537: We See What's Happening But Miss What's Going On.

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe We see the movement, the noise, and the surface-level events—but miss the forces shaping the bigger picture. This episode breaks down how to see what’s really going on. 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 537 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  What is going on?

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  What is going on? This is a it's a common question that we ask ourselves on a bunch of different levels, right? You might say it about your family. You might say it about your job. You might say, what's going on with my family right now? Or what's going on with my job right now? Or what's going on with my life right now?

• 0:31Jocko Willink?

  And it's a good question to ask, right? It's a good question to ask because it's a good way to take inventory.

• 0:39Jocko Willink?

  Kind of where you are and what your goals are and what the scenario is that's happening.

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  And what you need to do to execute on those things, right? So

• 0:49Jocko Willink?

  what's but if you think about it a little bit,

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  there's in those particular cases, right? In your job, in your family, in your particular life. There's a there's a level of I don't want to maybe use the word certainty, but there is some level of certainty about what's happening in your job and in your family and in your life. Because you're in it.

• 1:18Jocko Willink?

  And so you can see it, you can hear it, you can touch it, you can, you can feel it.

• 1:24Jocko Willink?

  But even with that,

• 1:27Jocko Willink?

  it's difficult to know what's, what's going on. Right? To really know what's going on. And that's because, you know, we, we have our own emotions, we have biases, we have our perspective. People don't always tell the truth, right? People don't always say what they mean. We don't always hear what they say. It's not, not your fault. You say something to me and I take it a different way. That happens. And then I have my perspective in my brain that morphs what you said into something else, or what I saw into something else. And sometimes we make, you know, bad decisions. We make bad decisions based on our own inability to compute what is going on.

• 2:14Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? Like, or you can watch people do this. You watch people from the outside and it's so clear what is going on, but they don't, they can't see what's going on. They don't know what's going on. And we do that. We make bad decisions.

• 2:30Jocko Willink?

  Because we can't accurately interpret what is going on in front of our own eyes, right? Despite what we see, despite what we hear with our own ears.

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  It can be challenging. Because let's face it, if everyone was just making perfect decisions based on the actual scenario that they were in, everyone's life would be that much better. And there would be no drama. It'd be like, uh, what, the Truman Show? Yeah. Right? Everything would just be like, oh, hi, how are you? Oh, yeah, everything's great. You know, I'm gonna do this and then, because I see these things here and I'll get this outcome. Oh, that sounds like a great plan. Go ahead. You do it and everything goes the way you wanted it to.

• 3:10Jocko Willink?

  But we don't do that. Even in our own lives.

• 3:15Jocko Willink?

  We misjudge what is happening right in front of us.

• 3:20Jocko Willink?

  On a regular basis.

• 3:23Jocko Willink?

  Which is kind of an interesting statement. Because then when you start looking at the broader.

• 3:31Jocko Willink?

  Picture, like what's going on in the world, let's look at what's going on in the world right now. In the world right now, there are. Wars happening in multiple regions of the world, uh, and all the.

• 3:45Jocko Willink?

  Chaos that that entails, but I don't know if there's anything much more chaotic than war, maybe natural disasters, maybe like a tsunami, earthquakes and earthquakes and arrows. But even those things, they, they only last as long as it lasts, right? And then it kind of settles.

• 4:03Jocko Willink?

  Uh, war, we don't know what, you know, that's a, it's chaos.

• 4:08Jocko Willink?

  And so on that larger scale, that's a question that many people are asking right now about the whole world. When they look at the whole world right now, what's going on? Or maybe even in some cases, they ask what the hell is going on in the world right now?

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  And some people are very, you know, get very drawn into this. Some people are very emotionally affected by what they see. And I'm not trying to say that war is not upsetting. And I think if it certainly is, and if, if you've listened to this podcast, we've made that clear over and over and over again, that war is the most horrible and wretched of things, right? War is mutilation and destruction and death. That's what it is. And it's horrible to see.

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  And it's horrible to see.

• 5:06Jocko Willink?

  When it's horrible to see when soldiers are killing soldiers, but then when you see civilians being killed, when you see women and children being killed, it's just terrible.

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  And so it would be unhealthy for a person to be like, see that stuff happening and be void of emotions. That wouldn't make any sense, you know?

• 5:33Jocko Willink?

  But it's also, I would say, not healthy to become so emotionally engaged in something that's happening that it negatively impacts your own life. So we got to find some balance there. Uh, this is something that happens in, you know, that I had to deal with and that guys were in combat have had to deal with, which is that horrible things are going to happen, right? People get wounded. People get killed. Your friends get wounded. Friends get killed. Civilians are wounded. Civilians get killed. It's

• 6:08Jocko Willink?

  those things are awful.

• 6:11Jocko Willink?

  And while we in a leadership position, and not even a leadership position, if you're in combat, you have to, you have to put those emotions into the calculus to figure out what's going on, but you can't let it throw your assessment off, right? You can't, you can't let your judgment be impaired by your emotions.

• 6:36Jocko Willink?

  Or by your ego, or by your fear, or by your past experience, or by your personal beliefs, or by your need to belong to the group, or by the stress, or the fatigue, or the group loyalty, or your optimism, or your pessimism, like you can't, there's all these little things that are coming into play. And you cannot let those things

• 7:00Jocko Willink?

  be the majority share of your decision-making process. Listen, you have to put them in there, right? Because you gotta figure, if I'm mad about something, my team is gonna be mad too. If I'm sad about something, my team's gonna be sad too. If I'm fatigued, my team is fatigued. You gotta, you gotta put it into the calculus. And by the way, you're also gonna think, well, what's the enemy doing? Oh, the enemy scored a big win yesterday? Oh, they're probably gonna be energetic today. They're probably gonna be enthusiastic. They're probably gonna be showing some more bravado. You gotta, you gotta put it in there. You can't ignore it. But you can't let it be the main driver.

• 7:35Jocko Willink?

  And that's, these are all things that distort reality, or misshape reality, and convince us that's something is real when it's not real, or convince us that something is fake when it is real. So

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  what that means is oftentimes, what we need to do, and what we should do more often, is leave some room in your brain.

• 8:13Jocko Willink?

  For I don't know.

• 8:15Jocko Willink?

  Or I'm not sure. Or that depends on how it develops. Or this could go in a lot of different directions.

• 8:26Jocko Willink?

  Right? To admit? Which is a weird thing to say you have to, it's like me saying, hey, you have to echo, you better admit that you need to breathe. You know what I mean? Like, hey, you better admit that you don't understand and know everything about everything that's going on in the world right now. You better admit that. This isn't, this shouldn't be a big ask. You know, we should hear a lot more people that are saying, I'm not really sure about that. Well, this could go a bunch of different ways. There's some outcomes that could take place. Here's some possibilities, even none of these are guaranteed. But you don't hear that very often.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:05Jocko Willink?

  And I get asked a lot, you know, what the hell is going on? What's going on? Or, you know, why are you not mad about this? Or why are you not supportive of this? Or why are you not shocked by this? Or why are you not afraid of this? Or why are you not overwhelmed by this? Or why are you not more compassionate about this? Or why aren't you more, like, I'll get asked, I mean, these are people I know. I mean, never mind the bots on the interwebs, but like people, I, my friends will ask me and say these kind of things.

• 9:32Jocko Willink?

  And I think the reason that I'm not angry, not shocked, not afraid, not overwhelmed, not cynical, like the reason I'm not

• 9:41Jocko Willink?

  is because of what I experienced in combat. Realizing what I learned in combat was that emotions like these don't really help.

• 9:55Jocko Willink?

  And I'm not saying you shouldn't feel them, and I'm not saying I don't feel them. I'm saying that I recognize that they color the lens pretty drastically.

• 10:07Jocko Willink?

  So? What does that leave me? Well, just like everybody else, I still, you can't just abandon, right? It's like, oh, I don't know what's going on, so abandon, right? No, it's not that. I have to try and still figure out to the best of my ability what's going on, right? What is going on? I mean, we've got to take assessment of what's going on out there in the world. And so I think when I do that, for me to say, for me to try and say and figure out what's going on, the thing, the first thing I start with is that admission that I don't know exactly what's going on. And neither does anybody, by the way. Neither does anybody. The smartest person in the world on that, you know, um, when you look at the stock market.

• 10:51Jocko Willink?

  And there's people that, you know, they, they, they have

• 10:59Jocko Willink?

  dozens, if not hundreds of people on staff with AI and algorithms and historical studies and all the data you can possibly put together. And guess what? They ain't right all the time. They're barely right. They're hedging. It's like they don't know. They can't tell you, they can't tell you if the price of gold is going to go up or down tomorrow. No one can tell you that, right? They can make a guess and it might be a little bit more accurate, but they don't know. So with all that information

• 11:31Jocko Willink?

  and all that capital to be gained, because if you could figure that out, obviously you'd be the richest guy in the world.

• 11:38Jocko Willink?

  But, but they, but no one knows.

• 11:41Jocko Willink?

  The, uh, when the real estate market tanked, there was like, there was like five people that saw that coming. Everyone else was just put money in shitty mortgages. Like, oh, so the whole industry with all their predictive models and all that, they didn't know.

• 12:01Jocko Willink?

  So the first thing I think when we talk about what's going on is to start with the admission that you, you, I don't really know.

• 12:11Jocko Willink?

  And neither's anybody else. Everyone, including me, is guessing as to what's going on.

• 12:20Jocko Willink?

  And again, that's interesting and it's kind of funny. And in some cases it's very disturbing that some people, some people talk as if they do know what's going on.

• 12:33Jocko Willink?

  And here's a hint, they don't. They don't know what's going on. No one does. But I wanted to

• 12:42Jocko Willink?

  talk about some things that I do when I am trying to not so much know what's going on, but understand a situation and, and try and figure out what's going on to the best of my ability.

• 12:54Jocko Willink?

  And at a minimum, try and figure out like things that might be happening. Well, remember, that's nothing, nothing's ever guaranteed. There's a, uh, the United States Marine Corps. Warfighting manual.

• 13:13Jocko Willink?

  Manual number one says, the very nature of war makes certainty impossible. All actions in war will be based on incomplete, inaccurate, or even contradictory information. War is intrinsically unpredictable. And what makes it unpredictable is it's filled with a bunch of human beings that are doing weird shit.

• 13:31Jocko Willink?

  Cause we know how far the gun's gonna shoot. We know how far the, we know how far the missile's gonna fire. We know all these things. We know how, how long someone can walk in a certain amount of time. Well, do we?

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, in theory.

• 13:44Jocko Willink?

  In theory, you know, like there's all these unknowns and all the unknowns come from the humans. So it's another, like another Clausewitz. What he said, war is a human endeavor, a fundamentally human clash of wills, often fought among populations. It is not a mechanical process that can be controlled precisely by machine statistics or laws. It is in the realm of uncertainty. Three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. Like, you don't know. But by the way, this is just everything.

• 14:21Jocko Willink?

  And

• 14:23Jocko Willink?

  war is a reflection of life and there are just as many variables in war. The misinformation, the contradictory information, the uncertainty, the fog, life is the same way.

• 14:35Jocko Willink?

  So how do we assess what's going on? First of all, we have to gather data. Right. Which means you spend more time listening than talking, which means you spend more time looking and watching than you do showing. This is observation, right? This is the O in the Oodle Loop. And what's tricky about these things? Is doing these things. This sounds so easy. Doing these things without judgment.

• 15:04Jocko Willink?

  Observing and listening and hearing and seeing things without judgment, which is very, very difficult to do, very, very difficult to do. You think about everything, like kinda everything that you look at. I mean, that's just the way it is. When you look at anything, you're immediately putting your own stank on it. You know what I'm saying? Like, anything that you see, you're like, oh, I see, oh, I, you know, oh, Echo said this. Here's what is happening with Echo. Like, that is, that is the way we operate. So when we hear something or we see something, we immediately see it in the context of our own background and our own reality. That's the way we see things.

• 15:49Jocko Willink?

  And that's why two people can see the same thing and have completely different viewpoints on it. Because they're putting that thing, that singular event, with all this context around it.

• 16:01Jocko Willink?

  You can see this with the news. I mean, clearly with the news. One event will happen and to watch the, the, the right and the left report on the same thing. And it's, it's insanity. It's insanity. So to actually be able to pull your own judgment. You can make judgment later, but I'm saying, when you're taking on data, to bring in the data and put it clean into the processor is a hard thing to do. It's a very difficult thing to do.

• 16:35Jocko Willink?

  Also, and this is where we get, this is where things are gonna get, this is where things get very, very challenging. Very, very difficult to know what's going on. Because ultimately, I think when we try and figure out what's going on, what we're trying to figure out is what,

• 16:49Jocko Willink?

  what forces are at play?

• 16:54Jocko Willink?

  That seems real simple, right? If you think about your family dynamics, right? Uh, your wife wants to go to one place to dinner. Your kids want to go to another place to dinner. And you want to go to a third place. So it's three different. Three different options here. Now, think, just think about in that simple scenario, what forces are at play?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:17Jocko Willink?

  I mean, there are things we could, we could literally write about that, the forces at play in that scenario. Forever. Because, you know, you've got this thing, you've got the, you know, remember that time back in the day when your wife wanted to do something and you forced her to do something else and she was really mad about it and she held it against you. That's in your, like, that's a force. That's a force that's in your mind as a human being. And it's been in your for, in your head for 19 years or whatever, since that time that you did that. And then, by the way, you got your kids. Oh, and by the way, we didn't talk about the forces between your two kids. Because are they unified together? Probably not. But there's, there's this whole force. Like, what is going on with them?

• 17:58Jocko Willink?

  And are they trying to win dad over right now? Because dad's the one that's in charge of, you know, where we go on Saturday night. So we want to make him happy. So we're gonna, well, these are all forces. These are forces that are at play. And so that's just in a family unit, man.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Under one circumstance.

• 18:14Jocko Willink?

  Not to mention finances. Right? Not, not to mention time constraints. Financial constraints. What is happening? Like, these forces that are in play? Go ahead. I cut you off.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, uh, no, no, no, just not to put too fine of a point on it. You're, you're saying. That's just the family dynamic.

• 18:32Jocko Willink?

  Just the family dynamic.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Under one. Relatively unimportant circumstance. See what I'm saying? So it's like, it's kind of a good example because you can start kind of quote unquote, simple, even though the forces, like you said, are infinite. But yeah, it makes it, um.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Kind of gives you a little bit of perspective on how much you kind of don't know.

• 18:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I. This idea, when you think about what's going on and and thinking, instead of thinking about the like, a lot of times people think about the facts, right?

• 19:04Jocko Willink?

  Or they think about the history. It's like, think about the forces that are at play. Because that's really, and when you start thinking about, there's this goes deep. Because you start thinking about, okay, so let's think of of a more like geopolitical situation. What forces are at play in a geopolitical situation? Well, you have traditions, right? There's traditions in with peoples and with countries. That they're going to follow. That's that's a force. Um, there's precedents. Well, this is what's happened before in the past. There's power, obviously power dynamics, same thing with your family. There's power dynamics in geopolitical situations, clearly. Money, clearly.

• 19:49Jocko Willink?

  Self-interest versus group interest. Like, it's my company. But then what's best for me, even inside my own company? Those are two disparate things. Like, I might want to drive the stock price up so I can sell off my thing, but at the same time, that might not be good for the company, but it's good for me right now because I'm going to leave into you like, see what I'm saying?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully.

• 20:12Jocko Willink?

  Forces at play, emotions clearly, ego, that's a force, revenge.

• 20:19Jocko Willink?

  Is revenge a force that plays a role? Yeah. It certainly is. Leverage. Like, are we going to give up leverage? Are we going to take some leverage? That's a force that's at play. What about just fatigue? We're tired. Uh, resources, that's a force. Hey, if I'm if I'm a super strong country and I have unlimited resources, that's a huge force.

• 20:43Jocko Willink?

  And it's gonna play out in, it's gonna impact where this thing goes.

• 20:51Jocko Willink?

  And it's kind of like, you ever used a, a, a regular old school compass before? Yeah. You know, like, that thing's supposed to point north, but when you get it around metal, it starts, you know, there's other forces besides just that mag, just the magnetic north. Yeah, yeah. There's other forces. You, when we would dive in the, in the team's, we would, you know, you'd be diving underwater and you're just pure compass. Cause there's no GPS underwater, pure compass. And you're also in, let's say a bay and in the bay, what people throw the, you know, people drop stuff, there's anchors that get dropped, there's pieces of metal people throw over boards, chairs and whatnot. So you'll be driving, all of a sudden you will watch your compass just kind of spin sometimes.

• 21:35Jocko Willink?

  So that's what's happening here. So anyone that says, oh yeah, here's the direction that everything's going to go there. There's all these things that are playing into it, man. Alignment, like how aligned are we? What about history? What, what force does history have over what's going on? Cause that has a pull. What about how much time we have? Time has a, time has an impact. Time is a force. Debt. We like being in debt. No one likes being in debt. Is that a force that might make me act a certain way? Yes, it is. Resentment.

• 22:07Jocko Willink?

  How strong is that force? It can be overwhelmingly strong, but put that up against loyalty. How's that play in? What about identity? What about status? What about narrative? What about grievances? What about threats? What about culture? What about trust or lack of trust? There's, you could, I could just go on and on and on with all of these forces. And by the way, imagine the nuance in each one of those particular forces.

• 22:38Jocko Willink?

  Infinite nuance within each one of those forces. At any given time. At any given time and it's shifting.

• 22:48Jocko Willink?

  So there's many more seen and unseen, heard and unheard, felt and unfelt. Like there's forces that people don't even feel, right? There's forces that they could not explain why they did something, but they did it. And there's an underlying force. They don't even know what it is.

• 23:06Jocko Willink?

  So to think that anyone could fully comprehend all these factors and calculate exactly what's happening

• 23:16Jocko Willink?

  right now, or what is going to happen in the future.

• 23:21Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of ridiculous. It's kind of, we can't, we can, we can guess. We can guess. And I think what happens is, what I see happen with people is people lock into, you take this massive list of variables that I just, and there's, there's an infinite number. But people lock into one or two or four particular variables that they think they understand.

• 23:53Jocko Willink?

  And then they think they understand the whole thing. So in other words, if I say, well, you know, I know that Echo, he made his wife mad years ago. And now he kind of, when she asked what, what they're going to do, he kind of goes and listens to her. And now I think I understand the whole situation. But it's not even close. That's one element. And by the way, that's one element simplified.

• 24:21Jocko Willink?

  Because there's an infinite amount of nuance around that element as well. But people think they, they understand two or three or four little components of a big giant scenario. And they think, oh yeah, these are the most important components here. I understand them. Therefore I will tell you what's going to happen.

• 24:41Jocko Willink?

  And it's very ignorant to say that.

• 24:44Jocko Willink?

  And what, here's what's also very bad about that is when, when someone locks into two or three components in a situation.

• 24:57Jocko Willink?

  They miss the forest for the trees, right? They think they understand everything, they get wrapped up in a particular detail. And then they apply that mirage of understanding to the entire complex ecosystem that they truly have no idea what's going on. So, we focus a lot, we focus so much on what's happening, that we miss what's going on. Do you see the difference between these two things? What's happening? And what's going on? What's happening is like, oh, we see this, we see that, we see the things that are happening. But we miss what is going on.

• 25:41Jocko Willink?

  And this is one of the most important things I learned in jujitsu. At a certain point, so I'm, I'm usually, let's say, on the bigger side, right? 225, like if you're on the mats 225, generally speaking, most rooms, you're gonna be heavier than, than most of the room, right? Most of your training partners. But then, you're gonna find eventually, you're gonna get some big boys. And as I got to train with more and more big guys, one of the most important lessons I learned is that when, if you get, if you get a good position on a big guy, like you're on top, you got a big guy.

• 26:26Jocko Willink?

  And there, they start to move, they start to try and escape, of course. If you hang on to one limb, or you hang on to their neck, or you hang on to their leg, to try and keep them controlled, if you hang on tight to one thing, you'll get swept. And what you have to do is you have to kind of let go of the small things, and let them move around, and let them kind of exasperate themselves, and you just keep a little, you know, distance is a strong word to use, because you're still like in contact, but you're not hanging on. Because if you hang on, you're gonna have problems. Now, look, when someone's smaller, you can squeeze them, and you can, you can manually keep your position. Yes, different, for sure.

• 27:08Jocko Willink?

  You can have control over that smaller individual, because you're a bigger individual.

• 27:15Jocko Willink?

  Kind of like if you have a small scenario, you can have mental control over the things that are going on in that small scenario. You can keep a handle on it.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:22Jocko Willink?

  But if you try and hang on to a big scenario like that, you're gonna get swept. So what you have to do is you have to, you have to figure out, you have to learn what minor movements don't matter. Because what you'll sense is if you're trying to hang on to these little movements, you're trying to track their little movements, you'll miss the big movements. And when you miss the, miss the big movements, that's when you get swept, that's when you end up on the bottom and now you're getting smashed. And by the way, this happens in every aspect of our lives because

• 27:54Jocko Willink?

  if you get hyper focused on some small behavior that your kid is displaying,

• 28:02Jocko Willink?

  you're gonna miss the broad direction that their life is heading.

• 28:08Jocko Willink?

  If you, you can do the same thing with your wife, if, or your spouse. If you focus on some small behavior or some small idiosyncratic thing that's going, that they do. Like they start doing some little thing in their life and you focus on that little thing, you can miss this broad change that is happening that you're gonna miss and it's gonna be problematic.

• 28:32Jocko Willink?

  This happens a lot with kids, by the way.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, happens with everybody.

• 28:38Jocko Willink?

  It happens with everybody. Like there's this one thing, we miss who that person is.

• 28:44Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's, it's a very easy thing. You know, we're, we're hunters by nature. So when we see something to focus on, we, we dive into it. It happens in business, of course. I mean, the, the examples in business, like, you know, uh, you get in the weeds on some marketing project or some new technology and then you miss the market shifting. Or you miss the competition reacting. So that, you know, that's just hyper fixation, right? But on, in business, in a personal, personal interaction, same thing, you focus on somebody who's got a particular habit, a peculiar habit. And it, it draws your attention and you miss everything else.

• 29:24Jocko Willink?

  And when the reality is like, I see there's something that you do Echo Charles that like, I focus on, but I miss the way your ego responds. I miss what's going on with your family. I miss what's going on with health factors. Like there's all these other things, but I only saw this one little thing and I should have seen the big picture.

• 29:45Jocko Willink?

  So, do you think you're going to be able to look at all the intricate complexities of someone else's life, someone else's whole life and figure out how to make like a perfect decision based on some little thing? No, you're not.

• 30:00Jocko Willink?

  So, on every level, this, this mode of operating that we have of like focusing in on small things, makes us miss what's happening more broadly. And that's actually you and I talked about, which brings me to this final topic, which we were talking about the other day.

• 30:24Jocko Willink?

  When you start talking about like geopolitical events, and I was saying to you, because if you watch the 24 hour news cycle, right? The 24 hour news cycle, they report each event

• 30:39Jocko Willink?

  as a holistic view of the entire unfolding of history. And when I was talking to you, I compared it to if we were watching an MMA fight and the fight starts, it's a five round championship fight. The fight starts, one guy comes out, throws a hook, throws, throws a one, two, and then a hook and the hook kind of glances, but it's not, not a great shot. And you and I, stop. Like that fight is continuing on, but you and I start to go, okay, well, let's take another look at that hook. You can see if it was a little bit more, if he had set it up a little bit, he'd

• 31:23Jocko Willink?

  made it maybe taken a half a step forward, he might've been able to connect. And by the way, if he would've connected with that, you can see where it would've hit his face, that would've been a knockout. So that tells you that this guy's defenses are weak. You see what I'm saying? Like this is one punch in a fight that's gonna have 500 punches, 500 punches. And not to mention all the feints that get thrown, right? Or somebody comes out, stuffs a takedown. Oh, what a, oh, Echo, Echo versus Jocko, Echo comes out, shoots a takedown, I stuffed the takedown. Oh, what a pathetic, uh, strategy Echo Charles had to try and shoot on Jocko. Everyone knows Jocko's got a good sprawl and a good guillotine, and you can see that Echo hasn't thrown through, this is one shot. And we're making it like it's the whole fight. It's not.

• 32:10Jocko Willink?

  So, we see this with geopolitical events, you know, whether it's international relations, or tribal interactions, or diplomatic strategies, or territorial disputes, or state-level politics, and armed conflict with all of these things, we see one little thing and we think we got it figured out. And by the way, the intricacies of war, intricacies of war, you know, you got weapon systems, you got supply chains, you got logistics capabilities, you got, like, do I really know what the training for this other military unit is like, what their preparedness is? Do I know, oh, I know they have these certain weapon systems, do I know how well that they were maintained? Do I know how well-trained they are on them? Oh, they have, they obviously have logistics,

• 32:54Jocko Willink?

  but do I know what their logistical capabilities are? I don't know, you know, oh, we've seen it on paper. We know they have trucks. How well do those, when's the last time those trucks got, there's all these things that we don't know. And by the way, when we start talking about human beings, you think, you think you understand the morale of some group of soldiers, or sailors, or airmen from a different culture that you've never met? You don't even know their rank structure? You don't know what their basic training is like? You have no idea what they're talking about in their barracks. You have no idea.

• 33:31Jocko Willink?

  You don't know anything.

• 33:34Jocko Willink?

  And so with all that, there's some little, some little detail that you can grasp on to some little thing that you understand, or some, some little thing that becomes an anchor in your brain. And then you extrapolate the knowledge of one little thing into understanding this whole scenario.

• 33:53Jocko Willink?

  Really, you think that's a good call? No, it's not. And by the way, on top of, on top of your, you know, assessment of, you know, you've been studying their culture for a while. I know their culture. And I, I, I actually took a class on, on, on their military, uh, their military traditions.

• 34:16Jocko Willink?

  And I read three books about, okay, you know, on top of all that,

• 34:21Jocko Willink?

  you, we haven't even talked about, uh, uh, disinformation, misinformation, right? Propaganda, bad intelligence, poor reporting, human error.

• 34:32Jocko Willink?

  People rushing to publish reports. What about anonymous, uh, anonymous sources? What about a complete lack of context? What about exaggeration? Like, you don't think somebody that's trying to get a news story out there might exaggerate something a little bit? Or they might have a little bias, or they might cherry pick a little bit, or they might oversimplify something for a headline? Or they might just, they might just lie? You don't think that could be happening a little bit?

• 35:00Jocko Willink?

  Or, or even just something as simple as inaccurate translations? I know we got, you know, the Google Translate, but you don't think that that thing? I've, I've put some stuff, stuff through that before. You think that thing's gonna be perfect?

• 35:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 35:13Jocko Willink?

  But with all these things that you, that there's no possible way you know, but you think you know how this is gonna go down?

• 35:22Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, all that stuff that I just mentioned, all this propaganda and bad intelligence and poor reporting and human error, all those things, these are things that are utilized proactively by governments, by the media, by religious groups, by ethno-states, by political elements, by advertisers and talking heads and networks and every human being out there in the world that has some kind of agenda that they're pushing. They're all doing all these things actively, purposefully.

• 35:55Jocko Willink?

  And you think you're gonna just see through all that. You're not.

• 36:01Jocko Willink?

  They want to tell you what they want you to think is going on. So that's what they're telling you. And by manipulating your emotions and by manipulating your ego and by manipulating your passion and by manipulating your beliefs and by manipulating your biases, you buy into it.

• 36:22Jocko Willink?

  And I would recommend that you don't do that. It's my, my recommendation is that you do not do that.

• 36:28Jocko Willink?

  I recommend that you don't let your emotions and your ego and your passions and your biases and your beliefs and your goals and your life. I recommend that you do not let those things get manipulated.

• 36:41Jocko Willink?

  I would recommend that you do something different. I would recommend

• 36:47Jocko Willink?

  that you take a step back and you detach.

• 36:51Jocko Willink?

  Of course, I mean, you've heard me talking about this for years. And I talk about it when you're in a gunfight, you better take a step back and detach so you can see what's actually happening. Well, yes, believe it or not, I recommend the exact same thing to try and figure out what's going on in the world. You want to figure out what's going on in a gunfight? Get off your gun. Stop looking down the sight of your weapon. Stop pulling the trigger. Take a step back and look around. That's how you figure out what's going on in a gunfight.

• 37:17Jocko Willink?

  You want to figure out what's going on in the world? Do the same thing.

• 37:23Jocko Willink?

  Take a step back and detach because all this data, all these opinions, all this information, all this media, all this, all this AI slop, it's all there to get you to feel a certain way. And the, probably the primary mode that they do that by is getting you to focus on

• 37:46Jocko Willink?

  small tactical details. Small tactical details. That's what they want you to get, get you to focus on. You know, if I was trying to, if, if, if we were, you know, they have a, on MMA fights now, you can bet as the fight is going on, right? You can bet like, it, it, now it's, now it's the, it's the, uh, second round. You can bet like, now I think Echo is gonna win. And if you dominated the first round, you know, the, the, the, uh, odds are going up for you. So I'm not gonna make as much money, but it's a little bit safer bet. Oh, so the odds like adjust. The odds adjust real time. Damn. Real time. But if I was trying to manipulate you, I'd be like, oh, did you see when Echo almost got punched in that, let's, let's watch that replay again. So you watch the little replay

• 38:30Jocko Willink?

  of the one punch that barely missed Echo's chin. And now you think, no, actually Echo doesn't have a good chance. He dominated the whole round, but they show you that one little piece of it over and over again. That's what's happening with the 24 hour news cycle. Every hour, every hour, there's a critical story. Every hour, there's a catastrophic event. Every hour, there's breaking news. Every hour, there's an urgent report, a major update, an important announcement, a new development, every hour. Really? Really? That's like me telling you that there is a, a catastrophic update every three seconds in an MMA fight. People are throwing punches. Guess

• 39:14Jocko Willink?

  what? That's what happens in an MMA fight.

• 39:20Jocko Willink?

  And again, this is something that I learned as a leader in combat. Things are going to be happening. There's going to be shooting going on. There's going to be elements maneuvering. There's going to be friendly elements maneuvering. There's going to be enemy elements maneuvering. There's going to be explosions. There's going to be vehicles going down. There's going to be people getting wounded. And each one of those things

• 39:46Jocko Willink?

  seem extremely important. But if you focus on one of those things, you're going to miss everything else and you're going to make bad decisions.

• 39:56Jocko Willink?

  This is why we talk so much about not getting sucked into some detail that locks up your brain. And even a wounded guy, God forbid, or someone, someone gets killed in action. Even as horrible as those things are, that is not the time to hyper focus on that particular event as awful as it might be. Because if you're not careful, you might miss that the enemy's maneuvering on you. Or you might miss what fire support is available. Or you might miss what friendlies are entering your zone. And any of those are going to have even more catastrophic outcome.

• 40:33Jocko Willink?

  So we cannot allow ourselves to be do that. And you hear this with war, with war reporting, every small tactical exchange is reported on as if it is a culminating point, which is like a doctrinal term, meaning like this is going to be a victory or a defeat for this entire situation. Like this moment is the culminating point. It's not. It's not. It's another punch thrown. Hey, can there be a knockout punch? Yes. Can there be a, you know, the guy gets a takedown and gets the back? And now he's starting to sink in the choke? Yes, that, that does happen, but it doesn't happen every three seconds.

• 41:15Jocko Willink?

  You hear this with business reporting as well, like business reporting, like they may never recover from this restock issue that they had, or, or, you know, political reporting, this is the final, the final blow to so and so's campaign. Like you hear this stuff, the final blow.

• 41:32Jocko Willink?

  You have to detach from these type of headlines. You have to take a step back.

• 41:37Jocko Willink?

  You have to collect the data. Because look, if there is a restock issue with some company, it's sure it's gonna have some kind of an impact, it's some kind of a negative impact. Or if someone out on a campaign trail does something really stupid, is it gonna, it can be a setback. You know, occasionally you get a knockout blow, like just happened to that guy that was, the California guy that was running for governor. Yeah. Like that was a knockout blow, but you know how many little knockout blows that guy's had? I mean, he's been, he's been dinged up the whole time. He was, you know,

• 42:13Jocko Willink?

  having sexual relations with a Chinese spy. Like he was, he rolled right through that. You know, it wasn't until he was straight up raping women. But all the other things that he did, they were just like little, little, little scuffs.

• 42:32Jocko Willink?

  So we gotta pay attention and collect the data, but don't over index on something. And by the way, it makes you not understand, it makes people not understand the difference between like, what is a real death blow and what's just day to day operations for the world?

• 42:52Jocko Willink?

  Detach.

• 42:55Jocko Willink?

  Let's take a step back, look around, recognize, recognize, there's a bunch of things you gotta recognize. You gotta recognize, the first report is always wrong. You've heard me say that before. The first report is always wrong. You get the guys calling from the field, hey, this is what's going on. That first report is going to be wrong.

• 43:14Jocko Willink?

  Not that they're lying to you, not that they don't have a portion of the information, but they don't have the whole picture. They can't. It's only their perspective. So the first report is gonna be wrong, the second report, and the third report, and the fourth, and fifth, and sixth report. They're all gonna be kinda wrong.

• 43:31Jocko Willink?

  But what we have to do is not take those reports as individual gospel. We have to take them as a whole and correlate them together over time. So we can get a picture of what's going on. This is an important thing to think about when it comes to trying to figure out what's going on is time and distance are good tools to use. Time and distance. Now, can you be too far separated from something? Of course you can't. Too much distance where you don't understand what the hell is going on. Too much time has passed and it doesn't matter anymore. Of course, you can go too far with those things, but time and distance are very good tools to help you suss out reality.

• 44:15Jocko Willink?

  A little bit of time, give it a little time before you make that judgment call. Get a little space.

• 44:21Jocko Willink?

  Use time and distance to help you gain perspective.

• 44:26Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, that's why we use the iterative decision making process. That's why we try and make small decisions rapidly. We don't, we don't try and comprehend everything in a big holistic way because we don't have that capability. So what we do is we take measure of what's happening. We take measure of what's happening right now and we make a small possible decision, the smallest possible decision we can to kind of guess what we should do next. And then we do that little tiny thing and then we pay attention to the feedback. That's what we do.

• 45:01Jocko Willink?

  If we get good feedback, we continue in that direction. If we get bad feedback, we go in a different direction. We try something else.

• 45:12Jocko Willink?

  So these are the things to close this out. These are the things that we have to do in the world to try and figure out what's going on in the world. Take a step back, relax, look around.

• 45:29Jocko Willink?

  Don't rush to judge anything. Don't rush to judge anything.

• 45:36Jocko Willink?

  Don't get sucked into little tactical events that occur.

• 45:44Jocko Willink?

  Make note of them.

• 45:47Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you can add them to the broad calculus, put them in the soup. You know what I'm saying?

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:53Jocko Willink?

  Put them in the soup, put them in there.

• 45:57Jocko Willink?

  But don't put an inordinate amount of weight on any one thing.

• 46:04Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, um, how do you know if a little tactical thing is having a strategic impact? You wanna know how you know that? It has a strategic impact. Like, how do you know that this guy's campaign fell apart? It's because he announced his resignation. Okay, yeah, that was a big deal.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

• 46:23Jocko Willink?

  It's not tactical anymore. How do you know in, in, in war, when, oh, this,

• 46:32Jocko Willink?

  this, uh, loss of this bridge? This was a strategic loss? How do you know that? Well, when all of a sudden the tide shifts and now the other team starts winning.

• 46:47Jocko Willink?

  And they were losing. But this bridge was taken out, resupplies couldn't happen. Because you take out that bridge and they go, oh, no, the bridge is gone. But oh, guess what? They had a engineering battalion that went in and built another bridge in two days. It was no factor. We forgot about that.

• 47:04Jocko Willink?

  You have to

• 47:06Jocko Willink?

  look and see, I, I try, here's, here's a good, um, protocol to run. And our, our, our instinct is to take a small thing and make it bigger. That's our instinct. Our instinct is to see a piece of news and make it bigger. And by the way, the news, they do that with us too, right? They take a small thing, they make it bigger. And then our brain takes the thing that they already made bigger and we make it even bigger. Catastrophic end of the world, every day. Catastrophic end of the world. I consciously, when I hear something, I try and say, man, it probably won't be that big of a deal. I try and say how this probably, hey, they took out that bridge, but you know what? It's not going to take that long to rebuild the bridge. They have the capabilities. And by the way, there's a area down south where they have another bridge they can easily reroute to.

• 47:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, that happened on his campaign. Yeah, but there's going to be a lot of he said, she said, well, like, okay, it's probably not going to be that big of a deal. Like what? You need to try and figure out how it's going to be minimal because that's probably what's going to happen.

• 48:06Jocko Willink?

  And believe me, when it becomes a major issue, you will see it. It's unavoidable.

• 48:14Jocko Willink?

  Use time and distance as a filter as much as you can.

• 48:18Jocko Willink?

  Use time, let things set. Let them develop a little bit before you lose your freaking mind.

• 48:27Jocko Willink?

  Just get a little distance from them before you lose your freaking mind. There's things going on in some world.

• 48:35Jocko Willink?

  And the only people that care about is the people in that world. No one else cares about it. Some business thing. Some political thing. Some war thing.

• 48:46Jocko Willink?

  It's the most important thing in this little tiny fraction of the world, but the rest of people are like, it doesn't affect me at all.

• 48:54Jocko Willink?

  So use time and use distance as a filter.

• 48:59Jocko Willink?

  And if you do these things. You won't know exactly what's happening. You won't know, you won't know exactly what is going to happen because that's impossible. And no one does. But if you use this type of protocol.

• 49:16Jocko Willink?

  You will have. The best. Possibility. Of understanding.

• 49:24Jocko Willink?

  What is going on?

• 49:29Jocko Willink?

  And that's what I got.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 49:32Jocko Willink?

  You were writing all kinds of notes over there, bro.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Well, you know.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, um, with everything you went down, it just became more and more clear that this applies to everything, even everyday life. You know, regardless of the news, no news, whatever. Like, you know, um, like the, one of the initial things we were talking about is like the forces at play, you know?

• 49:55Speaker 01

  And yeah, but we're, I think. I believe at this point in my life that the forces are. Big, small, in the past, a prediction of the future, like there's so many forces, some that you know. Some you don't know, and some you don't know you don't know. And then some you know, you don't know, kind of on purpose, like you're ignoring them on purpose. Because of your mood or all this stuff. And then some you don't know because you have no access to it, right? So the, the going to dinner analogy that like.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  At the end of the day, it's gonna be all these uh, it's like this tug of war of like, almost like conflicts of interest.

• 50:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  You know, and what I learned early on, as you know, from this outfit is

• 50:41Speaker 01

  one of the, the main ways to see kinda everything is this tug of war between the, the big picture and the small picture. The strategic and the tactical, essentially. So, really, at any given moment, you're gonna have basically that weird tug of war of conflict of interest within you and with others and how they relate to you. In every way, moment to moment. And then whichever interest at any given moment wins, that's the direction things are gonna go. And then, what that's based on is like unpredictable. Cause you're talking about like, just like how you were saying, like um, it's, we're talking with like, like people. Like, the kinda mood someone is in determines how they get to work, by the way. So, you know how like um,

• 51:26Speaker 01

  and I mentioned this before, where you know how like you're at the stoplight and someone peels out? And they didn't have to peel out, they're not, you know, they, they peel out. He did that because he was in a mood. Or she or whoever, usually he, did that cause he was in a certain mood. That was caused by something that happened, maybe that day, maybe yesterday, you know? And then, you just go down the rabbit hole of all those forces that caused that one thing for him to peel out, which is gonna have some effect, you see what I'm saying? So, all these like, at any given moment, could be anything. Very hard to keep your, your, keep a handle on everything, right? So, which is another, was one of the big, the biggest uh, what do you say, messages of this whole thing. We see what's happening, but miss what's going on. And the jujitsu analogy, in my opinion, was very, was pretty much perfect, where

• 52:11Speaker 01

  that's why I like, and in boxing or whatever, you have like feints and stuff, right? You know how they say in like boxing and stuff, like, don't look at their hands? That's only what's happening, you see what I'm saying? Like, what's going on is the body, the feet, you know, all this other stuff. So, it's like, yeah, if you're distracted by what's happening, you're gonna miss what's going on, yeah?

• 52:27Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna miss what's going on. The um, first of all, the forces at play, right? This is not uh- Some, you know, Nobel Prize winning statement. But

• 52:42Jocko Willink?

  it, there are so many people that are in scenarios. And they are not remotely calculating the forces that are at play.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:52Jocko Willink?

  Like it, just hearing this, and when you go into your next conflict, or you go into your next conversation, or you go into your next relationship, or you go into your next bit, next business deal. If you start thinking about what forces are at play. It will make everything so much more.

• 53:12Jocko Willink?

  It'll make, it'll make your ability to understand. And your ability to negotiate, your ability to say the right things. So much better. Because these forces. When we don't recognize them or ignore them, or don't see them, or we, or we.

• 53:30Jocko Willink?

  We kind of treat them as if. They're a, they're, they're there, but they're not real. Right? We think of them as like gravity, like how often do you actually think about gravity? You know, you don't really think about it a lot, but it's keeping everything together. It's literally keeping every, like, I don't go, man, I hope gravity holds this pen right when I let go of it right now and puts it on the table. Hope it doesn't float away. No, you don't think about it. It's just kind of there and you just kind of know it's going to be there. But to actively think like, oh, what forces are at play? And by the way, when you start to look at people's behavior, because people, people's behavior.

• 54:05Jocko Willink?

  Is being driven. By various forces. And by the way, people do things. That I do not understand.

• 54:15Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? Like, people do things that I do not understand. I can't, you know, you and I had this conversation on the underground podcast the other day. Like you love sushi. I don't. I've never eaten a piece of sushi in my life. I probably never will. You eat sushi almost every day. That just like I can, I cannot under-

• 54:34Speaker 01

  What food do you hate? I, I gotta be honest. And after that conversation, I actually thought about it coincidentally. Where I was like, what is the food that I'm like, just not down for the way you're not down for sushi? I don't, I could not identify one, but let's just say, um. I don't know, some obvious stuff like liver.

• 54:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Well, no, but I like liver. Like, you know how like sometimes I'll prepare it a certain way. So it's, I don't know, but whatever.

• 55:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  I see what you're saying.

• 55:02Jocko Willink?

  There's certain things that you you could you couldn't comprehend.

• 55:08Jocko Willink?

  Why I like you can't comprehend why I don't like sushi. It's gotta be hard for you to understand. I mean, I live in San Diego. We got fresh sushi all over the place. There's a sushi shop on every corner. Like, what is wrong with I I'm I'm a waterman, by the way. I'm out in the ocean all the time. I grew up in Maine, like in New England and Connecticut. It's like we there's seafood everywhere.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:29Jocko Willink?

  And now you're telling me you don't like sushi. What that's it's kind of hard to comprehend.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  There's a calculation that I'm not just not getting the answer to for sure.

• 55:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you can't like comprehend like what is wrong with you?

• 55:40Jocko Willink?

  What is wrong with you? You can't comprehend it. And people do things. People have behaviors that we I literally sometimes I cannot comprehend. I cannot comprehend what you're doing. So what we have to do there is try and figure out what forces are at play. But what we what is incalculable is we we just can't we can make an estimate. But we can't say for sure. You know what? There was a fight the other day and oh, no, it was a soccer game. And I was at I was at a San Diego soccer game. And I was talking with the CEO, Tom. And and you know, we were I said, hey, you know, how's this looking for tonight?

• 56:22Jocko Willink?

  And he's, you know, he said, this was actually last season. I see. I said, how's it looking for tonight? You know, how we how do we stack up on this team? He goes, you know, like, we stack up pretty good.

• 56:30Jocko Willink?

  We should be able to win. But we still have to play the game. You know what I'm saying? Why? Why is that? Because the outcome is the outcome is unknown. We can't just put stuff on paper. Like I was saying with the stock market, all these big stock people with their big calculators and algorithms and quants and the whole nine yards and years of college and years of experience, they don't get it right. They can't tell you if the price of oil is going up or down.

• 56:58Jocko Willink?

  Right now, who's, who knows? No, no one knows. Gold, where's it going? Up or down? They can't tell you. They can tell you what they think and they lose, right? They win and they lose. So, all, that's because that is a, that is, those are prime examples of like all these forces that are at play. Yeah. Forces, forces that even include the belief of the market. Yeah. Think about that. A force like gravity, like, you know, I said, some of these are seen and unseen forces. An unseen force is like, the belief of the market? How do you predict the belief of the market?

• 57:42Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? And that is a legitimate thing. Hey, the market believes that oil's gonna get cheaper, so the price is going down. This is what they believe. And by the way, when it turns out tomorrow that they were wrong, hey, they were wrong. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter, but we had to put that into the calculus. So it's the, it's the availability, it's the belief of the market, it's all these things, it's the natural disasters, fires, war, all these things affect it. But the belief of the market is one of them. One of the many. But if you can at least take in that, that calculus and, and know that

• 58:27Jocko Willink?

  there are so many things that we don't understand, and even the things we understand, we can't predict accurately. So, keeping that in mind, what, what I'm hoping that all this does, by the way, is I'm hoping it helps soothe people's anxiety on day-to-day emotional roller coasters of what is going on, because a lot of people, they're watching, they're watching those highlights from the fight. Or the highlight from, you know, the highlight from the fight, whatever that fight is, a political fight, a social fight, an economic fight. We, we, they've wrapped us into showing us the replay of one, of three seconds of a fight.

• 59:08Jocko Willink?

  And, and telling you to, like, change your bets and everything's gonna be different, and we don't know who's gonna win, and now this guy's definitely gonna win, because he almost caught him with that punch, and watch it again, watch it in slow motion, if he would've just put his foot over here, like, that's what they're saying to you. This fight is totally different now. And guess what they're gonna tell you in an hour? No, it's changed again.

• 59:27Jocko Willink?

  So I'm hoping that the ability to take a step back, detach, not over index on any piece of information.

• 59:36Jocko Willink?

  That is such a good skill to not over index on any one piece of information. If you do that, you're going to get caught. You just can't, you can't over index on, on little things. Now, again, if you're paying enough attention from a broad perspective, you'll start to see a pattern. You go, oh, hold on a second. I see a pattern now. Now, a little thing, now I can predict that there's probably a big thing coming and that's okay. But don't over index on those little things. They'll hurt you.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  As far as unseen forces goes, one that you opened my eyes to a while ago, I forget what book it was. It was morale, you know, morale, right? So, because I'd hear it in football games and stuff like, oh, this quarterback is feeling confident. So this adds to, and I'm like, brother, that's not gonna, the quarterback is feeling confident. You know, like, so what? Now they're going to win the game versus lose it like, brother, that's not a factor. See what I'm saying? The guy either has a skill or he don't have the skill and they're going to work together, you know, and whatever. And then, um, it was, I forget some book, man, I forget the exact wording, but you opened my eyes to the idea, which is true. Literally like every single day. If you don't want to be there versus you really do want to be there is two completely different things.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  Two different outcomes, two different pursuits, two, it's two different events, literally. So, and I live this 100% from my sports days to just working out to freaking jujitsu. But if I don't want to be at jujitsu, bro, I don't want to be at.

• 1:01:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the morale thing, and you can watch this in any sports. You can watch when they will say, the announcers will say, because it's so clear, the momentum has shifted.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's another one.

• 1:01:22Jocko Willink?

  The momentum has shifted. Think about that. That's a real thing and they're all, that all these little micro, little collective things that happen inside of a team. For instance, If I'm playing basketball and you know where we just got, we just scored 12 points unanswered and I'm about to take a three pointer, how much pressure is on me?

• 1:01:46Jocko Willink?

  There's almost no pressure and so guess what? Now it's a 15 point lead and now my next shot, there's even less pressure. And so you're just, you're just playing looser and looser and the looser you play, the better you play. Now you go the other direction. When it, when a shot is critical, there's all this pressure. People choke more.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  More stuff.

• 1:02:03Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, that momentum is a real thing. Morale is a little thing and Napoleon said, I forget what the number is, but he gave it a ratio. Like morale is to, is to numbers as three is to one or something like that. Morale is more important.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you ever?

• 1:02:19Jocko Willink?

  So didn't you ever play football though? Where like you're, you did feel the morale of the quarterback being like, all right, guys, oh yeah, you know?

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, yeah.

• 1:02:27Jocko Willink?

  For you just to say forget about it.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  It's more the, the whole team morale in my experience, but um, as far as morale goes. Yeah. And it was never illustrated like that to me. So I, I remember when my, and I'm literally remembering this like it had just happened where it was our, actually the first game I ever played, first game game I ever played against this team and we were like seeded to be the, the team. This Kala Pop Warner, by the way, Kauai, Southside, where we at. Um, we played against, uh, Kapak and Kapak had some good guys on there, but whatever. We had, you know, with me and my brothers, some freaking other heavy hitters, you know, 10, 11 years or whatever. And, uh, that bro, they came out and they just started freaking defeating us right from the first play.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Like he was bad and we're like, what the hell? Like everyone was like coordinated and these, these guys, these two brothers, cousins, Jared and Kalani. They were just like freak athletes all of a sudden. So they just started beating us and I remember feeling like, bro, A, I don't even want to be here anymore. B, like I didn't like have any drive to put in effort because we just lose anyway. See what I'm saying? To the point where I was doing this regular play where they pitch you the ball. I just didn't catch the ball.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Straight up. Didn't catch the ball. Not a hard ball to catch. Like it just didn't. And I remember thinking, and then I was just like, whatever. Like it doesn't. Like that's an extreme version of your morale just going and then literally directly affecting the outcome.

• 1:03:56Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  Just because I don't want to be there. You ever phoned something in?

• 1:04:00Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Actually, that's why I asked. But, but I would pray, like if I had like a competition or you know, in your case, you're in the on the battlefield. You're gonna freaking face this group of guys, you know, but you're praying they just phone it in that day. You're praying that they're just like, bro, I don't want to be here. I'm gonna phone it in, do the bare minimum, you know? And that's what you're compelled to do when you don't want to be there, when morale is low.

• 1:04:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know what you just talked about. So what you got caught in that football team?

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Jocko Willink?

  Was you got caught in the, in the, in the shock, right? So this is something I was talking about this with some Jiu Jitsu competitors the other day.

• 1:04:38Jocko Willink?

  If you, if you are, if you expect the shock, like, hey, this is gonna, this is gonna start off wild.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Jocko Willink?

  If you're just ready for wildness, you'll be okay. If you're not ready for wildness, you're gonna get, you're gonna fall behind.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Jocko Willink?

  So a classic case of what you're talking about is, oh, we think we're the better team. We kind of roll out there like we kind of got this one in the bag. And then they come out there ready to murder you and you get hit with that shock and all of a sudden you guys are looking around 11 years old like, bro, what's going on? And you get overwhelmed by the shock. But it's, and what you just said, it's the surprise. And the surprise immediately defeats your morale. Well, how do you calculate that?

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Jocko Willink?

  Like, how do you put that into the, how do you put what, how do we calculate that force? How can I predict that your team? Cause by the way, it can also go like, we're gonna destroy this team and we go out there and you can over shock them. Like they come at you, stuff their face and all of a sudden it's like, you, you ever had that in Jiu Jitsu where you're like, you, you get a submission on someone? And you're going like you, like 30 seconds into a round, you get a submission and you work real hard and they get out.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm thinking of a very.

• 1:05:52Jocko Willink?

  That is total demoralization.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I was rolling with this guy. We know, um, he's a black belt now. He wasn't a black belt at the time. And, and he's smaller than me too. And I was just, you know how you kind of like, you kind of modulate, right? And then this guy's not really that much of a threat, but you know, so he kind of is bringing it and I'm like, all right, like it's, it's getting kind of boring. I'm gonna turn up the heat a little bit and bro, this guy's like defending and kind of getting a better of me a little bit. I'm starting, and then my morale went down. And he's, I think apparently his went up, but I'm like, yeah, it's that exact thing where I was like, wait a second, I wasn't ready for this, like mentally.

• 1:06:26Jocko Willink?

  Yep. So that is a force in a two-person jujitsu match in a totally confined environment. And now we think we're going to understand the morale of some foreign military like, bro. And by the way, every different unit and they're all out there. They have good leaders, bad leaders, uh, good, good NCOs, bad NCOs, like some have been eating well. Some of them haven't been like, what? What are we talking about? All these forces come into play and we think we can calculate the whole thing. And we're making our big predictions. So I hope that this will help everyone become a little bit more detached, which is not, which is, which is counter to our culture right now. We're getting force fed information 24 hours a day.

• 1:07:09Jocko Willink?

  It's in your pocket. It's, it's, it's, uh, I, I heard something the other day that like the average person looks at their phone 150 times a day. Just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. So 150 times a day, you're getting a, you're getting a catastrophic headline shoved down your throat. Bro, it don't matter. It literally doesn't matter. You could wait a week before you look at your phone again and you won't miss a damn thing. And by the way, if there's something that you should have missed, someone's going to tell you. Like someone's going to say, hey, did you see that? Uh, you know, there was an earthquake in Texas and there's a tidal wave that just wiped out half of Houston. You'd be like, no, I didn't see that. Okay. Well, take a look and you can go look at it.

• 1:07:53Jocko Willink?

  You see, you see what I'm saying? Like it's, there's no reason, there's nothing that's going to happen in the next hour. That's going to, that's going to impact you from a global news perspective. And quite honestly, probably not from your own life perspective. Look, did you have an emergency once a year where your kid needs to call you? Cool. Have an emergency phone, have an emergency punch through number, but most of this stuff doesn't matter. Most of this stuff is just little tiny tactical interactions that are going on in the world and we're freaking out about all of them. Don't.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  A lot of this is like the, and you kind of mentioned where it's the shortcut of your brain, right? Cause it doesn't want to do that much work. So it'll just like pass judgment or it'll just summarize or just, you know, like, I don't want to have to think through all these freaking unseen forces. So I'm just, you know, so like, so I talked to Jason Kalipa and he ended up mentioning this, but it's like, you ever forget why you're in a bad mood? Like you're kind of in a bad mood, but you just forgot why?

• 1:08:51Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Or at the very least, like you have to almost like remind yourself, wait, like, I'm not feeling that like, I'm, I'm mad about something or I'm just whatever bothered, whatever. You don't have to be angry.

• 1:09:02Jocko Willink?

  I think the closest I could have to that is like, let's say I got some important kind of negative thing going on.

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:08Jocko Willink?

  And I'll wake up in the morning and won't remember it for like the first three minutes.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Right. But are you, but do you still feel the feeling though?

• 1:09:15Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  That's the point. Okay. That's a different thing. Yeah. That's a different thing.

• 1:09:18Jocko Willink?

  You're just saying you're in a bad mood. You're like, this sucks.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like.

• 1:09:21Jocko Willink?

  Wait, why?

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  You know, like, let's say you had a, um, okay, let's say a typical situation, say you argue with your wife about something, right? And it puts you in a bad mood because you didn't resolve it. Then you go to wherever, right? Go to work. And then, you know, you do your work and your brain.

• 1:09:35Jocko Willink?

  As if you had a job.

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  I'm just saying hypothetically, you know, you concentrate on this and that, this task, that task or whatever. And then like, it's almost lunch break and you're like freaking still kind of in this weird, bad mood. It kind of, that mood kind of drifted with you. You know, it carried along with you throughout the day, but you don't really consciously remember what it was that made you in the bad mood or why you're in the bad mood. You almost have to be like, wait, why am I feeling like this again? Oh yeah. Argument with my wife. Oh wait, what was that about again? Okay. It's like, you gotta remember, but the bad mood is still there and that bad mood can affect other stuff.

• 1:10:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  You don't even know why you're in a bad mood anymore.

• 1:10:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  The, the point is side note, the reason why this came up is, uh, Jason, I was talking with Jason Kalipa about jujitsu, about like one of the benefits and like how the, this particular benefit works. And you know how they say it's a stress reliever, right? They're like, why is it a stress reliever? And the obvious one is like, oh, cause you get to do this in physical and like all this stuff. This is true, but. Let's say you have that same thing. You have an argument with your wife or whatever. And you know, you have other stuff to do. So you're not just continuously thinking about like, what actually happened that's making you in the bad mood, right? You're just left with a bad mood. So that bad mood is called a stress patch that just kind of gets attached to your brain. The rest of it is secondary. See what I'm saying? But it's just adding to your stress for the day. Maybe something else bad happens. Now you've got another stress patch.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  You forget about the actual event because it's not happening right now anymore. It was in the past, but you still have the mood from it. It's two patches, maybe three patches, maybe four. You go to jiu jitsu, you gotta forget about all that. All the way down to your emotional state, you gotta forget because freaking Jocko's trying to choke me. I'm trying to choke this guy. He's trying to pass my guard and freaking hold me inside mount all freaking for five minutes or whatever. Like you're, you're, you're concerned about bigger things in that particular moment. Add everything else on what jiu jitsu is. Those stress patches get washed away. See what I'm saying? So you forget consciously and emotionally about that stress that you had before. So for you to get that stress patch back, you have to actively pursue it, which you're not in the mood to do because you're kind of in a good mood. See what I'm saying? That's how it works, bro. I'm here to tell you.

• 1:11:42Jocko Willink?

  So train jiu jitsu. I say detach, take a step back, look around, don't over index. You say train jiu jitsu.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  It's one of those things.

• 1:11:50Jocko Willink?

  I can't, I can't deny that. Uh, I think it will helpful, be helpful, be helpful for your mental path. It'll be helpful for your psychological path. And it'll help your, help your physical path as well. So that's what we got. Um, speaking of jiu jitsu, speaking of training, speaking of getting after it, you should do the all the above. And when you do that, you're gonna need fuel. Check out jockofuel.com. Get yourself some protein. Get yourself some energy. Get yourself some hydration. Get yourself some joint warfare, super krill, time war.

• 1:12:27Jocko Willink?

  Greens creatine.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  Creatine, 100%.

• 1:12:30Jocko Willink?

  We got a new creatine coming, by the way.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  What kind of new creatine? Little something.

• 1:12:34Jocko Willink?

  Little something, little something.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:12:36Jocko Willink?

  Little something, a very highest quality creatine. We're gonna have some flavored versions of it as well. For those of you that aren't dry scooping straight up like I am right now.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why I mix the hydrate with it. It's like a little flavored creatine.

• 1:12:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, we got, we're gonna have you covered. Uh, jockofuel.com, you can get it at jockofuel.com or you can get it wherever you get stuff. We're all over the place. We're in stores all across the country. So if they don't have Jocko Fuel, ask them for it. In the meantime, get some. Also, since we're training jujitsu, we recommend that you get gear that's made in America, 100%. Check out originusa.com and get yourself a gi, get yourself some rash guard, get yourself some training shorts, get yourself some jeans, some boots. Uh, by the way, women's jeans coming. Did you know that?

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  I did not know that until right now.

• 1:13:29Jocko Willink?

  Women's jeans are coming.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 1:13:30Jocko Willink?

  Women's jeans are coming. Um, check out the site, get on that early request list. Uh, some one that I know got one of the early pairs of women's jeans.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:13:41Jocko Willink?

  My wife.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 1:13:42Jocko Willink?

  I think they're putting her in the ad too.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  Okay, alright.

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  Because I made an impromptu video to like show, you know, the fit and whatever.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, and then they're like.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  And choose a model or whatever.

• 1:13:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And so she was looking, you know. Let's face it, let's put her in the ad, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  I dig it, man, I dig.

• 1:14:00Jocko Willink?

  So, originusa.com, get your wife some jeans.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:05Jocko Willink?

  American-made jeans. That fit good, look good, feel good. And they're made in America, they're made with freedom. That's what we do, originusa.com, check it out.

• 1:14:15Speaker 01

  It's true. Also, oh, forget about Jocko Store, we're representing. Hey, we need, you know, shirts to wear on the path, you know, whether it be to workout or just to represent.

• 1:14:25Jocko Willink?

  See what I'm saying?

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  The black on black, that's where you represent in public, in my opinion. Not doing too much, but not too little. See what I'm saying? You're in that sweet spot. Threading the needle in that way. Um, but yeah, we got some shirts.

• 1:14:37Jocko Willink?

  Will you send me a Sog Support Black on Black shirt, please?

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Yes. Oh, wait, did I not? Okay, my bad.

• 1:14:41Jocko Willink?

  No, you did not, although I'd be wearing it right now.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I thought I just sent, but I sent one to Tilt. Actually, I sent a bunch to Tilt.

• 1:14:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  Appropriately.

• 1:14:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, hell yeah. SogLegacy.com?

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  SogLegacy.com. Yeah, this part is kinda, kinda in the same vein as, as the, you know, Jocko store. It's, um, yeah, so the Sog is just the support stuff. So, so you can represent.

• 1:15:04Jocko Willink?

  Without stolen valor.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  Exactly, right. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:07Jocko Willink?

  I remember one guy on Twitter a long time ago, a guy said, you know, uh, so and so, I, you know, so and so was in the SEAL teams and, you know, he sent me this thing and is it appropriate for me to wear a trident, even though I wasn't in the SEAL teams? Is it appropriate for you to wear a trident out in public, even though I wasn't in the SEAL teams? And I wrote back on Twitter, I wrote, I was in the SEAL teams for 20 years and I don't wear a trident in public.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  Wait, a real trident?

• 1:15:34Jocko Willink?

  Any trident, like, yeah, like any trident thing is.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Even on a shirt? Cause you remember when Jimmy May was on. I was like, hey.

• 1:15:43Jocko Willink?

  What did he have on?

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  No, no, he gave me a polo shirt and a hat.

• 1:15:49Jocko Willink?

  But it said Beyond the Brotherhood on it.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  Yes, but it had a trident on there.

• 1:15:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, like a, like a actual SEAL trident?

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:15:54Jocko Willink?

  Or just like a three? Yeah, yeah, that's different. That's acceptable.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  Okay, so that's different. If it's a design of a trident.

• 1:16:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of an actual like three-pronged trident? Yeah, but when I say trident, I mean,

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  The pin.

• 1:16:05Jocko Willink?

  The SEAL Budweiser insignia.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:16:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it didn't have that. Yeah, yeah. The trident in real.

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  It was, yeah, yeah, it was, and I asked him. I was like, bro, can I wear this? Cause I want to wear it.

• 1:16:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Both of them, to be honest with you. Um. Not at the same time, that'd be too much, but I didn't want to wear them from time to time, but I can't just be going out of the freaking in the clear with my freaking trident on my hat.

• 1:16:31Jocko Willink?

  And your tactical watch. At the same time.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  You see me, you see me, yeah, exactly right. So I asked him and he's like, no, no, no. In fact, you should wear it because it's like support, all this stuff. Perfect. Same thing with Sog Legacy, by the way. So, yeah, and you know, like if you don't like the old, you know, the overt Sog freaking thing on your chest or whatever, or that's the way you're thinking, even though it does look dope, I wear that thing all the time. Um, you can do the black on black one. See what I'm saying? Again, doing a lot, but not too much, not too little.

• 1:17:00Jocko Willink?

  And that is support for Sog, like literally, you know, uh, Tiltz out there capturing these stories from all, as many Sog guys as he possibly can. Those guys are, you know, you know, you could debate about who like the greatest NBA player is or who the greatest hockey, like there, there's a debate.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:18Jocko Willink?

  There's a debate. There's no debate. When it comes to special operations, it's Sog.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  Sog.

• 1:17:24Jocko Willink?

  And then everybody else. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:27Jocko Willink?

  Like just, that's the way it is. Uh, Sog all day. So support your, support your local Sog guys.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  Yep. That's at soglegacy.com. Back to Jock Store real quick. The, the, we had these silicone wristband, discipline equals freedom. They're little wristbands, you know, represented whatever. And a lot of people wanted them. They were sold out for a long time. I'm sorry. See what I'm saying? But after like a lot of pressure from the public. Anyway, they're back in stock right now. See what I'm saying? So you can, you know, little wristband.

• 1:17:55Jocko Willink?

  The black on black though.

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  They're not black on black.

• 1:17:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you made a mistake, didn't you?

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  No, wait, no. They're supposed, no, no, the wristband is black with white. See what I'm saying?

• 1:18:03Jocko Willink?

  But not black on black.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  I'll look into it for sure, but there's other black on black options.

• 1:18:08Jocko Willink?

  Bring the Sharpie into play?

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  Any, anyway, oh, also the shirt locker, which is a new design. You know, if you're into the discipline equals freedom representation.

• 1:18:17Jocko Willink?

  From what I understand, Life Babbin supported the last one.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:18:20Jocko Willink?

  What was, what was the last one?

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  He was very, so he's, he sent me the, a picture of his shirt, his most recent one. The discipline like one. Um, I forget the name. It's just red script discipline. And this looks very clean, very nice. For, uh, you know, when you wear it, it looks good on you. Like that kind. I know you don't know about that kind of stuff, but other people do. A lot of us do.

• 1:18:41Jocko Willink?

  I was doing, I was doing a, uh, an interview about Origin a couple of days ago. And they were asking me something and, and I was, basically I was saying like, listen. Oh no, he asked me about like the popularity of denim in Japan. And I was like, hey, man, just FYI, right? You're starting to lean into the world of fashion. Which I don't know anything about.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  No, you don't.

• 1:19:07Jocko Willink?

  You're starting to talk about like, I know that what you're talking about has something to do with fashion. In Japan. And I know like, like Japanese, they're very particular about surfboards, right? Cause I'm a surfer and they, they like those, they like those longboards. They like that Josh Hall, they like that Joel Tudor, they got that vibe, right? They got that vibe, that longboard vibe. And then they got like a rockabilly thing going on over there. So they got some American culture and, and that denim, I think is in that. Area. Now I know about surfboards, but fashion is not my thing.

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  I don't know, but so far it sounds like you know a little something.

• 1:19:46Jocko Willink?

  And these things brought, like, there's a certain point where. Utility of clothing. Like there's one end of the spectrum. And then the other end of the spectrum is like, I'm wearing something because it looks good, which is what you just said.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:00Jocko Willink?

  I, I'm only on one side. I'm like the utility of the clothing.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:04Jocko Willink?

  But then it goes all the way to the fashion.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:07Jocko Willink?

  So I don't know much about the fashion.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  You go a little bit, I mean, not to get too technical and put too fine of a point on it, but in the spirit of accuracy. You go a little bit down the spectrum, but only to, it's like a facility or a functional fashion.

• 1:20:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying?

• 1:20:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, functional fashion is completely accessible.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:24Jocko Willink?

  Acceptable.

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta be squared away. See what I'm saying? Your belt buckle can't be all smudged. See what I'm saying? Your shoes can't be all scoffed and it's about gotta be shined. See what I'm saying? For the most part.

• 1:20:34Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  Under certain circumstances.

• 1:20:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, under certain circumstances.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  Functional circumstances?

• 1:20:38Jocko Willink?

  Functional for sure. There's a reason for you to be squared away.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:20:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You can't just be lolly gagging around.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  No, can't be sloppy either.

• 1:20:47Jocko Willink?

  Can't be sloppy. You know, I will say my.

• 1:20:51Jocko Willink?

  When I put clothes on.

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  Sure, hell, yeah, when you put clothes on.

• 1:20:56Jocko Willink?

  I think pretty much the goal is that not wearing anything that would draw any special attention to it.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Special, okay.

• 1:21:02Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 1:21:03Jocko Willink?

  Now, look, have I worn an occasional T-shirt that has a little bit of zing to it?

• 1:21:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:11Jocko Willink?

  But that the goal, right? It's like, I don't want to wear something that people are is drawing attention.

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:21:17Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of where I'm at.

• 1:21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I understand. So, well, okay, so as far as the shirt locker goes in that regard, we got a little bit of both. You know, usually we stay within the gray zone for sure. But this particular one Leif liked.

• 1:21:29Jocko Willink?

  What was it? Oh, discipline.

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  The discipline one. Yeah, you know, I'm sure he put it on and was like, hey, this, this thing fit. Collar design really looks good on me. Let me, you know, let me say some words, whatever. Sends me the text, he said, hey, legit, you know, and but he did ask for some past designs to be kind of released or whatever. I showed him that, you know, that good one, the other good one. I showed it to him and said, hey, we're kind of doing that. Anyway, it was a thing. That's why he texts me.

• 1:21:57Jocko Willink?

  All right.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  Which I understand.

• 1:21:58Jocko Willink?

  Well, if Leif is happy.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:22:00Jocko Willink?

  We're all happy.

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  That is correct.

• 1:22:01Jocko Willink?

  Shirt locker.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  Shirt locker all day.

• 1:22:03Jocko Willink?

  All right, cool. Also, we got some books. Um, we got Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones. We got Need to Lead by Dave Burke. Um, I've written a bunch of books too. Written a bunch of kids books, The Whole Nine Yard. So, check those out. Eshlonfront.com. If you have issues inside your organization, they are leadership issues. Did I just say that? Yes, I said that. Regardless of what they are, they're leadership issues. So, if you need help with leadership inside your organization, go to Eshlonfront.com. Also, if you need help as a leader in all aspects of your life, you can learn the skills of leadership at ExtremeOwnership.com. So, go and check that out. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee.

• 1:22:48Jocko Willink?

  She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also, check out HeroesAndHorses.org. And finally, Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. And if you want to connect with us, you go to Jaco.com. And then on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink, Echo's at Echo Charles.

• 1:23:08Jocko Willink?

  Just be careful on there because it is not healthy. Should have a little warning label. Warning, causes freaking anxiety. So be careful. And of course, right now, around the entire globe, military men and women are, they're living in this process that we're sitting here talking about. They're doing things that will impact the world and history. And we thank them for their service and sacrifice. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for your service and sacrifice here on the home front. And everyone else out there, stay detached.

• 1:23:54Jocko Willink?

  Don't hyper fixate on small details. Use time and distance as a tool for clarity. And don't mistake what's happening for what's going on.

• 1:24:07Jocko Willink?

  And that's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.