498: Regardless of the Distractions, You Know What To Do. Do It.

>Join Jocko UndergroundExplore Jocko Store< https://www.jockostore.com Exploring deeper themes from the Marine Corps Institute’s Leadership Credo. Leadership isn’t about rank—it’s about earning trust through action. True leadership requires understanding human will, stress, fear, and mission focus. The will to fight is central in combat—and in life. Emotional control, both personally and within teams, determines success or failure. Jiu-jitsu parallels are drawn to show how will, not just skill, defines performance. Leaders must inspire through hardship, guiding others even amid chaos, loss, and uncertainty. Leadership is the art of influencing people to push beyond their limits toward shared goals. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 498 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  So, last podcast, number 497, we covered an article by retired

• 0:15Jocko Willink?

  United States Marine Corps Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, and it was about combat leadership at Iwo Jima. But that, the place I got that document from was from a Marine Corps Institute document, which is called Leadership Credo.

• 0:34Jocko Willink?

  And just in going through that document, look, there's some pertinent information related, related to the article that we read about stress and friction and human will, and of course, about leadership. And the lessons that it teaches, I was thinking, you know, we can use these lessons, of course. So, let's get into this document right here. Marine Corps Institute, Staff Non-Commissioned Officers Career Distance Education Program, Leadership Credo. Leadership Credo, a credo, do you know the definition of credo?

• 1:16Speaker 01

  I know what creed is, but...

• 1:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a very similar thing. Credo is a statement or beliefs or aims which guides someone's actions. So, you're, you're right, credo. Have you noticed there's been a little bit of news going around where people will ask a kind of a gotcha question?

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  And then the person doesn't know it, and they just look bad?

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38Jocko Willink?

  Have you seen some of this?

• 1:39Speaker 01

  I'm familiar with this trend, for sure.

• 1:41Jocko Willink?

  So, I feel like I just did that to you a little bit.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:43Jocko Willink?

  Do you know what credo means? And you're like, no, kinda not really.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  I don't, I, I understand what you mean, but I don't think that applied to me, because I don't care.

• 1:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, check.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Under no circumstances am I required to know what credo means in my everyday life.

• 2:00Jocko Willink?

  Well, I think for you, kinda, honestly, you don't really have any requirements to know anything.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Very low requirements, yes.

• 2:07Jocko Willink?

  So, check, Leadership Credo.

• 2:11Jocko Willink?

  Starts off with a quote, "No man is a leader until his appointment is ratified in the minds and hearts of his men," the Infrastrux Journal, 1948, which is really important to remember. Because if you think just because you got a rank put on your shoulder, or you got a title, you think now you're in charge, doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything if the people that work for you don't respect you. It also says, "Leadership is the art of getting things done through people." That's General Al Gray, Grayism, 29th Commandant of the Marine Corps. Carrying on, "Leadership is the defining quality of Marine senior NCOs and officers. Good leadership inspires and motivates Marines to accomplish a mission."

• 2:52Jocko Willink?

  Leadership, emphasis on will, "Leadership inspires others to take action. To provide inspiration, the leader must affect the Marine positively. To do this, the leader must first understand the factors that determine a Marine's will to fight. These factors include fear, courage, stress, and a shared sense of the mission." So, look, of course, we're talking about Marines right now, but if you talk about your company, or your business, or your team, the things that, the factors that play into a person's will to work hard, to take the step to execute, these factors, like a Marine's will to fight, include fear, courage, stress, and a shared sense of mission. Although these qualities are intangible, they often determine the outcome of combat.

• 3:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay, fair enough, but please take a note, take a moment to think about the fact that these things apply to whoever you are. You don't have to be a Marine in combat. Motivating Marines, "The best leaders can motivate Marines to perform actions they wouldn't ordinarily perform. Anyone can be put in charge of a group of Marines and lead them to the chow hall." Why is that? Echo Charles, putting you on the spot again. Well, because we're going to the chow hall. Yeah, so anyone can lead the Marines to chow hall.

• 4:08Jocko Willink?

  However, it's not as simple to motivate a marine unit to continue fighting during difficult circumstances against a determined enemy. Such a challenge requires effective leadership. So, keep that in mind if you're on the, if you're on Iwo Jima and you've just lost forty of your guys on D-Day alone, might be a little bit more challenging. Fast forward a little bit, Marine Corps legacy. The Marine Corps has a long legacy of success in battle. The cornerstone of success has been leadership. Leadership by Marines who, in combat, refused to bend to the will of the enemy.

• 4:45Jocko Willink?

  This legacy of leadership of getting things done through people is now your mission.

• 4:51Jocko Willink?

  Combat is just getting, just breaking the will of someone else. Do you feel that in jujitsu?

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Sometimes, yeah.

• 4:58Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes you just get caught, right?

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 5:01Jocko Willink?

  Which is different than when your will gets broken, right?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  When you were saying that, that I was thinking about jujitsu where it's like, okay, but...

• 5:07Jocko Willink?

  Have I ever broken your will in jujitsu?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, you know.

• 5:10Jocko Willink?

  Cause I was gonna...

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, a few times.

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  So, but the...

• 5:15Speaker 01

  You gotta figure though, I feel like jujitsu has this very unique, well, sometimes I might feel like it's a unique characteristic where, no, somebody can just simply be better than you. That's why in the beginning of the jujitsu, when you first start, or let's say you've never done it before, someone will get you and be like, no, no, no, let's go again. And then they'll get you and you're just kind of more confused.

• 5:35Jocko Willink?

  You still have a will.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Oh, frick yeah, will all day. Exactly right. Freaking sick Jeff Glover on one of these guys. He'll be like, well, I don't get it, you know? So, put it this way, someone who maybe I outweigh or you outweigh by a lot, but is way better than you, they're not gonna, it's not in, like...

• 5:51Jocko Willink?

  It's not really a test of your will. It's just a test of knowledge.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Maybe in some different sort of way, but, yeah, yeah, but as opposed to you or Sloan or one of these dudes who's gonna kind of like, oh, it's a very different experience, we'll say. So, yeah, yes and no.

• 6:14Jocko Willink?

  Keep mission focused. You must think rationally, make good decisions and inspire your Marines to renew their efforts. You must keep yourself and your Marines' mission focused. Furthermore, you must do this despite a clever, cunning, active enemy who is constantly devising and implementing ways to kill you and the Marines you lead.

• 6:36Jocko Willink?

  This idea, and you haven't gone off on a tangent on this in quite some times. I'm probably am breaking my own, my own rules, but you used to be real into distractions.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:50Jocko Willink?

  Maybe it's because you have less distractions now than you used to. Maybe it's because you learned how to overcome them, or maybe you've submitted to them. I'm not 100% sure.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wait, what do you mean? I, I.

• 7:00Jocko Willink?

  You used to talk about distractions.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:03Jocko Willink?

  And how distractions were like a huge part of the friction that people face in life.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:08Jocko Willink?

  And this is, this is what is they're talking about here and they go into it more later. So I'm just warming up. Get your mind warmed up.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  But this.

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  Because you used to distract us with all kinds of stuff. Leadership challenges. You will face tremendous challenges as a combat leader. Some of your Marines will freeze, cower, or panic under fire. Horrible wounds and deaths of friends and fellow Marines could become overwhelming. And we read some of this on that last podcast. Guys that are just completely locking up or breaking down. Competent battalion commanders, eight, 10, 12 days into battle, leading their men, and they break down. And they can't perform. They're crying. They gotta be evacuated.

• 7:49Jocko Willink?

  The entire unit may suffer unimaginable hardships from heat, cold, thirst, hunger, or fatigue. The props of civilized life may be stripped away and you and your Marines will be fiercely bent on simply surviving.

• 8:09Jocko Willink?

  So there's some of the challenges.

• 8:12Jocko Willink?

  And this has a little quote in here that we might be familiar with. For us, combat was a series of changing events characterized by confusion, awesome violence, gripping fear, physical stress and fatigue, fierce hatred of the enemy, and overwhelming grief over the loss of friends. Think about that combination right there.

• 8:31Jocko Willink?

  Awesome violence, gripping fear, physical stress and fatigue, fierce hatred, and overwhelming grief. That's what these guys are experiencing. We endured vile, personal filth in a repulsive environment saturated with the stench of death and decay.

• 8:49Jocko Willink?

  In combat, I saw little, knew little, and understood less about anything that occurred outside K35. We had our hands full, fighting and trying to survive moment to moment. And that, of course, is E.B. Sledgehammer with the old breed. But what a characterization of emotions and thoughts, confusion, awesome violence, gripping fear, physical stress and fatigue, fierce hatred, and overwhelming grief all at once. And that's what you're feeling for day after day after day after day. Now, he talks about the two challenges, the book talks about the two challenges faced that we face. To achieve success in the face of these challenges, you must study and understand

• 9:33Jocko Willink?

  them. You will study two challenges and explore the problems that may, they may cause the leader. One, the will to fight, and two, the friction of war.

• 9:44Jocko Willink?

  So the will to fight. Combat is the supreme test of wills. It is a clash with an enemy who is determined to kill you. The enemy's will keeps him fighting. If you can defeat the enemy's will, you can bend your enemy to your will in combat. This is your central aim. And I think what's really important is to identify that. Like, when you identify it's will against will, and you have to break their will, and now you understand the pieces on the board and the way you move these pieces. If it's gonna help break their will, make the move. If it doesn't help you break their will, it's not worth it.

• 10:26Jocko Willink?

  Here's a firsthand account. Prior to the First World War, all armies fought in comparatively close order. The psychological reaction of the individual soldier was not so decisive, since the fighting was done not by the individual, but by the mass. And the mass was held together by drill and discipline. Moreover, the psychological impressions of battle were simpler. In modern war, the impressions are much more powerful. Usually, we fight against an enemy we cannot see. We no longer fight in great masses, but in small groups, often as individuals. Therefore, the psychological reaction of the individual has become increasingly important. As commanders, we must know the probable reaction of the individual

• 11:09Jocko Willink?

  and the means by which we can influence this reaction. And that's Captain Adolf von Schell from Battle Leadership, which we covered on probably the first 20 podcasts we did here.

• 11:20Jocko Willink?

  And then here's another one. Because war is a clash between opposing wills, human wills, the human dimension is central in war. It is the human dimension which infuses war with its intangible moral factors. War is shaped by human nature and is subject to the complexities, inconsistencies, and peculiarities which characterize human behavior. Since war is an act of violence based on irreconcilable disagreement, it will invariably inflame and be shaped by human emotions. So what I was thinking about here is, is that an advantage or a disadvantage to you?

• 12:06Jocko Willink?

  Right? You get put into a situation. Are the emotions that are taking place, both yours and your opponent's, are they advantageous to you or are they disadvantageous to you? And if you're not keep, because sometimes do we not want to like,

• 12:25Jocko Willink?

  capture the emotions of the team and accelerate those emotions? Yeah. Of course. But sometimes are the emotions getting out of control? Yes, of course. Now we gotta, especially like a negative emotions, we gotta, we gotta try and subdue those as much as we can, suppress them a little bit. But positive emotions, we want to elevate them. And then what about your own emotions? Cause those can also be tricky. They can they can help you out or they can hurt you.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, as you know, I've spent some time alone these past few days. So you start thinking and emotions is another one of those ones that I thought about for a while. As I'm doing circles in my yard by myself. But it's and this is this is going to seem real obvious, but you know, when you kind of think about it, it's like you kind of think about the depths and how deep it goes or whatever. And all the different situations it applies to, but it's, yeah, you can have, you can have elevated, elevated, elevated emotions and it'll still help you. The only thing that makes emotions, as far as I can tell, the only thing that makes emotions a negative is when you can't control them. So you can take a negative emotion, no matter how much or how little.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  And if you have it and you use it for what you're trying to use it for, it'll help you. Same thing with positive emotions, same thing with even like stuff like being sad. Like, you know how, you know, like you would think on the surface, like, oh, no, no one would want to be sad, you know? Like, that's a, that's a

• 13:52Jocko Willink?

  Sad movies.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Listen to sad songs.

• 13:55Jocko Willink?

  Just like people go to horror films.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:57Jocko Willink?

  My family, my kids watch horror film. Well, yeah, my kids watch horror films. All of them. My wife can't even be in the house if there's a horror film on. Ain't happening.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  That's the horror. The horror feels weird because there's an element, you know, people who like horror film and some to a degree I do too.

• 14:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  But it's just more, I feel like you, no matter how scary and gory and all this, like, you know, intense stuff going on there. You kind of can retreat to the inner safety of the fact that this is just a movie, you know? It's kind of like, you know, when it rains outside and it feels cozy because you're out in here, you know, kind of a thing. So it's almost like there's that going on.

• 14:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  But nonetheless, that's, but the sad thing doesn't, isn't really explained like that, doesn't feel like it anyway. Like, let's say you go through a breakup and you're one of these feelers, you know? And you go through a breakup and then you want to listen to like some sad song. It's like you want more sadness. It's weird. It's like you get pleasure in these months if you can kind of control. Like, but when you, when you can't control it, I freaking hate being sad. I hate being mad, sad, scared. For all these negative emotions or whatever. It's like, bro, if you can't control it, it sucks. It's bad. But. If you can control them, they're gonna be good.

• 15:08Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Even like positive emotions, if you can't control them, you get too excited. And here's, well, here's one of the things I thought of too, by the way, while I'm walking in circles in my yard. Positive emotions are one of the main contributing factors to me getting injured a lot of the time. Because I get distracted by the excitement or the this or the that, and I don't pay attention, then I slip or I freaking don't brace like. Cause I kind of hurt myself doing deadlifts. It was just, it wasn't terribly, but it was just a little bit. And it was like, I was just getting too fired up, you know? And but so I didn't pay attention to my technique. You see what I'm saying? And that can happen a lot. That's why like little kids, they get excited, then they stub their toe on the side of the freaking thing. Cause they tried to run through the door, you know what I mean?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  So it's like that kind of scenario. If you can, if you can control it, you'd be good.

• 15:55Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And believe it or not, you can, you, controlling your emotions is a learned process. I mean, clearly little kids have not learned to control their emotions. That's why they have temper tantrums. And then hopefully, like a teenager has learned to control some of their emotions, but they haven't controlled them all yet, right? They're still gonna do some ignorant type activities. They're gonna lose their temper, slam the door or whatever, be all mad. But hopefully by the time you're an adult, you have control over your emotions and your emotions aren't controlling you. But in combat or in a contest of any kind, how are these emotions? You're, you're, you're the fighters that like, oh, I'm gonna get him.

• 16:36Jocko Willink?

  You ever seen a fighter that was about to win? Cause he put a guy back on his heels and it goes ham and like gases himself out? Or gas himself out on a, on a freaking guillotine choke? And they're just dead after that.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 16:49Jocko Willink?

  So that's like an emotional, or you ever seen the emotional fighter that would come out mad? You know, like you talk so much shit during the, during the pre-fight conference? That I'm just like so mad, I just go, go crazy and get emotional and I lose the fight.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Right. If you can't control it, cause some guys, let's face it, some guys, MMA is a good one where when they're mad, but you can tell they're just using that anger as like this fuel for their game or whatever. In fact, you know, back in, um, when Dean won, uh, eighty, I think it was, yeah, ADCC. Like he had, he'd like, when he won the absolute, he like lost, right?

• 17:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he lost the day before, yeah.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so I forget who, I think it might've been Kidja Pili. He's, I think he's the one who said this. Might have been, I forget who it was, but he said, "No, Dean, you could tell he was mad." He was like, his anger, he used it as fuel and that's why he won. And I was like, huh, that would make sense. I don't know if that's true or not. But I, I remember thinking, just like I'm thinking now, like, "Bro, that's a thing. You can totally use negative energy and anger and all this stuff for good and for, and for it to be beneficial, if you can control it."

• 17:57Jocko Willink?

  That's the facts. Those are the facts right there. Uh, all right. "To overcome the enemy's will, you must inspire and maintain a strong will to fight in your own troops. Combat can cause a wide range of human responses from freezing under fire to acts of extraordinary valor and courage. The leader must ask, how will my Marines react to enemy contact? You can never be certain because so many intangible factors affect human will, such as fear, anguish, esprit, and unit cohesion, to name only a few. Furthermore, your Marines' reactions to combat will vary from man to man and from time to time. Some will fight more bravely in one engagement, but less in the next. But one point is certain:

• 18:42Jocko Willink?

  you, the leader, have tremendous influence on the fighting spirit of your Marines."

• 18:50Jocko Willink?

  And again, doesn't matter what the leadership situation is. That leader has a huge amount of influence on the people. Can be really positive, can be really negative. Combat stress. In combat, certain factors and reactions can inhibit a Marine's will to fight. These factors and reactions fall under the category of combat stress. Factors causing combat stress include stress, fear, panic, shock, fatigue. Some reactions are called acute stress reactions because they cause immediate loss of performance. An example of acute stress reaction is the fear you would experience if you suddenly came face to face with an enemy tank at close range.

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  Although you heard me on the last podcast, like, I don't know how a tank, I don't know how an enemy tank is suddenly appearing to you at close range. It's like, you'd be hearing some noise. Uh, some factors and reactor and reactions called cumulative stress build stress over time and include fatigue, anguish, and repeated exposure to danger. So on the last podcast, they talked about these two types of combat fatigue, right? One was immediate and acute. Like, hey, I'm on the beach, we're getting mortared and machine gunned. I'm getting in this first crater that I find I'm not getting out. As opposed to your 14 days in, 16 days in, 18 days in, and now you break from the continuous fear and stress.

• 20:17Jocko Willink?

  And it goes into that a little bit. Acute stress, sudden expect sudden, unexpected, relatively shortened duration and very intense.

• 20:25Jocko Willink?

  Fear is the most common source of acute stress in combat. Fear is a reaction to danger since combat is inherently dangerous, dangerous. Fear is universal among men, men in battle. This makes fear not a sign of cowardice, but part of combat.

• 20:41Jocko Willink?

  Yep. I like how they say that. It's just part of combat. There is no not part of combat. If you're going into combat, there's going to be machine guns and there's going to be fear. Yeah. Humans instinctively want to survive and combat threatens them with death, fear of injury, fear of pain and fear of being permanently disabled or normal in a combat situation. As men see other men being killed and injured in combat, their fears become more intense. They know the same can happen to them at any moment.

• 21:08Jocko Willink?

  And of course, the unknown is a great source of fear. And this is something that I talked about in the book, Mikey and the Dragons, right? You don't know what's going on. Man, that anticipation is so much worse than the thing. Yeah. It's so much worse than the thing. You know, it's being backstage with fighters or grapplers. You can see everyone all nervous. And then they then, you know, once you get out there, you're just doing your thing. Yeah, fully.

• 21:37Jocko Willink?

  Obviously, certain weapons cause a lot of fear. The amount of fear usually depends on what the Marine perceives he can do about it. For example, being mortared or bombed may raise great fear in infantrymen because he usually cannot respond directly to the source of the fire. Marines, oh, sorry, mines and booby traps have the same effect. On the other hand, the infantrymen may deal better with fear caused by receiving enemy small arms because he can usually fire back. This is something that's important to think about in your world. Because there's certain things in your world that you can't really control. You can't even, like, the market changes and you're afraid the market's gonna change. Well, you can't really control that, so what can you control? What can you deal with right now? What can you impact?

• 22:17Jocko Willink?

  But sitting around and worrying about something like the market is not gonna be helpful to you. You're better off freaking just getting out there and getting after it.

• 22:30Jocko Willink?

  It talks about the German Stuka dive bomber, which had like the siren mountain on it. So when it would attack, the dive bomber would be like

• 22:40Jocko Willink?

  and how that caused much more fear than normal, which is kind of it's kind of horrifying and cool at the same time. Fear causes both physiological and emotional reactions. Physiological reactions include trembling hands, nausea, perspiration, and increased breathing and heart rate. These reactions are not necessarily bad. If effectively controlled, they help the body prepare for danger. In fact, controlled fear increases your ability to react to physical threats and survive them, right? So you're, you get that adrenaline flowing, you're kind of hyped up. It's not necessarily a bad thing, of course, we don't want to live like that because then it can become a bad thing. Panic is a sudden burst of emotion that results in flight.

• 23:26Jocko Willink?

  It is particularly dangerous to a unit because it spreads rapidly. Isn't it kind of crazy? It's like the ultimate form of group think is a panic situation, a group panic. Like in combat. After studying incidents of panic during World War II, S.L.A. Marshall noted two distinct steps in a unit that panics. First, some friendly action, such as the unexpected withdrawal of an adjacent unit, was misunderstood. Soldiers watching the adjacent unit withdraw panicked because they feared they would be isolated and surrounded by the enemy. This in turn caused the panic to spread quickly and the entire unit fled. Yeah, like they talk about in World War I.

• 24:06Jocko Willink?

  How a runner, meaning, hey Echo, go take this message to the rear and tell them we need more weapons. Or more ammunition. So you go, you start running back and someone sees you, he's running, I'm running. Next thing you know, it's five people, 10 people, then everyone's running.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  That's a weird, it's actually not weird. That makes sense. If, let's say you're in the downtown San Diego daytime, just walking.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  And someone's walking towards you or in front of you, whatever, right? And they all of a sudden just start running.

• 24:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Bro, you're at least gonna feel it. You know, it depends on your personality, but you're at least gonna, whatever caused people to panic, you're gonna feel that. It's weird. No other context, except for them just running all of a sudden. It's weird how that is. It's like, it's almost like.

• 24:55Jocko Willink?

  It's like a tribal instinct, right?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like instincts. Like you know how people, like they say a lot of times, they say it in this weird kind of esoteric way, but they're like, oh yeah, we're all kind of, we're all connected or whatever. But you can kind of zoom out and be like, wait a second, maybe there is like this thing that's connecting all of us, you know? And then someone interrupting it kind of like short circuits us for a little bit. You know how they interrupt in all these little teeny tiny ways?

• 25:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and there's gotta be some, so we're up at Bull Hill Ranch for

• 25:27Jocko Willink?

  the council. And when we were up there, we know we ride horses and actually I've been riding horses for the last year because the way the schedule is set up. But the first time we were up there riding horses, there was like an incident with the horses where two of the horses got tangled up. They started fighting and there's like 35 horses. But they all got like, some of them, some of them just started running, right? The one I was on, I had to like chill that thing out and I'm not an experienced horse rider. And by that, I mean, that was my first time riding on a horse. So I'm like going, okay buddy, like, okay, it's okay, it's okay. But you could feel like the tension and same thing when you see a dog park. Or like a dog, like one dog starts running, they all get nuts, right?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:11Jocko Willink?

  And so it's not that different that a human sees a human running and you think, what, what?

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Panic.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 26:20Jocko Willink?

  So your behavior, especially from a leadership perspective, when you start to panic. And, and another thing is like, where, what is your psychological state when you see someone else running? These guys are in combat, they're already afraid. So at least he's in one, that's all they need to see.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:35Jocko Willink?

  Um, check. And then it says panic usually begins in the rear and moves forward. This is why maneuver warfare tactics stress getting into your enemy's rear. But you must remember that a capable enemy will be trying to do the same to you and will sometimes succeed. Your Marines tend to panic, your Marines may tend to panic when they feel cut off, isolated, or encircled.

• 26:57Jocko Willink?

  And then it says shock or freezing under fire is the most common reaction to uncontrolled fear. You may observe Marines who completely lose the ability to act when they suddenly find themselves in danger and overcome by fear. Fight, remember when it used to just be fight or flight? And then it became fight, flight or freeze? Cause people realize like, that's the most common thing is locking up.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:21Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever locked up from fear?

• 27:24Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I feel like I have, but I can't remember a very particular time. Yeah, I feel like you'd be like, you're in the headlights, right? Kind of a scenario? Yeah. Well, I don't know.

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  Some will cower in their fighting holes or sleeping bags, unable to fight no matter the circumstances. Others will have the will to fight, but find themselves physically exhausted and unable to move to fire a weapon. Yeah, and people just accept it. I was watching a thing about Everest the other day and it's just, at a certain point, people are like, yeah, I'm not, I'm not going anymore. Well, then you're gonna die. And they're like, well, I guess I'm gonna die then.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:00Jocko Willink?

  I mean, they might not say that, but when someone is saying, hey, I'm gonna leave you here unless you get up and start walking. And they're like, go ahead.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:09Jocko Willink?

  They're just accepting death. I don't know if that's quite the same as fight or flight or freeze, but that's more like will. Just their will is broken.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Right, like they're they'd rather like death is like a relief of some

• 28:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Existing torment or something like this. Yeah, the freeze feels like it's like your brain Kind of, you know, on a certain level, kind of shuts down because it doesn't know what option to pick. Like, you know, like the, you know, the front part, I guess the front part of your brain is like, okay, logically, if since this is coming from here, I'm gonna come from here, go from here. And since I see other stuff over here, I'm gonna not go. You know, it has this like decision making like sequence, you know, but when the one it kind of Short circuits because it's like too much to process or whatever. It's like, well, it's like almost like a flash of You have zero options, therefore you act on. All available, which is not.

• 29:00Jocko Willink?

  Which is just locked up.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:01Jocko Willink?

  Locked up.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what it feels like, you know.

• 29:05Jocko Willink?

  And then it gets into the source of courage. Any of these reactions may be temporary, lasting only as long as the danger is present, or the reaction may incapacitate a man indefinitely. However, fear can also be a source of courage. The fear of letting his comrades down is common in men who are about to enter battle for the first time, particularly against in cohesively tightly knit units. Marshall noted the following in Men Against Fire. When fire sweeps the field, nothing keeps a man from running except the sense of honor, the bound obligation to the people right around him Of fear of failure in their sight, which might eternally disgrace him.

• 29:51Jocko Willink?

  So that's, that's what's keeping you there is I'm gonna look bad in front of my friends as, as Tony Fratelli once said, I'd rather die. He was like horrified of heights and he had to remember that he had to freaking rappel off some Giant building in Hong Kong and he was just scared like no part of his humanity wanted to go.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 30:12Jocko Willink?

  But he had definitely didn't want to Look weak and so he just went, just overcame the most primordial fear, but he just doesn't care. It's like better to die. And I would a hundred percent relate to that. Like I really just, yeah, I'd rather just die than go out looking like a.

• 30:30Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do.

• 30:34Jocko Willink?

  The, uh, I got asked that question on the podcast with Chris Williamson the other day. Um, it was like, you know, overcoming fear. And I said, go.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:43Jocko Willink?

  You know, very.

• 30:46Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's something that you learn, you know, you learn in the military at least for sure. That waiting is not gonna help you. Your fear is not going to dissipate.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:57Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna get worse. I was, uh, I was skiing. And it was like springtime, things were getting pretty thin. And there was like a legit little.

• 31:11Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no, no, it was, it was legit, like this is gonna take some courage.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:16Jocko Willink?

  You know, I hate to use that word when I'm talking about skiing.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah.

• 31:19Jocko Willink?

  But it was like potential danger, right? Potential injury, right? Rocks, snow, ice, steepness. But I'm standing there and in my head, I was just like, yep, I'm going like. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like, oh, you think it's, you think it's about, you know, like conversations are happening and I'm just like, go. You know what I mean?

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:41Jocko Willink?

  You just learn that you just gotta go.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Let's go. Yeah. Yep. That's real.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  My daughter did that when we were skiing.

• 31:47Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  And.

• 31:48Jocko Willink?

  Is she skiing or snowboarding?

• 31:49Speaker 01

  She was skiing. I was snowboarding.

• 31:52Jocko Willink?

  By the way, I got a snowboard, uh, snowboard for you.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 31:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Okay. All right.

• 31:56Jocko Willink?

  My, uh, my boy's got Cardiff snowboards.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 32:01Jocko Willink?

  So I got one for you. It's coming.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Man, that's, thanks, bro. I'm fired up about that. But yeah, so.

• 32:08Jocko Willink?

  No, he was like, he said, Echo's really into snowboarding, right? I was like, hey, really is a strong word. But would he like probably to have a Cardiff snowboard? Most likely.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah. I'm freaking down for the cause, I'll tell you that.

• 32:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Okay. So your daughter.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were on the top of the mountain and I'm like, you know, at this point I was like, was I, I wasn't brand new, but I was like, kinda new. And but I'm with her. So you know how like, at this point was she maybe like nine years old, maybe, I don't know, 10. So I'm thinking like that's what I'm worried about. Like I don't need this girl freaking charging this freaking hill and then hurting herself and I'm responsible, you know? And I'm like relatively new. I'm not like some pro snorbo- snowboarder where I can just freaking mosey down. No, I got this, you know, kind of a thing. So I'm, there's an element of nervousness. And she was scared. I don't know if she was scared or not, but we were hesitant up there. So I'm like, okay, wait, like if she falls down, maybe I can go over there and kind of, you know? So I'm making this plan. She's like, so she's looking at it, looking at it, not saying nothing, looking at it. She's like, I'm going.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  And she just goes. I was like, oh, I didn't feel like the control, but then I was like, huh, she just, I feel like she just charged.

• 33:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  She was like, bro, I'm tired of just standing up here and like waiting, you know, for the unknown to like overcome me, you know?

• 33:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I always have felt in combat for sure, like being aggressive and having an aggressive mindset is safer than being scared and being passive.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:31Jocko Willink?

  Same thing with jujitsu. Like if you show up at jujitsu and you feel like, oh, we're doing this type, oh, we're doing stand up and you're feeling like lackadaisical or you're feeling like, I don't know if I want to do stand up today. I want to get hurt. If you're doing stand up, freaking get it on. You know what I'm saying?

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:46Jocko Willink?

  Get it on. Don't, don't be like weak like that.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, speaking of fear and overcoming fear, I put this together the other day, which was pretty wild. So I was, I was actually at the council and we were talking, you know, we cover every subject at the council and we get like granular. But you know, they ask questions about all different aspects of life, including family. And one of the individuals was asking, you know, had like an incident with his daughter who was nine years old.

• 34:20Jocko Willink?

  And he didn't, you know, he didn't like the outcome of the incident. It wasn't, it was nothing. But the first thing I relayed to him was the, the story that you and I have discussed, which is like, hey, your son is five.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:33Jocko Willink?

  Like, yeah. And then I went to the fact that I just said, these things that your kids do at a young age, it has almost zero.

• 34:47Jocko Willink?

  Impact on the trajectory of their life. And the example that I ended up really nailing was Rana, my daughter, when she was probably eight years old or something. She was so horrified to compete in a jujitsu tournament that she like got dizzy, got pale, was like sick and fell down and like couldn't compete. She was so horrified of competing.

• 35:16Jocko Willink?

  And what made me think of this example was like, she just competed the other day and looked like she was going to a party. Like she was having so much fun, smiling and dancing and like just loving life. And it's, my point in saying that is if you've got kids and you think that this little ti- one little tiny data point on their personality, it, you think it's like the, the beginning of the end.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:39Jocko Willink?

  When in fact, it probably has almost zero impact, almost zero, zero impact. Like it's gotta be like a point zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, one. And maybe the, the impact it'll have is like push them in the other direction.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, maybe Rana at some point was like, well, I'm gonna get more, you know, I'm gonna become more confident or something like that. But you can't freak out when your kids are little. Now, listen, if your kid has some pattern, some negative pattern for months at a time, then it's like, okay, you know, maybe I need to help them out. But a lot of it is just like, whatever, dude. Like it's just a little kid doing a little random thing.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:15Jocko Willink?

  You can't put a bunch of money on that.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I learned a lot from that day. And, and you know, as time goes on, you start to recognize that, that kind of sequence of things. So it, it's almost like, you know, also another expression that you say it's like, it's a data point, right? So it's like, yeah, it's a data point, but it's kind of even less. I mean, it's a data point. At the end of the day, but it's just one single unit at a certain time too. Things change, man. It's like, you know how like the idea of late bloomers?

• 36:44Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Um, physically, I mean, you know, the late bloomers can apply to a lot of stuff, I understand. But physically, you know, people, they have their growth spurt like in their late teens or their twenties sometime.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  So that's like saying, oh, wait, he's like the second shortest kid in his kindergarten class, therefore he's gonna be, you know, like, he's not gonna grow that much or something like this. It's like the same like evaluation process, you know? Oh, yeah, it's like one data point at a very specific point in time. Yeah, exactly right. So I mean, and that you saying that about Rana, like, I didn't know that about Rana, like that she was like that nervous or didn't want to compete or whatever.

• 37:22Jocko Willink?

  Horrified.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you right now, Brad, if, if.

• 37:25Jocko Willink?

  She told me the other day, she never did a competition she didn't cry at.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's.

• 37:30Jocko Willink?

  Even once she, when she would win, she'd cry.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  That's borderline unbelievable, given how she is right now.

• 37:36Jocko Willink?

  She is, yeah. She's having all kinds of fun. I mean, it's ridiculous. You know what I mean?

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I do.

• 37:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, it's almost like a different, it's, you wouldn't, if you were, if you didn't understand what we're talking about, you would think there's no possible way that a kid that started like that would finish like this.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 37:52Jocko Willink?

  You wouldn't seem possible.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:54Jocko Willink?

  So if you've got kids and you have fear because your kid, you know, uh, didn't want to do something or didn't perform the way you expected or quit early on some little thing, or the other line, end of the spectrum is someone that's a little kid that's super determined, those kids get burnt out, they don't want to do anymore. So just chill.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  So here's a mistake, and I say this, this is a deviation from, from the Marine Corps in War for sure, but the principles with the kids relevant. It can work the other way too. So you know how like, um, this is a common thing where, let's say the mom or the grandma or whatever, thinking from my experience, where, uh, let's say your kids, uh,

• 38:41Speaker 01

  all right, I'll say my experience, my daughter was good at swimming and she could stand like cold water for some reason, like better than all of us, everyone, like during the winter time. I know it's not East Coast or nothing like this, but San Diego, when it gets winter time, the pool gets colder than normal. I don't want to get in there. But she's like, she don't care. It's like literally a non-factor. From Kuwait, where you got a barely. But she'll just jump in like as if she's not trying to impress nobody. She just jump in because yeah, it's all jumping the pool. You know, she she'd always been like that. And she got good at swimming real early. So we're like, oh, yeah, um, let's put her in swimming. So we put her in swimming. She's like, I don't really like it. I was like, hey, just just give it a good try.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Because me, just like jujitsu, right? Where it's like, hey, once you get your first submission, you're gonna be hooked. I already know. Like anything you get success at early, you're good. Chance are you gonna like it, right? And I knew she would do good. So she joined swimming and of course she does good. She wins like her meets like she won. She uh she wins first place every single time except for like two second place things, right? When I saw my call, bro, this girl's gonna be the swimmer, you know? But I was already hit to this notion where if I'm if in my mind, oh, she's gonna be fricking the swimmer. I'm gonna like be too overbearing and I'm not turn her off of, you know? Because I know everything, right? So, you know, it's like I risk that and I knew that.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  So I had to stick with my word, but I was on the inside. I was like, I I felt that. I was like, oh, my gosh, this girl's she's gonna love it. And it's gonna be, you know, I'm ready to get her. All kinds of support and like all this stuff, right? But I didn't. Sure enough, she was like, I mean, it was cool, fun to win, but I don't like swimming. She simply didn't like it. So it's like, just because they're good at it and like it at this point. Doesn't mean you start rearranging your whole life and their whole future for that one thing, you know? You gotta let time and, you know, just one data point.

• 40:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the other thing is like, think about what you were doing when you were nine years old. You know what I mean? Like, it's totally ridiculous. Now with me, I was running around in the in the woods like with a freaking charcoal. Uh cork blackened and rubbed on my face, wearing a camouflage top, trying to shoot my buddy Jeff with a BB gun.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Bro, so was I, though.

• 40:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  And bro, I wasn't I wasn't joining up that, you know, that was not my my thing, but which is actually part of the point.

• 41:04Jocko Willink?

  How come you didn't join?

• 41:05Speaker 01

  What?

• 41:05Jocko Willink?

  The military, yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Um, I wanted to be an architect. Actually, what's interestingly.

• 41:13Jocko Willink?

  But like Cake Nuts, you didn't see Cake Nuts go and you're like, eh, you know what?

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were like, well, Jeremy's dad was a Navy SEAL and then Kicko and Jeremy, they're just like, fuck, yeah, this is what we're doing, you know, kind of a thing. And, and.

• 41:23Jocko Willink?

  But they didn't drag you into it?

• 41:24Speaker 01

  No, no, no, they were, they wanted to be like Navy SEALs. I was like, bro, I don't want to be a Navy SEAL, bro. It doesn't make sense to me, whatever. But they were, he had like a very specific like.

• 41:35Jocko Willink?

  But they didn't get you hyped on it at all?

• 41:37Speaker 01

  No.

• 41:37Jocko Willink?

  Like even if you were around playing BB guns, shooting BB guns in the woods and, and your buddies are like, yo, we're gonna go do this for real. And you were like, hell yeah.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  No, no, bro, I was way more of a mellow person, I think. I wasn't like.

• 41:49Jocko Willink?

  But there's mellow teen guys.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  That has no bearing on my personality or what I wanted to do at all. And you gotta think too, um, on, in Kauai, the military culture is not super strong. So it's not like, that's not like the, you know, if someone's just floating in the, in the winds, you don't, I don't, I hardly know anyone who went in the military. I think I know like three, four guys besides Jeremy and Cake Nuts. Actually, one, yeah, one of my best friends, he went, he was a pilot. And then one guy went into the army that I remember. So, yeah, I don't know. It's probably a whole thing, a whole, uh, number list or reason.

• 42:25Jocko Willink?

  Well, if you would have gone, maybe you would have learned about overcoming fear. Fear is a powerful force in battle. It is common to all men, rarely discussed and understood. You'll feel it yourself. Instead of denying fear, you need to think about it, plan for it. And learn how to lead yourself and your Marines in spite, enact in spite of it. Yep. This is still just something that you can't really a hundred percent get control over. People are gonna be afraid. But it is very good to let them know what they're feeling. If they know what they're feeling, it's, makes it easier to overcome. I know we had some MMA fighters.

• 43:03Jocko Willink?

  And I would, I had a kind of a standard speech for the MMA fighters when I'd see that and those nerves start to kick up and just talk about, hey, there's some things you can't control. Over in Iraq, you could be driving down the street, get blown up, killed by a freaking roadside bomb. That can happen. And you know how much I worried about that? Barely any, because I couldn't control it. I worried about getting shot or getting to a firefighter, having one of my guys get wounded or killed, but there's some things you can't control. And just like when you're about to go in this cage and fight this person, there's some things you can't control. You might, you know what? You might get caught with a freaking left hook that knocks you out. You might get caught with a straight right that you just go down. And you know what?

• 43:45Jocko Willink?

  You've trained as hard as you can. There's nothing more you could do about it right now. What you can do is go out there and fight your fight, focus on what you can control. And that's what you gotta deal with. So same thing with guys, you two guys like

• 43:57Jocko Willink?

  in combat, like going to the bathroom a bunch of times before an operation, you're like, are you nervous? No, I'm not nervous. Yeah, you are. It's all good, man. It's all good. You're supposed to be.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that how you would say that. And even recently where you, when you say these feelings you're feeling are normal.

• 44:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  When you, anytime you

• 44:16Speaker 01

  indicate that it's normal, it's, it's like you almost give them permission to have those feelings and then not panic for having those feelings, you know, kind of a thing. Cause the element of panic is kind of like, especially when you look around, you can't read somebody's mind. Like, sure, this guy seems a little bit nervous, but bro, on the inside, I feel like 10 times as nervous as this person looks, you know? So you think there's something kind of wrong with you and you might short circuit or, or whatever, you know? But then once someone says, oh, no, no, that's normal, you know? And then it's like, oh, wait, I can feel like this. And then you feel like way less like destructively nervous, you know? I remember the football camp where

• 44:54Speaker 01

  in college football camp, you know, like two days and conditioning, like it's, it's freaking, it's, it's not a very fun experience, given the whole football experience. It's the least fun part. And it's however many weeks or whatever. And then you get a lot of new guys from, you know, out of town and stuff and, you know, some of the freshmen, they're new to the state and it's like, you're just doing football and it's like, you get homesick real quick. And I remember thinking, shoot, man, am I like not cut out for this? Cause I'm, I'm not enjoying this anymore. Like football is not fun right now. And I gotta do dedicate my current life to it. I'm like freaking bruh, some question marks were coming in my head. And then about that time, this other guy from, I was from Hawaii and we're still in Hawaii. So it's kind of whatever.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  This other guy from like Kentucky, he was like, he was just straight up overtly saying, this isn't for me. I'm, I'm leaving. I'm, I'm gonna quit. Like this, just this isn't for me. And they're like, what, what's not for you? He's like, man, this is just not for me, man. I didn't, he couldn't put his finger on it. The thing is probably, we're all going through that shit. It's like, bro, it's, it becomes less and less fun. You feel claustrophobic, you feel like you're in prison, like all these little feelings that it's almost like you can't put your finger on. They add up after, after a certain amount of time. And then everyone would laugh on him, like the veterans, the guys who have been there for a while, they'd like laugh. And he'd be like, what the hell, whatever. He's like, he's like, brah, that's how it is. Like, he's like, it'll be better when school starts, right?

• 46:19Speaker 01

  I remember one guy said that. And then he's like, I don't know, man. I don't know. And then he kept saying it for days. This is not for me. Every single person would say, ha, they'd laugh and they say, it'll get better when school starts. I'm thinking, oh, this is like normal. Like everyone feels like this and everyone like knows what to say. Everyone knows the process, you know? So then I felt, I felt way better after that. I was like, okay, I guess this is normal. So I guess I'm allowed to feel like this.

• 46:43Jocko Willink?

  Exactly. Yeah. No, that's a key component and you can, you can help your kids out with that a lot too.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have.

• 46:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, it's okay. You'd be afraid right now. Oh, it's, oh yeah, you're going to new school. Everyone's nervous going to the new school. I've said that to a thousand people coming into Victory MMA when they're like, well, I've just never trained before. Like, yeah, there's four more people in the class that you're going to right now that have never trained before.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:03Jocko Willink?

  And you're all gonna get in there and you're all gonna do fine. It happens every day.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  It was so funny because well, I got the words from you, like, hey, that's normal. Instead of saying, hey, don't worry about it. Like instead of saying, hey, don't feel this. Be like, no, no, yeah, fuck yeah.

• 47:19Jocko Willink?

  Of course you feel it.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  You know, you're sad, you're mad or whatever. And it applies to everything, not just, uh, not just fear. So I'd use it with my daughter because you know, like girls, when they breach puberty and all this stuff, they feel like insecure and oh my God, this and all that. And bro, I would use that thing every day. I'm like, oh yeah, that's normal. That's part of like this whole process or whatever.

• 47:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I've gone and talked to a lot of people, um, both military and law enforcement and mil, and yeah, military and law enforcement where it's like, oh yeah, you went, you went through something really terrible. And you feel sad, angry, confused, depressed and um and chaotic in your brain. Oh yeah, it's normal. Cool. Yep, it'll go away. Like it won't go completely away. It won't go away overnight. But like you're gonna live on, you're gonna keep doing stuff and you'll feel it sometime. You'll think about you friends that you lost. Oh yeah, you miss your friends that you lost? Yeah, that's totally normal. Totally normal. So drive on.

• 48:21Jocko Willink?

  Back to the document. The cumulative effects of combat stress are the greatest of all. In World War Two, nearly 25% of all casualties were related to stress. In some units, stress casualties were equal or equal to or greater than those from death and injury. Dang.

• 48:38Jocko Willink?

  Early combat experience usually builds confidence and steals a man for com- for future combat. However, this is true only to a point. As stress mounts with each new enemy contact, a Marine's performance suffers and adverse reactions begin. Some men develop fatalistic attitudes, joking about death, believing it's only a matter of time before the number opens up. Been there, done that.

• 49:04Jocko Willink?

  They may throw caution to the wind and behave irrationally in the face of fire. Others may experience great internal conflict as stress builds and they try to overcome their loss of courage.

• 49:17Jocko Willink?

  All these things are all the, all things that can take place. It's funny, the um, the, the like irrational anger and stuff, I got to see that sometimes. You know, guys, that would be, just guys would be, and you see this in any, or in any situation when people are stressful. When there's a lot of stress put on, they lash out, they break, they yell, they scream, like that's all just normal. This is the way it is. But then you put them in combat for an extended period of time, that's gonna maybe even happen even more. And the other thing that's funny is when you come home, kind of people forget about that. You know what I mean? Kind of like, we forget about the bad stuff.

• 49:52Jocko Willink?

  Uh, stress-related suicide, such men may deliberately seek death as the only honorable escape from their predicament. Others may take their own lives. During the six-hour aerial bombardment prior to Operation Goodwood, the 1944 Allied breakout from Enormity Beachhead, at least 25 German soldiers committed suicide. I tried to find a source for that. I couldn't find it. I'm not saying it's, I'm not saying it's not true, but I, but that's really fascinating. I would think if I thought I was gonna die and I was a soldier, I would do everything I can. If I'm gonna die to kill as many of my enemies as I possibly could. I wouldn't just do their job for them. You know what I mean? That's a really weird outcome. But I guess if you're

• 50:36Jocko Willink?

  suffering a bombardment for six hours and you're just knowing you're gonna lose and you're just waiting to die in some horrible way, you're like, oh, well, I'll just finish the job, I guess. Today, it is generally accepted that all men have a breaking point. There is no doubt that troops, however well-led, can only take the stress of battle for so long, then they break. Any commander at any level who tries to overdraw the account is courting disaster. The mental and physical constantly interact. Therefore, physical fatigue, hunger, disease, thirst, and above all, the stress of adverse climactic conditions, climatic conditions, can reduce the physical state of the soldier to such an extent that his

• 51:21Jocko Willink?

  will to fight is broken. So, yeah. Fatigue makes cowards of us all, but so can cold, so can heat, so can freaking sores on your feet and, and mosquitoes gnawing at you. Like, all those little things combined together, they can break your will. And by the way, that was Major General T. S. Hart.

• 51:46Jocko Willink?

  Each man's breaking point is difficult. Oh, sorry. Identifying each man's breaking point is difficult, if not impossible. Some men draw from a deep well of courage while others break early from, from the anxiety of entering combat for the first time. Rest and encouragement can replenish the will only to a certain degree.

• 52:05Jocko Willink?

  So they're saying like, oh yeah, if you, if you get broken, rest is only going to replenish you to a certain point. I think that depends on how broken you let them get.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:15Jocko Willink?

  I think if they get a little, little bit, you know, so a little, a little fracture can heal back up, but maybe like a compound fracture that's completely broke and sticking through the skin, maybe that's not going to heal up all the way. While most of your Marines will never reach their breaking point, some will. Depending on the severity of the breakdown, their incapacity may be short or long term. Many psychiatric casualties are reversible if they receive prompt treatment as close to the front as possible. So that's kind of in line with what we've been saying. But some severe cases require long-term treatment in rear area medical facilities. A few never recover.

• 52:53Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Get them off the front lines, get them to the help as quick as you possibly can. If you've got somebody at work that's starting to break, they're starting to get stressed out, you're starting to see them, they're not eating, they're looking sick, their feet, they're getting sick, they're freaking out, they're losing their temper. Come in, give them a break. People need a break sometimes.

• 53:11Jocko Willink?

  Over time, the cumulative effects of anxiety, anger, anguish, fatigue, boredom, and repeated exposure to danger reduces combat effectiveness in almost all men.

• 53:22Jocko Willink?

  As you lead Marines in prolonged combat, watch carefully for signs of stress-related breakdown and treat quickly. Stressed casualties can be just as debilitating as those caused by death or physical injury. So as a leader, you've got to be paying attention.

• 53:40Jocko Willink?

  Many factors determine a Marine's will to fight. Combat factors such as fear, stress, fatigue and fatigue affect each Marine differently. Since it's impossible to predict or measure the impact these combat factors will have on your men, you as a Marine leader must do your best to you can to prepare yourself and your men. Study and learn human behavior in combat and use your own actions and example to positively affect your men's will to fight. You are the most important factor keeping your Marines fighting. And as much as all I just laid out, this is an interesting quote here. It is my belief that no one can give a prescription for a correct application of the principle of psychology in war. The only thing of which we are certain is this, the psychology of the soldier is always important.

• 54:25Jocko Willink?

  No commander lacking in this inner knowledge of his men can accomplish great things. It's like it's so variable that they don't actually say, hey, here's how you handle this. It's so variable that's like, oh, this guy might be in one day totally stressed out. Get him to the rear. This guy might let make it 14 days before he gets stressed out and you send him to the rear. I guess the only thing that's not variable is you have to be able to identify it. You have to pay attention to it. And then when it happens, you gotta pull someone to the rear.

• 54:57Jocko Willink?

  Also, it's pretty, pretty clear that people are more afraid of what they can't see than what they can see. And they're also more afraid when they don't have control versus when they have control. Like for me, I always felt more, more scared in a vehicle than on foot. Cause in a vehicle, you have less control. In a Humvee, I'm the vehicle commander. I can be like, stop, go, turn left, turn right. In a tank or in a Bradley, like you have no, I have no control. I'm sitting in the back with a bunch of freaking soldiers or Marines and that, that, that thing is going, that Bradley is going where it's going. And if it gets blowed up, you're just getting blowed up, you know?

• 55:37Jocko Willink?

  So I had the most tension, I would say like fear, but the most like discomfort in a Bradley with the least amount of control. And then the Humvee with a little more control than on foot. Yep, I'm in control.

• 55:54Jocko Willink?

  So this next section deals with the other thing that we have to contend with as a leader, which is the friction of war. And it says friction is the force that makes apparently easy, that makes the apparently easy so difficult. Friction inhibits effective performance. When a plan fails because the trucks do not arrive or the link up unit gets lost, this is friction. Friction is not a difficult concept to understand because you can see it daily during both peace and war. So portrayed, war appears a simple enterprise, but in practice, because of the countless

• 56:33Jocko Willink?

  factors that impinge upon it, the conduct of war becomes extremely difficult. That's from warfighting Marine Corps. Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. Ooh. The difficulties that accumulate end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war. Friction is the only concept that distinguishes real war from war on paper. That's Carl von Clausewitz from his famous book on war, which we have not covered. People ask me a lot of times why we haven't covered on war yet. We will at some point, but the main reason we haven't is because I prioritized other

• 57:16Jocko Willink?

  books that I think more accurately reflect what I've experienced. And that's why I like B. H. Liddell Hart, who is kind of counter to, he's the other. He's kind of the, maybe this is strong, but a little bit more opposing of the Clausewitz view. But the Clausewitz view, there's plenty of good takeaways that we should pay attention to, myself included. Maybe I'm like your, uh, what are those, like a hipster with music? Yeah. You know what I mean? Sure. Like a hipster with music is like, oh, that band? Yeah. Oh, they're they're so popular. I don't listen to them.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  Oh, right, right.

• 57:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm like an elitist. You know, I like the I like the uh, the more lower unknown. Not that Beige Old Heart is unknown, but he's definitely not as popular as Klaus Witz.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:10Jocko Willink?

  But then again, we've covered a really popular stuff, too. I mean, free, we covered Napoleon for crying out loud and and Sun Tzu. So we've covered the greatest hits. Yeah, we had, but there's a greatest hits we haven't covered yet, and that's Klaus Witz. Maybe I need to get in the game.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 58:27Jocko Willink?

  Check. Noted. Opposing wills. It is impossible to fully appreciate friction in combat until you've experienced it. Enormous friction is generated simply by the fact that combat is uniquely dangerous, and the reality is that the enemy is trying to kill you. The very essence of war, a clash between opposed wills, creates friction. The enemy is not an inanimate object, but an independent, independent and active force that seeks to resist your will and impose your own will on you. This dynamic interplay between the enemy's will and your will makes war difficult, complex, and full of friction. So we were talking earlier about paintball versus live fire. This is an interesting thing.

• 59:12Jocko Willink?

  So

• 59:15Jocko Willink?

  in

• 59:17Jocko Willink?

  when you're using paintball

• 59:20Jocko Willink?

  and people are shooting at paintball at you and you don't really want to get hit,

• 59:25Jocko Willink?

  but you still don't really mind that much.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 59:27Jocko Willink?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:29Jocko Willink?

  So on the one side, I might run across the street and grab Echo and drag him back, even though there's people shooting paintball at me. I'll do like a full freaking Medal of Honor run to freaking save you. Right?

• 59:47Jocko Willink?

  And but but we might think, oh, well, that's not really realistic because you aren't actually getting shot at. So you're not actually going to die, but it kind of gets leveled out because the people that are shooting at me. My guys are putting down cover fire on them. So the fact that they're still shooting is a little bit unrealistic. They might be not be taking such accurate shots because they're freaking like scared of getting shot themselves. So it it evens out a little bit.

• 1:00:15Jocko Willink?

  Like you wouldn't be so brave, but the enemy wouldn't be so accurate.

• 1:00:20Jocko Willink?

  This is kind of reminds me of I'll be training with like, uh, I had this discussion actually with Mihal. Because like if if I get a heel hook on you, but we're just, we're just training, right? So I get a heel hook on you. Well,

• 1:00:36Jocko Willink?

  I'm not going to put the full effect of the heel hook to where I'm going to hurt you. But also you're not going to go as crazy defending it. Nor are you going to take it as far as you would if we were in competition. So I think it kind of evens out that if we were training, I put a heel hook on you. It was a good solid heel hook. I go to, I go to start apply the press and you.

• 1:01:06Jocko Willink?

  But I don't apply it so hard because I don't want to hurt you. At the same time, you're not defending as chaotically, but more important, you're, you're taking it further.

• 1:01:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. You're a little bit more brave because I'm a little bit more chill. But if we escalate both those things, we're probably pretty realistic. So if I was going harder, but you were taking it further, then you know, we probably get to a place where just the training, the 85%. Like, well, you know, you know, you might say to me, like, if you get out of a heel hook, you might be like, I might say like, I would have had you if I went all the way and you would have been like, well, I would have defended more. And I would have taken it to a more of a limitation, right? Because let's face it, we're not, we're not training our ACLs.

• 1:01:56Jocko Willink?

  So I think when you're training appropriately, it does reflect very closely the real thing. Not quite the real thing, but the real thing.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense. Actually, I never thought about that. That's true. Like you're, you're way more. Inclined to, you know, stay in the pocket, see if you can't wiggle out of that arm bar, heel hook, or whatever, when the guy's not freaking cranking on that thing.

• 1:02:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  Like it, like he's trying to really rip it off, you know, like he would be in the competition.

• 1:02:25Jocko Willink?

  Right. And, and but also, if you get my arm in a competition, I might let that thing pop two, three, four times, and I can still functionally fight, it's just that I'm injured now. You know, I can still get through the fight. So there's a little bit, it's very realistic, surprisingly.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, you get that weird balance.

• 1:02:42Jocko Willink?

  Except for maybe with chokes, because chokes you can take out.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:45Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:45Jocko Willink?

  Let's go 99.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:02:46Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent, let's go.

• 1:02:50Jocko Willink?

  Sources of friction, friction comes from both external and self-imposed sources. External friction is imposed by factors such as enemy action, the terrain, the weather, or mere chance. Self-imposed friction includes factors such as a lack of clearly defined goals, a lack of coordination, and unclear complicated plans. Isn't it interesting that the freaking friction that we have to fight against?

• 1:03:14Jocko Willink?

  A bunch of it comes from us. Please keep that in mind. A bunch of the friction in your life is self-generated.

• 1:03:24Jocko Willink?

  It's important to keep in mind that friction from any source has a way of sneaking up on you despite awareness and planning, countless minor incidents, the kind you can never really foresee, can combine and create friction, causing you to fall short of your goals. I think that I, personally, am very good at predicting friction. It's like, I know that things are harder than they're gonna be. I know that friction is gonna sneak in. You know, it's like BTF Tony used to say, everything, everything takes a half an hour.

• 1:03:55Jocko Willink?

  Like, you think it's gonna take, hey, we'll just take 10 minutes to reload these radios. No, it's gonna take a freaking half an hour. Everything takes a half an hour. That's a little, that's just a little element of friction that's just universal.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Jocko Willink?

  For combat, for a combat leader friction has two important implications. The Marine Corps warfighting doctrine teaches that while you should try and minimize self-induced friction, the greater requirement to fight effectively within the medium of friction. This means accept friction as part of the combat fight.

• 1:04:25Jocko Willink?

  This means accept friction as part of combat and fight effectively despite it. That's really good. Maybe that's what I, there's. Let me put it this way, I'm not often surprised when things don't go like perfectly. You know what I mean? I'm not like, oh my God, what happened? No, I'm like, oh, okay, I get it. That's friction. Oh, that little thing went wrong? Oh, it took longer than we expected? Oh, the, the people didn't show up? Oh, the thing went, yeah, I, I'm like used to that.

• 1:04:53Jocko Willink?

  Overcoming friction requires will. Learn to prevail through your persistent strength of mind and spirit. It helps to remember that friction affects both you and your enemy in combat. That's, that's a good one, right? Hey, the enemy's cold too. Or the enemy's hot. Or the enemy's tired. So while you strive to overcome the effects of friction, you must attempt to raise your enemy's friction to a level that destroys his will and ability to fight. If you can operate at a higher tempo than your enemy, despite friction, you'll be victorious. Brian Stan. Brian Stan was hyped on freaking tempo, dude. Operational tempo. That's what he was, he was a full supporter of operational tempo.

• 1:05:38Jocko Willink?

  To generate and maintain a high tempo within an environment of friction, you must control subordinates by using mission orders. So this is when we get into a very important part from a leadership perspective. Mission orders, the way that they use that term in the Marine Corps and the military at large is like, this is when you tell someone what the mission is, what the purpose is, what the commander's intent is, not like, hey, I need you to do this specific thing. You don't say that. You say, this is where we want to get to. Get us there.

• 1:06:08Jocko Willink?

  And that's actually a really good example of like, instead of trying to give someone freaking street by street directions to get somewhere. Instead, you just say, hey, you're going to head north. And you're going to look for this landmark. And when you see this landmark go. Just a much more, I don't care what route you take to get there. None of that matters to me, but here's where you need to get to. You can figure it out. You can use GPS. You can use the freaking mapping compass. You can use the Thomas roadmaps or whatever. Remember those old things? Probably use them for the moving company.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:06:44Jocko Willink?

  No. Well. What they're saying here is that to avoid friction. You need a high tempo. In order to have on a high tempo, you've got to give people mission type orders. And that is, this is your task. This is your purpose. This is my intent. Go make it happen. Sometimes you will see leaders use detailed orders to closely control subordinates in an effort to eliminate friction. Which means they're focusing inward rather than take friction in stride. Historically, however, this has seldom worked. Yeah. That's called a little something.

• 1:07:20Jocko Willink?

  Called centralized command. Which does not work. In the face of friction, your most important challenge is to maintain focus on your mission. Friction generates constant and urgent pressure to lay your mission aside. This is Echo Charles talking about distractions. Casualties demand your immediate attention. Communications break down. Your neighboring unit. You told would be would attack has not done so. Your key subordinate leader has just been killed. These are all little points of frictions. All these distractions. And more. Will press upon you, forcing you to lay aside the mission. This challenges your strength of will.

• 1:08:02Jocko Willink?

  You must be strong enough to keep yourself and your unit focused on the mission despite the pressure to do otherwise. So there it is. Echo Charles, right in line with the Marine Corps. These distractions.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  And it will.

• 1:08:17Jocko Willink?

  You got jammed up by a lot of distractions back in the day. Are you doing better now?

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, big time because of understanding that will and the real. Put it this way, the premise that kind of was. Furthermore, we'll say was you'd be surprised what kind of forms distraction can come in. So a lot of times it's like comfort, you know, comfort is like a distraction. Or it is a distraction. Or like some kind of relief or, uh, you know, I don't know, pleasure, uh, like there's a lot of distractions.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  There's obvious ones like, you know, TV or I don't know, if you have a goal or whatever. But like they have, uh, there's like an expression, what's it called? The shiny object syndrome, you know, it's like that kind of stuff.

• 1:09:04Jocko Willink?

  A lot of people, there's a kids movie that has like a thing that chases a squirrel all the time.

• 1:09:10Jocko Willink?

  You're not familiar with this kids, kids movie squirrel. You hear people say that now. That's the, it's the new shiny object is squirrel.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It's all distractions. Um, but yeah, if you can, I, I would almost argue that a lot of time.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Most of the time, people don't get to where they want to go because of some sort of a distraction.

• 1:09:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's certainly very plays a huge part.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:39Jocko Willink?

  And sometimes the distractions, like it's here, it says your key subordinate leader has just been killed. It's calling that a distraction.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:46Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? Which is pretty psycho.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:48Jocko Willink?

  But at the same time, you got to accomplish the mission and you got to assume that. If you don't accomplish the mission, it's not only going to be your subordinate leader that gets killed. You gotta get across that airfield. You gotta seize that high ground, whatever that thing is. If you don't do it. You're going to lose a lot more than just your subordinate leader. So you can't get distracted.

• 1:10:10Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, if you're paying attention to the things that distract you, that's a huge help. Cause a lot of people are being distracted. They don't even know it.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:16Jocko Willink?

  No, no, it's going down.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Tradition can be a distraction.

• 1:10:20Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  From like, it's, it's pretty much.

• 1:10:23Jocko Willink?

  The way we've always done it. Just keep doing it the same way.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Big time. Or you're, uh, you're trying to, I don't know. Oh, you're trying to like cut down, trying to make weight or trying to lose weight, trying to reach a certain like weight physically. These are, that's, I feel like that's like the, uh, real obvious mission that a lot of people are on, right?

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  But no, but oh, Christmas dinner. See, I'm saying it's the tradition.

• 1:10:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Here's the Christmas dinner. I was like, what does this have to do with anything?

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, bro. I can distract you. Like, that's the tradition. So it like distract, you know, takes your eyes off the goal. You gotta tend to that, right?

• 1:10:58Jocko Willink?

  And in order to do that, you got to impose your will, right? So the leader's will, in an effort to keep your unit fighting and focused on its mission, your own will, the will of the leader is the single most important factor. Being a leader requires great strength of will. Marines sense their leader's strength of will. If your will is weak, your Marines will yield easily to fear and stress. If your will is strong, it will instill and strengthen courage and determination in your men.

• 1:11:32Jocko Willink?

  I'll close this out, uh, close out this section because there's more in this, in this book on the, it kind of drifted into some things that I didn't think would be as pertinent for our people. I'm going to close this out, the story from the Korean War. And it says, Captain Robert H. Barrow, commanding officer, Company A, First Battalion, First Marines, provides a powerful picture of strength of will in combat. In battle at best, S L A Marshall described Barrow's exceptional leadership during the First Marine Division's legendary mark, March to the Sea from the Chosin Reservoir in December nineteen fifty.

• 1:12:08Jocko Willink?

  At dark on eight December, the snowfall ceased and the cold intensified. Down along the canyon, the canyon road near the water gate, a brisk wind was piling on the drifts as high as a man's head. At the battalion CP, which was partly sheltered by the canyon wall, the thermometer read thirty degrees below zero. Up on the windswept crags where Able Company was clearing Chinese dead from the bunkers to make room for its own ranks, and at the same time preparing to evacuate its own casualties down the iced slopes of the mountain, it must have been a touch colder than that, though there was no reading of the temperature.

• 1:12:54Jocko Willink?

  All the batteries had frozen. Weapons were stiffening. The camp long since had run out of water because of the freezing of canteens. To ease their thirst, the men ate snow and seemed to thrive on it. But many of the problems raised by the weather. But of the many problems raised by the weather, the most severe one was getting an average man to observe what the field manuals so easily described as a common sense precaution. For example, prior to marching from Chin Hong Ni, Captain Barrow of Abel had made certain that each of his men carried two spare pairs of socks.

• 1:13:38Jocko Willink?

  But that safeguard did not of itself ensure his force through the men with the feet sweated from the labors of the day were all at the point of becoming frostbite casualties by the hour of the bivouac. Captain Barrow continues, quote, "I learned that night that only leadership will save men under winter conditions. It's easy to say that men should change socks. Getting it done is another matter. Bootlaces become iced over during prolonged engagements and snowdrifts. It's a fight to get a boot off the foot. When a man removes his gloves to struggle with the laces, it seems to him that his

• 1:14:24Jocko Willink?

  hands are freezing. His impulse is all against it. So I found it necessary to do this by order, staying with the individual until they had changed, then making them get up and move to restore the circulation." End quote. That process, simple and telling, consumed hours. By the time Barrow was satisfied that his command was relatively snug, it was wearing on toward midnight. Right then, his perimeter was hit by a counterattack. An enemy force in platoon strength plus, striking along the same ridge line from Hill

• 1:15:06Jocko Willink?

  1081 in approximately the same formation which Barrow had used during the afternoon.

• 1:15:15Jocko Willink?

  All that needs to be told about this small action is summed up in Barrow's brief radio report to Lieutenant Colonel Schmuck. Quote, "They hit us. We killed them all." So, there you have it. There is going to be resistance, right? There's going to be friction. And the most important force in those scenarios, the force that we utilize to overcome fear, to overcome inertia, to overcome friction, to overcome resistance, is the human will.

• 1:15:59Jocko Willink?

  And we have to remember that a leader can impose his will, or if he's not careful, he can impose his weakness. And then it is very important, critically important, perhaps for most people listening, most important to remember that you are your own leader. You are the soldiers. Yes, you're the captain. Yes, you're the battalion commander. You're even the freaking general. You are in charge of what you do. You have to make the calls and you are going to resist you. And you can't do that.

• 1:16:42Jocko Willink?

  You can't allow the prisoners, the inmates, to run the prison, right? You can't. You've got to impose your will on yourself. Don't let your own troops, yourself, don't let yourself down the easy path. You can't do that. You have to take the hard path. You have to force yourself to take off your gloves and untie your frozen laces and change socks so that your feet don't become frostbite. You have to force yourself to get up in the morning and go do physical activities so that you don't become weak.

• 1:17:25Jocko Willink?

  You have to force yourself to put away the donuts and eat something healthy. You have to impose your will. That is where the leader's will comes into play every single day. It's in your own head.

• 1:17:41Jocko Willink?

  So keep that in mind.

• 1:17:45Jocko Willink?

  And that's what we got. And speaking of will and speaking of discipline, we need to impose discipline on ourselves, impose our own will every day. Training, fighting, running, lifting,

• 1:18:03Jocko Willink?

  stretching, reading, writing, just gotta be doing everything when you're doing that.

• 1:18:10Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna need fuel. We recommend the best fuel, actually. We recommend you try out Jocko Fuel. Hey, check it out. JacoFuel.com. We got the real goods there. We got deals there on JacoFuel.com. We got, we got free shipping over $99 on JacoFuel.com. We got subscriptions that get you up to 20, 20% off and a bunch of free gifts there. So we got it. We're trying to take care of you. Trying to take care of our core people, right? The troopers that are out there at JacoFuel.com. If you're one of the troopers there, we, we will give you, we'll give you the goods. So check that out. And you know what we've got there? We got protein. I just drank a, a milk protein. Freaking tasty, by the way.

• 1:18:51Jocko Willink?

  We drank some milk. I also had, so today I've only partaken in Jocko Fuel products. A hydrate, a go, a milk, and I have another go that's kind of like we're sipping through because we, because it tastes good and that's what we're doing. And we got, what did I have this morning? Joint Warfare. Time War, Super Krill, this morning. That's every morning for me. I'm a little nuts because I have three Super Krill at night, three Super Krill in the morning, three Joint Warfare at night, three Joint Warfare in the morning, and I have Time War every morning.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's a, that's a mega dose for sure.

• 1:19:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but. Man, here I am.

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  Hey, you are.

• 1:19:33Jocko Willink?

  Getting after it.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Yes, you are.

• 1:19:35Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I do.

• 1:19:36Jocko Willink?

  So you might want to check all that stuff out. If I go on, if I go on a trip, I bring some of that Cold War. So you've got some Cold War over there. Are you partaking in a little Cold War right now?

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  Uh, well, I brought it for a video, but the answer is still yes.

• 1:19:48Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:19:50Jocko Willink?

  When I go somewhere and I have to shake hands with 1,000 people and I have to ride on four different airplanes filled with disease ridden people.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:19:58Jocko Willink?

  Cold War all day.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  Cold.

• 1:20:00Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we got. Go to jockoffield.com to check it out, or you can go to Walmart, Wawa, Vitamin Shoppe, GNCs, Military Commissaries, Afees, Hanaford, Dash Stores, Wakefern, ShopRite, HEB Down in Tejas. Leif was pointing out to me that sometimes you gotta look around a little bit because it might not be exactly, you might not find like go with the energy drinks. You might not find, it might be in a different section. Just you can ask somebody. HEB's super cool. Same with Meyer. If you gotta ask somebody, ask somebody. Same with Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Publix, like all these regional freaking places that are kind of the place to go in their various neighborhoods. If you, if you don't see it where you might expect to see it, just ask. Somebody will point it out where it is. And then we've also got a Lifetime Fitness Shields and then a bunch of little gyms.

• 1:20:45Jocko Willink?

  Little gyms, big gyms. Victory MMA and Fitness, we got Jocko Fuel, a lot of it, which is real nice. It's a real nice little situation there. If you need it in your small gym or in your business or your chiropractor in your hair salon or in your massage office or your cold plunge facility or your, what are the gymnastics joint?

• 1:21:09Speaker 01

  Dental.

• 1:21:10Jocko Willink?

  Dental office. Like you don't want your kids drinking sugar.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:21:13Jocko Willink?

  No. So if you, if you got a, if you've got any kind of business and you want to give them the goods, email [email protected]. We got you covered. Also.

• 1:21:23Jocko Willink?

  If you want communist free clothing, go to originusa.com and get clothing that is made without, it's a hundred percent communist free. No communism can be detected at all. We got communist free clothing, built by freedom. Originusa.com, we got workout clothes, we got hunt clothes, we got jujitsu clothes. We got jeans just to wear when you're taking your wife out to dinner. By the way, there's, there is a female jeans that are slightly in the works right now.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:21:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Like exclusive female, like women's jeans?

• 1:21:58Jocko Willink?

  That women's jeans, yeah, women's.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 1:22:01Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I got that habit from the military. It's just like the most, like, uh, way to describe a female is just female. You know what I mean? Like textbook. You don't know, you don't play any gray areas in the military. It's like, no, male, female. Those are just two things we're, we're talking about here. So sometimes that's still, I wouldn't say like a lady or women's, like you were able to easily as a civilian just be like, oh, women's.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:23Jocko Willink?

  But I was thinking female.

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I figure, I figure when you go to like one of these stores, you know, with fashion items. You're gonna go in the women's section, not the female section.

• 1:22:33Jocko Willink?

  But if you go, if you go to the Navy Exchange, you go to military uniforms, there's male and female. I'm pretty sure, don't quote me on that. It feels like that's the way it should be.

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  I feel the same way.

• 1:22:43Jocko Willink?

  Females, women, we will have you covered in the future. But, uh, go to originusa.com and get yourself some communist free clothing. No communism whatsoever.

• 1:22:59Jocko Willink?

  So there you go.

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  Yep. Speaking of clothing, jockostore.com. Mostly like t-shirts, some hats on there, some hoodies and stuff, but it's discipline equals freedom. See what I'm saying? So we're representing on this path that we're all on, by the way.

• 1:23:14Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:23:14Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, big time. So yeah, discipline equals freedom. Good. Get after it. Actually, I'm wearing a get after it right now. You know, these, uh, various ideas while we're on the path, you know, you can represent. Uh, we have a thing called the shirt locker. It's a new design shirt every month. People seem to like that one. A little bit outside the box as far as the creativity goes, I think, anyway. But yeah, people seem to like that one. So check that, that one out. It's on jockostore.com. We have new stuff coming out over the next two weeks. So be on the lookout for that. And if you want to be updated on new stuff in the future, I don't spam nobody. Just put your email, sign up for the email list. You sign up on the little thing on the form.

• 1:23:53Jocko Willink?

  Can we expect spam?

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  Do not expect spam. Look, if you're into spam emails or whatever, sorry, bro. I don't have anything for you. But if you want to be updated, maybe even some discounts, down for a little discount from time to time. Yeah, put your email in there. I'll hit, I'll, I'll hook you up there. Anyway, yes, jocko store.com.

• 1:24:12Jocko Willink?

  Also primalbeef.com, Colorado craft beef.com. You know, you need steak. You need all beef, hot dogs, you need, you need ground beef. Get the good stuff.

• 1:24:27Jocko Willink?

  Actually, it's great stuff. I just had a Colorado craft beef ribeye last night. It was freaking tasty. That being said, it was a Colorado craft beef ribeye, but I used the Sean Glass primal beef methodology for cooking.

• 1:24:44Jocko Willink?

  332211. Get it done. Check those out. Great steak from great people. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also check out jock on the ground.com. Also check out our YouTube channels. Bunch of books. Next book you need to probably get is called Need to Lead by, speaking of the Marine Corps, Dave Burke.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Good deal.

• 1:25:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, good deal, Dave Burke. He's got a book, Need to Lead. I've read it. I wrote the foreword to it, by the way, you know, just over here writing the foreword. So it's a great book, lots of really good information and good angles on things from that aviation perspective. Also, I've written a bunch of books, including a bunch of kids books. So check those kids books out. Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, four, and five. We got a movie coming out starring Chris Pratt. You ever heard of him?

• 1:25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hear. Yeah, great things.

• 1:25:35Jocko Willink?

  Do you like his acting skills?

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  Yes, of course.

• 1:25:37Jocko Willink?

  You could do better than him?

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:25:38Jocko Willink?

  How do you grade your own acting? Because you are in the movie Way of the Warrior Kid.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  Oh, in the, in that movie?

• 1:25:43Jocko Willink?

  Have you seen yourself in it yet? How would you think?

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  I, I, I'd say, well, what, like a one to 10 scenario? My acting, given my role, 10.

• 1:25:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  Couldn't have done it better.

• 1:25:53Jocko Willink?

  What about when you starred in your movie?

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:56Jocko Willink?

  How was your?

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  One.

• 1:25:57Jocko Willink?

  I thought your acting was better than that.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  One.

• 1:25:59Jocko Willink?

  That was pretty good.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  One point five?

• 1:26:00Jocko Willink?

  No, I thought it was pretty good.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  Put it this way, I had my moments of maybe five or six, but I'd say generally speaking.

• 1:26:06Jocko Willink?

  I'd have to rewatch it.

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  It was a learning experience.

• 1:26:08Jocko Willink?

  I'd have to rewatch it, try and check it out. So anyways, we got a bunch of books, kids books, adult books, check them out. Also, Echelon Front, we solve problems through leadership. If you have problems in your world, they are leadership problems. And the way that you solve them is through leadership. We have a bunch of ways to infer this information to you. The lessons that we learned in combat, you can come to one of our events. You can attend one of our events. We have the muster down in Florida, December 7th through the 9th. Every, by the way, these things sell out. Everything I'm talking about will sell out. So if you want to go, contact, go to echelonfront.com and click on events and you'll see which one you want to go to. The battlefield, we're actually doing new battlefields. It's not Gettysburg.

• 1:26:53Jocko Willink?

  We're doing another civil war battlefield out on the east coast. So fresh look, very cool, very interesting. It's kind of, kind of awesome when you like to show up there for the first, be like a plank owner of the first one of these. And then of course, we got the women's assembly down there in San Antonio, Texas, September 11th through the 13th. And also we have a consultancy. We can embed in your business, do an assessment, figure out where the shortfalls are and help you with your leadership. Get your entire business turned around and on the right track. So go to Extreme Ownership, go to echelonfront.com for that. But then if you want, if you want to have some online training to learn these skills of leadership, go to extremeownership.com.

• 1:27:36Jocko Willink?

  Whether you're a frontline individual contributor, or whether you're the CEO or chairman of the board of a massive company, there are skills that you need to win and extremeownership.com can teach you those skills. 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 amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also check out Micah Fink's Heroes and Horses.org. I think I'm gonna try and go, they have an event like a, like a dinner or something, like a big fancy dinner, which fancy for Micah Fink means he's like, what are we gonna just?

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  Campfire scenario?

• 1:28:17Jocko Willink?

  Campfire, I don't know, but, but it's nice. And um, try and get up there for that. Heroes and Horses.org, check it out. And then Jimmy May's organization, Beyond the Brotherhood.org. And if you want to connect with us, check out Jaco.com or on social media. I'm at Jocko Wilk, Echoes@EchoCharles. Just don't spend too much time on there. You got better things to do. You know it. I know it.

• 1:28:41Jocko Willink?

  Also, thanks to the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps for holding the line around the world and leading from the front. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for holding the line here at home to keep us safe. And for everyone else out there, here's one more quote from Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, MCDP 1. We know it as warfighting. And it says, "Discipline is not just a matter of following orders. It is a matter of self-control and self-direction.

• 1:29:24Jocko Willink?

  A willingness to do what is right regardless of the circumstances," end quote. That's what we have to do. Self-discipline, self-control, and self-direction. You know what you're supposed to do. Regardless of what distractions present themselves, you know what you're supposed to do.

• 1:29:45Jocko Willink?

  So go do it.

• 1:29:47Jocko Willink?

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