Jocko Underground: When Your Ready to Take Over The World, Here is Your Next Move

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe I'm in a good position to take over the world and kill it in life. What do I do? What to do if you're doing good.. but you want to be even better. I may have violated some boundaries with a superior. What do I do now? Follow my dreams? Or stay loyal to my family business? More red flags when starting Jiu Jitsu. 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 the Jocko Underground Podcast number 138. We are 138. With Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Let's get into some Q and A. Got some interesting questions. Some variety going on here. Let's go. Q and A.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Happy birthday, by the way. Today's Jocko's birthday, everybody. Happy birthday, Jocko. We're gonna see you later.

• 0:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so we're really doing a lot today to celebrate that. I'm in here.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  I'm honored. You can spend your birthday with me, freaking Brad. It's, you know.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  We got work to do.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 0:31Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I understand. I understand fully. Anyway, first question. Hey, Jocko Echo. After being a longtime listener of the podcast, I sometimes hear Jocko say he would take over the world if he was 20 again. I consider myself to be in that position. Three years ago, I was fat and playing video games eight hours a day. Now I'm 16 years old and have have run an ultra marathon, trained jiu jitsu, do CrossFit, and I'm jacked, tan, and fit AF. Thanks to you guys, by the way. Seriously. Anyway, so I'm curious, how exactly do I take over the world? What do you do in my position? P.S. Echo, I didn't take another rest day again, did he?

• 1:13Jocko Willink?

  He's just familiar with your excessive rest days.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Well, okay, okay.

• 1:17Jocko Willink?

  Because when you go, when you go to Hawaii or whatever, and you're gone for like three weeks.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  He misses me, yeah.

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and there's a bunch of podcasts that we record when you're gone.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  And then people want to know where you are.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Oh, like that's my rest day from the podcast.

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  It's your rest day from Earth.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Oh, from Iraq. I understand fully. Alright, thank you.

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  So, taking over the world. This is awesome. This is great to hear. Very cool. 16 years old and you're getting after in a big way, especially after being kinda down in the down, running down a bad path. Actually, it'd be interesting if you detail some of this, get that information out there. Like, what'd you do? Were you addicted to video games? Because that's a real thing. It doesn't seem like it could be, but it is. What were you eating? You know, what was your exercise routine before you got on the path? And sometimes I think it's a little bit hard for people to conceive that they can radically change their lives. But for you, you did it. So, if I was here in shoes, in your shoes, right? Because what are you saying? How exactly do I take over the world? What would you do in my position?

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  First of all, I would figure out what I wanted to, what kind of life I want to live, right? Like, what kind of life do you actually want to live? Part of that life you want to live is what do you want to do for a living? Like, what do you want for a job? Because you need to have some kind of a income, you need to produce and add value to the world in order to be able to eat. Right? And now unless you say, hey, my path is to live off the land and I'm going to go into the bush and I'm just going to live off the land. Hey, if that's what your goal is, cool, then you can do that. But anything kind of like any other mode of living, you need some kind of income, right? You can't just, you need a place to live, you need a roof over your head, you need to get food.

• 2:57Jocko Willink?

  Again, if you're going to go build a shelter and you're going to hunt and you're going to store food for the winter, like you're going to do the whole thing, you can do that. Most people aren't in that zone. So that means you're going to have to have some kind of financial income at some point. So what kind of job do you want? And as I'm looking at what kind of job I want to look, what, what kind, where do you want to end up in life? And think about this, when I say, where do you want to end up? What actual geographic location do you want to end up in? What kind of financial position do you want to end up in? What kind of physical condition do you want to end up in? What kind of mental capacity do you want to have? Cause all you got to consider all those things.

• 3:39Jocko Willink?

  And then start to shape your life in a certain way, and this might sound a little bit weird, but. So when I was trying to figure out what military branch I wanted to go into. You know, I grew up surfing in Maine, and so I knew how to surf. And I saw that the SEAL teams, you could only be stationed in one of two places. San Diego, California, or Virginia Beach, Virginia, both of which had waves. Now, if you go in the Rangers, you could be, you know, in Fort Lewis, Washington, and you, there's a bunch of different, in special forces, you could be in a bunch of different places. The Marine Corps, you could be a little less places, but there's special ops at the time wasn't as, as visible. So basically I thought geographically, where do I want to live?

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, I want to live by the ocean where there's waves. Cool. San Diego, Virginia Beach. Boom. Guess what that led me towards? Yeah, San Diego. Guess what else I liked? I liked being in the water. I liked to surf. So if I would have joined the Rangers, I might not have ended up in a place where surfing could be part of my gig. So you gotta think about where you, what location you wanna be in. Now financially, what do you want financially? Do you want, are you a type of person that's like happy with sort of three hots and a cot? Meaning, hey, as long as I have food and I have shelter, I'm, I'm kinda good to go. I'm not, I don't need the, the dang designer furniture, the special couch and stuff like this. I don't need any, I don't care about any of that.

• 5:06Jocko Willink?

  So, and again, when I say that, I'm kinda pointing out my, that was my thing. When I was growing up, I wasn't thinking about a nice car. I didn't consider, you know, for me, a nice car was like a old muscle car, you know, a freaking GTO or something. So there was, I wasn't thinking Porsche. I wasn't thinking Mercedes Benz. I wasn't thinking Audi. Yeah. I was just thinking car. And when I was thinking of place to live, I didn't think about two staircases. You ever been to a house that has two, like I've seen a house, they have two staircases going up? The entry, the Yeah. The entry. Yeah. I wasn't thinking about, like, some people probably think about that, and that's kind of a desire of theirs. I didn't have that. Where do you wanna be mentally?

• 5:50Jocko Willink?

  You know, like, what, what do you wanna, what's your game plan gonna be? Or do you wanna be, do you wanna be a person that's learning and growing from a mental capacity? And then physically, do you, are you concerned about physicality? So you gotta consider all those things. There's probably a couple more. Those are just like the ones I thought of. But like, where do you want to end up? And then, once you figure out where you wanna end up, you say, okay, now I can plot a course to get there. Because if you're, if you go, dude, I don't really care where I live, but I wanna make a ton of money. Or I don't really care what my job is. I just wanna make a ton of money. Or I don't care about money. I just wanna do this certain type of job. You see where this can just guide your whole decision-making process, these things? Yes, well.

• 6:35Jocko Willink?

  What about physically? Like, some people, they hate labor, manual labor. And will do anything to get out of manual labor. Some people, they don't wanna be inside to work. Like, I do not wanna be inside of a building. There's a lot of people like that. So depending on where you, where these thoughts lead you, then you can start to Set up a course for your life that will bring you to those places. Maybe it's you want to make a ton of money and you want to live in New York City. Cool. That's a pretty good, there's a path to go to do that, you know, you're going to go try and go to the best college you can. Try to go and study in some Ivy League college and get a job as an intern and go up the chain of investment banking.

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  Right. And okay, you're going to work like crazy. You're going to be inside. You're going to be looking at a computer. You're going to be doing spreadsheets. You see what I'm saying? But you, there's the course. If you want to work outside, hey, maybe you go and you start working construction. Or maybe you like forest service, like you want to be out in the bush, but you still want to have a job. Cool. Go in the forest service. Go be a park ranger. Like there's all these things that you can do. And, and then to me,

• 7:44Jocko Willink?

  we can make things happen. Now, it's important to remember that you can direct anything you, you can direct things in the way that you want. And if you're really dedicated, you can likely be somewhat successful in achieving your goal. Now, it's not going to be perfect. Number one. Number two, there are some people that cannot play in the NFL.

• 8:08Jocko Willink?

  Right? Yes, sir. You're more of an expert on that than I am, right? You had guys on your football team in college that were the biggest stars in their high school on the football team. They were the biggest studs. They were athletically gifted. They still didn't go to the NFL. Yeah. And dedicated their life to training for the NFL. True. So this is a reality we have to face. Right? And this could apply to anything. You want to be a, a, a singer? You can practice. You can go to a voice coach. You can sit in the studio all day and you still never, you want to be a writer. Like I want to be a writer. You can write, you can write all kinds of books and turning manuscripts. No one ever publishes anything you did.

• 8:49Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta keep that in mind. You also might not be able to get into that Ivy League school.

• 8:56Jocko Willink?

  So then what you gotta figure out is you gotta, okay. Well, how can I get close to the, to the thing that I wanted? You see what I'm saying? So you make some alternate plans. Oh, I couldn't get in, I wanted to be a SEAL. But I couldn't get in because my eyesight, I have, what is it? Uh, I have bad vision. Or uncorrectable vision and I just couldn't, you just know it, it doesn't matter. There's no waivers. You can't, you can't go. Okay. So what are you gonna do? Oh, well, maybe it's the Rangers don't require as good vision. So go in there, you see what I'm saying? You're gonna get something to approximate.

• 9:28Jocko Willink?

  So figure out. Where you wanna be and then start to figure out how you can get there and come up with some. Alternate plans in case the primary plan doesn't work out.

• 9:43Jocko Willink?

  So I guess here what I'm saying is I think this is a key component to, to wrap this whole thing up. When, when, when you hear me say, take over the world, what I, what I really should say. Is. You have the opportunity to create an awesome world for yourself that you can live in the way you want to live.

• 10:04Jocko Willink?

  And what that is, is freedom. And we know that we get there through discipline. So.

• 10:12Jocko Willink?

  And one more thing I'll add. Is you gotta think strategic because. You're not gonna get your own world. You're not gonna be able to shape your world overnight. It takes time and it takes sacrifice, you know? When I was a younger dude. I was, my wife and I, you know, I wanted a family, wanted to live by the beach. Well, guess what? When you're in the Navy.

• 10:35Jocko Willink?

  And you have a family, you got kids to feed, your, your wife is not working because she's having children. And you wanna live by the ocean. Guess what kind of house you're gonna get in San Diego, California? We'll just say not a mansion. We're not gonna get a mansion. So my wife. And me. And my three children lived in a nine hundred and thirty four square foot house. Now, so that was a, you know, one bedroom for the two girls. They shared a room, one bedroom for the baby boy at the time. And my wife and I lived in the living room. You know, you walk in the front door of the house, our bed is on the left. That was our bedroom. It was our, it was the bedroom. It was the dining room. It was the kitchen and it was the living room.

• 11:18Jocko Willink?

  That was one big room. Cause you know, it was like a, a little cot, a little beach bungalow.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, let me start to interrupt, but what year did you move out of that place? What year was that?

• 11:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, we built, I built another bedroom on it.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 11:32Jocko Willink?

  And that made a huge difference.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:34Jocko Willink?

  Cause now the girls shared a room, the boy had his own room and then we had a room.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  So, and we also, that was an extra bathroom, cause we only had one bathroom. You know, you got four people, five people with one bathroom. It's a different, it's, it's not easy.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 11:51Jocko Willink?

  Even some people might call it problematic.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Right, yes, potentially.

• 11:54Jocko Willink?

  Five people with one bathroom, cause let's face it, there's times where a lot of people gotta go to the bathroom.

• 12:02Jocko Willink?

  But what I'm saying is, even at that time, I was kinda, I was stoked. I mean, I, well, I, quite frankly, I was just stoked. You know, we had a house by the beach. Guess what? Guess how much time we spent inside our nine hundred and thirty four square foot house?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:13Jocko Willink?

  Almost none. Cause we're going down to the beach, we're walking to the park, there's a park nearby, the neighbors were all cool. Like, we had a whole pack of people, you know, that were all in the same area of operations. Like, my wife, all her friends. We had freaking Darren and Tanya up the street. We had Scott, Scott and Scott down the road.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Two Scotts?

• 12:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's two Scots, yeah. Uh, Trevor, like just a whole rack of people and everyone had kids. So, even though.

• 12:47Jocko Willink?

  In that location, see, location was more important to me than financial, right? Location was more important to me than, I wish I knew some things to rattle off about like, you know, when you go into the, the home that has like the plasma TV or whatever, all that stuff, right? I didn't care about any of that. We had the same TV for years, bro, for years. Um, so, but even in that, in that world was a world that I kind of made, you know? Now was I building towards, hey, it'd be nice to have a place where you have, let's say, a pool. Yeah. That's a huge thing to build towards. Took a long time to build towards that. Eventually I got it, but you see what I'm saying?

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes.

• 13:30Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta create your own world and my point is that it takes time to create your own world. That's what I'm getting at.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  When was, but when was that that you moved out of that one or, or? Yeah, moved out of that one.

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  Two thousand twelve.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. So.

• 13:46Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm trying to remember because I've been to that house one time.

• 13:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Not inside, but I came and like dropped off something.

• 13:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Or picked up.

• 13:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It still looks the exact same. The people that bought it from us.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:58Jocko Willink?

  They're just like, it, it looks the exact same.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  They, they had the same approach as you.

• 14:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. They were just trying to get in the, yeah. By the beach, like there was like pieces of, uh, stucco that, that were off. And they're still off.

• 14:14Jocko Willink?

  Check. So there you go. Create your own world, man. Don't worry about taking over the world. Make your own world. That's a better way of putting it.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. That, and that's always the impression, like anytime you'd say that, because a lot of times too, if you take it for it's, it's kind of like, oh, you're gonna take over the world now. Okay. But it always landed on me like that, like how you said it just now, like that, then that makes sense to me. Um, this, I'll be honest, even I was just listening.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  And that's good advice for anyone, even if you're kind of like, feel like you've kind of. You know, feel like you don't have as many goals because maybe you've achieved or something like that. I feel like this is like a good like thought to revisit, you know, like where do you want to be? And are you there right now? Then cool, but how can you formulate your day to day, which how you put it, create your own world? But how can you like engineer your day to day where you can, you know, it's that balance of like, oh yeah, stimulated and challenged, but at the same time, like you're not in debt or have this weird life deficit where you're, you know, struggling or whatever, or bored or unfulfilled or I don't know, whatever, you know, whatever problems that you might have. Yeah, always good advice. I would, I wish I would have known it when I was 16.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  But yeah, we all even revisit it again. I don't know. Never know.

• 15:28Jocko Willink?

  Looks like you're doing all right, though. You kind of have your own little, nice little world, kind of.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Here's, yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 15:32Jocko Willink?

  I mean.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  For the hot, the house thing is, um, that's an interesting one that I don't think many people, I don't hear people talking about it that much. Where if you, I could, it stands to reason that if you have a nice house, the chance of you staying in that house like day to day, like staying in there, kind of goes up. I mean, obviously it depends on who you are and what your interests are, but like just in and of itself, it kind of, you, it stands to reason that the chances of you going outside and playing and being outside a lot goes down. Because it's fun and cool to be in your house. You got your freaking.

• 16:04Jocko Willink?

  So you're saying that's kind of a little bit of a bad thing?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  It can be, right? It can, it can hold you back a little bit, I think. Cause like, yeah, let's say you have, you know, I don't know, five bedrooms. Everyone has a 90 inch TV in there.

• 16:16Jocko Willink?

  They're not even coming out of their room.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Right. Exactly right. And I think there's an element of that going on, but if you don't, let's say your house is essentially you're just there to freaking eat dinner and sometimes and sleep, use bathroom. If you can get in there with, you know, four other people rolling around. Yeah. And that's it. Otherwise it's like, why would I be in here? It's like boring, you know? It's not like super calm. We don't have amenities. It's not like you got freaking, you know? Luxury couches that you're all laying on and nothing like that. So you're like, all right, let's go. And you're by the beach. In your case, you're by the beach, but either way, outside is going to seem more interesting, you know? Yeah. And there's a lot more outside than there is inside a lot of the time. That's the truth. So you kind of got to watch out. Those, uh, what do you call them? The staircases that you were talking about? Two staircases, yep.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Grand entry. They might have some shackles on those banisters coming down. Oh, yeah. They might. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have the two staircases and you know, we know someone that does. Oh, yeah, yeah. Actually, I know a few people. Oh dang, look at you. You're kind of excited. I, you know, it is what it is. But yeah. Cool. Next question. Thank you, Jocko. On this birthday of yours. Uh, okay, Jocko, I was thinking about leadership.

• 17:30Jocko Willink?

  So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen,

• 17:40Jocko Willink?

  go to jockounderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this. We're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we're doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you

• 18:12Jocko Willink?

  more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us.

• 18:18Jocko Willink?

  And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jockounderground.com. It costs eight dollars and 18 cents a month. And if you can't afford to support us,

• 18:38Jocko Willink?

  we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.