangerous risk,

• 1:08:26Jocko Willink?

  the greater is the chance for each to escape therefrom. I also know that if we have confidence, which none of us should lack in action, we feel stronger and we are. We begin more resolutely, are ready to keep up the struggle longer, and therefore finish it more quickly. But that is just... You know, I've, I've talked about World War I, how I don't like World War I, I wouldn't want to fight in World War I. Because you're, doesn't matter how good of a tactician you are, you can just, you're just gonna charge and it's gonna be horrible. Well, if you take that a step further, I guess I would love to be in a situation where I'm fighting with a sword against another guy. Cause now I could have trained, I could rely on the guys next to me, we could, you have so much control.

• 1:09:11Jocko Willink?

  Because even in World War, to any, any other modern war, like he's just saying, you're not scared of the enemy necessarily. You're scared of a random bullet, you're scared of a random piece of shrapnel hitting you, and that's could come at any time.

• 1:09:24Jocko Willink?

  So it's the psychology is very, very different.

• 1:09:29Jocko Willink?

  Back to the modern soldier here, we finish it, but in order to finish it is necessary to advance, to attack the enemy. And infantrymen or troopers, we are naked against iron, naked against lead, which cannot miss at close range. So again, you against me with a sword? We gotta battle, right? You against me with a gun, if you get your shot off, I'm dead. That's it. I'm naked against that. There's no shield gonna stop it. I mean, now we have body armor, but your chances of getting hit in the body armor, although it saved many, many lives, but it's not a, definitely not a guarantee.

• 1:10:07Jocko Willink?

  Let us advance, in any case, resolutely. Our adversary will not stand up to the point blank range of our rifle. For the attack is never mutual, we are sure of that. We've been told so a thousand times, we have seen it. But what if matters should change now? Suppose the enemy stands at point blank range, what of it then?

• 1:10:29Jocko Willink?

  So you're saying, you know, who's gonna stand up when you're at point blank range? How far is that from Roman confidence? In another place, we have shown that in ancient times to retire from action was both difficult and perilous matter for the soldier. Today, the temptation is much stronger. The facility greater and the peril less.

• 1:10:52Jocko Willink?

  Now therefore combat exacts more moral cohesion, greater unity than previously. So that's exactly what I was talking about earlier. If modern combat, you can find a little, you know, a little ditch to hide in, find a little doorway you're gonna get into.

• 1:11:09Jocko Willink?

  Especially in this kind of mod, you know, this is a little bit pre-world war one, obviously, but they're still charging, right? They're still getting up and charging.

• 1:11:22Jocko Willink?

  So because everyone's all disaggregated across the battlefield, here we go. Back to the book, supervision becomes more and more difficult. Direction being more distant tends to be, tends more often to escape from the supreme commanders and the subordinate leaders. The certain and inevitable disorder which a body of troops always presents in action is with moral effect of modern appliances becoming greater every day. So we are getting more and more spread out on the battlefield.

• 1:11:52Jocko Willink?

  In the midst of the confusion and the vacillation of firing lines, men and officers often lose each other. Now, we have some improvements nowadays. You know, we've got radios that are gonna travel longer distances. We've got devices that allow people to know where each other are. So there's some things there that we've closed up a little bit. But if you think your radio is always gonna work on the battlefield, you're wrong. That's why decentralized command is so important.

• 1:12:20Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, in troops which do the fighting, the men and officers closest to them, from corporal to battalion commander, have a more independent action than ever. Right? We gotta have our troops know what's going on. As it is alone, the vigor of that action, more independent than ever, the direction of higher commanders, which leaves the hands of higher commanders, available forces, which can be directed at a decisive moment, the action becomes more preponderant than ever. Battles now more than ever are battles of men and captains. So this is pure decentralized command. It's pure letting, making sure that everyone knows what the commander's intent is and they can execute out on the battlefield without you having to tell them what to do. They better know what to do on their own.

• 1:13:06Jocko Willink?

  This completes the demonstration of the truth stated before. Combat requires today, in order to give the best results, a moral cohesion. A unity more binding than at any other time. It is as true as it is clear that if one does not wish the bonds to break, one must make them elastic in order to strengthen them. Very, very, very, very poignant that, right? Because the more we try and control things, the less control we're gonna have in these modern combat and in business and in life.

• 1:13:50Jocko Willink?

  The more constrictive you are, the more rigid you are, the less control you're gonna have. It's just not gonna be able to flex and flow with all the craziness that happens out on the battlefield. It's not gonna work. Decentralized command all day. Back to the book. The art of war is subjected to many modifications by industrial and scientific progress. But one thing does not change the heart of man. In the last analysis, success in battle is a matter of morale. In all matters which pertain to an army, organization, discipline and tactics, the human heart in the supreme moment of battle is the basic factor.

• 1:14:34Jocko Willink?

  It is rarely taken into account and often strange errors are the result. Witness the carbine, an accurate long-range weapon, which has never given the service expected of it. Because it was used mechanically without considering the human heart. We must consider it. With improvement in weapons, the power of destruction increases, the moral effect of such weapons increases and courage to face them becomes rarer. Man does not, cannot change. What should increase the power of material is the strength of organization, the unity of the fighting machine. Yet these are the most neglected. So we run into this all the time with Echelon Front, right?

• 1:15:18Jocko Willink?

  We we are leadership. That's what we talk about. That's what we talk about as leadership. And oftentimes when we work with a company, what they're focused on trying to fix the problem that they have, they focus on the symptom, right? They focus on the process that this must be messed up, or we've got people that aren't following our instructions, or we've got,

• 1:15:39Jocko Willink?

  we've got growth that we're trying to maintain and it's not coming out the way we want it to. But they're looking at, they're not looking at the human heart, right? And that's the first thing we look at. That's the main thing we look at. And I'll tell you this a hundred percent of the time, when we go to a company, and no matter what the problem is, no matter what the problem is, I will tell you, the solution to the problem is with the leadership. Period. End of story. Period. End of story. Oh, we've got a process that's messed up. Okay, who's in charge of the process? Give me that person's name. I'll go talk to him. Let's get the leadership working. Oh, we've got decisions that aren't being made. Well, that's a leadership problem. We've got manufacturing that's that's not up to speed. It's not good quality.

• 1:16:24Jocko Willink?

  Is that the manufacturing problem? Is that the problem with the machines? No, there's a leader that's in charge of that. That is allowing this slack to happen. It is about leadership. It is about the human heart is what is it about? What it is about?

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  You said that before about morale. You talk about morale. I think even one of the books said, they do something to to lower their morale, like they're attacking their morale. I think I forgot. I think it might have been the Chechens. I forget.

• 1:16:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:54Speaker 01

  But.

• 1:16:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, every army does that.

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:56Jocko Willink?

  Or they try to attack the morale of the enemy. If you can beat the morale, you're going to beat the army in many cases.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz so it's kind of like, if you make them not want to fight, they're not going to really want to fight, or they're not going to fight, you know?

• 1:17:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what makes, you know, in the Vietnam War, what what hurt our morale so bad? Booby traps. What hurt our morale so bad? Mortar fire, sniper fire. And you're losing guys, but you're not having anyone to engage against.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:23Jocko Willink?

  And you're not taking any ground and holding it. That's one thing they did nicely in Iraq. We could see that we were making progress and so although we'd take, you know, you heard Brian Stan talk about it in the area where he was, there was progress was made and you can look at it and see it. And so therefore you're making these sacrifices, but you know that there's progress occurring.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Jocko Willink?

  And so that you're, you're taking hits to your morale, but your morale is also building back up because you know that you're making progress.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:55Jocko Willink?

  This is an interesting comment.

• 1:17:58Jocko Willink?

  Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare attack a lion. Four less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely. There is the science of organization of armies in a nutshell. Now, this is kind of a strange thing to me because I understand what he's saying, but I have no, I don't know what they mean by attack a lion. We got guns. Do we have swords? Well, it seems like a lion. Four guys. I don't, I don't like those chances. What do you do? You can't do a takedown on a lion.

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  You do the Monteleone.

• 1:18:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know you do the Monteleone. Yeah, I, I, I understand that, but.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  I think it was a metaphor.

• 1:18:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. No, I know. It's a good metaphor, but I'm, I try and think of things, you know, or sometimes I think of things in a realistic way. Have you ever seen the claws on a lion? Yeah.

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no.

• 1:18:50Jocko Willink?

  Four guys versus a lion. I don't think it's gonna work out good if you have no weapons. If you have some weapons,

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:54Jocko Willink?

  but you don't want to be the one guy like, you know, the sacrificial guy that does the first attack. So I can get to the neck. Echo, you run at him, bro.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, be the bait.

• 1:19:02Jocko Willink?

  I got your back. And then I run up and stab it in the head, but that's after you got a jugular removed by his claw.

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  But see what he's saying is if you can rely on me.

• 1:19:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  You'll do it resolutely. I don't know if I can really like rely on myself being the bait though. It's kind of whack.

• 1:19:21Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:19:23Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, anytime a new invention may assure victory. At any time, a new invention may assure victory, granted. But practical weapons are not invented every day and nations quickly put themselves on the same footing in as regards to armament. The determining factor, leaving aside generals of genius and luck, is the quality of the troops. That is, the organization that best assures the esprit, the reliability, the confidence, the unity. Again, we're just talking about the technology comes out. That's great. There's something more important than that. And that is the relationships, the relationships. That's what's most important.

• 1:20:03Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. The purpose of discipline is to make men fight in spite of themselves. No army is worth, no army is worthy of the name without discipline.

• 1:20:15Jocko Willink?

  There is no army at all without organization and organization is defective, which neglects, neglects any means to strengthen the unity of combatants. Methods cannot be identical. This is so, so important. Methods cannot be identical. So you can't just throw this discipline all the same to everyone. Listen to this. Draconian discipline does not fit our customs. Discipline must be a state of mind, a social institution based on salient virtues and defects of the nations. Discipline cannot be secured or created in a day. It is an institution, a tradition.

• 1:20:56Jocko Willink?

  The commander must have confidence in his right to command. He must be accustomed to command and proud to command. This is what strengthens discipline in armies commanded by an aristocracy in certain countries. So I just think it's very important because again, I don't, I don't want people to listen to the podcast to go, that's right, we're going to lay down the discipline now at the company. Everyone's going to follow the rules. No, it can't be draconian. It's got to be a part of the culture. People got to want there to be discipline.

• 1:21:29Jocko Willink?

  Very important. Back to the book. Ancient battle resembled drill. And when they say drill, you ever seen people marching like on a parade ground? That's drill. Okay? Ancient battle resembled drill. There is no such resemblance in modern battle. This greatly disconcerts both officers and soldiers. Ancient battles were picnics for the victors who lost nobody. Not so today. Artillery played no part in ancient battle. The invention of firearms has diminished has diminished losses in battle. Again, this is, you can see he was not 100% correct because he couldn't see into the future, but he's saying at the time, there was less losses in battle because of the firearms.

• 1:22:14Jocko Willink?

  And obviously that turned out to be true. Just what 50 years later in World War One, we get to obscene and horrible levels of casualties from the firearms.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  Why is that? Because they can, well, as far as what he said, because they could fire from a safe.

• 1:22:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm sure it's because they could fire from a safe spot and the momentum of the battle and therefore victory and defeat could occur at a greater distance. And it meant that once that that occurred, the people could run away.

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:48Jocko Willink?

  And so, oh, we were losing, we're going to run away. Whereas in the old days, you're in the game. And we start to beat you. I'm hacking your head off and all the people with you and you can kind of want to run away. We got archers lined up and we're all, we're all on a football field, you know, maybe, maybe five or six football fields, you know, a thousand yards, maybe 10 football fields. We're all there. And when we start getting the upper hand, you're, you're not going to get away from me.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  In fact, you, I mean, according to him, you turn your back to run away. You're, that's guaranteed.

• 1:23:14Jocko Willink?

  Whereas, hey, we can retreat, we can surrender. And then guess what? I mean, modern, modern surrenders, you know, they take place, they're almost like a formal, you know, you come and your general comes and signs the paper and then we take over your country. You know, whatever.

• 1:23:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, they signed, they signed surrender papers. Germany and Japan both signed, you know, unconditional surrenders.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sounded kind of like.

• 1:23:39Jocko Willink?

  Which is how you're supposed to win wars.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:41Jocko Willink?

  Unconditional surrender. And then the benevolence of our country says, okay, now we'll, we'll help you rebuild and you know, you can be a squared away democracy.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Hey, remember, um, here's, here's a question. So in war, like if you're like on Saving Private Ryan, there's a small little clip where the guys are like surrendering and they still shoot them. Is that like illegal? Like can't do that?

• 1:24:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're not supposed to do that.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Jocko Willink?

  Yep. It is illegal. It's against the law of armed combat.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  Remember the first Iraq war when the guys were like finding anything they could that was

• 1:24:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got asked that on, on social media. Guys like, well, what determines? I said, you know, you, you have to do the right thing in combat. He said, well, what the, who determines the right thing? I was like, well, the Geneva Convention of the Law of Armed Combat. Next question. Like there's rules to follow. This is like we're pulling it, you know, out of the thin air.

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  I know. Yeah, it's not a, you know.

• 1:24:33Jocko Willink?

  Not making it up as we go along.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, making it up.

• 1:24:36Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. The greater perfection of weapons, the more dreadful becomes modern battle and discipline becomes more difficult to maintain. Again, that's why it's so awesome. When you see the US Marine Corps doing the island hopping campaign. And the amount of discipline that it takes to go, when you're dug in and you're in a bunker, you're a Japanese Imperial soldier and you're in a bunker and you have a machine gun and you're your sights are set on the beach.

• 1:25:10Jocko Willink?

  The amount of discipline that it takes to go onto that beach as an American Marine or, or sailor, corpsman or army soldier that's coming on, it's just incredible. It's, it's absolutely incredible. It defies what DePique is saying. Some of the stuff that DePique says about fear and all this and guys are going to turn. Apparently he never worked with the US Marine Corps. Apparently never worked with the 101st Airborne. Those guys? No. I mean, I'm calling out a couple units, but come on, these guys are, it's, it's amazing. It's amazing. The amount of heroism and discipline to overcome that, that spirit of self-preservation.

• 1:25:53Jocko Willink?

  And I, and obviously a bunch, you know, tons of special operations guys and just, it's impressive. It really is.

• 1:26:02Jocko Willink?

  It is very impressive. I was humbled to see that stuff with my own two eyes.

• 1:26:10Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "The nature of ancient arms requires close order. Modern arms require open order." "And they are at the same time of such terrible power that against them too often, discipline is broken." So imagine this, this is tough because in ancient war, we're all close together. And so it's easier to maintain discipline, but when we all get spread out in modern warfare, it's harder to maintain the discipline.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, plus nobody's looking too.

• 1:26:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. "Discipline in battle becomes more necessary as ranks become more open and the material cohesion of the ranks not giving confidence. It must spring from a knowledge of comrades and a trust in officers who must always be present and seen." So leaders, you gotta be seen. What man today advances with the confidence that rigid discipline and pride in himself gave the Roman soldier, even though the contest is no longer with man, but with fate? Think about that. The contest in modern warfare oftentimes, not all the time, is fate. Am I gonna step on an ID? Am I gonna get hit by a random bullet? Am I gonna?

• 1:27:19Jocko Willink?

  There's the war now is much more random. It's much more random. Bad luck can cost you your life. Good luck can save your life. Good tactics will put more luck on your side. Bad tactics will turn luck against you. But there's always luck involved in modern warfare. So that's what you're up against. You're up against fate. So you know what? I'll tell you.

• 1:27:46Jocko Willink?

  Like when he talks about this modern warfare of, you know, and even when I talk about like, "Hey, guys going out in the turret, you know, guys going out on operation after operation in Ramadi." Sometimes, you know, guys would think they're gonna die, but a lot of times like, no, I'm not gonna get killed. It's not gonna happen. You know, like you have the sort of a, hey, it's not gonna happen. If it does, I won't know it. Check. Let's rock and roll. You know what I mean? It's a different. So I, I, I wanna make sure that I'm not making it sound like the lead turret gunner is sitting up there going, oh, tonight's the night. He overcomes that. And one of the ways you overcome it is, yeah, it's not gonna happen to me. It's not gonna happen to me. You know, we've heard that from some other books, you know, they don't think it's gonna hap- you never think it's gonna happen to yourself.

• 1:28:30Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna happen to that guy. It might happen to the guy next to me. I'm gonna be good to go. It's like when you're on a plane and you think this plane, you know, if this plane crashes, you know, a big commercial plane, jetliner or whatever.

• 1:28:43Jocko Willink?

  I think I'm gonna live. Like that's my attitude is like, if this thing crashes, I will live. You know, I'm gonna, I will land somewhere and track using my, using my free fall capabilities and I'll find a pool and I'll track to the pool and then I'll get all spread out in the last minute. I'm gonna, you know, I think I'm gonna live.

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  Like if you fall out of the plane?

• 1:29:05Jocko Willink?

  No, if the plane explodes in midair.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  Right, right. And you fly out.

• 1:29:08Jocko Willink?

  Like, you know those crashes where everyone dies on the plane?

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  If I'm on the plane, I'm gonna make it.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  Right. You're the only one. Yeah, I dig it.

• 1:29:14Jocko Willink?

  That's just like the attitude. So you can, you can have, if I can have that attitude about being on a plane. I can have that attitude and a bunch of guys can have that attitude going into combat. Like, hey, I'm not gonna get killed. Bring it. What do you got?

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. They can go, I think that's called availability bias, but I think that goes both ways.

• 1:29:32Jocko Willink?

  Like, what's the availability?

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  Well, availability means it's, I mean, the way, the reason they call it availability is because it's available in your mind, just that thought, you know, it's just, it's kinda, so basically.

• 1:29:44Jocko Willink?

  Because that one girl that lived through one of those crashes back in 1975, I'm like, hey, she could do it.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  Exactly right. I remember. I always hear about that heroic story, even though all the other millions of stories, everybody died. Like, winning the lottery. That's why people buy lottery tickets, even though you'd like, the chance of you dying on the way to buy a lottery ticket is higher than you winning. And you're like, oh, I'm gonna buy it every time. I'm gonna, it's gonna, gonna be someone. Might as well be me.

• 1:30:11Jocko Willink?

  Can't win if you don't play.

• 1:30:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so I think I think a lot of guys have that same attitude as I'm talking about and I know they do because I talked to him about it. Or not maybe not specifically, but no one's going, oh, you know, I'm really now believe me, we get guys that think they're gonna die every time they go out. You know, got some paranoid brothers that'd be like, man, I don't feel good about this one. Be like, you're gonna be okay, buddy.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:35Jocko Willink?

  No, man. I don't know. It's we we what's this hot. Bro, you'll be okay.

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  Even even then they sound pretty hardcore, though.

• 1:30:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, the funny thing is like one of my most paranoid bros that was always paranoid he was gonna die. He always, in fact, I was gonna send him home, not he was the end of deployment.

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:53Jocko Willink?

  And and we had planes and we had to fill up the planes with guys to go home. And one of the other guys, the senior guy said to me like, hey, we need to we need to send that guy home. You know, he's really stressed out. And I said, bro, he's not gonna go home because I know.

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, like if you say go home, he won't want to go home?

• 1:31:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's not gonna want to go. This is a guy that would be like, man, this we shouldn't be doing this up, man. I got a bad feeling about tonight, man. And I'd be, hey, man, it's cool. You know, you're gonna be all right. I think you're gonna be all right, bro. And then, so this other senior guy comes to me and says, hey, you know, you gotta get this guy on the plane. And I go, bro, he's not gonna go home. I know him. He's not going home. He's not gonna want to go home. Dude, he's freaking out. I go, yeah, this is the way he is. Just his way of dealing with it. And he goes, well, you gotta send him home. And I go, I'm not gonna send him home because we'll go ask him if he wants to go home. And I go, okay. So, you know, we're going to lunch or something in our little hut. And I go, hey, man, I want to get you on, you know, one of these early planes going home because fuck you. I'm not going anywhere. I was like, cool, man.

• 1:31:55Jocko Willink?

  Walked back and he's like, oh, what do you? He's like, what do you say? He's telling me to fuck off. Okay, cool. Well, I guess we can stay here. And you know what? He did 10 more deployments after that deployment. You know what I mean? So he's a guy that like, I don't know. That's just the way he dealt with it. He dealt with it through it's voicing and voicing his nervousness, but he just did it out loud, chain smoking cigarettes, getting after it. And would never ever want to stay back off an operation, no matter what it was. He, you know. You know, if I ever didn't put him on the the force list of the guys going out, he'd come to me like, what's your problem? Get me on there. Oh, yeah, bro. I never can't leave him back.

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just so. So it was, it probably wasn't the kind where he really did want to go home, but like how you were saying earlier, the culture kind of.

• 1:32:39Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what's inside of his head.

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:41Jocko Willink?

  But but definitely part of it is like, hey, I'm not going to be a pussy. I'm I might be talking like I'm scared.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:47Jocko Willink?

  And like, I don't want to do this, but don't you dare.

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:50Jocko Willink?

  Try and send me home. Bro, don't do it.

• 1:32:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:53Jocko Willink?

  Now let me have another cigarette and get after it. And yeah, actually, that guy just retired, one of my, one of my awesome brothers.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Well, when, when they say, um, when the guys are like, oh, it's not going to happen to me, right? When, you know, about dying and stuff, um, is that, do you think that they really feel that it's not going to happen to me? Or is that a thing that they sort of tell themselves?

• 1:33:16Jocko Willink?

  Well, I can tell you that oftentimes I did not think I could be killed.

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:20Jocko Willink?

  You know, I'm like, hey, this is, this is not going to happen, right? Bring it.

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:25Jocko Willink?

  Go ahead, bring it. And and I guess part of that, a little 10% of that was like, hey, if I do get killed, whatever, I'm good to go. You know, this is just kind of a good way to die, right? I don't mind that way of dying, getting killed in combat, right? I'm a Viking with a sword and I want to die with it in my hands. I don't want to die the way I'm going to die now. You know, now I gotta live and get, do all this stuff, right?

• 1:33:51Speaker 01

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:33:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, I guess so, but, um.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  Technically.

• 1:33:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. But so there's a little bit of the, but but I think guys probably fall in that whole spectrum.

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:59Jocko Willink?

  Of guys that just didn't think they would get killed. And guys that just said they didn't think they could get killed. And guys that thought they were going to get killed, but really didn't think they were going to get killed. They're just, man, you don't know what's going on inside people's, inside people's head. But what you've got to do is pay as, as much attention to it as you can. And always be looking at people and trying to gauge where they're at mentally. Cause yeah, it's, uh, it does, it does freak people out, you know? The continual specter of death, it can, it can hang heavy. And and you know, I was never exposed to the kind of things that these people were going through in World War Two, going on to, going on to a beach, going on where you're, hey, you know, we're going to take.

• 1:34:42Jocko Willink?

  You know, forty percent casualties first two waves. You know, that means you're looking at your buddy like, okay, one of us ain't gonna make it. Or one of us is at least gonna get wounded bad.

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:51Jocko Willink?

  I was doing some more, I was doing some reading, you know, just some World War II reading. It's just crazy. How those guys were going, I mean, D-Day is the same thing. D-Day, they, they found they were gonna take even worse casualties than they did.

• 1:35:03Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:35:03Jocko Willink?

  You know, actually, the first Gulf War, I remember hearing a port on, on the news, I think it was CNN. Cause yeah, it was CNN, cause that was the only cable news, I think at the time. They were saying there's gonna be forty thousand casualties in the first forty eight hours. I was like, oh, it's on, I'm gonna get some. And that was literally my attitude, you know? And of course, it was over in seventy two hours, nothing happened. That's why I think that lured us into a false sense of security and arrogance. The second Gulf War, we said, oh, we're gonna go into Iraq. Oh, yeah, well, you know, we'll probably be done in two or three months, or maybe a month, you know, maybe a month. And guess what? We got up to Baghdad in what, a couple, a couple of weeks, a week or two? And boom, we were there, okay, this is gonna be, yeah, well, guess what? We, we didn't, we, we weren't expecting that insurgency to form.

• 1:35:46Jocko Willink?

  And we didn't do a good job of transitioning the government properly, so we made some.

• 1:35:52Jocko Willink?

  I can't say we made some mistakes. Okay, I can say this, we made mistakes, but we. You, you don't know what's gonna happen in war, right? We don't know the answers. If we knew what the answers were, well, we would do everything perfectly. You just don't know. It's like, it's like playing a football game, right? You don't know what's gonna happen. Not only do you not know what the opponent's gonna do, you don't know what passes are gonna be caught and dropped and what the ref's gonna call. There's all these variables that you just cannot know. The only way you can know the outcome of a football game is to play the football game, right? The only way you can know what's gonna happen in a war is the war happens. And things are gonna happen that you will not expect, ever. And you gotta deal with them. And we were a little slow to recognize, but again, we had false sense of security.

• 1:36:36Jocko Willink?

  Hey, we beat these guys last time in seventy two hours.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay, we wanna take their country, so what's that gonna mean? Two weeks, we should be good to go. You can never do that. You gotta be ready for the long haul.

• 1:36:49Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. In ancient battle, unity existed, at least with the Greeks and the Romans. The soldier was known to his officer and comrades. They saw that he fought. In modern armies, where losses are as great for the victor as the vanquish, the soldier must more often be replaced. In ancient battle, the victor had no losses, or very limited losses. Today, the soldier is often unknown to his comrades. He is lost in the smoke, in the dispersion, the confusion of battle. He seems to fight alone. Unity is no longer ensured by mutual surveillance. A man falls and disappears. Who knows whether it was a bullet? Or the fear of advancing further that struck him.

• 1:37:34Jocko Willink?

  And again, we're talking, these guys are doing sort of World War I style, advances, charges on positions. The ancient combatant was never struck by an invisible weapon and could not fall this way. The more difficult surveillance, the more necessary becomes the individuality of companies, sections, and squads.

• 1:37:58Jocko Willink?

  Dispersion brings us back to the necessity for the unity, which was the absolute necessity in ancient battle. So,

• 1:38:07Jocko Willink?

  another, another point here. The size of the battlefield permits less than ever holding units together. The role of the general is much more difficult. Many more chances are left to fate. Thus, the greater necessity for the troops who know best their trade, who are most dependable, and the greatest of fortitude. So you gotta have even better soldiers now, because you got, you, you gotta train them better. Because they might be out there alone, or you know, with two or three guys.

• 1:38:35Jocko Willink?

  There is a strange similarity in battle at one league to battle at two paces. So one league, meaning separated by 2,000 meters. Two paces is obviously,

• 1:38:46Jocko Willink?

  two paces. The value of the soldier is the essential element of success. Let us strengthen the soldier by unity. And this is, obviously, this is businesses, this is teams. The tighter you are as a group, the better you're gonna perform. Work that unity.

• 1:39:08Jocko Willink?

  The good quality of troops will more than ever secure victory.

• 1:39:15Jocko Willink?

  Nothing should be neglected to make the battle order stronger and the man stronger. This is, this is good. When in complete security after dinner, in full physical and moral contentment, men consider war and battle, they are animated in by a noble ardor that has nothing in common with reality. How many, so everyone's all brave when they're at the dinner table, the full bellies. How many of them, however, even at that moment, would be ready to risk their lives? So even when they're at their dinner table talking, really at that moment, how many people are ready to risk their lives? But oblige them to march for days and weeks to arrive at the battleground and on the day of battle,

• 1:39:58Jocko Willink?

  oblige them to wait minutes, hours to deliver it. If they were honest, they would testify how much the physical fatigue and the mental anguish that precede action have lowered their morale, how much less eager to fight they are than a month before when they rose from the table in a generous mood.

• 1:40:18Jocko Willink?

  Man's heart is changeable as fortune. Man shrinks back and apprehends danger in any effort in which he does not foresee success. So when we don't think we're going to be successful, we shrink back, we get worried about it. There are some isolated characters of iron temper who resist the tendency, but they are carried away by the great minority. Examples show that if withdrawal is forced, the army is discouraged and takes flight. The brave heart does not change. Real bravery, inspired by devotion to duty, does not know panic and is always the same. The bravery sprung from hot blood pleases the Frenchman more.

• 1:41:03Jocko Willink?

  He understands it, it appeals to his vanity, it is a characteristic of his nature, but it is passing. It fails him at times, especially when there's nothing for him to gain by doing his duty. So this is like, you know, motivation, being fickle. If you're, if you're one of those, yeah, yeah, you're super fired up and now you want to go, that's going to fade away.

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:24Jocko Willink?

  That's not the kind of bravery we're looking for. We're looking for the constant, steady bravery.

• 1:41:31Jocko Willink?

  The instinct of self-preservation can make, can then make the strongest tremble. But they are strong enough to overcome their emotion, the fear of advancing, even losing their heads or their coolness. Fear with them never comes, becomes terror. It is forgotten in the activities of command. He who does not feel strong enough to keep his heart from ever being gripped by terror should never think of becoming an officer.

• 1:42:01Jocko Willink?

  Don't become an officer if you're gonna get really scared. The soldiers themselves have emotions, have emotion. The sense of duty, discipline, pride, and the example of their officers and above all their coolness sustain them and prevent their fear from becoming terror. Their emotion never allows them to sight or to more than approximately adjust their fire. Often they fire into the air. Cromwell knew this well, dependable, dependable as his troops were, when he said, "Put your trust in God and aim at their shoelaces." That's something that we still teach. You know, when you're in a firefight, you shoot low. Shoot at the ground in front of the bad guys.

• 1:42:39Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:42:40Jocko Willink?

  Because you'll hit ricochets, the bullets will walk up into the bad guys.

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 1:42:45Jocko Willink?

  Ricochets will put stuff in their face and you'll at least hit something.

• 1:42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:50Jocko Willink?

  If you aim high, you're gonna shoot over their heads and you're gonna hit nothing.

• 1:42:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wasn't, um...

• 1:42:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, Roger, Roger.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  Roger, yeah. He was saying, he was kinda saying that, right? Like the new guys shoot a tendency to shoot high.

• 1:43:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, for sure. He definitely said that, yeah. No, they, they drilled us into that. They drilled that into us big time. You know, walk it in.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, walk it in.

• 1:43:09Jocko Willink?

  Shoot it through, shoot it through their laces. And that's another thing, when you're shooting high, you don't know where it went. When you shoot through the ground, you can see where it's hitting. You're like, oh, okay, boom, I'll walk it in.

• 1:43:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, walk it in.

• 1:43:18Jocko Willink?

  Walk it on in.

• 1:43:21Jocko Willink?

  What makes the soldier capable of obedience and direction in action is the sense of discipline. This includes respect for and confidence in his chiefs, confidence in his comrades, and fear of their reproaches and retaliation if he abandons them in danger. This is peer pressure, basically, is what we're talking about. His desire to go where others do go without trembling more than they. In a word, the whole of esprit de corps. Organization only can produce these characteristics. Four men equal a lion. Esprit de corps is secured in war, but war becomes shorter and shorter and more and more violent. Consequently, secure

• 1:44:03Jocko Willink?

  esprit de corps in advance. This is about training. That's where we're going to establish esprit de corps. Mental acquaintanceship, this is a weird word for like friendship or brotherhood, mental acquaintanceship. It is not enough to make a good organization. A good general esprit is needed. All work, all must work for battle and not merely live quietly going through the drills without understanding their application. So you've got to have everyone understand what's going on. They got to understand why they're doing what they're doing. Once a man knows how to use his weapon and obey all commands, there is need, needed only occasional drill to brush up those who have forgotten. Marches and battle maneuvers are what's needed. So don't just run the simple drills that people

• 1:44:48Jocko Willink?

  know. This is, you know, the training that I used to run was battle maneuvers. That's what we were doing. And marches. Yes, you were going to get your long walk on. You're going to get conditioned. You're going to get tired. You're going to get fatigued. You're going to get after it. And you're going to get tested. And then some crazy stuff was going to happen. It's going to be mayhem. That's how we get guys ready for combat. The technical training of the soldier is not the most difficult. It is necessary for him to know how to use and take care of his weapon, to know how to move to the right and to the left, forward and back. But this is not what makes a soldier. It's absolutely necessary to change the instruction. He's talking about how the instruction is being run and he's talking how it should be run. It's absolutely necessary to change the instruction to reduce it to the necessary minimum

• 1:45:28Jocko Willink?

  and to cut out all sorts of superfluous information with which peacetime laborers overload it each year. To know the essential well is better than having some knowledge of a lot of things, many of them useless. Teach this in the first year, then in the second, the essential. Also, instruction should be simple to avoid mental fatigue of long drills that disgust everybody, so keep it simple. So, that is the viewpoint on training. That is what you have to do.

• 1:46:09Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. When confidence is placed in superiority of material means valuable as they are against the enemy at a distance, it may be betrayed by the actions of the enemy. If he closes with you in spite of your superiority in means of destruction, the morale of the enemy mounts with the loss of your confidence. His morale dominates yours. You flee entrenched troops give away this manner. So, did you, did you understand that? So, if you're stronger than me, but I attack you, you might just get on your heels and lose. And if you think about it, I mean, you see, you see this in film footage in World War I, people would take, they would take the trenches. So, you're in a detrench position, you've got cover and you've got concealment, you've got barbed wire, but someone's still gonna come in there and when they do, you run.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kinda like, you ever see those videos on YouTube with a squirrel attacks the dog? But it's like this big dog, but the squirrel gets nuts, you know? And the dog runs away.

• 1:47:03Jocko Willink?

  Is that a pun there too, like a squirrel getting nuts? You're good with that one.

• 1:47:09Jocko Willink?

  That was a chance one.

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  In Hawaii, when you're, when you amp out, when you, you know?

• 1:47:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you get nuts.

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  The guy's getting nuts. Like, you're nuts, huh?

• 1:47:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so, so it's weird, you know, it's weird that we talk about that because I was talking about that. I've talked about that when you when you're a kid, you see someone losing their temper, you see him getting nuts and it's impressive.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:29Jocko Willink?

  And he's saying, that's actually true. Somebody gets nuts, somebody might say, yeah. Now, if you're an experienced fighter and you see someone getting nuts, you go, oh, cool.

• 1:47:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:35Jocko Willink?

  I got a guy that's gonna be winded in about thirty five more seconds.

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Isn't that crazy? Like, that's essentially like a fight, he's trained, that's why.

• 1:47:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  He's trained, so he's essentially trained out of the human element that he's talking about, that instinctual.

• 1:47:48Jocko Willink?

  Oh, a good fighter, yes.

• 1:47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what I mean?

• 1:47:50Jocko Willink?

  Yes, absolutely, a trained, uh, yes, that's exactly what happens with a trained fighter. But this is, that shows you how that momentum in battle and business in anything. You, you, oh, you're gonna come at me? I'm gonna attack you, you're stronger than me, I'm gonna attack you. That's why it's be, be aggressive, right?

• 1:48:07Jocko Willink?

  Default mode's gotta be aggressive, that's why. Even advancing, even by advancing, you affect the morale of the enemy. But your object is to dominate him and make him retreat before your ascendancy. And it is certain that everything that diminishes the enemy's morale adds to your resolution in advancing. So go on the attack, be offensive, be aggressive.

• 1:48:31Jocko Willink?

  The mere attack does not completely succeed against such troop, troops. It is necessary to destroy them.

• 1:48:42Jocko Willink?

  Again, I always like to point that out because as we're sitting here talking, it's, we're, even me, we're starting to think of it like a chess game and a video game and all this stuff. But we're actually talking about killing everyone, that's what we're talking about. We can't forget that.

• 1:48:56Jocko Willink?

  In modern battle, which is delivered with combatants so far apart, man has come to have a horror of man. I thought that was interesting. We don't get this hand to hand combat very much anymore.

• 1:49:11Jocko Willink?

  These are good. He who calm and strong of heart awaits his enemy has all the advantage of fire. But the moral impulse of the assailant demoralizes the assailed. He is frightened, he sets his sight no longer, his sights no longer. He does not even aim his piece, his lines are broken. So again, you're, you're in a comfortable spot. This is what happened to the Japanese, the, the island advancing campaigns. They're hunkered down in a bunker. With thousands of rounds of ammunition and what do they see? They see United States Marine Corps coming across the beach and they go, oh my God, who are these guys and why are they not backing down? And they got frazzled, got overrun.

• 1:49:58Jocko Willink?

  With good troops on both sides, if an attack is not prepared, there's every reason to believe that it will fail. So this is so, this is, we see how we're going back and forth. It's like each one is contrary to the other one. So he's saying, hey, if you attack, you're gonna win. But now he's saying with, with good troops on both sides, if an attack is not prepared, there's every reason to believe it will fail. That's because the guys that are waiting the attack have such an advantage. They're dug in, they're covered, they're, you know, but again, look at the Japanese, they're, they're in a bunker. The Marine is on a beach, bro. That's, that's, you can't get any more exposed. Your weapon is wet, you're falling in the water. It's a horrible situation. We won every single time. That's amazing.

• 1:50:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's kind of talking about all other things being equal.

• 1:50:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's saying other things being equal. If the attack is not prepared, there's every reason to believe that it will fail. The attacking troops suffer more materially, materially than the defenders. The latter are in better order, fresh, while the assailants are in disorder, having suffered a bunch of losses and a certain amount of punishment. I mean, clearly, again, we're going across the beach, any beach, amphibious invasion, you're taking losses, you're disordered, the boats are crashing, you're coming through the water, people are drowning, all that stuff is really happening.

• 1:51:14Jocko Willink?

  The slightest, this is important, the slightest reaction by the defense may demoralize the attack. So you see that again, see someone in a, in a street fight, coming up, getting in your face and you're just like, like, oh, really? You want some? And it immediately will demoralize the attack. Never mind, you know, you, you, you hit them or you choke them. Cause then now you're in a fight. But if you just, the little thing may demoralize the attack. And that's why, you know, we train, when we get attacked, we attack. If you shoot at us, you're gonna feel the heat.

• 1:51:48Jocko Willink?

  The more confidence one has in his method of attack or defense, the more disconcerted he is to see them at some time incapable of stopping the enemy. So that's another thing. You think you're all strong, but then when you start getting beat, you just fold.

• 1:52:04Jocko Willink?

  Fold.

• 1:52:07Jocko Willink?

  Interesting, just a quick comment. There is, back to the book, there is always mad impatience for results without considering the means. So you see this a lot in businesses, in the military, where the senior leadership, they wanna see the results, we want results on this thing, you gotta be patient. Because the whole time you're asking that, like if I start asking you, echo, how do we do this? How do we do this? How do we do this? How are we doing right now? You start going, well, maybe I'm failing because I'm not getting any results here. You know, I need to give you some space and give you some time to let things develop and let you succeed.

• 1:52:46Jocko Willink?

  With us, very few reason or understand reason, very few are cool. So again, human nature.

• 1:52:55Jocko Willink?

  If you only, this is important, this is very important. If you only use combat methods that require leaders without fear of high intelligence, full of good sense, and of a spree, you will always make mistakes. So you gotta plan your plan that it suits the, maybe the less superior leader that you might have.

• 1:53:19Jocko Willink?

  Man is always man. He does not always possess ability and resolution. The commander must make his choice of methods depending on the troops and on himself. Okay. Pride generally causes refusal to acknowledge the truth that fear of being vanquished is basic in war. In the mass, pride, vanity, in the mass, pride, vanity is responsible for this dissimulation. With a tiny number of absolutely fearless men, what is responsible is their ignorance of a thing they do not feel. Feel. There is however, no real basis

• 1:53:59Jocko Willink?

  for this, and all real tactics are based upon it. Discipline is a part of taxes, tactics

• 1:54:07Jocko Willink?

  is absolutely at the base of tactics, as the Romans showed. So, discipline is more important than, hey, we're just gonna be brave. This is not gonna work out for you. Not gonna work out for you very well. I had a...

• 1:54:24Jocko Willink?

  We were, just got to Ramadi. And I pulled the, the officers in to, it was actually the radio room where we had radios. I just wanted to talk to the, the officers. And I said, hey, guys, look, it's gonna be a long deployment. It's gonna be rough and we gotta pay attention to guys that get, you know, combat fatigue and it's gonna get, you know, guys will get scared and it's gonna break them down and all that. And one of the junior officers was, he said, he literally did not believe me. He was like, that's, he, he said, that's not gonna happen to our guys. Cause we had a bunch of, you know,

• 1:55:05Jocko Willink?

  badass studs. He goes, that's not gonna happen to our guys. We don't need, we don't, we don't need to worry about that. I said, okay. Well, I hope you're right. And then about two months later, he goes, you were right about that.

• 1:55:15Jocko Willink?

  And I said, yeah, I know. Ben, you know, so let's find out who we gotta take care of, get them some rest or whatever, and do our best.

• 1:55:24Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Our infantry no longer has any battle tactics. The initiative of the soldier rules. The soldiers of the first empire trusted to the moral and passive action of masses. Today, the soldiers object to the passive action of masses. They fight as skirmishes or they march back to the front as a flock of sheep, of which three-fourths seek cover and route if the fire is heavy. So you think you're gonna, we'll just march to the front. No, three-quarters of your guys are not making, not gonna make it to the front. Maneuver is possible only with good organization. Otherwise is no more effective than the passive mass of ra, of rabble in an attack.

• 1:56:05Jocko Willink?

  In ancient combat, the soldier was controlled by the leader in engagements. Now that fighting is open, the soldier cannot be controlled.

• 1:56:14Jocko Willink?

  Once, often, he cannot even be directed. Consequently, it is necessary to begin action at the latest possible moment and to have the immediate commanders understand what is wanted and what their objectives are. Decentralized command.

• 1:56:31Jocko Willink?

  Obviously. Self-esteem is unquestionably one of the most powerful motives which moves our men. They do not wish to pass for cowards in the eyes of our comrades. If they march forward, they want to distinguish themselves. After every attack, formation no longer exists. This is because of the inherent disorder of every forward march under fire. The bewildered men, even the officers, have no longer the eyes of their comrades or of their commander upon them, sustaining them. Self-esteem no longer impels them. They do not hold out. The least counter-offensive puts them to rout. So, just talking about being separated

• 1:57:17Jocko Willink?

  and how before we had everyone watching us, now no one's watching me. I guess I'm gonna take a little, take a little cover over here in this trench.

• 1:57:29Jocko Willink?

  Do you object that no one ever gets within 200 meters of the enemy? That a unit attacking from the front never succeeds? So be it. Let us attack from the flank.

• 1:57:46Jocko Willink?

  No, this is important. This is important in combat. No prescribed interval will be kept exactly. It will open, it will close, following the fluctuations of combat. And this is true with any plan. Business plan. It's not gonna be what you thought it was gonna be. It's not gonna go as planned. There's gonna be fluctuations in what you told people to do. They gotta be ready for that. You gotta be ready for that.

• 1:58:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I love this one.

• 1:58:15Jocko Willink?

  Absolute rules are foolish.

• 1:58:22Jocko Willink?

  Absolute rules are foolish. About it. If you find yourself.

• 1:58:30Jocko Willink?

  Saying never or saying always, you better put a caveat on that. Those are too strong. There's no such thing. With this very rare, actually, I'd say there's no such thing. Maybe I could think of an example, but.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  I'm sure there's an exception either to that.

• 1:58:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, even to the one that I could think of. There's gonna be an exception.

• 1:58:51Jocko Willink?

  This is cool. The infantry square is not a thing of mechanics of mathematical reasoning. So the infantry square was a tactic they used and they hear that they'll tell how they formed up. A platoon in four ranks, two facing the front, two to the rear, its flanks guarded by the extreme files that face to the flank. And conducted, supported by non-commissioned officers placed in the fifth rank in the interior of the rectangle. Powerful in its competence and fire cannot be dislodged by cavalry. So he's talking about this infantry square and why it's such a good tactic. Why? Moral reasons and no others make the soldier in a square feel himself stronger than when in the line.

• 1:59:36Jocko Willink?

  He feels himself watched from behind and has nowhere to flare. So you might think like, well, they got good 360 security and that's why it's good or they're in a unit that's easier to control. What it is is, hey, when I'm in the square, I know someone's got my back. I know someone's got my flank and I know that the people are watching me and counting on me. So I gotta fight hard. That's why the infantry square worked really well.

• 1:59:58Jocko Willink?

  Fire by command presupposes an impossible coolness. Had any troops ever possessed it, they would have mowed down battalions as one mows down cornstalks. So he's saying, look, this idea that you're just gonna tell me to get online on my command, shoot, no. They need to have freedom and the only thing that creates calmness under fire is security. Security, just like a quarterback. What's gonna make him calm under fires when he has good defensive people keeping the.

• 2:00:29Speaker 01

  O line.

• 2:00:30Jocko Willink?

  The O line, keeping the, the, what, the defensive line at bay. It's gonna keep him cool under there. I mean, obviously some guys get pretty cool under some pressure.

• 2:00:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:39Jocko Willink?

  Not as cool as they are when they got a good O line just holding the line.

• 2:00:46Jocko Willink?

  As always, oh, sorry, always, always take draconian measures to prevent pillage from commencing. If it begins, it is difficult ever to stop it. So you gotta keep, you gotta hold the line, keep your troops disciplined.

• 2:01:02Jocko Willink?

  Here's a little dichotomy of leadership coming at you. A leader must combine resolute bravery and impetuosity with prudence and calmness, a difficult matter.

• 2:01:19Jocko Willink?

  That's the dichotomy of leadership. You gotta be calm, but you gotta be brave.

• 2:01:24Jocko Willink?

  You gotta be prudent with what you're doing, but you, at the same time, you gotta be a little bit rash and be aggressive.

• 2:01:33Jocko Willink?

  Good times.

• 2:01:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay, he lays out a little information here about generals and being in high command. So when this is, we're talking about CEOs, we're talking about senior leadership. When one occupies a high command, there are many things which he does not see. The general in chief, even a division commander can only escape this failing by great activity, moved by strict conscientiousness and aided by clairvoyance. So you have to be able to like see, you have to have clairvoyant skills. This failing extends to those about him, to his heads of services. So you're the CEO, you're not gonna know everything that's going on.

• 2:02:18Jocko Willink?

  The only way you do, you do know what's going on is by being really proactive and finding out what's going on. And by the way, it's not just you that doesn't know, all your little, all your other people in the C-suite, they don't know what's going on either. You lose a lot of that stuff unless you're super proactive. Now here's some examples. These men live well, sleep well. The same must be true of all. They have picked well-conditioned horses. The roads are excellent. They are never sick. The doctors must be exaggerating sickness. They have attendants and doctors. Everybody must be well looked after.

• 2:02:50Jocko Willink?

  Something happens which shows abominable negligence, common enough in war. With a good heart and a full belly, they say, but this is infamous, unheard of. It could not have happened. It is impossible. So you gotta be careful of that detachment when you get to the senior leadership positions. When you start going, oh, those guys in the front lines. What's wrong with it? What can they possibly be complaining about? It can't be that bad out there. Actually, it can. Now, we'll talk about a little micro-management. Back to the book. Today, there is a tendency, whose cause should be sought on the part of superiors to infringe on the authority of the inferiors.

• 2:03:31Jocko Willink?

  This is general. It goes very high and is furthered by the mania for command. Right? People don't want to be controlling everything. It results in the lessening of the authority of subordinate officers in the minds of their soldiers. So when you're micromanaging, you're hurting the authority of your subordinate leadership. This is a grave matter. As only the firm authority and prestige of subordinate officers can maintain discipline. The tendency to oppress subordinates, to want to impose upon them in all things the views of the superior, not to admit of honest mistakes. Right? We don't want to make mistakes. So we want to impose on them, all things, the views of the superior, not to admit honest mistakes.

• 2:04:15Jocko Willink?

  And to reprove them as false, to make everybody, even down to the private, feel that there is only one infallible authority, and that's me. A colonel, for instance, sets himself up as the sole authority with judgment and intelligence. He thus takes all initiative from subordinate officers and reduces them to a state of inertia, coming from their lack of confidence in themselves and from fear of being severely reproved. How many generals before a regiment think of, think only of showing how much they know? Ugh, don't be that leader. They lessen the authority of the colonel. That is nothing to them. They have asserted their superiority, true or false, that is

• 2:04:59Jocko Willink?

  what is essential. With cheeks puffed out, they leave proud of having attacked discipline.

• 2:05:08Jocko Willink?

  Really bothers me. But it's, you know, here we are, 1840, we're talking about, 1860, we're talking about. 1865, 1880, we're talking about micromanagement. We're talking about micromanagement, right? We're talking about the upper echelon, not knowing what's these problems that we deal with with businesses all the time and echelon front, we, this is what we deal with. And it's hard for people to see that they're doing this because they don't know it. Even though this is such a common trait that we can go back thousands of years and see. People don't recognize it.

• 2:05:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, this one bothers me. Ask much in order to attain, obtain a little is a false saying. A source of errors and an attack on discipline. One ought to obtain what one asks. It is only necessary to be moderately reasonable and practical. So this is like, hey, Echo, we need to sell 10,000 of these new units we've made. And what I'm really hoping is that you sell a thousand. That's not, that's not a good way to do. If I want you to sell a thousand, that's what I want you to make. You want you to make a thousand of these new units. Okay. Make a thousand. I don't tell you make 10,000 and hope that you can know. Think, well, it's a disaster. Don't do that.

• 2:06:28Jocko Willink?

  Man's admiration for the great spectacles of nature is the admiration for force. Again, we're getting into a little bit of human nature, just a little touch. In the mountains, it is mass, a force that impresses him, strikes him, makes him admire. In the calm sea, it is the mysterious and terrible force that he divines.

• 2:06:49Jocko Willink?

  That he feels in that enormous liquid mass, in the angry sea, force again, in the wind, in the storm, in the vast depths of the sky, it is still force that he admires. All these things astounded man when he was young. When he became old, he knows them. Astonishment has turned to admiration, but always it is the feeling of a formidable force which compels his admiration. This explains his admiration for the warrior. The warrior is the ideal of primitive man, the savage, the barbarian. The more people rise in moral civilization, the lower this ideal falls.

• 2:07:32Jocko Willink?

  But with the masses everywhere, the warrior still is and for a long time will be the height of their ideals. This is because man loves to admire force and bravery that are his own attributes. When that force and bravery find another means to assert themselves, at least, or at least when the crowd has shown that war does not furnish the best examples of them, that there are true and more exalted examples, this ideal will give way to a higher one. Don't think it's quite happened yet.

• 2:08:15Jocko Willink?

  And one last note on decentralized command. Napoleon said, he quotes Napoleon, "The only method of fire to be used in war is fire at will." So, when you're trying to control your teams and their every action, because that's really the, that's the, that's the action of a soldier, right, is to fire. When you try and control that, you are micromanaging in many cases. You let them operate on their own.

• 2:08:54Jocko Willink?

  And now I'm gonna, I'm gonna close out this, uh, piece of battle studies right here. We're going to August 15th, 1870. And this is about in the first month of the Franco-Prussian War. Colonel De Peak was with his regiment on the outskirts of a town called Mars-Latur in France. And they started to receive artillery fire. And this

• 2:09:26Jocko Willink?

  section or this quote is from the history of France's 10th Infantry Regiment. So they start taking some shelling and here we go. "The Colonel had arms taken at once and disposed the regiment north of the road, which, being elevated, provided sufficient cover for the men. He himself stood in the road to put heart into his troops by his attitude, they having been a little startled by this surprise and the baptism of fire, which they received under such disadvantageous circumstances. Suddenly, a shell burst over the road a few feet from the Colonel and mutilated his legs in a frightful manner.

• 2:10:10Jocko Willink?

  The shell caused other ravages in the ranks of the 10th. The commander of 3rd Battalion, Major D. Chenais, was mortally wounded. Captain Ray Bole was killed. Lieutenant Pone, 3rd Battalion, 1st Company, and 8 men of the regiment were wounded." The Colonel was immediately taken to the other side of the highway, into the midst of his soldiers and a surgeon called those of the regiment already being engaged in caring for the other victims of the terrible shot.

• 2:10:45Jocko Willink?

  In the meantime, Colonel De Peak asked for Lieutenant Colonel Doliac, delivered to him his saddlebags containing important papers concerning the regiment, and gave him his field glasses.

• 2:10:58Jocko Willink?

  Then, without uttering the least sound of pain, notwithstanding the frightful injury from which he must have suffered horribly, he said with calmness, "My regret is to be struck this way without having been able to lead my regiment on the enemy."

• 2:11:15Jocko Willink?

  They wanted him to take a little brandy, he refused and accepted some water, which a soldier offered him. A surgeon finally arrived, the Colonel showing him his right leg, open in two places, made with his hand the sign of amputating at his thigh, saying, "Doctor, it is necessary to amputate my leg here." At this moment, a soldier wounded in the shoulder, placed near the Colonel, groaned aloud. Forgetting his own condition, the Colonel said immediately to the surgeon, "See first, Doctor, what is the matter with this brave man? I can wait." Because of the lack of instruments, it was not possible to perform the amputation on the ground,

• 2:12:00Jocko Willink?

  as the Colonel desired, so this much-deplored commander was transported to the Metz Hospital. Four days later, on the 19th of August, Colonel Ardant de Puk de Piek died, like a hero of old, without uttering the least complaint. Far from his regiment, far from his family, he uttered several times the words which summed up his affections: "My wife, my children, my regiment." "My wife, my children, my regiment."

• 2:12:44Jocko Willink?

  Adieu. Goodbye.

• 2:12:58Jocko Willink?

  And so,

• 2:13:03Jocko Willink?

  we see a man who despite his intimate knowledge of the fear and the immense strength that the instincts of self-preservation hold, yet he showed no fear and overcame his own instincts of self-preservation. And maybe...

• 2:13:34Jocko Willink?

  Maybe that's because he knew them so well.

• 2:13:40Jocko Willink?

  He understood them so deeply that he was able to overcome them.

• 2:13:50Jocko Willink?

  And maybe of all the incredible lessons we can learn from Colonel DuPique, perhaps the most important one is for us to realize why it is so critical for us to increase our knowledge.

• 2:14:08Jocko Willink?

  Not just of war, but of all things.

• 2:14:14Jocko Willink?

  So that we have the knowledge and the understanding to confront and overcome those things, the good and the bad.

• 2:14:31Jocko Willink?

  So, learn.

• 2:14:36Jocko Willink?

  Learn about your strengths and your weaknesses. Learn about strategy and tactics. Learn about fear and hesitation. Learn about human nature.

• 2:14:52Jocko Willink?

  And learn about yourself. Test yourself. Find out who you are.

• 2:15:04Jocko Willink?

  Find out where fear and hesitation might cause you

• 2:15:12Jocko Willink?

  to back down.

• 2:15:15Jocko Willink?

  Or to fall short.

• 2:15:20Jocko Willink?

  Learn and understand yourself so you can overcome and conquer the limitations of your natural instincts and replace them with the will.

• 2:15:35Jocko Willink?

  And the discipline to overpower and overcome

• 2:15:41Jocko Willink?

  everything in your path.

• 2:15:50Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's all I've got for tonight.

• 2:15:57Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:16:00Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles.

• 2:16:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:16:02Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of learning and gaining knowledge.

• 2:16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 2:16:08Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you could convey some knowledge on how to support this podcast.

• 2:16:13Speaker 01

  Time for support. Sure. Of course. I feel like we should start with Onnit.

• 2:16:19Jocko Willink?

  Good places.

• 2:16:19Speaker 01

  You know, don't break the cycle, the routine, the ritual, if you will.

• 2:16:25Speaker 01

  So Onnit, best supplements in the, straight up in the world.

• 2:16:30Jocko Willink?

  He calls it, huh?

• 2:16:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Browse is funny. Like I sound kind of sick. I was like talking last week. I'm all talking. You know, you're trying to not be sick, remember?

• 2:16:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, that's right.

• 2:16:40Speaker 01

  Look at me getting sick. Guess what I did?

• 2:16:42Jocko Willink?

  Shroom Tech Immune.

• 2:16:43Speaker 01

  Boom, ordered it today.

• 2:16:46Jocko Willink?

  You gotta have that stuff on standby because you know what you can feel when you're getting sick?

• 2:16:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I totally deserved it. Just the how, actually, I didn't really say anything bad, but I deserved it.

• 2:16:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you were deep inside, you were looking to be weakness over there?

• 2:16:58Speaker 01

  No, yeah, well, no, I was more like, because I hadn't bought it yet, you know, we knew it was there. We were like, Shroom Tech support, because that's what I need. I don't necessarily need immune because I'm not sick. But then again, once you're sick, it's kind of too late, you know, kind of. Anyway, nonetheless, lesson learned. Shroom Tech Immune on the way for me.

• 2:17:18Jocko Willink?

  I, by the way, I didn't get sick. Like I just barely touched on getting sick and I amped up the vitamin C. I amped up the Shroom Tech Immune.

• 2:17:26Speaker 01

  That fires you up, huh? Because it's like a little battle, you know?

• 2:17:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it is a battle. It is.

• 2:17:31Speaker 01

  Morale was high after that one.

• 2:17:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:34Jocko Willink?

  I flanked him. I flanked him with the Shroom Tech Immune.

• 2:17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, big time. But yeah, so to kind of go down the list, and I think this is important. People ask me. And not the kind like how I say, you know, help people say, people been asking me. And it's like two people, their mom and then their neighbor or something.

• 2:17:53Jocko Willink?

  Your brother.

• 2:17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's like, oh, people been, then I was actually talking to my brother about this because he said that too. He was like, oh, people been asking me this. And then I was like teasing him. I was like, oh, yeah. Two people ask you and you're like, but here's the thing. Let's say if three people ask you the exact same question in like three days, that's one person a day. That's not very much, but if they're asking the same question, that's a lot of people asking you. Really feels like it.

• 2:18:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:18:16Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 2:18:16Jocko Willink?

  So a lot of people have been asking.

• 2:18:18Speaker 01

  People been asking me, you know.

• 2:18:20Jocko Willink?

  Three of them.

• 2:18:21Speaker 01

  Is the on it stuff for real? Is that for real good? You know, and, and what do you take? So here it is, if you didn't know already officially on, uh, what do you say on the, on the roster? Right? On the everyday consumption or whatever.

• 2:18:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:40Speaker 01

  I have on it total strength and performance. That's not every day. That's only when I do metcons and workout. Yeah. Sometimes I'll use it for jujitsu.

• 2:18:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:49Speaker 01

  Shroom tech. I use shroom tech the other day for jujitsu. Reminded me of why I used it before it was good. Give me the advantage. Not going to tell you.

• 2:19:00Jocko Willink?

  Cause I didn't notice any.

• 2:19:03Speaker 01

  It wasn't the, uh, or was it the other day? Yeah. Yeah. It was the other day.

• 2:19:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:19:08Speaker 01

  But we didn't really roll hard because you were taking it easy on my rib and I thank you for that.

• 2:19:12Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 2:19:13Speaker 01

  But I didn't feel tired. Like it wasn't, it was good. Anyway, so shroom to total performance and strict total strength and performance. Shroom tech as needed. That's for like, you know, hard output sustained stuff. Jujitsu rounds, metcons, if you're into CrossFit, take that stream tech, get you right through it. It'll keep you in the, in the green, maybe in the yellow, maybe. Um, and then krill oil, of course, daily.

• 2:19:40Jocko Willink?

  Daily.

• 2:19:41Speaker 01

  Essential. Um, you, you like the strong bone, right? This is for joints.

• 2:19:45Jocko Willink?

  Joints.

• 2:19:46Speaker 01

  Um, you know, you get these joint, you know, I refer a lot of stuff back to jujitsu because jujitsu is like a sustained. So true tech, you know, and it, it can mess with you. If you're getting after it five days a week in jujitsu, even three sometimes. If you're not used to it, you take the, um, the krill oil, it'll cheer you right up. Yeah. Krill oil.

• 2:20:11Speaker 01

  I got the gourmet peanut butter. It's not peanut butter. It's like cashew, almond, you know, it's a tri blend butter. That one's good. Yeah. And warrior bars for sure.

• 2:20:23Jocko Willink?

  We're not going trips now to speak to companies or work with companies. A lot of them in their little snack area. Warrior bars.

• 2:20:30Speaker 01

  They know about the warrior bars. They know. Yeah, it's good.

• 2:20:32Jocko Willink?

  So good though. Cause what are they gonna do? Put donuts out for me? I'll straight up leave.

• 2:20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And oh, no, no donuts.

• 2:20:42Speaker 01

  It's on it is interesting in that way. I don't know how much you browse the website, but when I'll go in there, I'll browse it. Just to see. Like, I'm not gonna buy, you know, women's T-shirts for myself, you know?

• 2:20:57Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:20:57Speaker 01

  But I'll just browse just, just to see.

• 2:20:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, but you still read about the women's T-shirts?

• 2:21:01Speaker 01

  Well, not, no, not necessarily. But I'm just saying, even if I'm not in the market for some stuff, I'll look and they have like all kinds of like new stuff. Like, um, you know, obviously protein powder and stuff, but they'll have like wellness stuff, uh, multivitamin. They have toothpaste.

• 2:21:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 2:21:15Speaker 01

  Deodorant. Yeah.

• 2:21:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:21:17Speaker 01

  I'm not saying get the toothpaste and deodorant. I'm just saying it's interesting how much new stuff they're always like coming out with. Oh, and I forgot to say the kettlebells that they have.

• 2:21:27Speaker 01

  I'm all up on those.

• 2:21:28Jocko Willink?

  Primal?

• 2:21:28Speaker 01

  Bells?

• 2:21:29Jocko Willink?

  Superheroes, legend bells.

• 2:21:31Speaker 01

  And then.

• 2:21:31Jocko Willink?

  There's zombie bells. That's why I have zombie bells.

• 2:21:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:34Jocko Willink?

  Cause I want something that looks, you know, disturbing and crazy.

• 2:21:39Speaker 01

  How much is the, um, or how, how much does it weigh?

• 2:21:42Jocko Willink?

  What, I have the forty K?

• 2:21:43Speaker 01

  Dang, the eighty something pound one?

• 2:21:48Speaker 01

  Dang, that's good. I have the werewolf one, two werewolf ones. Those are like sixty two pounds.

• 2:21:53Jocko Willink?

  I keep the zombie bell in the house.

• 2:21:55Speaker 01

  Oh, it's like aesthetic, like pleasing. Oh, you, you jump on it simultaneously.

• 2:21:59Jocko Willink?

  Because in my garage, I've got a bunch of kettlebells, but those are all older than on it, right? But in my house, I got the, the boom, the zombie bell.

• 2:22:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:07Jocko Willink?

  Cause that way you just hit a couple of snatches.

• 2:22:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:22:09Jocko Willink?

  You will wake up.

• 2:22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:22:11Jocko Willink?

  Hit a couple of snatches, hit a couple of swings, you're good to go.

• 2:22:13Speaker 01

  Do you do the one where it goes boom and hits the back of your paws? You gotta get used to that. Don't just jump into that.

• 2:22:19Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, there's some reason you notice it when you first start kettlebells, but you don't notice it after a while.

• 2:22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, just, well, you're not ready for the whole.

• 2:22:26Jocko Willink?

  No, you know what you do is you use your grip. At least I do. I use my grip to like slow it down a little bit.

• 2:22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:31Jocko Willink?

  There's a little bit of friction there. Crank it down. It's a little soft, little landing on there.

• 2:22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a good idea. So you kind of use the zombie bells, kind of like you're, you know how some guys, I think it was you who was telling me you have two gees? You have one gee, you never really use unless it's like picture taking time.

• 2:22:48Jocko Willink?

  That's not me.

• 2:22:51Speaker 01

  And it's called the Hollywood, that wasn't you, the Hollywood gee and the action gee?

• 2:22:54Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely not.

• 2:22:55Speaker 01

  The Hollywood gee is like, it's, it's, it's a legit gee, like most gees are, you can roll in them, but you, you kind of keep it, you know, in the closet, hung up. So you still roll on picture day?

• 2:23:05Jocko Willink?

  Do you even know me at all?

• 2:23:07Speaker 01

  I thought it was you, long time, maybe you changed, I don't know.

• 2:23:10Jocko Willink?

  I didn't change.

• 2:23:11Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, um.

• 2:23:12Jocko Willink?

  If I have a gee, it's gonna get rolled in.

• 2:23:15Speaker 01

  Dig it.

• 2:23:15Jocko Willink?

  Period.

• 2:23:16Speaker 01

  I dig it.

• 2:23:17Jocko Willink?

  Otherwise, why would I have it?

• 2:23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right, to take pictures in, no. Next question.

• 2:23:23Speaker 01

  Oh, by the way, Jock was in Jiu Jitsu Magazine taking pictures the other day, yeah, I said it.

• 2:23:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:28Speaker 01

  Maybe on the cover, maybe not, I don't know.

• 2:23:32Speaker 01

  Anyway, back to Onnit, we all know, okay, best supplements in the world, these are all the things, what they, if you, if you take a supplement for something, like from Onnit.

• 2:23:39Jocko Willink?

  You still doing Onnit right now?

• 2:23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm gonna continue to do Onnit because it's worth it, this is valuable information. If I was on the other side of this, I would hope that somebody told me this information.

• 2:23:49Jocko Willink?

  Well, that is true, and I think like, for instance, krill oil, you do not know about krill oil.

• 2:23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:54Jocko Willink?

  And now you know about krill oil.

• 2:23:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:55Jocko Willink?

  You are sore and getting old and decrepit.

• 2:23:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:23:58Jocko Willink?

  Boom, you started taking krill oil?

• 2:23:59Speaker 01

  Boom, back in the game.

• 2:24:00Jocko Willink?

  Back in the game.

• 2:24:01Speaker 01

  What's?

• 2:24:02Jocko Willink?

  So that's a good point.

• 2:24:03Speaker 01

  What's bad about the krill oil though, is I did, my, my wife's dad, my father-in-law would always say krill oil is better than fish oil and be like, whatever, health nut.

• 2:24:11Jocko Willink?

  Now you gotta look at it.

• 2:24:12Speaker 01

  Look at me, I lift, yeah, I gotta admit to it. All good. Anyway, you know that the supplements you take from Onnit are going to work, that's the good thing, and there's a bunch of cool stuff. Even in goes above and beyond supplements, like the peanut butter, the nut butter.

• 2:24:23Jocko Willink?

  You said this.

• 2:24:24Speaker 01

  There's a lot of stuff, yeah, I'm just a small reminder, all good. If you want 10% off though.

• 2:24:29Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that's.

• 2:24:30Speaker 01

  Here's the support part. Support the podcast, support yourself with a supplementation, support the wallet with the 10% off, go on it.com slash Jocko. Boom. Boom. Another way to support, Amazon click through. It's a good way to support and it's super easy. Takes no time. Before you do your Amazon shopping, go to the website, Jocko podcast.com. Over on the side, here's the thing too. If you have an ad blocker, it might, it might block these little banners there, which is cool. That's a safe thing to do. You know, you block ads and pop-ups and whatnot, but know that this will happen. Most of the time, most ad blockers. Anyway, banner on the, go Jocko podcast.com. Over on the side, there's a banner that Amazon

• 2:25:10Speaker 01

  click through that, then do your shopping. That helps a lot, supports a lot. Reinforcements. Another way, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, on Stitcher, if you haven't already.

• 2:25:24Jocko Willink?

  Do you know what I haven't said in a while?

• 2:25:25Speaker 01

  What?

• 2:25:26Jocko Willink?

  Review. Review. Kick a review on there, man. Kick a review on there. Tell them what's up. And there's been, hey, there was a, a review of Jocko White Tea.

• 2:25:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:25:35Jocko Willink?

  Have you read? It's the best review of all time.

• 2:25:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:38Jocko Willink?

  And it's, the basic theme is brew, brew, brew, brew, brewing up the tea again. And it goes through an entire, is the best review of all time.

• 2:25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saw that one. I agree.

• 2:25:53Jocko Willink?

  So that is what I mean, just the best thing about that, what, when I, when I read that, and of course I get it.

• 2:26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:01Jocko Willink?

  But what I love about that is when I read stuff like that, I think about all the people that, that know nothing about anything that we're doing. And they just read that and say, like, what do they think? What is going through their mind? So when everybody puts all these crazy reviews on, on Amazon or on the podcast, I gotta admit that I find them entertaining.

• 2:26:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. I would think if you, you don't really know, and you see just all the, the...

• 2:26:29Jocko Willink?

  I wonder what a person could figure out.

• 2:26:31Speaker 01

  That's the...

• 2:26:32Jocko Willink?

  What could they deduce?

• 2:26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:33Jocko Willink?

  They'd deduce like, get after it. Cause a lot of people say that, that, yeah, but there's a lot of stuff that... Yeah, it would freak people out.

• 2:26:41Speaker 01

  It, yeah, no, but that would at least make them think like dang, there's, there's a lot to this thing. This thing is heavy. This isn't just white tea or this isn't, you know, this is heavy. I gotta look into that. Unless they're scared or whatever, intimidated, or that's not for me, which would be strange, but.

• 2:26:56Jocko Willink?

  It would be strange.

• 2:26:57Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, yeah, if you're in the mood, write a review. You know, you're feeling creative, get creative, whatever. Good.

• 2:27:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you can get creative on all, you can get creative on, because the reviews actually help. That's the thing.

• 2:27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:08Jocko Willink?

  You know, you might think it's, doesn't mean anything, but A, we read them, B, it helps. It helps like Amazon, it helps the ranking in Amazon, it helps the iTunes ranking for sure.

• 2:27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:19Jocko Willink?

  So that's cool. It's another good reason to do it, but mostly do it just to crack me up and make people think that all of us are psycho.

• 2:27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and express yourself.

• 2:27:27Jocko Willink?

  That's a good point.

• 2:27:28Speaker 01

  Express yourself.

• 2:27:29Jocko Willink?

  I should read that brew. Maybe if we'd ever do a commercial for Jocko White Tea, that's what we should do.

• 2:27:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dang, that's a good idea.

• 2:27:38Jocko Willink?

  The, the chorus is there's no tea leaves in the pour. So good. Yeah, that's awesome. All right.

• 2:27:47Speaker 01

  Very much so. Also subscribe on YouTube. We're putting out more videos, you know?

• 2:27:52Jocko Willink?

  Which is pretty dope.

• 2:27:54Speaker 01

  Pretty dope. Sure. I don't know. Videos to watch, you know, shorter.

• 2:27:58Jocko Willink?

  Some in the hopper too, right?

• 2:27:59Speaker 01

  I got a few in the hopper, yeah. I have like three in the hopper, which is kind of different.

• 2:28:04Jocko Willink?

  You think you should prioritize and execute?

• 2:28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:06Jocko Willink?

  Or do you just, do you just like creating three different things at the same time?

• 2:28:09Speaker 01

  No, because a lot of time and I, this may, may or may not be the most disciplined approach, but I like kind of go with the wave, you know, so it's like, oh, man, this one really like I'm feeling this one, you know? So I'll let's make that one into a video and I just start and then I'll get hit with something else that you said or whatever.

• 2:28:27Jocko Willink?

  Just all these artistic things you got going on in your mind.

• 2:28:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:30Jocko Willink?

  Actually, I do that with books. This is, you know, I read a lot of books and I will definitely.

• 2:28:36Jocko Willink?

  Read a book and if it's kind of slow moving, I'll read another book at the same time. And then when I get bored with one, I start reading the other one. I can have up to three books going at the same time. So that's actually not a bad idea.

• 2:28:47Speaker 01

  There you go. See, and mine is a lot like, I just figure if you're real into it. Do it. It comes out like better. I don't know. It's what it feels like anyway. So, you know, I'm going to stick with that for right now, unless it, you know, produces roadblocks. And then, you know, we'll change the strategy, but they are coming along. Videos, YouTube, subscribe if you haven't already, if you're in the mood to support. You're under no obligation to subscribe to anything, by the way.

• 2:29:12Jocko Willink?

  Of course.

• 2:29:13Speaker 01

  But if you're in the mood, do that. Totally. Totally. Um, also Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko's store. URL Jocko's store.com. We have shirts. If you like t-shirts, cool. Multi-dimensional, multi-layered, philosophically layered t-shirts. Some travel mugs on there. The travel mugs, we're still working on it.

• 2:29:37Jocko Willink?

  Layer I was telling you about the other day.

• 2:29:38Speaker 01

  Which one?

• 2:29:39Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. I was talking about a layer. There's layers and things. Oh, this is what it was. The book, Way the Warrior Kid. There's a layer here because the illustrator for the book of Way the Warrior Kid is a guy by the name of John Bozak. John Bozak was my brother growing up, my friend growing up, good friend. One of my best friends growing up. And when we were kids, we were in hardcore bands and we were playing rock and roll music and stuff. And one of the bands that we were in was a little band called Bronson's Children. So the layer here is, one day I posted a picture of an old silkscreen t-shirt for Bronson's Children.

• 2:30:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:30:22Jocko Willink?

  Which I think we should personally reproduce.

• 2:30:24Speaker 01

  We're going to look into that.

• 2:30:25Jocko Willink?

  Get after it. Because Charles Bronson was was awesome, right? He was a legit guy. He was an actor like we have nowadays that were you're like, oh, would you, you know, I'm an actor? No, he was like, oh, I was a, I was a tail gunner in World War Two, barely survived, and I came back and got a job making movies about badasses. That's Charles Bronson. By the way, grew up in, you know, like a, he was like a coal miner. He was in the mines. In some steel town in Pennsylvania, barely spoke English because he was a Polish immigrant. Anyways, with an attitude like that's why, that's why that book band was named Bronson's Children. So the layer here is, interestingly enough, because I don't have a lot of friends, right? Never have.

• 2:31:07Jocko Willink?

  But the layer here is the couple, the few friends that I have, I'm good friends with.

• 2:31:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:13Jocko Willink?

  And, yeah, and so, that old Bronson's Children t-shirt silk screen was designed by my guy that was in the band with me, whose name is John Bozak, who now has illustrated way of the warrior kid. That's some layers. Yeah.

• 2:31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:31Jocko Willink?

  Layers. So. Cool.

• 2:31:33Speaker 01

  You did a good, good job. That is good.

• 2:31:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's awesome.

• 2:31:38Speaker 01

  But, yeah.

• 2:31:38Jocko Willink?

  Layers. Sorry.

• 2:31:39Speaker 01

  Layers. Yeah. Hey, let's go back to the story real quick. Uh, the, yeah, shirts, whatever. They have layers. Cool. If you listen, you know, these layers or you'll pick up on them, which is, you know, I guess kind of makes it fun.

• 2:31:51Jocko Willink?

  By the way, I have never thought these layers were super deep, right? You, you, I think you think the layers are deeper than I think they are.

• 2:31:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do.

• 2:31:59Jocko Willink?

  The one that I, I kind of was a little bit, I liked was the layers on the equal sign on discipline equals freedom. And you made it like a barcode, which matches the layers of the font, which is OCR standard, which can be read by a computer, just like the equal sign, apparently by the barcode. So I like where you're coming from. There's some layers there.

• 2:32:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, the OCR standard, the original font. The first font.

• 2:32:26Jocko Willink?

  You know what we should do is next t-shirt? Let me help you put layers in it.

• 2:32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:32:31Jocko Willink?

  And then we can not say what the layers are and have people report the layers.

• 2:32:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Actually, the good shirt layers apparently are kind of deep because I've got more than one inquiry about this. They're like, hey, did you realize that the word good is spelt backwards? It's like, I don't know if that's a mistake. I don't care. It's a cool shirt, but it's about backwards. And I was like, yeah, no, man, it's it's for you. That message is for you telling yourself that, but it's kind of Jocko saying it. That's why you look at it in the mirror. It's not for other people to show your cool shirt. Sort of is, but that message, anyway.

• 2:33:08Jocko Willink?

  So you

• 2:33:08Speaker 01

  Layers.

• 2:33:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I didn't think that was too subtle, though.

• 2:33:11Speaker 01

  I, hey, man, you know, to each their own. Certain people see, you know, people are different. Their minds, some are creative in different ways.

• 2:33:17Jocko Willink?

  With a shirt that's got layers.

• 2:33:20Speaker 01

  Layers for days.

• 2:33:20Jocko Willink?

  People are gonna have to do analytics and analysis of the layers on the shirt.

• 2:33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Good, good, good idea. You're gonna do it.

• 2:33:29Jocko Willink?

  You have a shirt that's so layered that no one understands what it is. Sometimes that happens in literature. When I was going to college, some had so many layers, I'd say, you know what? This has so many layers, it's not worth it. No, if you have to break out a microscope to see the layers, why put them in there?

• 2:33:45Speaker 01

  I know, man.

• 2:33:45Jocko Willink?

  Four people on planet Earth are gonna understand the layers you put in this crazy poem that you wrote. Why did you do that? Was that good? If only four people can get it? No, it's bad.

• 2:33:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it's bad for our thing. I want the people to to wind up getting it.

• 2:34:00Jocko Willink?

  I want some people to be able to get them.

• 2:34:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:03Jocko Willink?

  I think layers should be a little bit harder to see.

• 2:34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, like Easter eggs, kind of.

• 2:34:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Yeah, you don't need to, I guess you don't need to.

• 2:34:11Jocko Willink?

  For a while, you weren't talking about the layers. You thought that was too much.

• 2:34:14Speaker 01

  Layers came back, you know? I didn't want anyone to go into layer fatigue or nothing like this, but, yeah, they're back. Anyway, layers on the T-shirt, they're good. Well, you, you know, they're quality shirts. They're not like the cheap, you know, I didn't go to Target and buy a bunch of undershirts. And then, hey, let's, and spray paint them in the garage.

• 2:34:32Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:34:33Speaker 01

  They're good. They're good. Anyway, choco store dot com, some hoodies on there, some patches, some cool patches. And rash guards. Just take a browse. Don't buy anything. I'm not saying go buy something. I'm saying, look at it. You like something? You're in the mood to support? Get something. Get something in return. There you go. Also, psychological warfare.

• 2:34:55Speaker 01

  Is doing well. And when I say doing well, I mean, it's out there like making a difference.

• 2:35:00Jocko Willink?

  That's true.

• 2:35:01Speaker 01

  And I remember there is actually, you know, whatever a few weeks ago, I said, oh yeah, I don't need it anymore. Like I got my boost and it, but yeah, I needed it. I went right back to it and boom, it worked. Easy money. Yeah, that's, that's the genius of it.

• 2:35:14Jocko Willink?

  What did you need it for? What's, what was the scenario?

• 2:35:16Speaker 01

  The workout, the same as always. Like I could easily skip today.

• 2:35:20Jocko Willink?

  Projects to finish up right now. And um, so I love to wake up early in the morning and work out, but I gotta prioritize next to you right now and finish some projects.

• 2:35:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:29Jocko Willink?

  And so like today.

• 2:35:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:31Jocko Willink?

  I didn't, I woke up and wrote because I got projects.

• 2:35:35Speaker 01

  Hell yeah.

• 2:35:35Jocko Willink?

  And it's, it's so easy. If you don't work out in the morning, it's so easy to not work out. And because by the time I had this, I didn't get where I wanted and then I had something else and then I'm trying to work on this and then the email. So now, because what I want to do is like, hey, I'm just gonna go get a pre-lunch workout, 11 o'clock in the morning, get in there and get it done. And all of a sudden it was 11:30, all of a sudden it was 12, all of a sudden it was like 12:10, get the workout started. And now I'm a little bit hungry and you know, you, you, you have a little thought of, you know what? Maybe I shouldn't work out. But I actually didn't have that thought. You know what I said? Cool. I'm tired. I'm fasted.

• 2:36:17Jocko Willink?

  And I don't feel like working out, so I'm definitely gonna work out right now. I'm gonna make it a good one. So that's what I did.

• 2:36:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, but not everybody's like that, Paul.

• 2:36:25Jocko Willink?

  No, like the voice that's in Psychological Warfare, I actually have to live with that asshole all the time.

• 2:36:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, asshole, you know, you know.

• 2:36:32Jocko Willink?

  There is no like, it doesn't, I, it never, it never presses pause. It never stops. It's always in there telling me, get to the gym. You don't wanna work out? Good. Get in there and crush yourself. That's, I have to live with that guy. So.

• 2:36:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good. Which really is the, the originating story of Psychological Warfare. So if you didn't know, Psychological Warfare is a album with tracks that you can purchase from what?

• 2:36:55Jocko Willink?

  No music, there's no music.

• 2:36:57Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 2:36:57Jocko Willink?

  It's, do you think it should have had music?

• 2:36:59Speaker 01

  Eh, okay, maybe, but.

• 2:37:01Jocko Willink?

  The problem is.

• 2:37:04Jocko Willink?

  There's too many different types of music.

• 2:37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it wouldn't have the same effect, I don't think.

• 2:37:09Jocko Willink?

  That's true. I agree with you.

• 2:37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 2:37:11Jocko Willink?

  Because otherwise, I would have said, hey, put some little instrumental, whatever.

• 2:37:15Speaker 01

  Well, here's some, like, if there's music on certain things, like you like to listen to certain, like, you know, you hear a speech of, I don't know, Martin Luther King, or somebody saying, like, a speech, and you want to get inspired.

• 2:37:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:27Speaker 01

  It'll work, for sure, but that's not really what this is in that specific way. It's more like you actually talking, you know?

• 2:37:35Jocko Willink?

  That's a good point.

• 2:37:35Speaker 01

  It's like you're part of, like, your own brain.

• 2:37:39Jocko Willink?

  Like the movie No Country For Old Men?

• 2:37:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:41Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if you've seen that movie.

• 2:37:42Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 2:37:43Jocko Willink?

  There's no soundtrack.

• 2:37:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:44Jocko Willink?

  It's just the actual sounds of earth and people and walking, and that is such a cool effect. So I think you're right in this case.

• 2:37:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:53Jocko Willink?

  No Country For Old Men, by the way, written by Cormac McCarthy, who also wrote Blood Meridian.

• 2:37:59Speaker 01

  Dig it.

• 2:38:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Layers, by the way.

• 2:38:03Speaker 01

  Layers all over. Yeah. All right. Yeah, that's it. Psychological world. Oh, I didn't finish explaining what it is. So it's an album you can get iTunes, Amazon Music, whichever. And there, basically, you listen to it if you're ever feeling a moment of weakness before you wanted to go, you know, work out.

• 2:38:22Jocko Willink?

  Before you want to do something or not do something.

• 2:38:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you're making a decision and you're choosing the short-term payoff over the long-term payoff, essentially.

• 2:38:28Jocko Willink?

  Donuts.

• 2:38:29Speaker 01

  Eating donuts, or just messing up your diet with donuts or sugary stuff, or.

• 2:38:34Jocko Willink?

  Or donuts.

• 2:38:36Jocko Willink?

  When I was going to airborne school, there was this sergeant major, and he was some black guy from Georgia. And he, and for some reason, there's the Chattahoochee River down there.

• 2:38:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:47Jocko Willink?

  And he says, uh, let me tell you what, you go down in that Chattahoochee River. So he's talking about if you're parachuting and you end up in the Chattahoochee.

• 2:38:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:56Jocko Willink?

  You better watch out. There's snakes in the Chattahoochee.

• 2:39:00Jocko Willink?

  And there's alligators in the Chattahoochee and snakes and vines that'll wrap you up and snakes. Snakes in the Chattahoochee. I always thought, you know what? Keep clear of the Chattahoochee because there's snakes in there.

• 2:39:13Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. So is that kind of what you were trying to replicate there with the psychological warfare?

• 2:39:18Jocko Willink?

  No, uh, I forget what I just did, but it led me into that story about the snakes in the Chattahoochee River.

• 2:39:25Speaker 01

  Yep. You gotta beware for sure. Beware the sugar coated lies. I don't know. By the way, your impression of what was his name?

• 2:39:32Jocko Willink?

  I have no idea. He was, so he was what's called a black hat at, at Army Airborne School back in the the Navy used to only go to the Army Airborne School. So you get done with SEAL training? And you're all in good shape and feeling, and then you show up at airborne school, which is a, which is a much, it's a less strenuous school than SEAL training. I mean, there's all, you're not special operations if you go there. I mean, any, pretty much anyone in the army or many, very many people in the army. So it's a, it's a three week school. It's a good school. I mean, obviously the biggest thing you gotta overcome there is not physical. It's the fear of heights or whatever, fear of jumping. But yeah, so you go down there and the black hats are the guys that run airborne school. It's a totally professional thing. It was a lot of fun. And that, that sergeant major though, he was awesome. He was, he had the crazy eyes. You know what I mean?

• 2:40:17Jocko Willink?

  Guys with crazy eyes. So we had, and the one other thing he said to me one day, cause he liked me, you know why he liked me? Cause I was getting after it.

• 2:40:23Speaker 01

  Hell yeah.

• 2:40:24Jocko Willink?

  And he said to me, he goes, hell, and I don't think he, I think he called me like Navy. Yeah. That's what he called me. He just called me Navy, right? Cause they don't know what our ranks are. He's like, hey Navy. And I said, what's up? I think he said clear. For some reason he said clear sergeant major or something. I go clear sergeant major. And he goes, let me tell you something. When you get back to your SEAL team, one day I want you to come over to JSOC. And we'll have fun killing motherfuckers.

• 2:40:56Jocko Willink?

  Now, what do you think I was, I was like nineteen years old. I am so in. Wherever you go Sergeant Major, I'm with you. I'm in the game. So yeah, that was Sergeant Major Black Hat.

• 2:41:10Speaker 01

  Dang.

• 2:41:10Jocko Willink?

  Down at airborne school.

• 2:41:12Speaker 01

  You kind of sound like Taj Mahal, the singer.

• 2:41:15Jocko Willink?

  I don't even know who that is.

• 2:41:17Speaker 01

  He's a blues singer, man. Actually grew up with his family in Kauai.

• 2:41:20Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:41:20Speaker 01

  He's a traveling guy, but yeah, he's a blues singer anyway.

• 2:41:23Jocko Willink?

  He's a what guy?

• 2:41:23Speaker 01

  He's a blues singer.

• 2:41:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay, but he's from Hawaii?

• 2:41:26Speaker 01

  Well, he's not from Hawaii.

• 2:41:27Jocko Willink?

  But I mean, how can you really get a lot of blues when you live in Hawaii?

• 2:41:30Speaker 01

  I think you'd be surprised, man. You sound like him, your little imitation there. It's good.

• 2:41:35Jocko Willink?

  We have fun killing motherfuckers.

• 2:41:38Speaker 01

  He never said that, but you know. Anyway, there it is. Psychological warfare. Sounds more like Jocko, not Taj Mahal. And he tells you, he convinces you that making the long-term decision to stick with the disciplined path, he gives you that boost in your head. So it's like, yeah, it's good. Anyway, check that one out. You want to get one of those or all or just albums? Good. It's been number one. It's been straight up number one.

• 2:42:06Jocko Willink?

  Straight up number one.

• 2:42:07Speaker 01

  Since day one.

• 2:42:07Jocko Willink?

  Since day one.

• 2:42:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:08Jocko Willink?

  So everyone that's hooked it up. Thank you for, for, that's a good way to support the podcast too.

• 2:42:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Dig it.

• 2:42:14Jocko Willink?

  Is, because it costs nine ninety-nine to buy the album.

• 2:42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, the whole thing. It's like fourteen.

• 2:42:18Jocko Willink?

  And you know what? We were like, oh, should we, how do we do this? Well, hey, it's nine ninety-nine. Boom. Done.

• 2:42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:26Jocko Willink?

  You can get it and you're supporting the podcast. So that's cool. Also, you know another thing you can get is Jocko White Tea. You can get it. It's in stock, by the way. And it's going to stay in stock. I'm a little nervous about saying that, but it's going to stay in stock. Because you know why I'm confident in saying that? Because I bought a lot of it. Because I don't play around. When I make a logistical error and we end up with no Jocko White Tea and everyone's angry about that, myself included, guess what? We're going to do something about it. So we have. Stock. We got a lot of stock and you actually know that you need it. Because deadlifting.

• 2:43:04Jocko Willink?

  You know, you need that 8,000 pound increase, which by the way, is guaranteed. It's guaranteed to happen. We're hearing about pull ups now too. People that are trying to get better at pull ups are going from 10 to 12 pull ups. Now we're getting numbers up around 147 minimum. And the other thing is the jujitsu, if you're training the jujitsu. And we're probably going to have to add a warning to the label of Jocko White Tea. Because we've got people out there that are just randomly throwing kamuros. They can't stop it. They're meeting somebody, boom, they're throwing a kamuro on them. Just on the regular, just landing kamuros all over the place. So you gotta watch out for that little warning. It's on Amazon. That's if you're here in America.

• 2:43:47Jocko Willink?

  If you're on international orders, go to eBay and get it from the official listing of the Jocko Podcast. It's sold by Pro Resourcing, which is actually going to change in the near future. Cause we're getting more involved in the actual. What's that called? The fulfillment of the tea. We're joining some forces.

• 2:44:06Speaker 01

  Streamlining.

• 2:44:07Jocko Willink?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:44:10Jocko Willink?

  While you're on Amazon, also, there's a book called Extreme Ownership. Referred to it a couple of times tonight, possibly by me and my brother Leif Babbin. And let me tell you what you do is you lead within your company or within your team. You infiltrate with Extreme Ownership. Get a copy for your subordinates, get one for your bosses, spread the word. Because it will, it will actually improve your alignment and your effectiveness as a team. It will. And one thing I noticed, I was at a company that we were working with and it's very impactful. Just when people read the book, all of a sudden they have a common language. They're referring to the problems in the same way.

• 2:44:54Jocko Willink?

  They recognize the problems clearly because they've seen it and they all understand it. And it improves the communication and the understanding between the groups. Because they know what the problems are because they've been identified in the book. So make that happen. And also you can get a little copy of a book preorder. It's called Way of the Warrior Kid. And you might be thinking, oh, I'm not a kid. I'm an adult. Doesn't matter. You actually need this book too. So, there's a part in the book when Uncle Jake is trying to explain to his young nephew,

• 2:45:34Jocko Willink?

  Mark, what discipline is and why it is important and that it starts, discipline starts by getting up early in the morning. And of course, Mark, he just thinks discipline is sort of like following the rules. So Uncle Jake has to do a little explaining to him and this is what Uncle Jake says. "That's one kind of discipline, but it isn't as simple as just following the rules people give you. The most important part of discipline is following rules you set for yourself. It is doing things you might not always feel like doing, things that make you better." Then Uncle Jake started getting really intense, intense. "Listen, if you want freedom

• 2:46:18Jocko Willink?

  from being bullied at school by Kenny, you have to have the discipline to go to jujitsu class and learn the skills to defeat him. If you want freedom from ridicule, when you do pull-ups at school, you have to have the discipline to train so that you can do pull-ups. If you want freedom to swim in the water and enjoy your school field trip, you need the discipline to overcome your fear of the water and learn how to swim."

• 2:46:44Jocko Willink?

  What about school? Do you want to be free of being stumped on tests and not knowing the answers to the questions they ask you? Then you need the discipline to study and learn the material they teach you. And when you get older, you're gonna want financial freedom. That means having enough money to do what you want without worrying about it. And the only way you're gonna get financial freedom is by having financial discipline, by saving money and not wasting it on things you don't need. And that discipline starts with getting up early in the morning.

• 2:47:23Jocko Willink?

  So that's a little hit from my Uncle Jake right there. So Uncle Jake is, you know, he's clearly mentoring and helping his young nephew, Mark, who's got some shortfalls that he needs to correct. And Uncle Jake helps him do that. So all kinds of lessons to be learned in there for all of us. And, you know, lessons about how to study, how to overcome fear, how to get stronger. So order yourself a copy and do it now. This is the thing. We want to do it now. Again, I pointed this out before. We want the publisher to print enough so that there's not a shortage. Right? If everybody waits, then the printer goes, oh, we're going to need that many copies. And then everyone orders it when it comes out.

• 2:48:06Jocko Willink?

  And now we have a backup and everyone's angry. So order it now. That way we have enough when it rolls out. And get one, you know, get one for the kids at school, the classroom, the library down the street. Get the word out there. I wish, I wish I had this book when I was a kid. I wish I had this book when I was a kid.

• 2:48:29Jocko Willink?

  So it actually comes out May 2. And then, by the way, two days later, after May 2, after this book comes out, it's gonna be time for the Extreme Ownership muster, number 002 in New York City, May 4 and 5, Marriott Marquis in New York City. We're finalizing all the details right now. And I'm telling you what, it's gonna be awesome. We're gonna get after it. And it's gonna leave a mark. It will have an impact on you. It's intense. It's gonna be powerful. And the other cool thing is you're surrounded by all these other people that are all in the game, out there crushing it. Every imaginable industry, every level

• 2:49:11Jocko Willink?

  of leadership, just getting after it. So sign up, book your ticket, get your hotel room. And by the way, I mean, obviously, Leif is gonna be there. I will be there. So will JP Denell.

• 2:49:27Jocko Willink?

  Of course, Echo Charles is gonna be rolling around cruising, as he likes to say. Dave Burke, who's now new to Echelon Front team. JP's been on the Echelon Front team for a little bit, you know, basically came on the podcast and we said, you know what? We gotta get you in the game. So JP's in the game, obviously. And Dave Burke, just coming on right now, done a couple, worked with a couple of companies so far. Wasn't in Marine Corps, fighter pilot, Top Gun, Top Gun instructor, by the way. And also was with us with Task Unit Bruiser as the Anglico Team Leader in the Battle Ramadi. So awesome guy. He's gonna be coming on the podcast here soon. I'm so can't wait for that.

• 2:50:13Jocko Willink?

  And also I'm telling you, we will be hanging out with you.

• 2:50:19Jocko Willink?

  Talking, discussing things, overcoming problems. There's no backstage, no green room.

• 2:50:26Jocko Willink?

  I'm not that guy. No, none of that. No curtain behind, to hide behind, just us. All of us, all these guys I'm talking about, cooning Echo Charles. We brought Echo Charles up on stage last time. He didn't like that. He doesn't like public speaking. I think you need to give a speech, like a five-minute speech about something. No, okay. So come on out and do that. And until the muster, until we do get there, in the meantime,

• 2:50:56Jocko Willink?

  you know that you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram. And even you're gonna find us right there on that Facebook, y'boha. We are there. And we are interacting on the interwebs. Echo is at Echo Charles. And I am at Jocko Willink. And to close this out to the warriors out there in the world, giving us freedom and protecting this country. A country, by the way, where we can say whatever we want.

• 2:51:34Jocko Willink?

  Where we are blessed with unprecedented freedoms in thought and speech. Thanks to all you servicemen and servicewomen out there in the world, holding the line right now, protecting those freedoms and keeping evil at bay. And the police and law enforcement that do the same for us here at home, keep us safe from evil. Thank you for putting on your vest every day.

• 2:52:07Jocko Willink?

  And to the firefighters and the EMTs.

• 2:52:11Jocko Willink?

  That are standing by 24 hours a day, think about that, 24 hours a day to come and help us. And of course, we never say, "Thank you." Or we never even see them until some unforeseen horror comes. And that's when you're there for us. So, thank you for your vigilance. And to everyone else, listening to this podcast. Thanks for going down this path with us, this path of learning. And gaining knowledge and trying to get a better understanding of the world and trying to get a better understanding of ourselves.

• 2:52:56Jocko Willink?

  So we can all recognize and overcome our weaknesses and our faults.

• 2:53:06Jocko Willink?

  And we can all get out there.

• 2:53:11Jocko Willink?

  And get after it.

• 2:53:15Jocko Willink?

  So until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.

• 2:53:22Jocko Willink?

  Out.