409: You're Only Squandering Your Whole Future and All Your Potential

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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 409 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes I want to take you by your shoulders and shake you. You've got to open your eyes. How long will it take you? Running through life blind, what a waste. Shut down and neutralized, what a case. What happened? What happened to you? What's going on? What's going on with you? Someday becomes yesterday. Your life goes and crawls away. You're walking hand in hand with a death trip. You can't even feel the power in its grip.

• 0:47Jocko Willink?

  And those right there are the lyrics from a song called Wreckage or Wreck Age. There's a hyphen in there by a group called The Rollins Band off the Lifetime album.

• 1:01Jocko Willink?

  Which was the band Rollins Band led by Henry Rollins, the singer from Black Flag, one of my favorite bands as a kid. Especially by the way, Black Flag, My War, Side Two. That was on my record player for, I don't know, probably 18 months to two years straight. That song though, from the Rollins Band album, had a big impact on me. And that album had a big impact on me. It came out in 1987. It was sort of one of the bricks in the path, I guess you might say. You know, you know the Pink Floyd song, it's another brick in the wall? Well, I've been putting bricks in the path.

• 1:43Jocko Willink?

  This, this album, this song definitely put some bricks in the path for me.

• 1:50Jocko Willink?

  And it's amazing really that people can go through life blind. How they can slip down the slope and get neutralized and be caught in the grip of something without even feeling the power that's controlling them.

• 2:04Jocko Willink?

  And I think Echo Charles, you recently recognized you were being a little bit neutralized. You were being inhibited by alcohol. And when you recognized that, you took control, you squared some things away. And I think that your story over the past few months and your thoughts and your methodology for how you executed might help a lot of people. So, let's get into it. What's, what is your history with alcohol? Where does it start? When you were a kid, what about your parents? Was there alcohol in the house? What's going on?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there was alcohol in the house, but we hardly ever saw it. So it was like, uh, so my mom never really drank at all. But then my dad was like the super social dude. So he would like, he'd like after work, he'd always bring us with him. And you know, for, for the most part, yeah, like after work, he'd go to these beach parties with his friends. And they weren't huge parties, they were just hanging out with their friends, basically. And yeah, he'd drink and stuff.

• 3:08Jocko Willink?

  And you figure, how old is your dad at this point? Probably in his 30s, maybe?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you figure, well, he was 33 when we were born. So, you know, yeah, 40s, like my age ish, yeah, yeah.

• 3:17Jocko Willink?

  Going down, down to the beach?

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  Having a couple beverages with the boys?

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, which, you know, there's no, you know, we grew up on quiet. So it's like, that's just how, so it's not like, it wasn't a big deal. You know, kids running around and we weren't the only kids. So, you know, at the pavilion, you know, by the beach or whatever. So, and my dad was the kind of where like, um, you couldn't tell he was drunk. You know how some people you can tell, they just night and lights, they switch and you can tell they're drunk in whatever way. Their behavior, their, their.

• 3:44Jocko Willink?

  Well, let's break that down a little bit. Some people get angry, right? They want to fight everybody. Some people get silly, they're laughing at everything. Some people, they get all slurry and kind of lose their moto skill, motor skills.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:59Jocko Willink?

  I can tell you when, when I used to drink a lot, I would just be more of me. I would just be like an amplified me.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:07Jocko Willink?

  And that's, it's fun, but it's not really like one of the best. Long term, not a long term thinker.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:16Jocko Willink?

  And so your dad was one of these dudes that would be like, you could barely even tell that he's drunk type thing.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  Or that he's drinking.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  You couldn't tell. Like I, and then again, I was a kid, so I don't know, but he would not act different. And maybe if there was something different, I didn't notice any kind of pattern, you know, kind of a thing. And then what would help, and I'm thinking back, I remember this, he, I would be like, oh dad, have you ever been drunk before? And he was like, no, I don't get drunk. He would say that, even though he does get drunk. But he would say that, you know, I don't know if that was a tactic or what, but yeah, it was like full on. He didn't act different at all. Meanwhile, I see other people acting different. Like they would get, I, I saw like people getting in fights and I seen a guy like stab a guy in the arm and like all this stuff or whatever. And he's like, oh yeah, they don't know how to control their alcohol, you know, that kind of stuff.

• 4:56Jocko Willink?

  You thought that?

• 4:57Speaker 01

  No, that's what my dad would say, you know, sometimes where like if someone's showing out or something like that. Um, they're like, yeah, they're just drunk or whatever, kind of a thing. And I was like, okay, well, you know, alcohol can do all this stuff, but for some reason, either my dad doesn't drink a lot. Or, you know, it just doesn't affect him. So it was like that. And then, but every once in a while, like I'd find, find like a 40 ounce in his truck, half, half gone, you know, like that kind. But I didn't notice any, any of the effects though, nothing like that. My mom would mention it. Like, oh dad's drinking or whatever, but I wouldn't see it. So I didn't know what she was talking about, like whatever. So that was kind of it really.

• 5:31Jocko Willink?

  So what, when did you start drinking when you were a kid?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  No, like not when we were a kid. Actually me and my brother Jade, we didn't drink. And it was like, kind of, you know, we played sports and stuff like that, but even through high school, when everyone else started kind of drinking and partying. We were like, kind of like, it was like a, like a badge of honor, kind of a thing where it's like, yeah, we don't drink or do drugs, nothing like that. In fact, we, we had this newspaper article when we went to college and they were like, you know, interviewing us or whatever. And they were like, oh yeah, what would you want to like, what message would you send off to people about yourself that you'd kind of, you know, want, want people to know or whatever. We're like, oh, that we don't drink or do drugs and never will. That's what it said in the newspaper.

• 6:11Jocko Willink?

  Look at you. I didn't know you were so famous.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  No, no, well. Yeah, no, I mean, we were, we were playing football. So you know, football is kind of a thing.

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  You're kind of hometown heroes, huh? A little bit.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  I, you know.

• 6:23Jocko Willink?

  Do most of the guys that play football in Hawaii, are they from Hawaii? Or do people come from freaking Nebraska and stuff?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, at UH, University of Hawaii. No, no, they are everybody. So like some people from Hawaii and then some people from the mainland for sure.

• 6:36Jocko Willink?

  But is it kind of like if you're from Hawaii, you're sort of a hometown hero type thing?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we don't have NFL in Hawaii, or we don't have a pro team in Hawaii. So UH is kind of the, the top in the state, you know? And we're kind of isolated. So, yeah, it's a li- I think it's a little bit more heightened. I think like something, I mean, other, some towns are like that as well, but yeah, for, for sure. I would say being a football player in Hawaii, like especially when you go to UH, it's like a thing for sure.

• 7:00Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys ever get in any trouble with the kids that were drinking?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  No, no, never.

• 7:06Jocko Willink?

  Did people peer pressure you? And what'd you say?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Not really. Um, no, no, I ne- I never felt any peer pressure.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  Check this out. As a tactic, isn't it easier with the peer pressure to say, I don't drink? Than to be like, well, not right now. And well, well, I guess I'm not really drinking tonight.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so.

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  Just be like, no, I don't drink.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  I think if you have, and now that I'm thinking of about this clearly as an adult. If you have something else going on, that's like noticeably at least a little bit successful. And then you say, I don't drink. It, it kind of, you know, people kind of put two and two together like, okay, like that makes sense, you know, kind of a thing. And we were always into sports and like working out and stuff. And we weren't the only ones, but that was, it seemed like that was kind of a thing. Like we were obviously on like this path, you know? And then so we're like, yeah, we don't drink. So I don't remember any of our friends. I had some peer pressuring friends too, by the way, Jeremy Treskin.

• 8:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  And you know, he drank a little bit, you know, like whatever. He was just like normal. Um, and yeah, I don't remember him peer pressuring us to drink. He peer pressured us into doing a bunch of other stuff, but never really drinking.

• 8:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So he knew that that was a futile effort because you guys had a hard stance against it.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  It's what it felt like. Yeah.

• 8:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And then what about you get to college? How'd that go? Did you enter into the drinking realm into college?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Nope. So it was like, that didn't move me either way. College and freedom now and all that stuff. So we actually, there's at UH, there's like this dorm, I think it's called E Lima. And it's like, there's no drinking allowed. It's a non like drinking, no drugs dorm.

• 8:44Jocko Willink?

  E Lima.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  So it was called E Lima. So even if you have a beer, like a closed beer, or if you went shopping and you had a beer that you're gonna give to your friend or something and it was in the dorm, you would get busted for it. I think you'd get like kicked out of the dorm. It was like that. Whereas it was like a non-drinking dorm and we stayed there for, I wanna say like, I don't know, two semesters.

• 9:04Jocko Willink?

  What did, was it kinda nerdish? Cause I mean, you know, sometimes it's like not drinking is associated with being kind of a dork or a nerd.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:14Jocko Willink?

  And now you take all the people that don't drink, cause some people that don't drink, they don't drink cause they're getting jacked or they don't drink, cause they're a freaking straight edge hardcore kid or whatever. But then you also get people that don't drink, maybe because they're a little bit nerdy.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:27Jocko Willink?

  And they don't, they're not social, so it's sort of socially awkward and now they put them all together. What was going on in E Lima? What was going down? Tell me what's up?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  I don't know. Me, put it this way, if it was, I never felt any of that. I never felt that people thought I was a nerd or nothing like that. I just figured that's just how. Cause there was other people stayed at that dorm.

• 9:46Jocko Willink?

  So would you say if you took a cross-section of E Lima dorm?

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:50Jocko Willink?

  And you looked at all the people, it would seem like just regular, like a normal cross-section of a normal college dorm? Or would you say, yeah, no, you're right. It kinda leaned.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah, there was more. Yeah, it was leaning. Thinking back, now I can notice, oh wait, there was a lot of people who are really into the academics and really not, really trying to avoid the distractions of the party aspect of college for sure. Thinking back, but, um, but I didn't feel that at the time at all.

• 10:17Jocko Willink?

  And so, did you stay in this dorm the whole time you were in college?

• 10:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 10:20Jocko Willink?

  What happened?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  I think, you know, I think the curiosity kinda gets the better of you overall, where, you know, you're around people and, you know, parties and stuff like that. And everyone's like having so much fun and still getting good grades and we're playing football and stuff like that. And a lot of people, pretty much everyone, pretty much, there's a handful of people who didn't drink or do drugs. But pretty much everyone else drank too, on the team and they're still doing great in football and all this stuff. So, so the, the idea of drinking being this big detriment in your life.

• 10:50Jocko Willink?

  Started to get normalized a little bit. Drinking became normalized.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  More normalized and it started to kinda shed some light on the idea how true or not true it is. It shed some light on the idea that I think this whole being a non-drinker thing was more just like a cool thing to say and do for the, like the novelty, you know? Because ultimately it's just not even a deal. It's not a big deal at all. And then so you kind of mix all that stuff together and then you know curious.

• 11:18Jocko Willink?

  When you would drink, what kind of drinking were you doing? Were you a dude like, you know, you see the college kids that are just slamming handles of vodka?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, doing the whole college thing.

• 11:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, the whole thing.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz.

• 11:29Jocko Willink?

  Blackout drunk scenario?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  I never was that. No, no, no. So in college, you figure.

• 11:35Jocko Willink?

  Cuz I'll tell you what, like in the SEAL teams, there's a whole nother freaking, and I guess the military at large. There's a level of drinking. It's probably comparable. It's it's in the realm of like college type drinking.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  I think you're.

• 11:47Jocko Willink?

  Blackout, throwing up.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:49Jocko Willink?

  Alcohol poisoning.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Competing in drinking games.

• 11:52Jocko Willink?

  Drinking competitions.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:54Jocko Willink?

  Like, there's a level of stupidity.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:57Jocko Willink?

  That goes down in the eighteen to twenty.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Twenty two.

• 12:02Jocko Willink?

  Twenty four, twenty five, you know, age group.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:06Jocko Willink?

  This is when people die.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:08Jocko Willink?

  This is when people fall out of windows. This is when people die of alcohol poisoning, drown in their own puke. Uh, just all kinds of horrible things happen.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:17Jocko Willink?

  And it comes like that age group, eighteen to, like I said, twenty three, twenty four. You know, hopefully by the time you're twenty five, you're not slamming handles of vodka.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:30Jocko Willink?

  But.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  I think the military is probably more hardcore.

• 12:32Jocko Willink?

  I think it is too. I think it is too. The other thing that's, well, there's a bunch of things that make it that way too. Number one, you have a paycheck.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:40Jocko Willink?

  So like a college kid, like you're a little bit concerned about your money. You know, you're a little bit concerned about your money. In the military, you're like, yo, I'm getting another, I'm getting more money in two weeks.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:48Jocko Willink?

  So the money I've got for right now is for tonight. And we're gonna get it. And there's a whole element of like, we're gonna die anyways.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Right. Yes, that's.

• 12:56Jocko Willink?

  You know, I came to grips with that. I was talking to Peter Attia when he came on the podcast last time, like, you have an element. When you're in the SEAL teams, even in the nineties, there's no war going on, but you're skydiving.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:06Jocko Willink?

  You're freaking diving, you're locking out of submarines, like, people die.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:11Jocko Willink?

  And so at some point in your head, you either. Believe that you could die, or you at least use as a rationalization to like just get crazy.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:20Jocko Willink?

  Like, at least some part of you is, well, you know, this might, I could die tomorrow doing a skydive. So we're gonna have a good time tonight.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 13:27Jocko Willink?

  So you have that whole thing going on. So you got a paycheck, you got a possible death in the near future.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 13:33Jocko Willink?

  And you got a bunch of friends. And the other thing that's weird, oh, this is probably the biggest one. You know how when you go to college, you're free for the first time?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  Well, that happens on a weekly basis in the military. You were like in the field and you were like, couldn't do anything. Or you were in the barracks and then the weekend comes and we're gonna do whatever we want. Let's go.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  That totally makes sense.

• 13:54Jocko Willink?

  There's all kinds of dumb shit going on, going down in the military. So I think it is next level, slightly next level. And look, I've seen the college kids give it a run for the money. You know what I mean? They, they go.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it feels like there's a different, um, like dynamic as far as like what's, what drinking is kind of centered around. So like military has this just general feeling of hardcoreness to it where like, you know, you're dealing with guns and real bullets. And like all this real, real stuff, kind of on the hardcore part of the spectrum. And then, um,

• 14:28Speaker 01

  and then it's like this stress reliever, I guess you could say, and like just, and if you're gonna do something, like it better be kind of hardcore. Better be kind of badass, right? In college, it's not like that. It's more about like the fun and the party and the freaking, you know, the freedom and the kind of, we're wild, yes, but not like.

• 14:45Jocko Willink?

  Let me ask you this. Did you football players ever just like drink by yourselves as a group?

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Drinking beers or whatever. Not, but it, that was different though. That's different. That's just more like you're just cruising, drinking beers, not getting hammered and woo, partying and pounding shot. We're not part, you know, taking shots.

• 15:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's when you get isolated elements with alcohol with no possibility. Like a lot of it, let's face it, in the military. And then as a young man, a lot of the drinking is centered around going to find women, right? You're going out to find girls, meet girls, all that. We're going to a party, we're going to a bar, we're going to a club, all this other stuff. In the military, sometimes there's no, you're not even doing that.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:21Jocko Willink?

  You're just literally getting drunk and wrecking yourself for no reason.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I don't think, yeah, I don't think that's, not in my experience anyway, but.

• 15:28Jocko Willink?

  So when you, so you were drinking hard?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  No, well. Not really, yeah, kind of. I mean, no harder than anyone else. I just thought it was really fun. You know, like the first time I ever drank, I was like, bro, I have no idea how people can sustain this because beer tastes like really bad. If you, if you never drank and then try drink a beer, even like a super light one without like that much beer taste, you're like, bro. The taste itself is jamming you up, you know, the more you drink. And then I remember thinking, man, I wish beer tasted like Mountain Dew because getting hammered. Kind of was cool, but the taste is holding me back from the fun. I could be having kind of a feeling, you know? And I remember I would always like chew gum or like whatever, but no, I wouldn't drink that hard. But when you don't drink. And you're new to drinking, it doesn't take a lot, you know?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  But it was, it was just more about the fun and stuff like that. A newfound fun, you know?

• 16:17Jocko Willink?

  And, and you just viewed it as now it went from something that you didn't do, but now it's just kind of a normalized thing that has become part of your life. No big deal. Drink. Oh, we're gonna go out, we're gonna have fun, we're gonna drink, all good. Loosen things up a little bit, provide a little social lubricant, big time, right?

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And we did dumb stuff for sure. And I did dumb stuff for sure.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Like, you know, you sneak into like private property and like. Have the party there. I got in trouble for um, inciting, like what they said was a kind of a riot, which wasn't a riot, that was an exaggeration. But it was basically a big party was going on. There's two parties going on in these high rise dorms. And they both got shut down because they were too loud. There was like a band in there and stuff. It was a flagrant party. It wasn't my party, I was just part of it. It was my friend's one. And then, so that, you know, everyone comes shuts it down and everyone has to all come to, this is like hundreds of people. They all come down and now they're in the courtyard in the bottom, on the bottom floor. And it's like, no one wants to end the party. It's kind of early, you know? And no one wants to end the party, but they don't have anywhere to go and you can't hang in the courtyard. But technically as an individual, you can't, see, I was kind of formulating my little argument.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  As an individual, you can hang out in the courtyard. So as a group, you can't, but as an individual, you can. So I was going to, and so although there was security and then the RAs, resident advisors, I think whatever, they're saying, hey, you guys can't hang here, right? Hundreds of people and I knew most of them. So I was just going around saying, hey, you don't have to leave. And I'd I'd say that argument where it's like, you can stay here, like, there's no rule against staying right here, you know? We can't have a party, but if you just say you're, I'm just here cruising by myself and I don't, you know, I'm not with them, kind of an idea. You can't go. And I was right.

• 17:58Jocko Willink?

  So when you drink, you become an adamant debater.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  That was one of the, one of the things for sure, but it worked though. So no one left. And more security would come, more security would come, then the cops finally came and was like, you guys all do have to leave. And then everyone laughed and then I got in trouble for that. But yeah, that was, it was like that kind of stuff like I wouldn't, you know, you get into little fights and stuff like that, but it wasn't anything where I wasn't getting arrested.

• 18:25Jocko Willink?

  Are you trying jujitsu yet?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:27Jocko Willink?

  You just knew a little bit.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  I knew from the Hoist Gracie tapes and stuff like that. So actually we would do little tournaments and little matches in the gym, but I did not, I was not trained in jujitsu at this point, no.

• 18:37Jocko Willink?

  And that's how your college, kind of normal college, still drinking is pretty normalized. Are you drinking weekends? Are you drinking during the week at all?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Not during the week.

• 18:45Jocko Willink?

  Just drinking weekends, kind of no big deal. All right. Then you move out to San Diego, right? After you get done with college and you get out here, did you go straight to work in the, in the nightclub industry?

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:57Jocko Willink?

  And so now it's alcohol centric.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  The environment, yes, but I wasn't, I was still only drinking on like days off, kind of a thing, like two days, one day, two days a week.

• 19:07Jocko Willink?

  And that's kind of the, the, where you stayed for a while?

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:11Jocko Willink?

  Was like, okay, did you drink? Hey, you get done working at two o'clock in the morning and like you guys close the front door? And now we're gonna, you know, or is it not really like that?

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Every once in a while, yes. If like, let's say I worked on a Saturday and I don't work on a Sunday or whatever the days are. And then, you know, the, the manager or whatever, because we're all friends in there too. So, you know, we'd close up and then yes, we'd have like one drink, two drinks. You can't just drink all the alcohol in the bar, you know, it's like.

• 19:37Jocko Willink?

  And plus you gotta drive home.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta drive home. You gotta, you know, like, it's not party time and it's late. You're not gonna, you know? I mean, although that probably happened, you know, once or twice or whatever, but generally speaking, no. So you just have one or two and that's it. And again, not every day, just because you're around it every day. Like I'm not drinking every day. Most people not like that. It's just on the days off.

• 19:56Jocko Willink?

  So you're still. Kind of in a place where drinking is sort of normal. You're not really feeling any negative impact. You're having fun.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Not at all.

• 20:05Jocko Willink?

  You're still working out. You're still doing normal stuff. You're not, you haven't been arrested. You haven't gotten a DUI. You don't feel the need to drink every night. So you're in a pretty, what we would say is a non, alcohol's not having a, now look, we could drill down and be like, oh yes, we could pick it apart. But from your perception at the time, alcohol's not having a negative impact on your life.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  That is correct. And here's why, which is like something that like you kind of go in and out of remembering this idea that thinking back then, even in college, where the reason it wasn't a problem is because I had other stuff going on that was more important than hanging out and partying. Or another way to put it is alcohol didn't fit into the more important things that I was doing. Like it didn't fit. It would always mess it up. So like you can't, if you're into your fitness, you know, kind of a thing, being a young, single guy in San Diego, whatever. And I was always into fitness, whatever, but I was kind of into it. So if I'm drinking, right? You can't work out hungover. Like it's not sustainable, you know? And I knew that. And I was really into like the working out process was fun to me. So I was like, frick, if you work out, it makes working out.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Or if you drink, it's not fun to work out the next day. It's not at all. No matter how much you power through it, it's not fun at all. So it was night and day. So it was like, I understood that these other things are way more important than drinking. No matter how fun it gets, these more things, these things in life are way more important. And drinking would just get in the way. So, and that was always in the back of my head, not consciously, but that's how it felt, you know? Like if someone's like, hey, let's go out, party. I'm like, no, I have like workout, I work, you know, all this stuff.

• 21:37Jocko Willink?

  So it's safe to say that you wouldn't be considered like an alcoholic by standard definitions.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Not in the public definition. I mean medically, yeah, because of how much, but.

• 21:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Cause they, they would give you like a thing in the military to judge if you're an alcoholic or not. And, and it would be like six questions, like, do you drink to get drunk? Do you ever blackout? Do you have more than whatever? And it'd be like. It'd be that you'd answer them and then it'd say, if you answered yes to one of these questions, then you are, you could be considered an alcoholic and most of the guys in my platoons would just, every one of them would be a yes. Like, yeah, yeah, of course I blacked, I blacked out, you know, last night, whatever. So it was almost like they judged it to the point where it didn't mean anything.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:27Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:28Jocko Willink?

  It's like, oh, everyone's just an alcoholic. But it sounds to me like you would have actually answered no to most of those questions.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  I would have answered no to most of them, but I will still would have been alcoholic because I would have answered one, yes to at least one of those. And I, I know I do have to answer yes to a lot of the ones that the doctor asks, asks you, you know, you have more than, you know, four drinks or whatever per week.

• 22:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have more than four drinks in one day and I drink more than once a week, you know, kind of a thing.

• 22:54Jocko Willink?

  Four drinks in one hour.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:56Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's like, I'm an idiot.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you're doing cool. I mean, relatively speaking, this is not a, this is not causing negative impacts in your life at this time. Again, could you have been better? Yes. You know, when I look back at my life, and I just think of the financial implications of drinking, it's ridiculous. It's totally ridiculous.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Yes, it is.

• 23:21Jocko Willink?

  Because when I was on the SEAL teams, you know, we spent a lot of money.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:25Jocko Willink?

  On alcohol, a lot of money on alcohol. And if I would have saved that money, invested that money, bought something, you know, a house, whatever, like it would have been just a totally different scenario.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:37Jocko Willink?

  I mean, we'd spend, it was no factor to spend four, 500 bucks a night in the nineties.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:43Jocko Willink?

  You know, in the early nineties, go out and spend 500 bucks.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Oh, like at the bar?

• 23:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:47Jocko Willink?

  Because back in the day, you could only get $300 out of a, out of an ATM.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 23:53Jocko Willink?

  And so I remember I'd have to kind of preload the day before.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:57Jocko Willink?

  To make sure I had like 600 bucks for, for whatever we were going to do. And look, that might include a taxi, it might include some, some burgers or whatever, but most of it, three, 400 of it, booze.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:09Jocko Willink?

  Just like an idiot. So there's that and then time. You know, like, how much time did I spend drinking and did we spend drinking when we could have been getting better at guitar, could have been, you know, learning how to do a skill that would be more valuable. What sucks is, you know, you're in the SEAL teams, there's only these certain skills that you care about.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  That's it. And I think that applies to everybody.

• 24:31Jocko Willink?

  About diving, you're like, just these things that you care about and you can do okay with them. And you're pretty good at them. And actually in your platoon, you're like, dude, you know, we're all the best. And I'm pretty good even with the best. So I'm good.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the exactly the same. My obviously not with shooting and typing, but with the stuff that I cared about. It was drinking basically was like second to all that stuff. So I could fit it in. You know, if you can get five workouts a day or a week, um, get to work on time, do a good job at work, not get arrested and stuff like that. You're like, you're kind of good to go.

• 25:03Jocko Willink?

  Do you feel like you're good to go?

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So then what, what created the where you started to drink a little bit more? Was that when you got injured? Was that you?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah. So this is years later. So you figure.

• 25:16Jocko Willink?

  You lived that lifestyle for five, six years.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Five, six, two thousand one, two, three, four, five. Yeah. Five years ish, you know? Yeah. Just like, I would say I was not an anomaly as far as drinking.

• 25:26Jocko Willink?

  That's why I hate to say it normal because I wish the normal was people didn't drink. But for in comparison with normal humans, you were kind of doing the normal thing, drinking on the weekends, Friday, Saturday.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:41Jocko Willink?

  You know, maybe if there was a Sunday, you know, pool party, you'd kick back with a couple, two, three, five.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly. Right.

• 25:47Jocko Willink?

  Call it good. Okay. So we know where you're at. And then you tear your bicep. Is this the first bicep that you tore?

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. So and fast forward, because I got into jujitsu, which was even more like, hey, no drinking, you know, like kind of. So, and then I was working out twice a day, like doing all this stuff, competing, you know, also drinking. Right. You can't do all that, you know?

• 26:06Jocko Willink?

  Jujitsu slowed my drinking down.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 26:08Jocko Willink?

  Like big time. Like when I went from just being in a platoon, I wasn't doing jujitsu. Cause then what are you doing on the weekends? Like you, we'd go to work out on the weekends, but we'd go to work out at like 10 in the morning. So you drink all night, party, whatever, get home, the bars close at two o'clock in the morning in California. You know, whatever, maybe you takes you till three, fall asleep, you still, you know?

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:30Jocko Willink?

  Wake up at six hours later, it's nine o'clock, go work out. You're totally in the game. You're totally in the parameters of the job and of the life that you want to be living. Now, when you throw. Jiu Jitsu in there. And by the way, you can go, you don't have to wrestle a pull up bar. You don't have to wrestle the deadlift. That thing doesn't fight you back.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:50Jocko Willink?

  So if you're not giving it your all, it doesn't know.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't.

• 26:54Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:55Jocko Willink?

  Like if you, you couldn't get, you know, your sixth rep, your sixth rep, it doesn't care. You just did five and it, you don't have to pay anybody for that.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:04Jocko Willink?

  But on the mats of justice.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:06Jocko Willink?

  There will be justice.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Oh, big time.

• 27:08Jocko Willink?

  Justice is served.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And if you're competing, that matters. You know, where like, if you're like, okay, I'm going to go to training and you're competing or whatever. You got a tournament that month, that week, whatever. And you go train and you have a bad day of training. That is like, oh my gosh, like freaking, should I be competing? I'm not that good. Or what, you know, like just day to day, that's kind of like that constant evaluation of your skill level. So yeah, if you're hung over and you have like multiple bad days of training, that gets in the way of your goals. And it's really obvious.

• 27:34Jocko Willink?

  So did you, had you cut back on drinking during your Jiu Jitsu years?

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Um, now that I think of it, yeah. But it wasn't like a thing where I'd be like, okay, it's just like, hey, if I, if I can't really drink, then I don't drink, you know, kind of a thing. It wasn't like, oh, I really need to cut back. It wasn't that. It was like, I got Jiu Jitsu.

• 27:49Jocko Willink?

  I got Jiu Jitsu tomorrow. I'm not going out tonight.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Right. I don't consider drinking.

• 27:53Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  You know, drinking is like, I have to consider actively, you know, then I'm like, oh yeah, I can drink. Then it kind of a thing.

• 27:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So you get injured.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:00Jocko Willink?

  And now you can't train.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Can't train.

• 28:02Jocko Willink?

  And this is when you're starting to get creative, for lack of a better word, you're making videos. This is kind of the beginning of your video career.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  I think one that injury kind of opened up that, you know, where, cause I can't go train. I can't lift really. I mean, even when I'm lifting, it's like, you, you don't have many fitness goals. You're trying to achieve when you're injured like that. So you're just trying to maintain, trying to do rehab and stuff like that. So in the meantime, what are you going to do? Kind of a thing. And yeah, I was always into that creative stuff, you know? So yeah, I picked up a camera, whatever and started that.

• 28:34Jocko Willink?

  The reason I bring that up is because I know that you have told me, and you used to tell me this, even when you were drinking, you'd be like, Explaining that you would kind of get a pleasure out of sitting there making a video and drinking your, what did you used to drink vodka and soda water or something?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, at that time, I think it was vodka and grapefruit juice.

• 28:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you're drinking vodka and grapefruit juice?

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:01Jocko Willink?

  And but you would just drink, that's what you do, you sit in the computer and you work on your videos?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  All night.

• 29:07Jocko Willink?

  All night long?

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:08Jocko Willink?

  Staying up late?

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Well, here's the thing.

• 29:10Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes you used to come to record the podcast in the morning and you'd been up all night?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Well.

• 29:15Jocko Willink?

  Or a lot of the night?

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Yes, oh yeah, a lot of the night, pretty much all, yeah, all night. Well, if you remember, fast forward a little bit, the first few podcasts, I would drink while we're doing the podcast.

• 29:25Jocko Willink?

  That's insane.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that was just like, like the first drink of the night. But yeah, here's what it is though.

• 29:31Jocko Willink?

  Why did you drink while we were recording the podcast? I didn't even know you were drinking.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was just, it looked like a cup of water because no one has a big cup like that of just full of, I don't know.

• 29:41Jocko Willink?

  So you were drinking, that's interesting, I'm gonna have to go back and listen to those and see what drunk Echo, but you weren't really drunk?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 29:47Jocko Willink?

  You were just buzzing.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  After that one drink, it's like you don't really feel it till the end of it anyway, so it doesn't, it, that was not a, it didn't really change me at all. Even when I stopped drinking, I didn't feel any difference at all. But um, no, and here's the thing, here's, and I'm gonna say this part because it's a trap, because this is part of the trap where, because you know, it's like an addiction, right? So there's good addictions and bad addictions. And of course, both are kind of debatable on certain levels or whatever, but I got addicted to the learning process of all this video and CGI and all this stuff. Because at that time, that was the beginning of the resource flood, you know, like on YouTube and stuff, you can learn anything on YouTube. Like right now, you can learn pretty much anything on YouTube. You can literally learn how to be a lawyer on YouTube right now.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Um, but back then, it was like, that was the beginning of all that. And a big part of it was video stuff and video related stuff.

• 30:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's, of course, for videos to learn, there's gonna be a lot of videos to learn about videos to learn. Because the people that know how to make videos are making videos to learn.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly right. So consider the little like.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Trap, I kind of fell in, it's because I was, I got addicted to that as well. That's all I wanted to do.

• 30:59Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean addicted?

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Like, that's all I wanted to do is like, learn how to do this next effect or this next type of video.

• 31:04Jocko Willink?

  How many hours would you spend doing that?

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Like, eight to 10 hours a day.

• 31:09Jocko Willink?

  Just straight?

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Yes, straight. So a lot, it's like during the day, it wasn't as fun, but during the day, and I'd try to get a workout in of some sort.

• 31:16Jocko Willink?

  Sarah would be like, come on, like, hey, we want to eat dinner. And you'd be like, I can't, I'll be down, just eat without me, type thing.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, not that specifically, but yes, though.

• 31:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing a bunch of other things because I'm just gonna be dorking out over your office.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Correct, that is correct, yeah. I mean, we didn't have kids still like later, so it was just me and her, but um, yeah, oh yeah, fully. Like, I wasn't going places, even if I would go places, I would be like, thinking about it, yeah, fully. I was addicted to that. But then at the drinking, now I was really addicted to the process, you know, because you, you get to kind of.

• 31:50Jocko Willink?

  Makes it like more fun?

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Way more fun, oh yeah. So, um, but like I said, like there's external things that can make the addiction to the drinking way more powerful. Like if you're addicted to like going out, looking for chicks or like, you know, the, the other thing that you're into, if it involves drinking, like it makes it like double, double addictive kind of a thing. Just so happens, mine was a constructive thing, but which ended up being a little double edged sword because now I can rationalize it more, you know?

• 32:19Jocko Willink?

  You used to rationalize, you used to rationalize some videos and some ideas that were just dumb.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that was part of it.

• 32:26Jocko Willink?

  And we had many conversations about that where you'd basically say, you'd have an idea when you were two o'clock in the morning and you were kind of drunk and you'd spend three hours working on, like something that just was, that you shouldn't be working on.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the next day, oh yeah, you know how many like, so we'd laugh about, um.

• 32:44Jocko Willink?

  Started videos?

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Started videos, started companies. So I buy like five URLs, like X Y Z dot com. And the next day, I'm like, I don't know what I was thinking.

• 32:54Jocko Willink?

  CGI graphics dot com.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Trust me, that's a way better idea than the most of them that I have. But yeah, you know, yeah, that was, that was the process right there.

• 33:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so we started this podcast in 2015, believe it or not. And I remember for a while, you kind of like backed off. I remember you, you were saying like, dude, you have. And you kind of backed off of drinking for a bit.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:18Jocko Willink?

  Um, and you kind of went back to maybe the normal like all weekends, whatever, having a pool party, whatever, something like this.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully. And a lot of that is because I had kids. So when you have kids or whatever, you make those adjustments. But it's weird because I'm not competing in jujitsu anymore. And you know, fitness is kind of like, eh, you know, like, I don't care that much about it, even though I did care about it. It was still part of the whole gig, but I didn't care as much because the career part of my life was like, um, was improving, you know? And was kind of establishing itself before the podcast. So as long as I could get the work done, as long as I could get a workout in, and as long as I wasn't, um, failing as a parent. The rest of the, you know, is I fit in the drinking. And just so happens, you can make a lot of adjustments, you know, with these things, especially when you run your own schedule.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  So you can go, okay, I'm gonna drink and then, okay, you know, kind of, and kind of battle through everything else. And still kind of be able to be successful in it. You can pull that off. So yes, I wasn't getting like, it wasn't super heavy, but basically I was maintaining for sure. But I'd go in and out though. Like I would quit for like a month, you know, that kind, I was that guy, which is.

• 34:28Jocko Willink?

  When you quit for a month, why would you quit for a month? Would you be like, dude, I'm doing this too much and I'm not getting stuff done?

• 34:32Speaker 01

  You sort of, it's a feeling that comes, you know?

• 34:34Jocko Willink?

  So was it full like addict mode when you're like, dude, I just really want to have a drink right now? Or you say, you know what? I can quit anytime. See, I just quit for a month. It's no big deal. I'm good.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  That was it. Yeah, exactly right. I never felt like, every once in a while, when I'd wake up, like, actually in the hungover realm, where I drank kind of too much and I'm physically feeling not that good, then I'd be like, man, I really need to stop. But then if it wasn't that, I was like, because I proved to myself every single day that I can power through the day, even if I'm a little bit dragging, you know? It was that kind of scenario.

• 35:04Jocko Willink?

  And then what happened, um, like basically COVID, now we're in lockdown allegedly. And look, your, your and I lockdown was not like a normal person lockdown. I think we were kind of doing what we were doing. Uh, but it did mean the kids are at home. It did mean there's no travel at all.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:23Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 35:24Speaker 01

  No jujitsu either.

• 35:24Jocko Willink?

  You, you and I traveled. Uh, people were doing jujitsu in very small groups. And it was easy to not do jujitsu because, well, you could be like, well, I don't know, or whatever. So.

• 35:39Jocko Willink?

  You started drinking more.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:41Jocko Willink?

  In lockdown.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. So, and here, I think this is important because I think a lot of people are kind of in this zone as well where

• 35:51Speaker 01

  COVID lockdown, yes, I got to the point where I could get good workouts in and still drink every single day and a lot too. But I could still get like PR workouts in, like good workouts.

• 36:01Jocko Willink?

  And that's because you didn't really have much else to do. So you could like literally lay in bed.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:05Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, I'm not going to work out until six o'clock tonight.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 36:08Jocko Willink?

  We all good to go.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, exactly right. I drink a bunch of water, you know, some Gatorade, like freaking, you know, walk around a little bit, do somewhere, you know, I'm just sitting down in front of the computer. You know, hanging with my kids, like kind of playing around, go outside, throw the ball, you know, a little bit, you know, like that kind. It wasn't like have to go to this work and make all these decisions really function like cognitively, you know, it wasn't that.

• 36:29Jocko Willink?

  You basically used your day to recover.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Yes. Yep. Exactly, exactly right. And, you know, it kind of helped that I had a real tolerant wife or have a real tolerant wife. So she would just be like, oh, well, you were up late working because technically I was. So it's like, yeah, it's just his.

• 36:46Jocko Willink?

  You were making a CGI video of a freaking.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:50Jocko Willink?

  Of a flying chicken.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, but like I said, it was kind of like my work was delivering, you know, where it, there was no metric that you could say, hey, you're failing at work. In fact, it was the opposite. It was like, oh yeah, you're, you know, things are growing.

• 37:05Jocko Willink?

  Now we had the podcast.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  At the podcast, we're developing new things and they were landing and, you know, it was like, like I said, there was no metric to say that, that I was regressing, you know, in, in life.

• 37:15Jocko Willink?

  All, all arrows were pointed in a positive direction.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  We'll say most, yeah.

• 37:19Jocko Willink?

  Most, most arrows.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you can kind of tolerate it, you know?

• 37:23Jocko Willink?

  So were there any hints in there where you were starting to think like, maybe I should not be drinking so much?

• 37:33Speaker 01

  No, there was not. Not noticeably like given, I don't know, maybe like a general standard. You know, where like I said, like, bro, I don't go out and party. I don't go out and get into fights. I don't do illegal stuff. I don't go to jail, I'm not going to jail. I never had a DUI, nothing like that. So, no, I don't abuse anyone. I don't even get angry or nothing like that. I get even more social when I drink, you know, around people. And I wasn't really drinking around people that much, you know? So it was like freaking whatever, yeah. Nothing tangible will say that. I mean, you could go look into your brain and be like, hey, am I reaching my potential? Or whatever, then yeah, but that's different.

• 38:12Jocko Willink?

  It's funny how we can take our potential and just say whatever about it.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  I know.

• 38:16Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:17Jocko Willink?

  It's like you can take your potential or whatever. As if that's not an awesome thing to go after. As if your potential as a human being is just a whatever.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 38:28Jocko Willink?

  It's a sad, a sad state of affairs. At a certain point, though, I know some things kind of happened that, that you did think about. Like you had some snowboard trip you went on with, with Cairo. Where, what happened with that?

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was, I think throughout the drinking process, there was something in my head saying like, this isn't good, like literally this is bad. I don't know, we, we're not at the maturity level yet to admit exactly why, but we know it's there lingering, you know?

• 39:00Jocko Willink?

  And you're saying you?

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Me, in myself, in my own brain. So I would do these little tactics where I'd be like, hey, freaking, I'd pour my drinks out like for the night. You know, I'd pour them out like beforehand. Be like, okay, there's like, you know, I know how much vodka goes in one big drink. So I pour them out. So I'm like, okay, I got four drinks tonight or five drinks tonight or whatever. And then I take the bottle and I'd be like, Sarah, freaking put this, hide this somewhere, you know? So I don't, because you know, after a few drinks, that plan goes right out the window. You just want that other one because you want the fun to keep going. So I knew that and so I got to down to the system, right? And sometimes it wouldn't work because before the night would end for some, I don't know, for whatever reason, I'd go like. I don't know, go in the bathroom or something and I'd see, oh, that's where she hid the bottle.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  So I'd know it, you know, like that, it was, it was real messed up. It was like behind the scenes.

• 39:49Jocko Willink?

  That says red, that's like a big giant red danger flag to me. If I'm, if I'm asking my wife to hide the liquor from me so that I can't drink it later when I'm a little bit drunk.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:00Jocko Willink?

  But you didn't, you didn't, you actually registered that as if you were squared away.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Good system. Exactly right. It wasn't perfect because I'd defeat the system sometimes. But the point there isn't like, you know, whether I felt good or bad about it or nothing like that. It was more that it was obvious that something was wrong, that I was fighting against. Even though like I felt or I could rationalize to myself that it was working. It was obvious that something like was wrong and, and I could feel it, you know?

• 40:27Jocko Willink?

  So what happened with the snowboard trip?

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Um, you know, one of these moments of clarity, I'm like,

• 40:34Speaker 01

  I realized I was one of these people who had all these like, for lack of a better term, dreams and aspirations and plans. And one day I want to do this and I'd really like to get into this. Every time I see someone snowboarding, for example, I'd be like, oh, man, I've always wanted to snowboard. Like for years and years and grew up on quiet, there's no snow on quiet, by the way. So I'm like, oh, man, I would really love to do that. And then I'm like, wait a second, I could totally do that like tomorrow, right? You know, like at this moment, but then why don't I? And it never really happened. Then one time just, it was just one of those happenstance moments of clarity that I'd be like, not like, fuck it. I'm going to make the plan, tell Sarah and you know, Sarah grew up in the snow and she loves that kind of stuff. And she was like saying, so anyway, I made the plan. I was like, hey, let's go snowboarding right here. And Sarah signed right on because she grew up in the snow. She loves it.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  She was freaking super happy. She was even saying, frick it, I've been waiting for you to get out of your routine to start doing more stuff like this or whatever. I was like, okay, cool. And then we did it and we went up there. It was like the best, man. Everyone freaking loved it. I freaking, I loved it. I liked it even better than I thought I would. So it's like one of those things and it was just yet another hint that, bro, there's a world out here that like, Is like limitless that you can, things you can do, things you can learn, things you can, you know, have the potential of like embracing and succeeding in, you know, on all these different levels and it's all out there waiting. But that drinking, which that it always came back down to the drinking, because I can work all, you know, I can work a lot and still do that stuff because I'll have the energy to do it. But drinking, you spend the whole, just like I

• 42:03Speaker 01

  said, you spend the whole day recovering essentially. So you're like, if you're not in the mood to do something, but that feeling goes way up, way up when you're dragging from drinking.

• 42:13Jocko Willink?

  And for you, that was even true with that jujitsu.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was like a struggle to go, you know, where I'd be dragging myself to.

• 42:20Jocko Willink?

  And the other day you came and you were telling me afterwards, like, bro, jujitsu's so fun.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  So fun. Oh, yeah. Like, it's like, you know, back in the day where I think we're all kind of like this, who've been into jujitsu for a long time. Back in the day, it's like you couldn't wait to go to jujitsu. Even like when you, when you wake up, like in my case, I'd wake up in the morning and I'd be like, shit, how long is it till I get to go to jujitsu? Just can't wait. Everything about it's fun. Doesn't matter if you get tapped or don't tap, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. It's just like, just being there and doing it was fun. Everything from the moment you step. So I'd always think about it. But bro, when you're dragging, bro, that's kind of the last thing I want to do right now is go get freaking choked by Jocko and stuff and freaking get claustrophobia because he won't let me up.

• 43:06Jocko Willink?

  So then the window starts to close and you're like, well, I woke up a little bit late and I gotta, you know, I do want to do this and I gotta take out the garbage and plus I was supposed to, you know, probably not the best day for me to go.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, fully. And if I had been truly, that would happen so much that after a while, I kind of like forgot about it in this sense where you forget about jujitsu because it's just not in the schedule. And then every once in a while it'll click. They'll be, oh, wait, I could go to jujitsu right now. Then I'd like drag myself and go. So I'd hardly ever go. I'd go like once a week, once every two, three weeks, you know, like that kind.

• 43:38Jocko Willink?

  There was a competition of jujitsu this weekend.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, hell, yeah. World League.

• 43:43Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, World League. Good tournaments. Run super smooth. All good. Well, my daughter competed and she, she was competing. She did gi and nogi and she was competing with the gi. And she's in like a tough match, you know, these are, you know, it's tough matches. And I see, you know, some transition and I look at her, she's smiling like, like, like not a huge like over the top smile, but just like a smile as if she's like watching, you know, the office or just like a nice little smile. Like she's just having a good time in the middle of a little bit of a, you know, a hardcore match, you know, people try, people are trying to break your arm. People are trying to choke you and like she like

• 44:26Jocko Willink?

  maneuvers around. She's getting the girls back and like I look at her face and she's smiling like this, like a, I'm so happy. And I was like, yeah, that's the jujitsu right there.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:34Jocko Willink?

  And I zoomed in because I was videoing, I zoomed in. I try, I think I tried. I haven't reviewed the tape yet, but I think I caught like she's putting a choke on someone and she's smiling just to herself. You know what I mean? She wasn't looking around. She's just herself in her own world. At that moment in time, there was peace and happiness in her world.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  That's real.

• 44:55Jocko Willink?

  And that's a real thing.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Fuck, bro. That's like one of the things too that what drinking in this case, like what drinking just robs from you because there's that like that idea, that little thing, that smile, that freaking happiness, you know? You'd be surprised how many things in life like that that exists in and bro, I'm telling you'll miss. I don't know. I did. I totally would miss a bunch of that stuff, you know? Cause I'm like focusing on recovering and like, you know, you're dragging, you're not in the mood for anything.

• 45:24Jocko Willink?

  Things that are supposed to give you the internal smile aren't doing it.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Not doing it, not doing it. And you get used to it. So it's like a kind of a sad state of affairs, you know?

• 45:33Jocko Willink?

  So now you're just not smiling very as much.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Not as much at all.

• 45:37Jocko Willink?

  What about, what about, did you lose the, let's say like you're making videos and you're still into that and you, did you lose any of that?

• 45:45Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:46Jocko Willink?

  You still like that? You still got an internal smile?

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yes, sir.

• 45:50Jocko Willink?

  Did you feel like the, because you know, you'll hear a rock and roll guy say like, well, you know, we wrote this song. We were high. We were drunk. That's kind of like helped us make this wild stuff. I heard Joe Rogan will say like, you know, these dudes were high as hell, you know?

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:05Jocko Willink?

  Uh, did you, do you, how do you feel about your creativity with alcohol?

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. I would say that that's a real thing. In my experience, I felt like that was a real thing for sure. Cause like,

• 46:18Speaker 01

  To to think back and analyze it, it was like from an idea standpoint, all my idea, you know, and this goes for everyone, by the way, for the most part, where when you drink, all your ideas seem good, not just the good ones.

• 46:28Jocko Willink?

  That's what I remember you telling me is like, you tell me like, when you're drinking, you think all your ideas are good, which is, which is not good, because then you don't prioritize and execute, you don't prioritize, you just think you just had nineteen good ideas last night, and they're all stupid, well, eighteen of them are dumb.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Well, think about it, this makes sense, and it's true, because when video, who cares about making videos or making creative stuff, just say in life, when you go out drinking, all ideas are good, bro, let's all take off our clothes, go to the freaking pier in PB and jump off in the middle of the night, that seems like a good idea when you're drinking, and I know this because that's literally what I did, this is a long time ago, but this is like one of the things you do, and then when you think back, you're like, brother, that was a wasn't a good idea at all, but literally in the moment, it seems like a good idea, bro, let's get into a fight with that guy, I don't like how he looks, I don't like how he like, looked at me, I don't know if he looked at me or not, but I just don't like it, let's get in a fight, that seems like a good idea, and then you'll just execute, you know, it's like that's everybody, everyone thinks an idea, most ideas seem

• 47:30Speaker 01

  good, but it can kind of help you when you're formulating creative ideas, so you're just like, everything is included, so you're just like doing it and following through, and it's part of the learning process as well, so it's like, there's always a big payoff for me, for that, so it would help me, I think, I mean, results wise, I don't, I don't know, but process wise, it did, yeah, it made work way more fun.

• 47:52Jocko Willink?

  So I guess there's something that Kerry said to you, that left an impact, what did K-Dog say to you?

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were at sushi, and I was drinking sake too, by the way, and it still made an impact, where he was explaining to me one of the-

• 48:05Jocko Willink?

  Kerry doesn't drink anymore.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, at all. So and I was asking, oh, yeah, you know, why not or whatever? And I wasn't trying to get him to drink at all. I was just wondering like, what's that? You know, what's the process? Keep in mind like nowadays too, it's we slowly hear more and more people kind of start saying like, hey, yeah, I haven't drank for like two years. It was just getting in the way, you know? And even you, what you would say, but I just thought you were just different. But even you saying something very specific, which really landed on me after I stopped drinking, was you just said simply, drinking doesn't help you. That's all you said. So I was like, oh damn. But before that, Carrie said, oh, well, he's like, in a nutshell, the reason I quit drinking is because on one hand, if I drink, my life goes to shit every single time.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  And on this, on this end, when I don't drink, my life literally gets better and better and better and doesn't stop. And I was like, oh damn, that's like a good, even if that's not factually true for anyone, like that's literally how it works most of the time.

• 49:01Jocko Willink?

  I mean,

• 49:04Jocko Willink?

  it'd be hard pressed to find someone that their life gets better when they're drinking and gets worse when they're sober.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Exactly, right.

• 49:10Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you could take some kind of a short term tactical view that like, oh, I'm gonna have more fun at this party. But if you want to talk about, yeah, at your life, broads, broads, broadly speaking, there's no one that's on the list of like, my life is better when I'm drinking alcohol.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, or ever since I picked up drinking more, eh, my life has improved, you know, by so much.

• 49:30Jocko Willink?

  So he says that to you while you're drinking, drinking. While you're kicking back sake and sushi.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, and it was, it was a fun time and that, that did add like another little inkling of an ingredient to be like, cause like I said, like I wasn't hundred percent okay with it. But that, you know, I did, I wasn't, I wasn't not okay enough with it to actually stop. So, but that added like another little thing that really stuck with me. That pushed, nudged me in the direction of like, okay, at some point this is gonna have to stop.

• 50:05Jocko Willink?

  So at what point did you reach the, the tipping point? What was it? Or what, what were the final kind of like items?

• 50:12Speaker 01

  It was weird. It was almost like, um, like a super anticlimactic ending to a movie or something like that. It wasn't like, oh, yeah. You know how like some people they'll be like, and this is what I do too. I'd be like, yeah, I'm gonna stop drinking on Monday and it's like a Friday, you know? So I'm gonna have one last, you know, deal and then on Monday it happened. Then maybe it works, maybe it doesn't and it for sure doesn't stick, right? But mine was like, it was like three or four days before camp and

• 50:38Jocko Willink?

  The jujitsu camp?

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Jujitsu camp, yeah. And, you know, I, for whatever reason, just didn't drink before, like a few days before that, just by happenstance. And then I went to camp and then I think in camp, like things gel because you're just in the mountains and a lot of times like we're just, you're just by yourself in the cabin, you know? And so like all the information and you know, that's kind of rolling around in your life, kind of like gels in your brain, I think. I think that was it, that's it.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  And you kind of do the math and you kind of like search your feelings and all this stuff and you kind of realize, wait a second, drinking even short term has not been really serving me in a way. And then if I could ever find it in myself to like not drink for a week, it's like, why, I feel so much better just in, in general. And like, you kind of consider, sure, I did some cool things like outside of my normal routine and, you know, developed cool traditions and, you know, you know, snowboarding was just one of them. And that is cool, but imagine how many other things could like materialize if I just freaking finally just turn my back on drinking, you know?

• 51:45Jocko Willink?

  What about that incident that we had? Um, we had an incident at camp with you, me, my daughter Hannah, a couple of other people, and there was a dude at camp. And we're all just sitting around for mid wrath or whatever, like the, the, the post evening jujitsu session.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:10Jocko Willink?

  They bring out food and you can kind of go get, you know, make a, make a sandwich, grab a milk was kind of the deal.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:17Jocko Willink?

  So we're all in there doing that and you're kind of tired, you know, but you just got done training, but you're not, you know, you gonna go get some food.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  You don't want to go catabolic.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 52:25Jocko Willink?

  So when they're eating and

• 52:29Jocko Willink?

  they made announcement like, hey, if you guys want some beer, there's some beer in there, you know, et cetera. And not all, I mean, we were all just got done training. We're not feeling like drinking. And there was a dude at the table with us, like kind of an older dude, probably like a little bit older than me. And he stands up and like walks over to cooler.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Well, before that, that we were talking with him beforehand and he's a successful dude like works in, I think Silicon Valley or something like that. Started some company with an engineer or something like that. Like, yeah.

• 52:56Jocko Willink?

  Like a successful dude that's, you know, at camp doing jujitsu on the path. I mean, it's like all good. Right? And then he, we know, we don't think anything of it, you know, there's like an announcement, hey, there's beer in the coolers. If you guys want to grab a beer, cool. He kind of just hears that and I don't think anything of it. He stands up, goes over, grabs a beer, you know, all good. Comes back. And I remember he, he kind of like put the beer on the table. And he reached to open it and he goes, I haven't had a drink in 20 years.

• 53:31Jocko Willink?

  And I look at him and I just go, hey, were you an alcoholic? And he got a look on his face like he just got busted kind of. And also saved. At the same time. And he goes. Yeah, I was. And I was like, what the fuck are you doing, bro? I was like, give me that shit. And I took it away from him. And I was like, go get a milk. And that you ain't drinking. This is horrible. Boom. So he was kind of like, like I said, he looked like he got busted and then he looked like he got saved. He walked over and he grabbed the milk. And I remember us walking back with, with my daughter.

• 54:14Jocko Willink?

  And cause then, you know, we all sat there for a little while and at the, you know, when we left, I was like, hey, bro, you know, this is do not drink, like do not come to this freaking camp and derail your life. And he's like, no, I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know what happened. He was a little bit like, he almost got possessed in that moment. The weird thing was, it wasn't like the possession was random because I could understand if, you know, we were all like hooting and hollering and listening to freaking Brazilian dance music or whatever. We're all in there, you know, pumping our fists in the air and, and having drinks, but we weren't. We're sitting around literally talking about jujitsu, getting ready to go to bed. So it was weird that he got caught up in that moment.

• 54:57Jocko Willink?

  So I'm driving back or driving north, I think I was driving one of those little golf clubs back with my daughter and she just looked at me and she said, there's nothing good about alcohol, is there? And I said, no, there's not. It's horrible.

• 55:12Jocko Willink?

  The good news is, I talked to him like following, like there was three days left at camp. Every day I talked to him, you know, and I just said, hey, man, how are you doing? He's like, dude, I don't know what happened. I'm totally good to go. Like, that was weird. I hadn't even had to, what, this is the thing that I remember. He goes, he goes, I remember, he goes, when I picked up that beer, we, I got to the table, he goes, I put my, my fingernail got underneath the, whatever that thing's called.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:35Jocko Willink?

  The opener. He said, my finger got underneath that opener and I started to feel like, oh, it's back. Cause you can imagine like a junkie, like how, how that feeling, like when you get that, you're like, oh, it's almost here. It's almost here. And he got that feeling. He remembered that feeling for 20 years. Got his fingernail and he's like, oh, I get to go back. I get to have it. And then boom, no. The fuck are you doing? And he was danger close.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:04Jocko Willink?

  Danger close from going down. God knows what happens. That was a incredible moment to see because you can see how, two things. Number one, you can see how easy it is. And number two, you can see how much impactful it is to have someone around you that's going to be like looking out for you a little bit.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:23Jocko Willink?

  Or for someone to step in and help you get through tough situations.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:27Jocko Willink?

  So that to me was a, was a, was definitely a good learning lesson.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 56:35Jocko Willink?

  Uh, to be watching out for other people and also the level after 20 years, you can get sucked back in and think you're okay. I think it's going to be all good. It's not.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:44Jocko Willink?

  It's not. It's not going to be okay. It's not going to be good. It's not going to bring you anything.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  That was, um, that impacted me too, by the way. Cause I wasn't, I didn't really like make any kind of decision, especially at that point where it, I was just doing camp. Like I don't really drink in camp. I think, um, maybe a few years ago, I had like a, you know how they have wine sometimes? I had like had a drink. I don't drink in camp for whatever reason. Um, and then. Experiencing that right there was like, really thinking back, it was like a good situation where I was detached from it and I could see the two, you know, the two sides of it kind of playing themselves out, right? And then you're, you were like the, you know, the, the good guy and, and he was like the victim and the alcohol was kind of like the bad guy, the little devil, you know? And you were there, you know, the little fight just ensued right in front of my face.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  And this guy, bro, he almost went down straight up because it's not like you saw the whole thing happening. We didn't know anything.

• 57:42Jocko Willink?

  Actually, that's what someone else, someone else that was at the table with us said to me, like, I never would have asked that.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Me, I said that.

• 57:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay, it was you.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're like, I never would ask that because to me, if someone, if someone stopped drinking, there's a good chance they were an alcoholic. And if they say, I haven't drank for 20 years, that's a, that's like letting you know, there, there's an issue.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:07Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I, when I stopped drinking, I stopped drinking kind of like you, like I just kind of stopped drinking.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:12Jocko Willink?

  Um, I didn't have any reason to drink anymore. I just, so it wasn't like an epiphany moment for me that was like, I didn't wake up, you know, in the freaking gutter with my wallet gone and my wife left me and my kids, whatever. No, I, I just retired from the Navy, um, out of the Navy, like, oh yeah, I used to drink with those guys. Those guys aren't really here anymore. Uh, oh, I saw one of them last weekend. Oh, cool. We had a drink, but I still gotta go home. I got work to do. I got this, I got that. And then it just eventually, over a pretty short period of time, I was like, yeah, this is stupid.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:47Jocko Willink?

  Um, I don't need to be doing this. And then that was that. So you had these things. So you get to camp, you don't drink at camp. Did you decide at camp, you know what I'm done? Was that at camp?

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. But it was like a light, it wasn't like a, you know, draw the line in the sand kind of a decision. It was just like, bro, I think, I think I'm kind of done. And it's got, you know how you can kind of have these little.

• 59:12Jocko Willink?

  Scares me about that is there's a lot of people, the description that you just gave and the description that I just gave, I don't think that's normal. I think if you have a problem with alcohol, you have to draw a line in the sand.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  That's what I.

• 59:23Jocko Willink?

  I actually don't think I have a problem with alcohol. Matter of fact, I know I don't, like I, I have no desire to drink. When I stopped drinking, I had no desire to drink. So I can't say that I would have a problem, but I think in. I think people that have a problem, they have to draw a line in the sand. And I know this because I've known alcoholics.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too.

• 59:41Jocko Willink?

  The one beer, oh, just, no, I'm just gonna have a few tonight. That's not a thing. It's not a thing if you're an alcoholic. It's not at all.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Yep. And I do believe that everything is a spectrum.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  But I think that being an alcoholic, this is what it seems like, that, that, that's a spectrum as well. But the really, the, the way that to ensure that it's going to be effective, that you can win the fight against that kind of stuff is to draw the line in the sand, for sure. That, as far as like reliably win, that's, that's the way to do it a hundred percent.

• 1:00:17Jocko Willink?

  What's weird is if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking like, well,

• 1:00:23Jocko Willink?

  I don't really think I would need to quit drinking because I don't think I have a problem with it. So therefore I'd need, I'll just keep drinking. It's sort of like that's just indicated to you that you actually really want to keep drinking. You probably have a problem.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:34Jocko Willink?

  If you're like, yeah, you know what? I don't, I don't think I should drink either. You probably don't have a real problem. And you stop. If you're listening, it's like, yeah, well, I don't really, uh, wouldn't need to draw a line in this. If you're making, if you're already making excuses hearing this. And by the way, if I sound like I'm trying to get you not to drink, if you're listening to this, I am, I don't want you to drink. I know it doesn't help you. I know it only will hurt you. I know it brings no benefit in your life. I know it hurts your health. It hurts your mindset. It hurts your workout tomorrow. It hurts your interaction with your family. It just doesn't do anything good for you. It doesn't help, as I said to you a few years ago. Drinking does not help you in any way. So I'm recommending line in the sand.

• 1:01:19Jocko Willink?

  Yep. I'm gonna stop drinking. Right when? Right now. If you have to give yourself this weekend, that's definitely telling you that you should stop right now.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's

• 1:01:27Jocko Willink?

  Right now.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  That is assorted itself out. That method, it sorted itself out to be a failure.

• 1:01:34Jocko Willink?

  And I've always threatened to do like a, a podcast on the straight edge. I think we might've done an underground a little bit on straight edge. But just the straight edge scene when I was growing up and what that was like, the, there's a, a whole genre of hardcore music. That's all straight edge. Don't drink, don't smoke, don't do drugs. And It look it it spun off in all kinds of wild directions. Uh, but the the core of it, very positive, in my opinion. Definitely kept me out of that kind of stuff when I was younger. And I know it's kept a lot of kids and brought a lot of people onto the more positive side side of things.

• 1:02:17Jocko Willink?

  But it's but it's a small, small genre. Most music is telling you to drink, telling you to party.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:02:24Jocko Willink?

  That's what most music is doing. It's terrible.

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  Yep. You do notice a lot of that stuff too, like how much, and this sounds like obvious and it's nothing new, but like how much alcohol is part of like our culture and even the good parts of our culture, right? So you you know, we just traveled recently, so I'm looking at all the cool advertisements on the electric billboards and like all this stuff. And one of them is like, oh, finally get a break, you know, get away, whatever, go to this hotel. Right. And they show all the cool fun family stuff at this hotel and the kids running around like real wholesome stuff. Kind of like, oh, that man, that seems kind of nice. And a few of the clips are like, you know, the parents cheersing their wine and their like tropical drinks.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  And they didn't say, hey, there is alcohol in here, but it's like, obviously alcohol, like that's what they're selling, you know?

• 1:03:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  I mean, the wine was obviously alcohol too, but um, but it's like just, and it's just it, that's just how, that's just part of it. You know, it's not like a big deal and they're not saying, hey, wink, wink, you can, if you really want to, you can have some of this stuff. If you really want to go hard, they're not saying that. They're saying, hey, this is part of the family wholesome, uh, refreshing, recuperative experience of our awesome hotel.

• 1:03:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Like, oh, yeah, by the way, alcohol too, by the way, in that one. So hell, yeah, come get it, you know, kind of a thing. And it and to be honest, it seemed kind of nice. The little ad was like, oh, that looks kind of nice, but I was like, huh, interesting.

• 1:03:48Jocko Willink?

  They just lit it in there.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  Lit it right in there.

• 1:03:51Jocko Willink?

  All right, so you quit drinking. What do you notice when you quit drinking? Like what? How long did it take you to start feeling the effects of like, I'm not drinking anymore? Now I'm not drinking, it's been. This many days.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  It will immediately. So, and I've always known this and asked like Greg Jane, right? Greg McIntyre, um, I always talked to him about drinking, even when I was drinking. We just talk about it, the effects of whatever. If I go like one day without drinking, the next day not feeling that drag, bro, I feel like Superman. I was like, bro, no wonder guys can work so hard. They feel like freaking they have endless energy, you know? Cause I'm so used to dragging, you know? Um, and but for whatever reason, it just didn't, you know, take hold of whatever. Um, but so of course I feel that like you just have, and you're not dragging. And when you're used to dragging, like for just literally like a decade of dragging pretty much every day is the norm.

• 1:04:41Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  And now you're not dragging. You're like, holy cow. It's like you shed like a big ball and chain is just cut loose, you know?

• 1:04:47Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say you've been wearing a weight vest, 20 pound weight vest for the last freaking 10 years.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  Mentally, that's literally what it feels like. And then it's weird because that feeling just gets stronger and stronger as like the weeks go on. So you're like, holy cow. Like I didn't know, like, it was weird. Like I always had this happen where I'd be dragging and then, and if you drink it enough, I, given the kind of the research or whatever I've done, it's like, it kind of get, puts you into a literal depression because you're like, your chemical balance or whatever kind of gets imbalanced in that way because it's like this cycle and all this stuff. So I'd feel that not super strong, but I'd feel it every once in a while where I'd be like, what is this dumb? Like life is kind of like pointless in a way. Not, it's not suicidal or nothing like this, but it's just kind of like, all right, you work and you

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  do this and it's like, who, I mean, but why does that even matter? You know, you go down this weird spiral. It's not super powerful, but it's there. And I'm like, I, yeah, I don't know. Whatever. All right. Cool. Whatever. And then I'd go.

• 1:05:45Jocko Willink?

  Crack open a drink.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  No, no, no, not at all. I'd go work out and I'd do a hard workout. Cause like I said, I got into a point, to the point where I could totally do a sick workout being hung over. I go do a workout and after maybe the first two, three like hard sets boom this rush of like oh my gosh life has so much more meaning now and I don't know why I know it's not because I worked out and life is freaking you know life is lifting I'm not saying that but it was just this more like this and it kinda is but it was just more of a feeling you know and I was like fuck there's some chemical shit going on in my head that that is causing me to feel like this and this working out hard like this is kinda helping me balance it out

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  so that feeling that the workout at that moment because it's happened a few times that feeling just like is like constantly there

• 1:06:37Jocko Willink?

  the norm

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  yeah so it's like every once in a while I'll be doing some normal everyday shit and then I'll be like why am I having so like why am I enjoying this so much right now and then usually I'll say it because Sarah knows that I stopped drinking or you even a lot of times I'll be like like how I said isn't jujitsu just so freaking awesome or whatever like that one I'm having those feelings like I'll express it to anyone around who can appreciate it I'll be like you know how freaking cool it is to not drink or what you know I'll say that sometimes is because of that reason because you start like appreciating everything more and I did anyway and and as the weeks kinda went on it just got more powerful more and more powerful you know so

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  that that was it that was the experience so now all these ideas that you're like hey I need to do more of this or I need to start this or whatever you're just freaking it's time let's do it let's start it and then you just do it you know you follow through with way more stuff

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  so I'd say yeah that's that's the impact for sure

• 1:07:36Jocko Willink?

  so you did you did you tell Sarah your wife did you say hey I quit drinking or did you like she said oh do you wanna me to make you a drink and you were like no I'm good and the next day she said do you want me to make you drink he said no I'm good I think I I don't really need it you know like

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  I didn't like tell her and I'm trying to remember because again, it wasn't like this big deal. I was just because and let's face it like I've probably said, I think I'm done with drinking a bunch of times before.

• 1:08:07Jocko Willink?

  So you felt like maybe you didn't need to say it again.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Exactly right. That's what I would have felt pointless. Yes. To say it like, hey, but I did end up saying it. I said, but I said, hey, I think I'm kind of done with drinking. I just said that and she was like, yeah, me too. You know, she'll say that.

• 1:08:22Jocko Willink?

  So what? She just got on board?

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  Well, I think in the moment she thought, okay, we're going to try this again, you know, kind of a thing. And then, um, and then I didn't drink and she was like, after a few days, she was like, oh, shoot, I'm, I think I'm with you, you know, kind of a thing. And then.

• 1:08:38Jocko Willink?

  Cause now she's feeling good.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. She, you know, I think most of us are like this where it's like, oh shit, that's what we're doing. Okay. I can sign on to that, you know, like unless it's like some bad decision, you know? So it was kind of that going on. And then, yeah, so that was, that was it.

• 1:08:52Jocko Willink?

  Did, did you take the alcohol out of your house?

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  I didn't. I didn't. No.

• 1:08:57Jocko Willink?

  Do you feel like temptation?

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  No. So, no.

• 1:09:01Jocko Willink?

  What's your favorite alcoholic beverage?

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Vodka soda with lemon.

• 1:09:05Jocko Willink?

  Vodka soda with lemon and like, do you have that? Do you have that in your house right now?

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Um, I, I don't, I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:09:14Jocko Willink?

  Do you have any desire where you're kind of like feeling like it?

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Um, no. So I'm trying to think of it. Have I ever had that since every once in a while here's it's, this is weird. Anytime I hear like an old song that I used to like a lot.

• 1:09:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  Because really, when I really analyze my feelings, it's more like, um, the benefit that alcohol did bring in the short term was like, I could feel more like I could feel like, oh, I feel like, you know, if you really get into a certain song, you know, the feeling. It was like, oh man, if I had a beer to help enjoy this, it was more of that. So I'll be like, oh man, if I had to like, to really immerse myself in the feeling, but it's such a fleeting feeling, you know? It's like, once the song ends, you're like, freaking whatever. That was a dumb thought kind of thing. So it was that. Uh, I will say this though, and, and this is kind of important too, where it's nothing new, but it's, this is really, I am convinced this is a massive, massive deal where, okay. So when I go out to sushi, I always drink sake.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  So I went out to sushi a few times once with my son, no sake for probably the first time in a long time. It was just me and him, though he's seven. No sake. So I was like, oh freaking it was way better with him. Like way better than than my memories of going and drinking sake. I don't think I've ever gone with just him before, but nonetheless, I remember thinking, man, this is better. I'm like talking to him more, way more into this. Now, a few weeks later, I went with my cousin. Um, and I hadn't seen him for a while or whatever. And I went out to sushi and it was cool, really cool to see him, but it was not fun. It wasn't as fun as like.

• 1:10:47Jocko Willink?

  If you would have been drinking.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, good to see you cuz. Yes, exactly right. And I think it was mainly because, you know, it's your cousin. No, he doesn't drink at all either.

• 1:10:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it was good overall. Of course, it was a great time catching up with him, all this stuff, but put it this way, man, it probably had a lot to do with my expectation because him, he's, you know, he's a professional comedian. You know, so I'm thinking festive, festive, party time. See what I'm saying? But it was a little, it was a lot more mature. That's what it was. It was a mature interaction, you know, which was cool. But I think it comparing it to my expectation, it was like, oh shoot, it wasn't the party that I almost, I guess in a way, expected, you know? So there was that.

• 1:11:29Jocko Willink?

  So what's the big deal? You said this is a big deal.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  Oh, because when you go in certain environments, like if, put it this way, he doesn't drink. And he was with his girlfriend as well. And, and she said, oh yeah, I drink, but not really. So it's not like she's gonna start drinking when I just, when we were talking about not drinking. So none of us were drinking. So if he were to, in that moment, if he were to be like, oh yeah, like, yeah, I drink freaking, let's get some sake, come on, like, all good, not in a pressure way. I'm just saying like, if you were to offer that up as an option. And I, and I was like, oh yeah, fuck yeah, I started drinking sake, whatever, I wouldn't have been surprised at all because of that, you know, thing and. There's all these rationalizations that you can go through, like in your head.

• 1:12:12Jocko Willink?

  Wait, if he just said that, you think you would have been drinking?

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:15Jocko Willink?

  That night?

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:16Jocko Willink?

  Even though you quit drinking?

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I, I didn't, it's weird because it doesn't feel like I like drew a line in the sand. I just, I just came to the realization, drinking doesn't help you, you know, kind of a thing.

• 1:12:27Jocko Willink?

  Seems a little bit sketchy.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  Yes, it does. Yeah.

• 1:12:30Jocko Willink?

  Seems a little bit, seems like that might be, it might be an indicator that a line in the sand would be better.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  That's why I think a line in the sand is better. It'll be a lot more reliable.

• 1:12:40Jocko Willink?

  So now, hopefully after this podcast comes out, people will just be like, oh yeah, I could quit drinking. And hopefully it won't be like, oh, let's see if we can get him to drink.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, put it this way, if someone tried to get me to drink, then now it's like another thing. Now it's a challenge, me and you, and I'm winning, I feel like it anyway. That's an additional.

• 1:12:56Jocko Willink?

  Unless I put on that special song and I offer you some sushi and sake, and then I start vibing out.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  The best way, the best way to do it is be a person who doesn't know any better and want to drink some sake with me. Then, yes, I will.

• 1:13:10Jocko Willink?

  You're giving people the game plan.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, but you know, yeah, if you can pull it off, whatever.

• 1:13:15Jocko Willink?

  Now you can be suspect of people that act like they don't really know you and just act like they're trying to have fun and actually just offer you some sushi.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be to on purpose pull that off. I don't know, it doesn't seem like it'd work, but, um, but yeah, that's why I say it's a big deal. Because you can go in a certain, specific environment and relapse real easy. Especially if you can justify it like that.

• 1:13:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, like the Alcoholics Anonymous thing is like people, places and things. You can't see the people you used to see. You can't go to the places you used to go and you can't do the things you used to do. If they have to do with alcohol. So you can't go see your old, you know, buddy Fred, who likes to get liquored up. You can't go to the bowling alley, because that's where I used to drink and get liquored up. So that's, oh, and then I can't bowl. Cause that's the thing that I do or fish or whatever thing I'm doing and drinking. So.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  You know why that is the, the, the thing, what is it? What would bowling be?

• 1:14:11Jocko Willink?

  People places.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  People place thing. So if you go.

• 1:14:13Jocko Willink?

  Thing that I do.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Okay. So let's go places, right? So if you're used to going bowling, in my case, going to sushi with friends and freaking talking. So a lot of times.

• 1:14:21Jocko Willink?

  Habit.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like, it's like habit. It's a habitual thing, but like there's more to it. It feels like there's, it's, there's something a lot more compelling. Cause habit seems like something where you should just snap your brain and get out of the habit. Like, I feel like that's kind of the thing, even though I know there's more to it.

• 1:14:36Jocko Willink?

  Routine.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  Routine habit, but almost on a level of necessity. So like, if I go to sushi or if let's say I go bowling and I'm like, okay, now when I go bowling, I don't drink beers now. And I go and now bowling is really boring now because all that like association kind of works off each other, you know, to make this experience. Now that one lacking element provides this experience that's not, not as fun. It's not as quote unquote pleasurable because of all the, you know? So now you're in that same experience bowling and now it's super boring. So now you're kind of angry like, hey, man, what like I had this thing that was a enjoyable experience, part of my routine, my tradition, my whatever, you know, my whole thing.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  And now I don't like it like, so you kind of rebel against that and add that ingredient again, you know, it's like that, that idea is sue, it's, it's a, it's super strong, you know? So it's hard to defeat unless you really kind of dig deep and analyze it for what it is.

• 1:15:29Jocko Willink?

  You were telling me that you feel like you can control your brain now more.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true.

• 1:15:35Jocko Willink?

  Which is like mind control from freaking, uh, this one goes freedom field manual. Now you feel what I feel.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do actually. And that, that went through my mind so much where I'm like, freaking this is how Jocko does it. He just doesn't drink, you know? It's like, I know there's more to it than that. I know. But the feeling is that night and day where. You know the idea of, um, hey, you wanna do something, right? You wanna do something for yourself or with yourself, or, um, you know, you have some goal you have, or whatever, things, it's no- nothing huge, like freaking, I wanna lose, you know how easy, or you know how simple it is to lose weight, if you wanna lose weight? You know how simple it is to work out every day? Like, if you were like, hey, your life, like, if you had like some terr- like terrorist person, and was like, hey, I'm gonna kill you if you don't work out five days a week this week. I'm gonna kill you, the moment that the, it turns midnight and you haven't worked out, I'm gonna kill you.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  He's right there, and you can't kill him, bro, you would easily do that, it wouldn't be a problem. So it's like, it's probably, it's super simple to do it, you just essentially find reasons not to, right?

• 1:16:34Jocko Willink?

  Excuses.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  Exactly, right, excuses, right, so excuses are powerful, but they're only as powerful as you allow them to be. So if you can, if you say, okay, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna set this goal, short term, medium term, whatever, and then you don't do it, you can't control your mind. You, for real, can't control your mind, cause somewhere along the line, you said, yeah, I said I'd do that, but I'm not gonna do that, you know, kinda thing. It's like, bro, you can't control your mind for some reason, I mean, I don't know where the disconnect is, but for some, somewhere, you lost control of your mind.

• 1:17:07Jocko Willink?

  That's a crazy thing to think about, like, we think about the power of the human will, and people make all kinds of goals and they just never do them.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  Just choose not to do it.

• 1:17:14Jocko Willink?

  Just like, no, I'm instead gonna freaking sit around and watch Netflix.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:20Jocko Willink?

  That's actually what they do.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yep, exactly right.

• 1:17:23Jocko Willink?

  That's very crazy.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  So you know how you, your whole, and it's half joke, it's probably not even half joke, it's like, probably like 1% joke, the rest truth, even though it sounds like a joke, you know how you're like, oh, how is a donut more powerful than your mind or whatever? You know, like the old school, that whole, we're against the sugar coated lies, like that thing? So really think about that, in actual boots on the ground, freaking reality, real life.

• 1:17:44Jocko Willink?

  It's a real thing.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  Think about that, like, I do not like, let's say, I don't know, let's say it's an aesthetic thing, right? You'd like, I don't like the way, I don't know, my body looks, or I don't like my health, my current health. Health.

• 1:17:57Jocko Willink?

  The most important thing.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  Probably, yeah. If you lose your health, you lose whatever. Yeah, the most important thing, you only get one body. Like, you know, that whole thing, really analyze it for what it is. So now, this donut is literally a step backwards now. Right? And the donut isn't a person who's like.

• 1:18:13Jocko Willink?

  It's not a manipulative creature.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  Bro, it's just existing. It's literally just existing. Like, you can literally close your eyes and it doesn't even, you can't even see it. Like, it's not like.

• 1:18:22Jocko Willink?

  Really smell a donut too much, most of them.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  And here's the thing, that doesn't matter either.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Bro, the thing could, you could literally like throw it down the can and it'd be done. Throw it in the trap, it's gone, you know? It's not a thing that follows you around and forces that your hand behind your back or you gotta like tap or nothing like that. It's like just existing. And you're like, okay, I'm gonna do this with my health.

• 1:18:42Jocko Willink?

  Going, it's like going out, you know, we have the grappling dummy?

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:46Jocko Willink?

  Which is, for those of you that don't know what that is, it's like a, it's like a punching bag with arms, but just a stuffed punching bag with arms. Imagine you walk out on the mats and you get tapped by that thing. That's what happens when you eat a donut.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  Literally.

• 1:18:59Jocko Willink?

  It's like something that beats you, that has no, no mind of its own. Can't even move towards you, can't do anything. And yet, you go out there and you just trip over the grappling dummy and break your arm.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  I would, I mean, you're, you're absolutely right. And it's almost like not even an analogy. It's almost like literally that's what you're doing because the grappling dummy, like your mind made it into a grappling dummy. It's just cotton and freaking leather and cloth, like put together in a certain, and your mind was like, ooh, that looks like a person. And it's over there in the corner and you chose to walk over there and you didn't trip over it. You walked and got into the triangle choke of the, you put his legs over, you put energy into putting his legs over your head, under your arm, and then like squeeze, you squeezed it. He didn't squeeze, that's just cotton. Cotton doesn't squeeze nothing. You squeezed it and then tapped and be like, man, I just, I just didn't have the skill today, you know?

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  Just had a bad day. Bro, no, he didn't. You had the skill, you had everything. And then you chose to do it, expended energy.

• 1:19:59Jocko Willink?

  Freaking piece of cloth.

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly right. The same exact thing. And here's the thing, it's not like you just tapped out and whatever. With the donut, you literally has taken a step backward with in a very important, one of the most important things that you have in your whole life. And you took a step backwards just because you couldn't control your mind. That's why.

• 1:20:19Jocko Willink?

  And you feel like you have more mind control now that you're not drinking?

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:20:22Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent. Uh, hey, what about? I know one of the biggest things that you say you take away from the podcast in general is the ability to see though. Strategic vision, the big picture, the long-term plan as opposed to the short-term gratification tactical, what I'm doing right now today. Do you feel like the big picture, the long-term strategic plan has become more clear and easier to navigate towards?

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. The big time. Actually, I would even go one step further and say it became clear. Because before I realized it was there. So like moment to moment, you're like, okay, you can make the evaluation, but

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  now I feel like I can like actually see it for what it is, like this actual real existing kind of thing. Yeah, I feel like I have way more access to it now.

• 1:21:15Jocko Willink?

  So you have this focus, you can control your brain, you understand the big picture.

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  You go through life, you'd heard, you always hear people tell you that, you know, alcohol is not good for you. I told you, you know? I mean, I never was like, dude, you shouldn't. I don't think I ever said to you, you shouldn't drink.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  You gave me more shit about getting a Coke the first time, like a Coca soda.

• 1:21:42Jocko Willink?

  Coca-Cola.

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, more than you ever did about anything drinking.

• 1:21:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I don't like that high fructose corn syrup going into your, you know, into your gut. Uh, but you heard that. But you never really understood the power of not drinking. You know what I'm saying? Like as many people said, oh yeah, it's a waste. It's poison. It's all this stuff. You never said to yourself, you know what? I mean, for a long time, for 10 years of drinking. You never said to yourself, you know what? Actually, more than 10 years, probably 15 years of drinking. You never said to yourself, my life would be way better if I stopped, right? Now that you've stopped, is it even better than you thought it would be? Or you had heard it would be?

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  It is on par and keep in mind, it's exactly how I.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  Put it this way, I never really actually imagined it. I just knew it as like, kinda like the answers to a test almost, you know, like kinda like, if someone were to ask me, hey, would your life be better or worse without drinking? I'd be like, better, cuz I know that that's true. I can't feel it though. I didn't feel, you know, you don't know it, know it. Yeah, how, how much better? How does that look when I do this? How does that look? I never really thought real deep into that part of it. I, I would, I was just basically going moment to moment, you know, like, so if I could pull it off, you know, one day, one week without drinking, then I could feel it, you know?

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  But I didn't really like, I guess I failed to formulate any kinda like, structure or plan or, or vision into the future, you know? I was like, cool, I, I did it and I know that's good for me, you know, but who, now I can kinda cut loose and whatever, you know, kind of a thing. It was like a moment to moment kinda thing. I think once it kinda takes hold and then you, you recognize it for what it is and then you kinda get exposed to, in a real way, what you could be doing and what your life could be and you're exposed to it actually happening. And then you say, okay, I choose right now to, to pursue this and not pursue this.

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  And go back to what frickin' K-Dog Kerry Hilton said, where you just go binary, go be like, okay, hey, I could either go this path and be like, hey, my life is gonna go to shit every single time. And in real life, it doesn't go to shit every single time, level 10. No, it doesn't. But it might go level point one.

• 1:24:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:03Speaker 01

  Or more point five or one. Yeah, exactly right. And here's the thing, it did, whether it adds up or not, I mean, it does add up. Yes. Oh, freak yeah, obviously. But it doesn't matter. You're choosing to go negative per, like, per, like, event. You're choosing it as opposed to the other choice, go positive. So it's like, okay, so I could either go here, where my life goes to shit every single time, or I could go here, where my life improves every single time and doesn't end. So then you kinda, if you can kinda formulate that whole structure in your head and be like, I choose this one, right? It, it does become a lot easier for sure.

• 1:24:39Jocko Willink?

  Well, I have noticed in the past few months since camp that your productivity is higher. Your attitude is better. I mean, you never have like a bad attitude, but your attitude is better. I mean, even coming to train.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:54Jocko Willink?

  You know, I used to like laugh when you show up to train. I'd be like, oh, you're gonna train today, huh? Now you're you're in there, ready to go.

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:25:02Jocko Willink?

  You're you're, uh, I'd say benefiting across the board. What's crazy to me is like, what else is like that?

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:09Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? What else is it? What about your phone? Like in the in the social media that you're just looking at? Or what about the food that you're eating? Or what about like the cold exposure? Like what little? What little things are out there? Jiu Jitsu. A lot of people don't know that that can put a smile on your face, right? A lot of people don't know that kind of thing. So it is definitely.

• 1:25:31Jocko Willink?

  It is definitely, and it's it's interesting. What's interesting about having you on here? Is, you know, most people that stop drinking, they they have been, number one. They're alcoholics and maybe I don't know there's a severity for alcoholism. But they're like, most people that quit drinking, they quit drinking because like they hit rock bottom, right? That's a thing.

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:52Jocko Willink?

  Gotta hit rock bottom. And I would say you did not hit rock bottom.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:25:55Jocko Willink?

  But you realized how much further you could go.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:00Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's like you didn't have to fall out of the tree to hit rock bottom. But you looked up and saw that there's a lot more altitude to gain. And you ain't getting it if you're hitting the bottle every night.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  I believe so, yeah.

• 1:26:15Jocko Willink?

  So let's stay clean, everybody.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say my, uh.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  I like these little metaphors, like little vision where you can kind of have like a vision of it, a quantified like vision. And it's almost like alcohol is this, um. Is this little devil? That and let's face it, the devil can offer up some cool things.

• 1:26:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:26:35Jocko Willink?

  Devil, that's what they, that's what the devil does.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  Deal with it with the devil. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:26:39Jocko Willink?

  The devil doesn't, yeah, the devil doesn't offer you up things that look bad. The devil offers you up things that look good. You get suckered in.

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

  Exactly right. And the, and no matter, and the more you justify it, the more the devil's like, yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, you're like, no, no, but it's not, it's helping me in this creative way. Or it's like, it's not a problem, you know, I do it to have more fun with my friends, build relationships and all this stuff with, but the devil's in there going, yes, yes, yes, exactly. Like more of that, more of that, you know, kind of a thing. But really what the devil is doing, it's his finding its way into the, a bunch of parts of your life. In fact, the more, the better. The more parts of your life that the devil can find his way into, the better for him. And then his goal is to just fuck it all up.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  And the more you justify it, the more he's like, yes, yes, allow me into this part too, you know? It's like, yeah, man, you're, you're stressed right now. I can help you with that. Like, let me help you with your stress, by the way. Put some alcohol on your stress. That'll help. That'll help, you know?

• 1:27:33Jocko Willink?

  It'll help for the next hour. You can't think straight and you forget about the fact that that stress is there.

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:39Jocko Willink?

  Then you wake up and the stress is born.

• 1:27:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And then you know what? Then you'll need me a little bit more. Don't worry, I'll be there. I'll be there for you until you die. It's true.

• 1:27:51Jocko Willink?

  Quit drinking out there if you're drinking.

• 1:27:54Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't help you. Get some help if you need it, but the alcohol is not going to do it. Um, anything else, Echo Charles?

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 1:28:00Jocko Willink?

  Hey, look, don't be drinking that, but you know what you can drink? You can drink one of these right here. You can drink, you can drink some Jocko Go. You can drink some greens. Bro, our greens are good. And they give you that, they give you everything you need. Jacofuel.com. Get some hydrate, get some go, get some mulk. Get everything that you need to support your body.

• 1:28:23Jocko Willink?

  Don't be mixing, don't be mixing go with alcohol, by the way.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:27Jocko Willink?

  Some people have done it.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:28Jocko Willink?

  They call it a jocktail. As opposed to a cocktail.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  That sounds cute for sure, but kinda defeats the purpose a little bit.

• 1:28:35Jocko Willink?

  We're not doing that.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  Why even drink, actually in a way, and hey, no offense, I'm not judging any person.

• 1:28:40Jocko Willink?

  Cause it gives you energy, cause it gives you energy to get more wild.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  But we know why we drink this one instead of the bad one, because this one's better for you. Yeah, it tastes good, you know, all this stuff, but you're kinda defeating the purpose.

• 1:28:51Jocko Willink?

  Honestly, if you're gonna, if you're gonna mix drinks, I would rather you at least have it be more healthy version. But I would really prefer if you just didn't drink any alcohol. That's my recommendation.

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  I'll tell you.

• 1:29:04Jocko Willink?

  And there was a, there was, you know, we got a question on the underground a while ago and a guy had written in, you know, like, can I just have one or two drinks a month or whatever?

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  And I said, you know what? And it was really in a time, this is, I don't know, maybe six months ago. And I was, I kinda had an answer in my head of like, listen, if you can drink, you know, you can have one or two drinks, not that big of a deal. That's normal and people carry on and, and, and I just couldn't say it, man.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:26Jocko Willink?

  I just couldn't say it. I was like, you know what? I just can't get behind alcohol. I just can't do it. I've known too many people that have lost too much in their lives to alcohol.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:36Jocko Willink?

  You know, everything from people that have, you know, spent all their money, people that have drank themselves to death. Uh, people that have wrecked their relationships, got divorced, end up killing themselves. Like it's a terrible, it, uh, it's such a huge part of all that negativity. Why do it? Why do it? And look, if you're out there kicking ass and you think yourself, well, I'm kinda like Echo, you know, I still do my job. I still get everything done. I can still go to work out and imagine how much better you could be if you didn't have that ball and chain around your ankle, if you didn't have that weight vest on.

• 1:30:10Jocko Willink?

  So don't do it. That's my recommendation. I do recommend Jocko Fuel, jockofuel.com. You can get it while, while you can get a vitamin shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, Afees, Hannaford, Dash Stores, Wakefern, Shoprite, HEB, down in Texas. What's up, Texas? We were just down there for the muster.

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, outstanding.

• 1:30:30Jocko Willink?

  Outstanding event. Uh, Meyer, up in the Midwest, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere. You know, you got a jiu jitsu gym, you got a CrossFit gym, you got a powerlifting gym? You wanna get some Jocko Fuel in there, email [email protected].

• 1:30:47Jocko Willink?

  Also, don't forget about if you're training jujitsu, which you should because it'll put a smile on your face. In many equa- in many cases, sometimes it won't. We get that. Sometimes you're gonna get frustrated.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  You're making a frown here and there.

• 1:30:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  That's just the do- the frowns are just the doms of jujitsu.

• 1:31:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, sometimes.

• 1:31:05Jocko Willink?

  Like, sometimes you get really mad doing jujitsu. You get caught, you do something stupid.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm gonna be honest, I've seen you, well, I've seen you appear really mad with Dean Lish a few times.

• 1:31:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, a few times.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  Well, but I don't know that I've ever felt really actually mad in jujitsu, ever.

• 1:31:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  Even when I got injured, I was mad that I was injured.

• 1:31:26Jocko Willink?

  I would get mad if I'm injured.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  But I wasn't mad, but I was glad I'm still doing jujitsu, though.

• 1:31:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  You know, it's like the live by the sword, die by the sword kind of a feeling.

• 1:31:34Jocko Willink?

  If you want Chaco Fuel there, get, uh, go to J F Sales at chacofuel.com. And if you need jujitsu gear, wherever you are. Go to originusa.com. If you need jeans, wherever you are. If you need boots, wherever you are. If you need t-shirts, hoodies, rash guards, whatever you need, go to originusa.com and get American-made stuff.

• 1:31:57Jocko Willink?

  Don't support communism. Don't support slavery. Don't support child labor. Don't support poor quality products. Support an American-made product that is of the highest quality. Originusa.com. Get what you need.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:32:15Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  Also, discipline equals freedom. This is true. It's true. The more disciplined you are, the more free you are. Cut the ball and chain. That's what it is. Freaking ball and chain. Um, yeah, but you want to represent on this path, right? We're on the path, drinking or not. Whether you chose to quit drinking yet.

• 1:32:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  Or not, we're still on the path. You want to represent? ChacoStore.com. Discipline equals freedom. Good. These are good attitudes to have, by the way. Um, that's where you can get your stuff. Hats and hoodies, shirts, of course. Um, also this shirt locker, by the way.

• 1:32:50Jocko Willink?

  I saw a lot of representation at the muster from the shirt locker. Really piques a lot of people, other people's curiosity.

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep.

• 1:32:58Jocko Willink?

  When they say, yo.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:00Jocko Willink?

  You just made like a heavy metal-ish looking one. It's pretty dope.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, fully. And so a lot of them are like this, which I didn't realize, but like when I see everyone kind of with it, it's almost like. You know, we know discipline equals freedom. We see you wearing the, you know, the deal and um you'll see like a new one. They'll be like, hey, where'd you get that one? Like that one's like kinda cool. Like where'd you get that one? I never, I didn't see that one before. But yeah, that's kind of the phenomenon in a way. Yeah. Good representations.

• 1:33:27Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Shirt locker.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  It's called the Shirt Locker. It's on Jocko Store. It's a cool subscription. You get a new one every month. Uh, you know, the new, new design every month. It's cool. On Jocko Store.com.

• 1:33:37Jocko Willink?

  Hey, you might also need steak, right? You might need ground beef. Go to ColoradoCraftBeef.com. Freaking outstanding, outstanding steak. And also PrimalBeef.com, which is out in Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley. So you got two options right there to get yourself some steak. They will deliver it to your door and you can just grill it up. You can throw it, uh, you can throw it in a pan and cook it two minutes, two minutes, two minutes, two minutes, two minutes. What is it? Total of eight minutes? And you've probably got yourself a solid steak right there. Throw some pepper and some rock salt on it.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  Watch your heat, by the way.

• 1:34:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, don't get crazy. Don't get nuts.

• 1:34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't get nuts on them.

• 1:34:24Jocko Willink?

  Don't get nuts on the heat. What, what heat would you say?

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Uh, I would do a medium. Wait, wait. Do you put the, the, what do you call the top?

• 1:34:30Jocko Willink?

  The cover?

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, the cover. No, the cover. Okay. No, no, no. I do the cover, but then I just go one minute, one minute, one minute, one minute, one minute only.

• 1:34:36Jocko Willink?

  Four minutes?

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  Yep. But with the top on.

• 1:34:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Cause that's maintaining a lot of heat, cooking it from multiple directions.

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah. So you know, hey, we all have our process.

• 1:34:45Jocko Willink?

  Check those out. Uh, awesome people, awesome companies that you can, you can get into and you can also eat some awesome food. So there you go. Also subscribe to this podcast. Also go to jockounderground.com and subscribe to that alternative podcast. Also Psychological Warfare, FlipsideCanvas.com, but from Dakota Meyer. All the different books that I've written. Check those things out. We have Echelon Front. We just got back from the muster. Thousand people there. It's been sold out for months. The next one is in San Diego. If you want to come to it, you gotta go register right now. We solve problems through leadership. EchelonFront.com is the website. We also have online training.

• 1:35:25Jocko Willink?

  Leadership is not something you can do one time and now you know how to do it. Just like you don't get in shape going to the gym one time. You gotta go every day.

• 1:35:36Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we made the Extreme Ownership Academy for, ExtremeOwnership.com. You can go on there every day and you can learn leadership and you can review leadership and you can hone your leadership skills. So you can handle everything that's going on in your business and in your life. ExtremeOwnership.com And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, she's got an unbelievable charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also, don't forget about Micah Fink. I just met a graduate from the HeroesAndHorses.org program.

• 1:36:18Jocko Willink?

  Great individual from the Marine Corps that had been through the program, was having some real issues going toward to the program, comes out of the program like a new man.

• 1:36:32Jocko Willink?

  So thanks to Micah Fink for what he's got going on there. Also Jimmy May's got an organization to help people transition out of the military, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. So check that out. And if you want to connect with us on the interwebs, we're on there. Echoes that, Echo Charles. I'm at Jocko Willing. Just watch out for the algorithm because it's a monster and it'll sneak up on you. It'll probably bring you, it'll probably serve you a beverage, do a drink, an alcoholic drink, just to get you to sit there and scroll, drunken scrolling. This is bad news. Don't let it happen. We'll see you on the, on the interwebs, but we're not going to be part of that algorithm. And thanks to all of our military personnel out there.

• 1:37:09Jocko Willink?

  These are tenuous times right now. Very tenuous times. The war drums are beating.

• 1:37:17Jocko Willink?

  And for us sitting back here in America going, oh, we should do this and we should do that. And it's all of you out there in uniform that actually answer the call. So thank you for what you all do. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret Service, and all first responders. Thank you for answering the call here at home. And to everyone else out there, I'm going to give you some guidance from Lemmy of Motorhead. Another band that put some bricks in the path for me and helped me out as a kid. Lemmy says, "So you see, the only proof of what you are is in the way you hear the truth.

• 1:38:00Jocko Willink?

  Grab a hold, don't let go, don't let them rob you of the only thing you know. Oh no, no one else got the right to make you feel sorry for yourself. Stay clean. It's your only hope." So stay clean everyone. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.