539: Elevate From The Gray Slop In Your Head.

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Breaking down the battle between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex — emotion versus reason. Why people panic, escalate conflict, make terrible decisions, and how to detach from the “gray slop” in your head. 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 539 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. So Leonardo da Vinci, he said, there are three classes of people, those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.

• 0:17Jocko Willink?

  I want to talk to you about something that we brought up on the underground podcast. I coined, I called it on the, on the podcast gray slop, gray slop, gray matter. Like, you know, your brain is gray, gray slop. This is, has to do with detachment, which is another thing, you know, I've been talking about detachment for years, detached from the chaos, detached from the mayhem, detached from your ego, detached from your emotions. That's gonna make your life so much better if you can do that. But lately I've been looking around and I'm realizing how truly difficult that can be for people and at the same time, seeing how important it is.

• 1:02Jocko Willink?

  And how much it really fouls and jams people up. And when you look at someone, you know, like you and I've talked about, you see someone that's drinking too much and it's kind of bringing down their life and you can see it so clear, but they don't, they don't get it. Or they're involved in a relationship that's a disaster and you explain to them, but they're like, no, no, no, no, like this time, or I can save her, or whatever, whatever the thing is, right? Those are all emotional decisions. Those are just being all, you're, you're all in your own gray slop, your gray matter, your, your, your core. So what is that? You know, this gray matter actually has a, the gray matter that I'm talking about is called the limbic system.

• 1:47Jocko Willink?

  And we'll get into this some more later, but the, the limbic system is kind of the part of your brain with the animal instincts, the, the raw emotion, it's got the fear in there, it's got the rage in there, it's got the, the fight or flight things. It's very fast, it's very impulsive, it's very irrational.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  That's your limbic system. And then the other side, of course, you have the prefrontal cortex. This is the rational brain. This is the logic brain. This is what has, this is what gives you impulse control. This is what allows you to execute long-term planning, which I know you like. Strategic thinking, strategic is in your prefrontal cortex. Moderating your behavior so you don't go nuts is in your prefrontal cortex. And there's, people have been talking about this for a long time, you know, this is nothing new. When I talk about detachment, I'm not the first person to come up with this, right? No, dude, people have been talking about this. Plato. Plato had the chariot allegory and you had these two horses. One was the animal mind and the other one was the spirit and the, and the moral impulse.

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  And, and the driver is reason that's supposed to guide those forces, right? So this is not, this is nothing new. Uh, Descartes had the, the machine versus the soul and the animal. The animal is just instinct and humans have the ability to override those instincts. You're supposed to have that ability. In more modern times, like nowadays, um, Daniel Kahneman, he wrote a book called Thinking Fast and Slow. He breaks it down into these two systems, you know, system one is the fast, the automatic, the emotional, the intuitive, and then system two is the slow deliberate, the analytical one. Jonathan Haidt describes the elephant and the rider. And his point of the elephant, the elephant's big and strong.

• 3:34Jocko Willink?

  Kind of like if your emotions are big and strong, they can override the rider. It's just gonna do what it wants. So that's a good, good analogy. We can take something away from that. Steve Peters, he wrote a book in 2012 called The Chimp Paradox. And then he wrote a children's book called My Hidden Chimp. And then he wrote a guidebook to go along with that in 2018. And he wrote a book called The Path Through the Jungle. And he runs a consultancy, which is called Chimp Management. Cause your inner chimp, when he calls the inner chimp, that's the thing that's going on emotion and going on animal instincts.

• 4:15Jocko Willink?

  And the frontal cortex is the human thing. So you gotta manage that chimp in your head. So again, these are a bunch of, these are centuries worth of people that have talked about this.

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  And written about it. And clearly people understand it and they've been putting the word out forever. And yet it's very, very difficult for people to implement it. This detachment. And I don't think people, one thing I don't think people realize is how much influence that animal brain, that gray slop that's in your head, how much it really influences your logic and your rationality. I don't think people see that it's not, actually each of these examples, they talk about it as two separate things. But there's all kinds of little wires going between the two. And I don't, sometimes don't think people recognize how much they feel like they're being logical, but they're not.

• 5:09Jocko Willink?

  They feel like they're using their, their human elevated enlightened brain, but they're not, they're using the chimp brain.

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  So we do things and we think, we kind of think that the animal instinct is kind of good because, you know, if you get, something happens, you're afraid, you can, you get extra strength. You were just talking about before we hit record. You know, you see fighters that they're, they're exhausted, but then they knock the guy out and all of a sudden they have all this energy. For the celebration. Yeah, energy for the celebration. There's like a regulatory component that's going on and then it overcomes it. But we get extra power when we need it sometimes.

• 5:48Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and it seems like it's helpful, but there's just so much more going on inside that gray slop. And I just don't think people recognize that a lot of times they think they're out of the gray slop, but it's really like their neck deep and it's still interfering with their nose. It's kind of getting little sprinkles into their eyes. And it's, it's just bad.

• 6:10Jocko Willink?

  And it's, it's real, man. And, and this again, this is not me saying my theory. This is like factual information.

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  The amygdala,

• 6:23Jocko Willink?

  which is part of limbic system,

• 6:26Jocko Willink?

  it, it wants us to categorize people as us or them. Right? That's part of our nature. That means prejudice. That means irrational polarization. That's why we get into cliques. Right?

• 6:43Jocko Willink?

  Uh, social status.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  Social status posturing, right? You, you, you might think that's like, oh, well, he's got a big ego because he's insecure. But actually, as an animal, higher status positioning means you get more food. It means you get better mating rights than the other animals. So you're actually genetically programmed to kind of posture up and act tough and show off.

• 7:13Jocko Willink?

  That's an animal instinct that you have. And by the way, how's it make you look? It makes you look arrogant. It makes you look stupid.

• 7:19Jocko Willink?

  There's all kinds of things that translate this animal behavior that translates into our, what we think is oftentimes elevated behavior. This is stuff we talk about all the time in Ashland Front, the feeling like I need to be right.

• 7:34Jocko Willink?

  Cause if I'm right, I have more status. If I have more status, I have better, you know, position in the hierarchy. The urge to show off. The pain of, the pain of social rejection is you feel that there's, that's like a similar, it's processed almost the same way as physical pain. That's why people are so scared of it.

• 7:57Jocko Willink?

  Hypervigilance, negativity bias. Like we focus on bad news. You're genetically programmed as an animal to focus on bad news because good news won't kill you.

• 8:08Jocko Willink?

  That's why we get hyper folks fixated on it.

• 8:12Jocko Willink?

  The, uh, resource hoarding means I need more. Why? Well, that's, it's a human instinct. That's why people do impulsive shopping. That's why people binge eat. That's why there's actual hoarders in the world that hoard things. Their whole house is filled with stuff that they will never, ever, ever need.

• 8:36Jocko Willink?

  Here's one, displacement aggression. So when an animal gets stressed by a more dominant animal, and it can't fight back because it knows it's gonna lose, it turns and attacks weaker animals.

• 8:52Jocko Willink?

  Does that sound like something humans might do? Hell yeah, it is.

• 8:56Jocko Willink?

  So all these things play into it. And of course, we got the one that we hear about all the time, which is, again, pure animal instinct. It's instant gratification from the dopamine loop. Dopamine wants reward right now. It doesn't care about five days from now. It doesn't care about five years from now. It doesn't even care about five hours from now. It wants dopamine right now. So that's why you're doom scrolling. That's why you're eating junk food. That's why you're making all these short-term decisions that are bad. It's genetically programmed into you. It used to keep you alive. Because you were like, I'm just gonna keep looking for these berries until I find them so I get food. Or I'm just gonna keep going after this animal until I get it so I have food. I'm gonna keep chasing down this cave woman so I can procreate. Like, all those things.

• 9:37Jocko Willink?

  And yet, they made it into our world right now.

• 9:43Jocko Willink?

  And the people, this is what I think is interesting, is I think people have varying levels of escaping their gray slop. And, most important,

• 9:54Jocko Willink?

  it's difficult to see. Most of the people, when you're just swimming in your own gray slop animal instincts, you don't see it. You don't, it doesn't feel different. You don't know it. It's not like the temperature drops and you go, oh, wait a second, it just got cold in here. No, you're just like, everything looks the same, except for you're really emotional now. And you don't say, oh, I see what's going on. This is my, I mean, this is the problem people have is, they start getting emotional and they go, oh, this is an animal instinct of mine taking over. And I shouldn't allow that to happen.

• 10:27Jocko Willink?

  So, and people have varying levels of being able to escape their gray slop that's giving them all these animal instincts.

• 10:42Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, when you're, when you're little, you're just in it. You know what I mean? That's why little kids lose their temper. That's why they get nuts. That's why they, even a little baby, what does it do when it's hungry? Screams. Oh, that's what they do. Now, as we get older, hopefully we don't scream as much, but when you're, you know, when a, when a little kid gets bullied, how do they react to it? Right? When a little kid is afraid, how do they react? Sometimes they cry, they freeze up. But then as you get older, hopefully you control those emotions. When you get dumped in, in 10th grade, "Oh, I can't believe I got dumped," you know, and you, crying in the school or whatever.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 11:25Jocko Willink?

  When you get dumped when you're 24, you're like, okay, hey, it didn't work out. You're a little bit more mature. You have a little bit more, but at least you hope. But let's face it, there's a chance, by the way, there's a reason that people get murdered after they get, after they dump someone. Right? Because people just succumb to just gray slop and it's the end of the world and it's total emotion and it's ego and it's chaos. And they go and kill people.

• 11:51Jocko Willink?

  So we're supposed to grow out of it. But it takes time. This is why, this is why a young male driver has a really high insurance. Because this, this dude is just, I mean, he's an animal, right? He's just, how fast can I go? How, you know, I'm gonna take risks. I'm gonna make things happen. I think I can survive. I'm gonna push the envelope.

• 12:14Jocko Willink?

  Hopefully, over time, you, you get more and more elevated out of this gray slop and you get a little bit, this, you know, a little bit of distance from it. But it still drives so much in people. And by the way, this is like one of those things where, if you think, if you think you're not insane.

• 12:38Jocko Willink?

  That's the person that's insane, right? The person that's like, "I'm not crazy." You know, like, no, no, that's the person you have to watch out for. This is the Catch 22. The book Catch 22. If you were, if you were sane enough to say, "Hey, I don't want to fly on these raids." Then, well, it doesn't make sense. So, so when we're crazy, we don't know that we're crazy. And when we're caught in the gray slop, we don't know that we're caught in the gray slop. And so, think about all the things that are in your head that drive decision-making process. Right? Fear and anxiety. What does that make us do? It makes us freeze up, it makes us play it safe. What about anger?

• 13:21Jocko Willink?

  Anger drives us to the short-sighted win. "You're right." Like, "I'm right." "Oh, that's great, that's a good way to win an argument with your wife, to show her approval." That's all it is. Greed. Greed's the other end of the spectrum. Now, you're just ignoring obvious risk. Or, you got excessive optimism.

• 13:47Jocko Willink?

  These are monkey minds, right here. Sadness. When we're really sad, when someone's really sad, they lower the bar. They settle for less. "Oh, this is as good as I can get." Just an emotion.

• 14:01Jocko Willink?

  Need for validation. This is a, this is an animal instinct. And now, you're doing things just for approval. Making decisions so that you can get approval.

• 14:12Jocko Willink?

  Fear of rejection. What happens if you're fear of rejection? Which is an animal instinct to have. Well, you don't step up, you don't take, you don't, you keep quiet.

• 14:24Jocko Willink?

  Um, you know, "I have to be right, I'm better than them, I'm, you know, this is an attack." There's so many mistakes that we make.

• 14:34Jocko Willink?

  I'll start tomorrow.

• 14:37Jocko Willink?

  Right? Even, even conformity, the herd instinct. These are all things that, that will make us make bad decisions. I mean, how many teenagers have made bad decisions because of, they're trying to conform with whatever everyone else is doing? This is peer pressure.

• 14:54Jocko Willink?

  There's a thing called HALT, H A L T. Hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. These things all disrupt your decision-making process. We even have a combined name, hangry. Right? When I'm hangry, people are like mad, just get out of my way. I need to get into the freaking KFC line ASAP. Get that Domino's pizza right now.

• 15:21Jocko Willink?

  That's hangry, but people make dumb decisions when they're lonely. People make dumb decisions when they're tired.

• 15:30Jocko Willink?

  So many of these decisions that, bad decisions that we make, they're just rooted in this gray slop, in this limbic system, in this chimp brain.

• 15:40Jocko Willink?

  And generally speaking, like I said, they're not good decisions. So here's something that I think a lot of people don't recognize. If you can elevate above it, right? If you can get out of the gray slop, if you can get out of your own limbic system, not only will you then be able to see the errors that you could make that are being driven by your animal instincts, but a huge bonus is that I can see now Echo's chimp brain in action.

• 16:17Jocko Willink?

  So in other words, if I'm walking down the street and I see Echo Charles and he mouths off to me like, "Get out of my way," or something like that.

• 16:26Jocko Willink?

  My, if I'm in the gray slop, what am I gonna do? "Who the hell are you telling me to get out of your way?" Maybe I push him, maybe I attack him, maybe we escalate the situation. But if I'm elevated, if I'm enlightened above my own gray slop, and I'm walking down the street and Echo says, "Get out of my way", I see that it is his animal instinct that is causing this behavior. And I say, "Oh, that guy must be having a rough day. Probably not much gain to interact with him. I'm just gonna like, you know, move a little bit to the right and carry on."

• 17:00Jocko Willink?

  So when you, when you're not caught up in your own animal brain, you can see when other people are. But you wanna, you wanna see problems? Add alcohol, right? Which, which unleashes our, our chimpanzee brain. And now all of a sudden you, you bump into me in the bar and that is a challenge and we're fighting.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  But if I'm elevated and you bump into me in the bar and I go, oh, hey, man, this guy must be having a rough day. Hey, sorry about that. And I can deescalate.

• 17:36Jocko Willink?

  Here's the thing. This doesn't only apply to like physical altercations. We do so many dumb things based on our ego and our emotions and our, and our chimpanzee brain that have nothing to do with physical interactions at all. And, and that's because the, the mind recognizes

• 18:00Jocko Willink?

  things that are rooted in physical survival, but they're not actual physical survival in today's day and age. In other words, like, hey, if I'm, I'm protecting myself. Like I have to have some animal instincts, but if I'm just protecting my ego, why, I don't need no animal instincts to do that. If I'm trying to show that I'm superior because I need to get more food for myself in a caveman situation. Okay. Makes some sense. If I'm trying to show my superiority in a board meeting. You know what I'm saying? So that I can, so that I can prove my, my position in the hierarchy. It doesn't make sense to do it there. And so we make stupid mistakes.

• 18:45Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, by the way, that, those things, when I try and prove a point in the board meeting and make Echo look like he didn't know what he's talking about. That doesn't help me. It doesn't help Echo. It's not the right thing to do. So the instinct is actually wrong when removed from this physical world.

• 19:06Jocko Willink?

  This is why people talk down to other people. This is why people impose their plan on a group. Hey, you need to do it like this. This is why people try and get the credit because I'm trying to improve my status. This is why people make little maneuvers to try and get the promotion. Because it's based on their hierarchical status and they want to, they want to rise up.

• 19:30Jocko Willink?

  This is why people escalate an argument instead of de-escalating an argument. That's why they do it. This is why people talk instead of listen.

• 19:39Jocko Willink?

  It's all just monkey brain.

• 19:42Jocko Willink?

  It's all a bunch of emotion and ego.

• 19:45Jocko Willink?

  And we have to get away from it. It is not easy. It is so intertwined. Again, the metaphors that I raised, the elephant and the chariot and all these things, these are metaphors that make it seem like there's a really good, clear bifurcation between these two elements, but

• 20:09Jocko Willink?

  in my opinion, they are much more intertwined. There's little, there's little wires going all in between the two of them.

• 20:19Jocko Willink?

  And I found a good article about this. Now, the article relates to it somewhat what we're talking about. It's from a combat perspective, but again, this doesn't just apply to combat, but I want to read some sections from this article. The article is called Neuroscience for Combat Leaders and it's written by a guy named Major Andrew Stedman. And the little footnote about him, it says, Major Andrew Stedman, U.S. Army is an infantry officer and a student at the Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, holds a BS from the U.S. Air Force Academy. He must have switched from the U.S. Air Force Academy to the Army. His combat experience includes two deployments to Iraq and one to Afghanistan.

• 21:05Jocko Willink?

  So this article is called "A Brain-Based Approach to Leading on the Modern Battlefield." And I think you're gonna see some examples of what I'm talking about, and then we can extrapolate this combat situation to the rest of our lives. Of course, everything in combat is more pronounced, so it should seem real obvious in combat when someone does, gets caught up in their freaking animal brain. It causes real catastrophic situations, but makes us stand out. When we get caught up in our animal brain during an argument with our spouse, doesn't lead to a catastrophic scenario, hopefully, most of the time.

• 21:52Jocko Willink?

  But if you, if that's how you live your life, your life is not where it should be.

• 21:58Jocko Willink?

  So here we go. Let's get to this article. "Everything you do in life is based on your brain's determination to minimize danger or maximize reward. The brain wants to move towards things in life that give it pleasure or ensure survival, and away from things that cause it pain or threaten survival. Combat demands that military individuals overcome this natural impulse to survive and move toward the danger. From this perspective, succeeding in combat is a measure of how well the brain copes with dangerous situations and performs tasks that ensure survival. The field of neuroscience has seen significant advances in recent years, and the benefits of this knowledge can positively affect numerous disciplines, including combat leadership. Using functional magnetic ressonance imaging (MRI), surgical methods, and experiment-based approaches,

• 22:42Jocko Willink?

  researchers have revealed many of the biological processes that underlie our most basic emotional and cognitive behaviors, such as how and why we react to threatening situations."

• 22:56Jocko Willink?

  How our brains allocate energy to cope with competing demands and how our senses interact with our minds to create the world we know. So again, threatening situations. What's a threatening situation? Look, when we're reading an article that's written by an infantry officer, you think threatening situation is gunfight, IED threat, mortars inbound. But a threatening situation for a normal person is like, oh, this guy's maneuvering and trying to get credit for the project that I led. That's a threatening situation.

• 23:33Jocko Willink?

  Right? That's a threatening situation. And this is what triggers our limbic brain to kick into gear. Back to the article, "Learning about brain function and physical reactions to stress does not simply inform the leader but creates self-awareness that makes him better able to control these processes. Tactical-level military leaders can use new knowledge to understand the effects of combat, anticipate and recognize cognitive reactions, and adjust their leadership abilities to succeed in difficult situations. They can do this by performing exercises to decrease physiological stress reactions using emotionally-controlled leadership to guide their organizations and creating an environment during battle that

• 24:13Jocko Willink?

  facilitates effective decision-making." So we're gonna force our brain out of the animal mode and into the logical mode when we're in stressful situations. That's what a combat leader is gonna have to do. "By educating soldiers about brain function and incorporating cognitive stressors into training, leaders can prepare their units to perform battle with emotional stability." But it is not just combat. If you can do this when you're having a conversation with your boss, when your kid is getting mad at you, when your kid does something stupid, which they're gonna do because they're a kid.

• 24:51Jocko Willink?

  You, you can react like an animal and do bad things. Do think, do things that are going to have a negative impact on the situation, or you can control your brain. You can get out of your own gray slop. Basics of the brain. Combat leaders need a basic knowledge of cerebral biology to understand the importance of the mind's function during combat. The two major areas most relevant to this topic are the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. The former is the collection of brain regions involved in emotions, learning, and memory. The latter is for higher level thinking. That's the prefrontal cortex, actively influences body functions and performance. Inputs travel along pathways in both these systems and allow us to react to scenarios with a balance of emotion and reason. That's what they're supposed to do.

• 25:36Jocko Willink?

  Why does our emotion so often take lead? So often? It's ridiculous. It's embarrassing for us as humans to let our animal instincts run the show. Located in the center of the brain, the limbic system primarily contains the thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus, and the amygdala as the creator of emotions and memory. Its primary function is to interpret information sent from the body senses to the, to issue emotional commands back to the body. The limbic system also sends its data to the executive areas of the brain, the frontal lobe, for cognitive processing and receives instructions about how the body should respond to the given situations.

• 26:19Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes the limbic system can independently respond to the world, like when we react to threatening situations. This occurs on a subconscious level, when the amygdala, the fear and anxiety response center, compares data from the world with the hippocampus, which is the memory database of experience. The in, if the incoming information corresponds to a threat that has been tagged as negative or dangerous, the amygdala immediately commands the body into action. We've all experienced this process when our reflexes have caused us to snatch a hand away from closing door, leap away from a snake.

• 26:55Jocko Willink?

  So there's some times where it's gonna do something. And if you don't have control over it, that those times are gonna grow. Those times are gonna be bigger than they should be. Right? You know, the classic thing that I tell people is if, if, if I said, hey, Echo, I'm gonna be at your house. When you come home and I'm gonna scare you, there's probably zero percent chance I'd be able to actually scare you. But if I just got in there

• 27:23Jocko Willink?

  and I tried to scare you, there's probably a really solid percentage that I would scare you. So that's having the cognitive pattern where you can get control that quickly is very important.

• 27:42Jocko Willink?

  Back to the document, the more sophisticated process of the minds occur in a sheet of tissue just behind the forehead known as a prefrontal cortex. This is memory, judgment, planning, sequence of activity, abstract reasoning, impulse control, personality, reactivity, surroundings and mood. That's a pretty big, important block. Isn't it crazy that it just gets overrun all the time? Like every time you see someone get road rage, they've lost their mind.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:07Jocko Willink?

  I actually, that's funny you hear me say this. When I, when I talk about someone losing their mind, and I've never thought about this until right now. It's when they've lost control of their prefrontal cortex. That's like, and, and I say that a lot, you know? I'll be like, oh, this dude just lost his mind. But the funny thing is, I say it when I'm talking about people that are doing something super emotional. Their ego is out of control. Like someone does something like, oh, the dude, he lost his mind. You've heard me say this. I do this. But that's what I'm talking about. They've lost their mind. They've, they've, they've shut down their prefrontal cortex and they're just full chimp mode, just going.

• 28:46Jocko Willink?

  This is the area that this area, this area is what allows humans to solve math problems, develop abstract concepts and ponder our own existence. It's also the area that military leaders use to balance risk in combat, develop courses of action and create strategies to lead effectively. So there you go. That's what it's doing. It's got a little section here about every part of the brain is packed with blood vessels and it talks about how it actually, the brain redirects blood and glucose to appropriate areas based on what's happening. This allocation leaves less fuel for other brain functions like cognitive control, which requires vast amounts of blood and glucose to operate. When the limbic system is heavily engaged, as it is during high threat

• 29:30Jocko Willink?

  stress of combat, it will quite literally steal fuel from the prefrontal cortex, thus handicapping a leader's ability to combat the situation with cognition. So think about that right there. You're losing your mind. You're losing your mind. And this is something that, um, you know, you can train to. It's we, we used to call it stress inoculation. If you get put in stressful situations, often you eventually get used to them. And now it's not going to need to steal so much fuel, so much glucose and oxygen for your, for your frontal cortex because you're not freaking out.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  That, uh, that does explain panicking.

• 30:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Like where it's, it steals blood and nutrients from your prefrontal cortex and gives it to other parts of your body.

• 30:21Jocko Willink?

  By, by the way, it gives it to the part of the brain that's freaking out.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  So basically your prefrontal, the, your decision making goes down. The rest of your, the other part of your brain, the, the panic mode, that part.

• 30:36Jocko Willink?

  The emotions.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Is lit up and then it feeds the rest of your body that it, you know how like, uh, like when you physically, you know, you're running away from a dog chasing you or something like this, where you go, you'll spring right into action. But if there was no dog chase, you'd be like, bro, I'm not running nowhere. See what I'm saying? But all of a sudden you have this energy out of nowhere, spontaneous energy. Now that explains it.

• 31:00Jocko Willink?

  It also explains why people shut down. It explains why people do dumb things in the moment. It explains, it kind of explains crimes of passion, right? Like, I'm so emotional that my prefrontal cortex, which is long-term planning is like, oh, if I do this, I'm gonna go to jail. My life is ruined. No, that's all shut down. And I'm just, I'm gonna pay this person back.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you ever heard of this? And I always wondered if it's true. I can't help but believe that it is true. Where some people, they'll do a crime of passion, whatever. And then they won't get convicted because they were temporarily insane or something like this. Where, and then from what I understand, like when they evaluate the person, they literally don't remember doing it.

• 31:44Jocko Willink?

  I was about to say, like, sometimes people don't even remember doing it.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:47Jocko Willink?

  And there's times where people do things like in a combat situation, they don't remember.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:52Jocko Willink?

  Like, they don't remember that that happened.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:54Jocko Willink?

  They were just in full survival mode.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it doesn't even, it doesn't go into the part, like, the brain that, that has memory, the hippocampus that creates the memory, like, kind of, Brad, it just shunted all the, the energy and nutrients to the other part of the body and, and wasn't working for that moment. That's what I'm saying. Dang.

• 32:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And by the way, you can see this a lot with your kids. Cause your kids, you know, they're, they're, it doesn't take much to just shut down the, the thought and just become a little animal.

• 32:28Jocko Willink?

  Uh, back to the doc, as a successful business consultant and CEO, David Rock explains in the book, Your Brain Works, the degree of activation of the limbic system is the degree of deactivation of the prefrontal cortex. Brain research has shown that there are many more neural connections that flow from the amygdala directly to the prefrontal cortex than vice versa. Therefore, it's easy for our emotions to guide or suppress our rational thoughts. Hello, everybody. This is our problem. This is cru, this is a crucial fact because military leaders must preserve cognitive functions when leading in combat. And by the way, guess what? Combat has all these things going on. Fear, anxiety, pressure, stress,

• 33:12Jocko Willink?

  not to mention physical stress. You're tired.

• 33:16Jocko Willink?

  Not to mention, you haven't slept in a day and a half or two days.

• 33:20Jocko Willink?

  The limbic system in combat, the limbic system is evolutionarily older than the prefrontal cortex, primitively old. In fact, it helped, it developed to help man survive the ancient battlefield of predator versus prey. The limbic system has the chemical authority to initiate rapid responses to threats and is good at doing so. The amygdala ignites, adrenaline flows to the blood, the pulse races, the eyes focus and rapidly scan for threatening movement. We halt unnecessary digestion and tense major muscle groups in preparation for a clash. Then the brain, teeming with blood vessels, redirects the available supply of oxygen and glucose-rich blood to the limbic and motor areas so that we can react quickly in the impending fight.

• 34:01Jocko Willink?

  At this point, the mind is in its most basic survival mode. It has no spare energy to devote to solving geometry problems or pondering philosophical dilemmas. This biological decision to focus resources toward limbic areas during dangerous situations is what keeps us alive at a time when the cerebral problem-solving approach would be fatally slow. But today's military leaders do not face the same world that our ancestors did. And by the way, you don't face the same world that our ancestors did when you roll into a department meeting that's going to be tense. And yeah, you'll roll in there and just shut down half of your prefrontal cortex. Or you've got a decision to make on buying a car and you're all emotionally

• 34:45Jocko Willink?

  excited about it and you just shut down your pre, override your prefrontal cortex and walking out of there with a $1,200 a month payment on a, on a, what is it, a 72-month loan.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Hell yeah. But it's all relative though, right? You know how you're like, oh yeah, our ancestors and their environment is so extreme. But like, there's an element of certain extreme levels of things that you kind of get used to. So it's like, you know how, you know, Theo Von has the, has the joke, right? Like, oh, we all have our Vietnam, right? Or whatever? Where it's like, it's relative to the person. So if you're not, if you start to get used to stuff, then yeah, you're going to be less sensitive. But, so if the environment is extreme, there's a general...

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Like you're used to it on a certain level.

• 35:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  So you'll still have all these fight or flight stuff, you know, all this stuff, but it just takes a little bit more. Now nowadays it's not like that. We're just more sensitive. See what I'm saying? So the board meeting kind of seems like a little bit of a final boss battle.

• 35:43Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Exactly. Or not to mention when someone bumps into you on the, in the Vons shopping line. You know what I'm saying?

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 35:53Jocko Willink?

  Vons, hell yeah. And then maybe mouths off to you.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:55Jocko Willink?

  Now all of a sudden we got a situation. Animal comes out. Uh, while there are still many threats that require rapid reflexive action, leaders also have to manage countless streams of information, communicate over multiple technological, technological systems, balance political, military and civilian considerations, and lead hundreds of men and women in the process. Combat requires a coherent, rational mind. And it ain't just combat that requires that. Combat is full of stressful moments. Initial contact with the enemy, rushing to secure an enemy terrain, or responding to an unexpected event. That test emotional resolve. Those involved experience intense

• 36:35Jocko Willink?

  sensory input and encounter debilitating explosions, grotesque scenes, and threatening enemy movements. As the limbic system attempts, attempts to keep pace with the environment, it starves the soldier's ability to maintain a clear mental framework. Coupled with the typically exhausting physical exertion of combat, soldiers are constantly or consistently at risk of degraded cognitive processing.

• 37:01Jocko Willink?

  I got a quote in here from JFC Fuller. He said, "In an attack, half of the men on a firing line are in terror, the other half are unnerved."

• 37:14Jocko Willink?

  Going into the leader in combat, "Each duty position on the battlefield contains some balance of reflexive and cognitive tasks. Some can be trained repeatedly in developing the muscle memory like loading and firing a weapon. Others are more cognitive in nature like calling for indirect fire, coordinating a synchronized attack, while each soldier has his own personal tactical situation to react to typical frontline riflemen operate in reflexive region, while the cognitive component of the battle increases with the rank and responsibility." In this article, the term leader refers to any individual who is responsible for leading several groups of soldiers in maneuver against the enemy and must manage multiple battlefield systems. This leader spends most of his time on the battlefield outside of his weapon sites. You've heard me talk about this 10,000 times. High port your weapon, look around.

• 37:56Jocko Willink?

  While the team and squad leaders are unquestionably leaders, they use battle drills and reflexive training to guide most of their actions and will not have to rely on their abstract cognitive abilities during combat unless they are operating as an autonomous element. The platoon leader and the platoon sergeant are the first leaders that engage in more complex problem solving than direct fire battle. The company level commander is squarely in the cognitive region with occasional moments that require reflexive action. The battalion level commander will rarely perform actions that are not based on premeditated cognition.

• 38:29Jocko Willink?

  What can these leaders do to mitigate physical reactions to stress that will inevitably occur? What methods are available to regain cognitive control and place the leader in a position to maximally benefit the unit? First, actively decrease the effects of stress. Second, infuse emotional stability into the organization. Finally, create an environment that facilitates effective decision making. So he's going into this, um, the things that you can do. Right? There's three of them. Control the effect of emotional energy. As combat will readily reveal, the body and mind undergo rapid changes when reacting to stress while moderate levels of stress improve functions like motor skills. Stress can easily impair performance in cognitive

• 39:14Jocko Willink?

  areas where today's tactical leaders typically need to operate. Heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing will all increase, digestion will slow, and nausea may occur, speech may falter, and auditory and visual cues may diminish. All of these effects are natural as the body mostly reacts to the fight. However, leaders have a responsibility to control the effect of emotional energy and remain calm in the face of danger.

• 39:40Jocko Willink?

  One proven combat used by law enforcement and military professionals is tactical breathing. As one of only two automatic nervous systems. Actions that we can control, the other is blinking. Breath rate is the first reaction to stress that leaders can rein in. So you can actually go send it in the other direction. This is why people say, take a deep breath. Right? Immediately after a significant stressor occurs. Or just prior to entering a high stress environment, simply take several successive deep breaths and hold each one for three to five seconds. As you breathe, visualize your body relaxing and remaining calm during the event. Although time may not allow leaders to take a long tactical pause, simply diagnosing a rapid breathing pattern and forcing a couple of slow breaths will

• 40:23Jocko Willink?

  help decrease the body's agitated state. And again, this is something that I didn't learn, but I stumbled upon. Because when I would talk on the radio, I didn't want to sound like a panicked freak. So I would take a breath. And when I took a breath, guess what? Calm down. Another method of controlling stress is a concept called labeling. And reappraisal. Which is the act of naming the emotional state you are experiencing and actively reassigning a new emotion that is more productive for the situation. Verbally identifying the emotions or reassuring yourself that loud activates

• 41:01Jocko Willink?

  the prefrontal cortex and begins to reclaim some of the power from the limbic system. Simple cue words like steady. Stay focused. And relax are active reminders that can elicit a controlled behavior. And this is something I've been teaching lately. We have something called a ditty. And we used to use the ditty for like pistol work, right? You'd have a little thing that you would say to make sure you hit all these points of performance. You know, fast to the holster, thumb on the index. Turn, point, you know, slack off the trigger, easy squeeze, front sight focus. And you'd do that every single time.

• 41:46Jocko Willink?

  You'd say that ditty to you.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Was that yours?

• 41:49Jocko Willink?

  No, I just, no, that's, people have different ones. I just made it up right now. And it probably wasn't a great one, but.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Nah, man, sounded good.

• 41:56Jocko Willink?

  But. You know, lately I've been saying, hey, if you start feeling like excited, say to yourself a little ditty, calm, cool and relaxed, calm, cool and collected, whatever, something like that. You say, you know, slow is smooth, smooth is fast, slow is smooth, smooth is fast, calm down, calm down, like whatever. Say something to yourself is, is a good way to get yourself to calm down.

• 42:16Jocko Willink?

  A unit's motto can be another steadying phrase. Repeating these words can trigger confidence and strength in the face of trying, trying circumstances. More important, such statements not only have effect on leaders, but also filter through an organization to reinforce its members. The key is to talk to oneself into a mental framework that is capable of handling the highly cognitive experience of modern combat.

• 42:41Jocko Willink?

  Any military leader will readily support the practice of unit rehearsals before the operations. Of course, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Do individuals not also have the responsibility to rehearse how they will react in combat? Professional golfers, divers and other elites who rely on precise skills use a techniques called visualization to reinforce desired behavior. Likewise, a tactical leader can benefit by visualizing himself performing with an emotional calm and cognitive clarity. A leader with, with clear vision of how he wants to perform will, as survival author Lawrence Gonzalez put it, create a kind of memory of the future. It's an interesting con- concept that the brain can access during combat.

• 43:24Jocko Willink?

  Like muscle memory, proper mental processes can become reflexive. You gotta rehearse, man. I recently relearned this lesson. I was in a movie.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah.

• 43:39Jocko Willink?

  And in this particular movie, it, it's kind of a long scene. And I don't say, I, I don't say anything until the end of the scene. I have two lines, but here's the funny thing. So, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to be a professional, right? You think I'm trying to be a professional?

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 43:57Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I'm trying to be professional. It's a big deal when you're, when, when you're in something like this Hollywood scenario because.

• 44:05Jocko Willink?

  They have to do it a bunch of times and everyone's on the clock and everything's getting all set up and the lights and the cameras and all this stuff and like if you screw it up, bro, everyone kinda.

• 44:17Jocko Willink?

  They don't like that. And and no one says anything because they don't want to put more pressure on anybody. You know, because then people freak out, right? So everyone just, but it's like a, it's the heaviest like unspoken like weight of like dang, like I think I screwed up. And it's funny when someone screws something up, you know, the director, when I was on Billions, the TV show. There was three of us standing in this scene and we were doing it, they were doing the scene. And like the, the, the director was downstairs, we were upstairs, he was downstairs, like all the cameras were upstairs, but he was watching it from downstairs. And like,

• 45:01Jocko Willink?

  somebody wasn't doing something to what, the way the director kinda wanted it.

• 45:06Jocko Willink?

  And he like, he goes, okay, uh, you know, whatever, cut. And then there's like a pause while the director walks up the stairs. And then he like says something to one of the actors, like, hey, you know, maybe just, you know, a little bit more like, like gives him a little direction. He's a director, gives him direction. And then, you know, okay, cool. And then he walks back downstairs and we do it again. And then he's like, do a couple of cut and now the director's coming again and you know, he's like, and he's like, I was like, I hope he's not coming to talk to me. Cause everyone is watching and everyone's going, this actor freaking not nailing it. So you feel kinda bad. So.

• 45:44Jocko Willink?

  I'm filming this thing and, and I'm, I'm just, I have one, two, two sentences, one line, right? Two sentences. And I haven't said them yet. We, we've recording for like an hour. It's all the other individual talking, just delivering these lines, delivering, doing great job, just all great and everything. And then. They have to stop and reset all the cameras for a different angle because now it's it's Jocko's turn. And believe me, bro, I'm a professional. And guess what I did? I memorized those lines in my head. I went through them in my head. I was like boom, boom, boom. I went through them in my head like hundreds of times. Yeah, yeah. Just want to be ready, bro. I'm a pro. Don't want to add up.

• 46:25Jocko Willink?

  From filming Warrior Kid, I didn't, I know what it's like when someone, you know, when you mess something up. And Mick G's got to roll in and say, hey, okay, let's do it. Well, okay, we'll do it again. You know, everyone feels it. Cameraman's lugging that thing around and he's kind of like, bro, what is wrong with you? You had one job. Yeah, that's real. So anyways, this is now three, four hours into this. And it's finally, now we go to the other angle and finally it's now my turn to deliver my line. And, and the first time I say it, I had not, even though I memorized it, I hadn't spoken it. I hadn't actually said the words and they were kind of like a little bit awkward.

• 47:09Jocko Willink?

  And I said it, bro, but I, I got, I got it done. I powered through it. But I was like, but it wasn't smooth. It wasn't the performance that you, you hoped for. It wasn't the performance that I don't think anyone was hoping for, right? But I got it done. But I was like, oh, you didn't say the words. You didn't actually let the words come out of your mouth. Yeah. And that's a bad move. So it's like when you partially rehearse something. And that's why what's interesting here is like, you might have the idea of like, oh, I'm gonna, if we get to here, I'm going to give this command. Yeah. But if you've never actually said it, bro. It might jam you up a little bit and I got jammed up. Now, look, like I said, I, I, I just had to go into team guy mode and just get them words out.

• 47:54Jocko Willink?

  Cause I didn't want to have to just throw away the take, right? Yeah. So I got the words out. Super awkward. I think they were like thinking maybe, oh, maybe, you know, maybe Jocko was trying to put a little stank on it.

• 48:06Jocko Willink?

  But I but I was like, yo, I wasn't trying to put anything. I was just trying to get the words out of my mouth. But I learned that lesson. You gotta you gotta actually say the words. You can't just practice them in your head.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:17Jocko Willink?

  Cause that's another thing. I was alone. There was no one to practice the lines with.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And yeah, what do you do in the mirror or some?

• 48:24Jocko Willink?

  No, I just like was literally looking at it and just going over like with like sitting in a chair, just thinking the words.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  How long did you have to like from the moment you got the the what do you the lines, the script to the moment of perform? How many days? How long did you have to prepare?

• 48:38Jocko Willink?

  I probably had weeks to prepare, but I only prepared for one day.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 48:41Jocko Willink?

  I didn't need to. I mean, it's literally oh, two sentences. It didn't take me long to memorize it. But I didn't say them.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Bro, I think even you preparing jammed you up. And this is why. So I have, you know how like you ever been in a situation where you're like?

• 48:55Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna let you continue. You're wrong, but I'm gonna let you continue.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:58Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Okay, because I believe I'm right right now, but I'd be interested to see if I'm wrong. So you're right. You don't seem like the type that would have this problem, but I've run into a situation where I'm like, shoot, I gotta bring this up. It's not even a big deal, but I just I feel like it's the right thing to bring it up and like sort it out, right? To whoever, whether it be to your friend or your wife or whoever, right? I gotta bring this up. And then I'm like, all right, well, I don't want to bring it up in a way that makes it seem like it's a big deal. Then it really is. You ever heard me say, and I know this, I say this all the time. It's like, I consciously say that. I say, even me bringing it up is making it seem like a bigger deal than it really is. I always say that.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  So.

• 49:42Jocko Willink?

  And then you make a big deal out of it.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, because I go deep into it. But only because in the spirit of understanding, you know? But then I gotta be like, hey, but the more I explain, the bigger deal it seems. So now I gotta explain how it's not a bigger deal. And it becomes a whole thing. You see what I'm saying? So here, so that and that's part of my point where if I'm like, okay, I already made the decision to bring this XYZ thing up, right? I already made that decision. So how do I deliver it in a way that makes it not a big deal? I was like, well, but there and there is a way to do that, right? But if you're gonna deliver something in a specific, specific way, it has to be natural. Otherwise, it looks contrived. And then now you bring, you introduce another element of the whole conversation. Are you even, are you being authentic? Are you, and it becomes this big deal, right? Which isn't a big deal. So you jam up your whole process.

• 50:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I said you were gonna be wrong, but I think you're actually right in many cases.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  So just to finish what I, what I jam myself up from time to time is I'll be like, okay, let me just practice in my mind how I want it to sound. And I'll go over it and over it. But that whole process of me going over it in my mind makes it a big deal to me.

• 50:51Jocko Willink?

  But also in your mind.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:54Jocko Willink?

  Maybe if you would have rehearsed out loud saying the words.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:57Jocko Willink?

  There's one more element that comes into play.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  I, I feel like that is true. But yeah, so besides that part of it, the, the point is if you don't actually go through it, because that's what being natural is. When you're actually natural doing something, you're, you're really used to doing it. So it's just natural. But if it's your first time ever doing it, no matter how simple or complex, you know, it is, your first time actually doing it ever, and you've been thinking about it. Right. It's impossible to be natural.

• 51:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, this is kind of the similar thing. When we record stuff at Echelon Front.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:32Jocko Willink?

  And like, someone will be, one of the instructors will be like, oh, hey, you know, talk about cover and move. And they'll be like, oh, you want me just to say blah, blah, blah? And they rattled off and you go, yeah, that's perfect.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:42Jocko Willink?

  And then the red record light comes on, boom, it's game over, freaking disaster.com. Bro, this is stuff that they've explained thousands of times. They know in and out better than anybody. And boom, you hit that, they see that red light, brain lock, bro, brain lock all day. So I think that has something to do with it. I also think that if you really, I think that you, you reach a point in memorization where it does become. It will sound natural because you've memorized it and it's now it's coming out of your brain just like it was. Uh, what is it? Thought? You know, it's like, oh, I just thought of this. So I think if you partially memorize something, it it's probably gonna jam you up. But if you memorize it to the core, it's probably gonna be beneficial.

• 52:25Jocko Willink?

  I'm not saying that you won't be a bad actor. I'm not saying you won't be like saying the line. Any military leader will readily support the practice of unit rehearsals before an operation. Like you might say it like a dork.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:42Jocko Willink?

  Or like in a very unnatural way and not know. There's a like, there's a reason that actors.

• 52:51Jocko Willink?

  That there's a reason that some actors are good actors.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:54Jocko Willink?

  Cause they could do it and it's convincing, right?

• 52:56Speaker 01

  This is my little theory.

• 52:57Jocko Willink?

  Everybody thinks they could be a good actor, but it is is more tricky than a lot of people think.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  So that and I I feel like at the end of the day, it comes, it kind of goes along with what I'm saying. So like, think about the this idea of of doing the thing, right? So snowboarding, for example, I watch all these tutorials. Okay, you put your weight before I went, you know? And that one's obvious because it takes a lot of physical balance that you can't just learn on a video. You gotta actually do it. It's just the nature. So that's like an extreme example. But just this idea of doing the thing, X, Y, Z. So your thing that you had to do was say the lines and how you did it was kind of up to you, right? But you had to do the thing, right? And in this case, doing the thing is is saying lines. That's the doing.

• 53:40Jocko Willink?

  I didn't do it.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  You never did it. So you can't make it look natural and you can't make it look authentic. You can't make it look however you're quote unquote, trying to make it look. Because it has to, it can't be contrived. That's it. Cause technically, I'm sure like these lines, you, there's probably a handful of ways you could easily set them and they would have been right on for a bunch of different ways, as long as it came out natural, right? That's really what good quote unquote, good acting is.

• 54:03Jocko Willink?

  But what's interesting is because of the role that I was played, it wasn't actually me. You know what I mean?

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Hey, show your range, bro.

• 54:11Jocko Willink?

  I've done plenty of things where I'm just straight up just being Jocko or some other named of a guy named Jocko, who's just Jocko with a different name.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Way easier, right?

• 54:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Cause you've done that many, many times.

• 54:21Jocko Willink?

  But I'll tell you what, Proud said that that's, he's like, oh, that's shit's hard. Like,

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:25Jocko Willink?

  And he was like, dude, you, you, you're, I think people, they, they, they start to act the way they think they are in their own head.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:34Jocko Willink?

  So that jams them up, you know?

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Big time. Okay. So Sam Harris talked about this a long time ago where it's like, okay, you use a certain part of your brain. Like, you know, the, your habitual, I don't know, whatever, you know, you know, all the parts of the brain here, but there's, there's like this part that, that does the habitual stuff. Walking, talking, you know, whatever, just habitual stuff. You don't have to like, okay, let me take my, this step or that. Okay. So that, and then there's the other part, which can still make you do the same action, but it'll be way more clunky. So like, you ever, this is where I really noticed it. Okay. I walked up and down the stairs in my house a million trillion times. But if I'm carrying like a big TV or something, I'm like, bro, I can literally walk up and down these stairs with my eyes closed. But I'm like, bro, if I take one wrong step, I'm dead. So now my, this other part of my brain is engaged.

• 55:19Jocko Willink?

  Trying to manage it, trying to micromanage your movement. It gets all jammed up.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Exactly right. And it makes it worse. Like you're, I'm literally worse at walking downstairs now that this other part of my brain is all engaged. That's what happened when the red light comes on, when they're videotaping the echelon front, who, you know, who, if you're jamming up your lines. That's what happens when they're saying action, you know, like all this stuff, even if you're quote unquote, just being another version of Jocko, which you've been for however many years, you know, now this other part of your brain is trying to be Jocko. That's not the part of the brain that's used to being Jocko. See what I'm saying? So good actor, this is what it seems like anyway. And I've heard people say this where if you can just, they say it's not even acting. You just be you. So it's, it's essentially, you gotta like, like,

• 55:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh damn, my boy's over here getting rickety. He's getting deep, bro.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  You gotta disengage that.

• 56:03Jocko Willink?

  Damn, okay. All right. I see how it is. We going there, huh?

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Yes, I've heard, in fact, okay, you know, David Fincher is right. He does like, he did like seven fight, like he's a director, right? So he's known from doing like a ungodly amount of takes. And then his philosophy is like, we make people, he makes people do the lines on set in the moment, cameras running so many times. That after a while, it's just like, all right, bro, I'll do whatever, you know? The lines coming out, the physical doing of the lines is just, that's natural already.

• 56:34Jocko Willink?

  Because you did it. That's kind of what I said. If you memorize it to a point and you've done it over and over and over again. Now it's just, it's part, you're not thinking about it. You stop thinking about it and just start doing it.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Now, but it's in show business or whatever. How often do you get the opportunity to do it in the actual moment over and over and over and over again? With everybody watching, with the camera guy.

• 56:56Jocko Willink?

  I heard like Clint Eastwood will be like, all right, like first take, he's like, all right, that was good. And they'll be like, hey, could we dig? We, no, you, you did fine. Like we're moving on.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there's so many different philosophies as far as approaching that goes, but it, to me, it made sense. And it, and it has a lot to do with, and I think anyway, of what you ran into. Cause you literally had zero reps.

• 57:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Doing easy lines.

• 57:18Jocko Willink?

  Mind reps.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:20Jocko Willink?

  But not one single actual rep. And I got jammed up in that moment and like pushed, just, just team guided out.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  It's, it's like literally like me watching a snowboarding tutorial a million times. Never been on the slopes, a million times. And I'm like, I know exactly what to do. I know when to do it. I know, bro, I'm, I got this down. I go on there and of course I'm gonna fall down a little bit. Seems like I might have some good technique in principle, but it's a little bit, there's that, that experience, part of that nuanced experience that needs to be there. Yeah.

• 57:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  So what then? So they, did they call you back?

• 57:57Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no, we did. I mean, the next one, I was good to go. And then it was just, hey, you know, what do you wanna, what, what stank do you want on it? You know what I'm saying?

• 58:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Did you, were you, um, were you like kind of surprised? Were you like, dang, I, I fucking, I suck more than I thought I would.

• 58:12Jocko Willink?

  No, I was, I knew exactly what happened. I was like, oh, you didn't move your lips and get the words out. You just thought you could do it. Cause you do it all the time. And now you try to do it and it, and it took, let's say, let's say, if the line was, uh, any military leader will readily support practice of unit rehearsals before an operation. It'd be like this, like my time to send the line is now.

• 58:36Jocko Willink?

  Any military leader will readily support the practice of unit rehearsals before an operation. It was like just clunky.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I understand.

• 58:43Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't like a throwaway. I didn't lock up where they're like, okay, hey, did you, you know, like, cause you don't want to be that guy, dude. You know what I'm saying? You don't want to be that guy that just doesn't know what you're supposed to do. You didn't prepare, bro. It's unprofessional, right?

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 58:59Jocko Willink?

  Trying to be professional offense. So it wasn't a total drop of the ball.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:03Jocko Willink?

  But like, I kind of fumbled it for a second, grabbed it and like, you know, went down immediately. I still caught it, but it didn't look great. You know?

• 59:15Jocko Willink?

  So that's why we rehearse is what I'm saying.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Rehearse, the role play comes to mind, like, you know, you guys like, hey, do a role play or whatever. Just how beneficial that is.

• 59:23Jocko Willink?

  So beneficial. And what they're saying is rehearse mentally. Hey, if stuff starts getting stressful, oh, I'm in a high port. I'm going to relax. I'm going to take a breath. I'm going to look around like that right there. Say that out loud and then relax, look around, make a call, relax. This is what I wrote on Seth Stone's window of his Humvee in 2005. In the desert, relax, look around, make a call. Follow these instructions, dude. Okay, got it. Back to the doc. Infuse emotional stability and control into the organization. Leaders must discover ways to control their application of emotional energy. Their behavior is a compass for the unit and indicator of what stress is allowable and appropriate for the situation. Okay, so they're looking at you as the leader.

• 1:00:06Jocko Willink?

  The first actions after a significant event, like an attack with an improvised explosive device, set the unit's tone for the engagement. As a, as General George S. Patton counsels, leaders are always on parade.

• 1:00:20Jocko Willink?

  An uncontrolled yell, a high pitched radio call, or even a worrisome look can transmit stress and doubt to the unit. Conversely, leaders with composure and confidence, despite stressful circumstances, will infuse those traits into the unit. Commanders should be deliberate and concise. Leaders should objectively verify emerging information to avoid overreacting or acting too hastily.

• 1:00:46Jocko Willink?

  Again, these are great. You know, this is stuff I've been saying for years and it's just a great angle on it.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Do you mind repeating that part where he said leaders are, somebody's always on parade?

• 1:00:58Jocko Willink?

  George S. Patton said leaders are always on parade.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Jocko Willink?

  Great one.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  So kinda like everyone's always kinda watching you.

• 1:01:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're watching you.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Looking to you for demeanor, the whole deal.

• 1:01:07Jocko Willink?

  And if you freak out, everyone's gonna freak out.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, you're right. That one kinda goes deep. Cause like, you know how like, ah, I think it might've been you. I don't know. It doesn't matter who took. But he was like, yeah, once you kinda let your uniform slack or a certain thing slack, just for your own personal self, people will like start to be like, oh, I guess we can kinda do that, you know?

• 1:01:27Jocko Willink?

  That's true, but this is an even more acute moment, which is if you see me panicking.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:33Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna panic. If you see me acting calm, you're like, oh, okay, we're calm.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:38Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it is. By the way, this works with your family too.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Jocko Willink?

  When your kid falls down and scrapes his knee, if you go, oh my gosh, are you okay? The kid's not gonna be okay. But if you go, dude, that was awesome. Try it again. The kid's gonna be fine. So.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  Always on parade.

• 1:01:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, always on parade. Neuroscience research reveals that there are methods leaders can use to do this. Noted author Malcolm Gladwell describes deliberate emotion in Blink. We take it as a given that we experience that that first we experience an emotion and then we may or may not express that emotion in our face. We think of the face as the residue of the emotion. The process works in the opposite direction as well. So you can force your emotions through your facial expression. Emotion can also start in the face. An equal partner, it is an equal partner in the emotional process.

• 1:02:34Jocko Willink?

  A German psychology experiment revealed that people who were physically made to smile by holding a pen clenched in their teeth, rated cartoons as funnier than people who watched the same cartoons while holding the pen in their lips, which prevented smiling. Facial expressions are not just a representation of emotions, they can direct emotions. Leaders can physically incite a more positive, relaxed emotional response in their bodies by intentionally forming a relaxed facial expression during combat events. This demeanor will also cue similar responses in the soldiers around them.

• 1:03:12Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Like, you have to, you have to impose your emotions on yourself.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  That blinking thing is funny.

• 1:03:22Jocko Willink?

  Well, this is freaking, for ten years, you and I have been talking a little something called normal face.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Jocko Willink?

  You know, I used to play this game with my own children. To get them to not give away their emotions in stressful situations. If you make a face, if you break, you get smacked in the head with the cardboard roller from inside the Christmas wrapping paper.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, hell yeah.

• 1:03:44Jocko Willink?

  And it'd be funny. You know, the kids would be trying not to laugh. But that translates to everything that you're doing. Cause man, if you give away your emotions, your boss sees that you're mad, your team sees that you're frustrated, bro, it's gonna spread. It's gonna cause problems. Normal face all day.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Brother, you know, I noticed this in, back to acting for a little bit. Like, if you watch, if you watch certain movies, if the actor, let's say, is not as experienced and they're trying to deliver some, like, deep, like dope, like freaking line. And then, but then they're blinking a little bit too much. It's like, it doesn't land as much versus like, you know, all these real intense actors. Like, you know, Daniel Day-Lewis, like Tom Cruise or something like this, and they're like going hard on some like monologue to somebody, but they don't blink at all. And Brad lands super hard.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Or, or on the other side, if they want to imply like stress or worry, they, they won't put stress and worry all over their theatrics. They'll just like start blinking a little bit more. And I'll be like, brother, that freaking sells it. Like, you feel it, you know, with the close up. Just from the blinking or no blinking.

• 1:04:48Jocko Willink?

  No blinking, there you go.

• 1:04:52Jocko Willink?

  Next section, creating an effective decision-making environment. Regardless of rank, even in the midst of intense combat, leaders must create an environment that is conducive to making cognitive, not emotional decisions. They can start creating this environment, but physically and emotionally disengaging from the immediate fight. Heard me say this a thousand times. Come off, go to high port, come off the skirmish line.

• 1:05:13Jocko Willink?

  This may mean finding sufficient cover for a local command post. A company commander seldom belongs in the hatch of his vehicle or exposed on the streets scanning for targets like a rifleman. Of course, desperate times will call for every gun to be in the fight, but only a handful of commanders will ever face this situation. The goal is for every leader to mentally zoom out from his personal tactical situation and take a more macro level view of the battle, preparing his brain to handle the impending cognitive challenges. This is what you need to do. And again, it's not just in combat. During that meeting, everyone start getting wild, just ease your chair back. Push away from the table, shut your mouth and listen to what's going on. Don't get involved and don't get on your gun, which is your mouth. Don't start firing your mouth off.

• 1:05:57Jocko Willink?

  No, listen, assess. The commander should use his space from the battle to focus on what he is trained to do. Assess and analyze what has occurred, recognize friendly forces vulnerabilities, predict what the enemy will do next, decide on feasible course of action, communicate the plan to the unit, and apply the appropriate leadership skills to inspire the unit to accomplish the mission. The specifics of these steps can include conducting rapid terrain analysis and land navigation using complex digital systems, calling for mortar artillery or aircraft fires, establishing HSE, and it gives a whole list of things that you gotta do. These are highly cognitive and require steady mind.

• 1:06:35Jocko Willink?

  A leader needs to find a suitable environment where he can generate new ideas, new insights for each unique tactical situation encountered. Battle drills are of course an effective method units use to survive the first moments of event, but the leaders must think beyond the battle drill and formulate innovative ways to beat the enemy. If you hear me talking at the muster, I'm like, oh, what's the first thing I did? Get on, you know, take cover, return fire, and then immediately get off the gun, look around. You've got a whole team that's shooting, you need to look around, make a call. As neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer explains in How We Decide, this is where prefrontal cortex really demonstrates its unique strengths.

• 1:07:15Jocko Willink?

  It is the only brain region able to take an abstract principle and apply it in an unfamiliar context to come up with something entirely original for a solution.

• 1:07:27Jocko Willink?

  It's very powerful. And then we got a, a model for cognitive battle. In Your Brain at Work, David Rock explains that the mental processes relevant to performing work are understanding, recalling, deciding, memorizing, and inhibiting. These are the things that are, you know, what you're doing. Understanding, following the initial shock of an attack, understanding involves how a leader creates maps in the prefrontal cortex that represent new incoming information and connects these maps to existing maps in the rest of his brain. That's what we're doing. You're looking at terrain, you're looking at the enemy that initiated the attack, you've got pertinent data, you've got the population considerations, you've got maneuverability

• 1:08:09Jocko Willink?

  requirements, you've got restrictions and friendly force disposition. Like, these are all the things that you're mapping out. And then recalling. In Battle, recalling is the process of comparing existing situation with the database of stored knowledge in the long-term memory of networks. These are the lessons that you've learned. These are the instructions that you've received. These are the experiences that you've had. These are doctrines that you've looked at. These are lessons learned that you've gone through. This is where perhaps a little phrase or a piece of advice comes into play, like, cover and move, or take the high ground, or keep it simple. Next up is deciding. A combat leader's brain engages in the deciding process when it chooses which recalled information

• 1:08:51Jocko Willink?

  will be most useful and applies it to real time in the world to build a new mental map. That's when we're making the decision. And then memorizing, this was one that I didn't really expect. The other ones make sense, right? David Rock describes memorizing as holding maps in attention in the prefrontal cortex long enough to embed them in long-term memory. Research shows that it is impossible for our brains to simultaneously hold multiple complex concepts in working memory without degrading accuracy. For leaders in battle, memorizing is also the internalization of a plan. Focusing on the concept of an operation, planned or hasty, creates familiarity that

• 1:09:32Jocko Willink?

  allows execution without redundant analysis or reference to written notes. Yeah, and what that boils down to is kind of cool.

• 1:09:41Jocko Willink?

  My first appointment to Iraq, we were always going to a different like AO, like area of operations. Here Baghdad, but Baghdad's huge. I think I want to say Baghdad was like nine times bigger than Ramadi.

• 1:09:53Jocko Willink?

  And so you'd be going to a neighborhood, you'd never seen it before. And I would do a decent job of getting familiar with the battle map going in there, but not as good as we like, once you're in Ramadi for four months, you're just like, I know where this is. And it just makes you better at it. I think if I went back in time, I would do a little bit more memorization of the battle maps. But what I would memorize would be like phase lines or this, the approach to the building or follow on targets. Like I would, I would have chunks of it. So that then, then I understand it makes sense. Like you don't want to have to be like, hey, we're moving to phase line B Bravo and be like, hold on, let me pull up my map and figure out exactly where that is. Oh no, there's the, there's the, the building with the fence by it. That's phase on Bravo. Cool. So that makes sense and it gives you.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Phase line?

• 1:10:40Jocko Willink?

  Just, uh, it's an area of an operation that you designate. For instance, uh, hey, when we reach this, when we've got all our forces assembled, we're at the, at this phase line, at this location, hey, we're at phase line Alpha. Now we've pushed through the target, the target secured, we're at phase line Bravo. It's just a way of describing kind of the, kind of the flow of an operation chronologically, but it's also physical.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So it's like a little designation of an understood.

• 1:11:13Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  Area.

• 1:11:14Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay.

• 1:11:17Jocko Willink?

  Uh, the next one, the last one is inhibiting. Inhibiting is the practice of selective focus. When one actively tries not to engage certain mental maps because they're irrelevant or counterproductive. We call that prioritize and execute.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  That's the red light when they press record on a camera.

• 1:11:33Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  You gotta suppress.

• 1:11:35Jocko Willink?

  Suppress that thing, but it's also prioritize. Actually like these, these things don't matter right now. These nine things already don't matter. What matters is these two things right here. So inhibiting is practice of selective focus. This is prioritize and execute all day.

• 1:11:49Jocko Willink?

  The leader must, and he talks about some of the things that we've got to suppress, must suppress his learned tendencies, realign his mental perspective, and develop new neural connections that will help him properly frame and respond to it. And then this author adds personalizing to these. I add personalizing, which is, which can apply to every moment of a leader's day. This is the application of leadership principles and personnel, personality attributes that will guide the organization to accomplish the mission effectively. Personalizing is the leader's conscious effort to prevent external influences from altering the foundation of character and leadership that he has consistently developed and that his subordinates have learned to expect.

• 1:12:32Jocko Willink?

  And then it talks about training for the emotional, emotionally stable fight. Training for combat is about changing the brain. Decades of neuroscience, and by the way, what's cool, I've got, I've got, I got to see this over and over again. I got to see young SEAL leaders when they're going through training, be, get caught up in the emotions and learn how to detach and start to be able to make really good decisions. So this is something that you can do. You can change your brain. Decades of neuroscience research have firmly shown that the brain is highly adaptable and that repeated activities designed to create specific behaviors like combat training literally change the cellular structure and strength of connections between neurons.

• 1:13:15Jocko Willink?

  So you can actually change these things. You can start to get some control over how much time you spend in the gray slop. At the rifleman level, training teaches soldiers to respond reflexively to situations that demand spontaneous conditioned response, such as engaging an enemy fighter at close range and like mag changes. And ready up drills. It is the same behavioral process that professional athletes apply to develop the fine tuned motor skills needed in competition. This learning process also applies to activities that demand higher cognitive ability, such as detailed planning for a combat operation or reacting to a complex attack. A way to train this capability would be construct an exercise that requires leaders to undergo

• 1:13:58Jocko Willink?

  physical or fear induced stress and then perform deliberate time constrained planning for an ambiguous situation. So you get better at these things. And again, I just said that you see this and you've heard me talk about this before. In the military, they want to get you used to being afraid. So what do you do to get used to being afraid? Well, guess what I did? The first thing I did was climb over the low wall. You climb over the low wall, it's only like 12 feet. You climb over it, you kind of dangle and you, the next obstacle, two obstacles away? The cargo net. The cargo net is like 50 feet up.

• 1:14:33Jocko Willink?

  You gotta climb to the top of it. When you get to the top of it, you gotta climb over it. And at a certain point, you gotta kind of like just let go and get to the other side. If you're scared of heights, you're not gonna be able to do it. You gotta, and even if you're not scared of heights, you gotta overcome them, or it doesn't matter, you gotta go do it, right? You gotta suppress that feeling. And then, by the way, a little further on the obstacle course, is the slide for life. Now you're up three stories, you're gonna dangle off the edge and slide down a rope. It's, if you can't, if you're afraid, gonna be a problem.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  So the slide for life, the, you said you gotta dangle on a rope, what, you just slide down a rope?

• 1:15:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you slide down a rope.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  Like a zip line?

• 1:15:06Jocko Willink?

  It's at an angle, it's like a zip line, but you're using your hands as the zip.

• 1:15:12Jocko Willink?

  And you, you pull yourself down, like, hand over hand.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, so you're kind of maneuvering.

• 1:15:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and then eventually do a commando stop. Style. Once you get to a certain point in BUDs, they let you like slide down on your stomach. But when you, when they first make you do it, you're like hanging underneath the rope. Like your legs are wrapped around the rope and you're pulling yourself.

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  How do you slide down on your stomach? If you're gonna...

• 1:15:33Jocko Willink?

  Just go look up commando style, slide for life, and you'll see somebody doing it.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  I'm gonna...

• 1:15:40Jocko Willink?

  Or I think they even call it Australian style.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah. Okay, alright, cool.

• 1:15:44Jocko Willink?

  But eventually, you get done with that, guess what you're doing? Repelling off the tower. And then you're rappelling out of a helicopter, then you're fast roping out of a helicopter, and then you're parachuting. And your first parachuting is static line, and then eventually you're free falling, and then you're free falling from high altitude with an oxygen and a rucksack. Each one of those things, levels up the amount of fear induced situation. And then they do the same thing with shooting, like the first time you're shooting on static range, and then the next thing you're shooting, you know, uh, on a static range with a little bit of movement. And then eventually you're doing live fire, immediate action drills in the middle of the desert with rockets and grenades going off.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  You ever been afraid of heights? Or had a thing against heights?

• 1:16:24Jocko Willink?

  I, I think I have just the normal, kind of, natural, like...

• 1:16:30Jocko Willink?

  Appreciation.

• 1:16:33Jocko Willink?

  But the weird thing is, when you're parachuting, it doesn't feel like heights.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  That that's and I feel I don't know at the end of the day, but it feels like if I feel like that's kind of one of the little tests.

• 1:16:44Jocko Willink?

  I've been more, I've been more aware of the height when I was on a building or on a rooftop. Then I was ever aware of the height when you're when you're jumping out of an airplane.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm with you. The same deal where if I climbed up there, I don't get afraid of heights at all. If I like, you know, like a big cargo net or something like this. The only time I'm like, quote unquote, aware where I'm like. Is yeah, like you're at a, let's say a hotel or something, you're on a top floor and then they just allow you out on the balcony. And I'm like, bro, this, there is very little barrier, given how far down that is. You see what I'm saying? Like someone could like fall over this balcony and just freaking fall this whole like an airplane or. Or something like that. It's almost like there's too much of a disconnect to understand that you're high up. You just seem like you're just sort of in a different world, you know?

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  But I feel like that's kind of the litmus test where if it's like, if people have this like, oh, like they kind of have this panic mode when they're like way up in the air. I feel like if I fell from here, I would, I don't know, I'm not in touch with it. See what I'm saying? I don't know.

• 1:17:51Jocko Willink?

  Interesting. Makes sense.

• 1:17:56Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, units should structure training to present multiple streams of information and detectable patterns of enemy activity. That will teach leaders what to look for. So that's what we're doing, right? We're putting people in situations where they're going to start going, wait a second, it doesn't really matter that there's, this is happening. What matters is that.

• 1:18:15Jocko Willink?

  Like we used to tell guys, if there was no shooting, like the enemy starts shooting, stops shooting at you, your instinct can't be, oh, cool, they left. Your instinct has to be they're maneuvering.

• 1:18:26Jocko Willink?

  So that's the kind of thing you can train people to pay attention to.

• 1:18:31Jocko Willink?

  On the individual level, leaders should develop personal cognitive battle drills that better prepare them for mental challenges of combat. They should rehearse exactly what words they will use to report initial contact and what guidance they use anticipating issuing in the opening moments of a battle. These drills create neural circuitry that is familiar to the brain when the actual event happens, thus making it easier to execute with calm and confidence. Leaders should position themselves on the battlefield to facilitate their cognitive responsibilities. Despite mission terrain or movement technique, leaders must discern what position allows them to survey all aspects of the fight. As much as possible, they should directly observe their soldiers and get information in real time without compromising their ability to keep a macro view.

• 1:19:15Jocko Willink?

  Conversely, soldiers expect to see their leaders at the proverbial front and cannot respect leaders who are never among them. Finding this balance is part of what makes command an art. Most importantly, all leaders have a responsibility to build a database of professional knowledge that will assist them in creating insight during stressful situations. They do this by studying doctrine, seeking instruction from mentors, being self-critical about performance, recording new ideas, participating in thought exercises, discussing related concepts with peers, and reading professional works. You gotta know history. You gotta have tactical options. You gotta have your personal experience. And if you have those things, you will be able to find creative answers on the battlefield

• 1:19:58Jocko Willink?

  because sometimes the answer is not a doctrine. The concept of brain-based combat leadership deserves attention in both military and professional development courses and unit-level education training programs. Teaching leaders what they will physiologically experience will better prepare them to maintain emotional stability and effectively lead others during combat. And it's got a bunch of recommendations for the army in here. And then here's the conclusion. Combat involves a wide range of events, dangers, and sensory inputs that can easily overwhelm the unprepared mind. The first job of every soldier, regardless of rank, is to maintain his composure and react reflexively to the threat as required.

• 1:20:40Jocko Willink?

  Leaders, however, must go beyond the conditioned response to combat that we train on the live-fire range. They must zoom out. Right detach and adopt a macro level view of the battle quickly analyze events occurring decide on the appropriate response coordinate complex systems and apply the appropriate leadership skills to accomplish the mission these brain functions are among the most sophisticated processes that we humans can perform leaders who do not protect their own cognitive function during combat will find themselves short of the biological resources necessary to win meaning glucose to your brain and place themselves and others at risk in this sense

• 1:21:20Jocko Willink?

  knowing how to think could be a combat leaders most valuable tool so what that whole article was about was trying to get leaders trying to teach leaders to detach from the monkey brain and use your brain to think and not be driven by your instincts but driven by logic and reason now here's where I'm gonna give some additional information that is slightly contrary it's not contrary but you have to think about it this is something

• 1:22:03Jocko Willink?

  I've always said detachment doesn't mean that you become void of emotions in fact emotions have to be part of the calculus your emotions your team's emotions your boss's emotions all emotions need to be taken into account now this does not mean that that that they drive our decision-making process but they have to play a role they have to be in the calculus we have to be the driver right here's my metaphor we heard about a chariot we heard about this we have to have the steering wheel we have to have the brakes we have to have the gas we have to know when is it the good time to add more emotion because sometimes we need to add more emotion to the situation Right? You ever had a situation where someone's not getting it? Like cornering someone in MMA? And they're losing two rounds?

• 1:22:49Jocko Willink?

  And they have one more round left? And they go, I think the fight's going okay. No, that's not, no. You might need to, you might need to press the gas on the emotion. You also might need to take some of that emotion away.

• 1:23:01Jocko Willink?

  You know, in yourself, you might need to know when it's time to turn on the emotion, when it's time to pull some back. You might need to know what you need to control. When it's time to follow your instinct and when it's time to say, hold on, I need to, I need to pay attention to the logic here. That should be our goal. Our goal should be to have the steering wheel, have the brakes, have the gas, know when we need to push, know when we need to pull back. And learn how to drive and manage and modulate your emotions and your ego and your reason and your logic and utilize all those different inputs to create decisions and solutions and create actions.

• 1:23:40Jocko Willink?

  And of course, you can't do any of this. If you can't detach, you'll never figure out anything that I'm talking about. If you are in the gray slop. You won't ever see it.

• 1:23:53Jocko Willink?

  You won't even know what I'm talking about right now.

• 1:23:57Jocko Willink?

  But you can't abandon emotions and ego and passion. You need to stay in touch with them. You need to stay connected to them, but you can't be controlled by them. And this is very, very difficult. And, and it's also very, very important.

• 1:24:13Jocko Willink?

  So T E Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, a famous British guy, archaeologist, he's a military officer. He became famous during the Arab revolt in 1916, 1918 against the Ottoman Empire. And he had a, a a quote in his book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

• 1:24:37Jocko Willink?

  Nine tenths of tactics are certain and taught in books. But the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across a pool. And that is a, that is the test of generals. And I saw a guy on Twitter X named Infantry Dort, which had a lot of good information. He had this quote up.

• 1:25:00Jocko Willink?

  But the point of this quote is this is something that is very, very difficult to teach. This that you can learn nine tenths of being a combat leader. You can learn from the books, you can learn from the schoolhouse. You can learn it on the drill field like there's all nine tenths of you can have it all dialed in, but there's a tenth of it. He calls it the irrational tenth, which is like you can't, you can't teach it to somebody.

• 1:25:28Jocko Willink?

  Now, T Lawrence does say you can get better at it, but it's very, very difficult to teach. But it's not only applicable to the military. It's applicable like you hear about it in sports, right? In sports, I think you can correct me on this. You're more of a sports guy than I am.

• 1:25:46Jocko Willink?

  You hear people describing athletes that have certain intangibles, right? They, hey, they're, they got this capability. They got this much talent, but they have intangibles. Michael Jordan, was he the tallest guy? No, like he, but what did he have? He had something that we all have a hard time naming. And people will try and name it court sense, like even court sense. What's that? Is that a thing like, are we going to name that? Like, is that a, can you just, can I teach you court sense? Maybe I can give you some, you get familiar with the game, but there's some people that have another level of it. Tom Brady, the famous videos of Tom Brady at the combine.

• 1:26:30Jocko Willink?

  Looking weak, you know, slow. But what did he have? He had some intangibles. Muhammad Ali, Lionel Messi, Deion Sanders, these people had some, and MMA, we see it, right? John Jones, Johnny Bones Jones. What is he doing? Like he's doing like, okay, we, we all know Muay Thai, we all know wrestling, we all know Jiu Jitsu. We all know boxing, but all of a sudden he's doing something else, right? He's taking all those things and mixing in a way that we go, wait, no one taught him that. And Coach Jackson would say like, well, no, he, I never saw him do that before. He just did it there in the moment. Fedor Amelianenko. What is he putting together? How does he, how, how's he winning fights? Right?

• 1:27:16Jocko Willink?

  Hicks and Gracie, Marcelo Garcia into the Jiu Jitsu world. There's something going on there.

• 1:27:23Jocko Willink?

  They have these untangibles. They have these, these, these irrational tenses that it doesn't matter. You can't get them from the gym. And then in Hollywood, you get the same thing, right? In Hollywood, what do they call it? They call it it. They call it the it factor or just it. Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Denzel Washington, right? Al Pacino, Chris Pratt.

• 1:27:48Jocko Willink?

  Chris Pratt? Bro, you hang out with Chris Pratt and you go, oh, you're like, oh, okay. There's a reason that he's Chris Pratt. There's something about him. He's got something. They call it it. They call it, uh, the thing. But you, you, when you, you don't, you don't really know what it is. Like when I was first going to meet Chris Pratt, I was going to a UFC fight with Jack Carr. And we were, we were flying from LA. It was super cool. But it was my first time meeting like a real famous like Hollywood person. I was kind of like, oh, you know.

• 1:28:25Jocko Willink?

  I bet this guy's gonna be like, you know how they portrayed Matt Damon in, um, in America, Team America World Police? You know, they kind of portrayed Matt Damon like, oh, like kind of just dumb or whatever. And so I kind of thought, you know, I don't know nothing about Hollywood. I'm like, okay, that must be the real assessment of these Hollywood people. So, but I, you know, I've seen Chris Pratt and stuff, but I thought, you know, whatever, like he's gonna be kind of like that caricature that they put forward in Team America World Police. And then you meet him and you spend like five minutes around him and you go, oh, okay. Okay, I get it. There's a reason that he's who he is.

• 1:29:06Jocko Willink?

  But no one, he didn't learn that in acting school. I don't even think he went to acting school. Right? He didn't go, he didn't, I don't think he was in the school plays and had the, the drama teacher like saying, no, you need to get a little bit more furrow in your brow or be a little bit quicker on your comeback. Like, none of that.

• 1:29:25Jocko Willink?

  But there's something there. And then you get like rock musicians, right? Ozzy, of course. Elvis, Hendrix, Prince.

• 1:29:38Jocko Willink?

  Like, you know, these are people that they just have some thing. And by the way, not just singers, but uh, you, people that are, people that can play an instrument. If you go down to Guitar Center and you put up, hey, I'm hiring a guitarist. I need a guitarist that can play Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Tool, which is hard as hell, and Rush, which is hard as hell, proficiently. Call this number, I'll get, in San Diego, I'll get

• 1:30:12Jocko Willink?

  10 phone calls. And they'll be able to do it too. And one of the guys is like a waiter, one of the guys will be a construction worker, one of the guys will be a, what, whatever. Because they, they're really good at their instrument, but they don't have that little thing that Kurt Cobain had, which is take four chords and turn it into like a crazy whole album.

• 1:30:38Jocko Willink?

  So there is this unquantifiable kind of 10th or intangible

• 1:30:45Jocko Willink?

  irrational 10th.

• 1:30:49Jocko Willink?

  And here's what I think is especially from a leadership perspective, that thing is the connection back to the gray slop.

• 1:31:01Jocko Willink?

  The connection back to the gray slop, which is the ability to connect with someone emotionally, connect to that animal instinct, communicate with that. Like you ever, even what you're just talking about, you see someone talking and they're getting people fired up. They're not talking to their logical. You never heard someone say, I want to go over the statistics right now. Like they don't, that's not, that's not a fired up speech. The fired up speech doesn't appeal to that.

• 1:31:30Jocko Willink?

  What it does when someone has this ability, when they have that connection back to their emotional gray slop and they can modulate it properly, they can utilize it to write a great song, to lead people, to improvise a martial arts move like they're to get, when they get done, Conor McGregor gets a hold of the microphone and everyone goes nuts because he's gonna connect in a way that someone else that doesn't have that ability

• 1:32:09Jocko Willink?

  to have problems or to not not get where they want to go. And by the way, sometimes some people can tap into it.

• 1:32:18Jocko Willink?

  And, and they, but, but it's too much, right? And in the, like in, in the, in the entertainment business, you end up with Kurt Cobain, you end up with Jim Morrison, you end up with Janis Joplin, you end up with Amy Winehouse, you end Winehouse, you end up with Sid Vicious, you end up with Jim Belushi, you end up with Heath Ledger. Like these people are people that would tap back in, but then it would kind of like just get hold of them.

• 1:32:44Jocko Willink?

  So they, it's one of these things you gotta control it.

• 1:32:51Jocko Willink?

  You gotta tap into it, but if you don't have control over it, it'll, and by the way, this happens with leaders too, like leaders that lose their minds, which I've, you know, when you have a leader that's in charge of an organization and they lose their minds. They were able, they used that tapping into their emotions and their ego to drive things and make things happen. But at a certain point, it takes over and they lose their minds. They, they, their, their prefrontal cortex just shuts down and now their ego's running the show and it's a disaster.com.

• 1:33:19Jocko Willink?

  So that's why you gotta, you gotta know how to when to hit the brakes. You gotta know when to hit gas, you gotta steer it in the right direction.

• 1:33:28Jocko Willink?

  And if you can, if you have the rationalization and you have the discipline to do that, you have the discipline to go, oh, so hold on a second. This is about to be an egotistical decision. And by the way, when I stood up in front of the company, I said, we're gonna, we're gonna go into this market, nothing's gonna stop us. And that was tapping into my ego and tapping into my emotion and connecting with other people's emotion because they all want to win and I want to win because that's going to do better for our survival in the world. And I'm going to tap into that. But then two months later, when it's like, hey, we got a decision to make on if we're going to continue to expend this money on this marketing campaign that hasn't done well. My ego might be saying, I know it's going to work, but it's not a good move.

• 1:34:06Jocko Willink?

  And you gotta be able to, you gotta be able to decipher and utilize the proper area of your brain. And you have to be the person that's controlling it. You can't let your emotions make decisions, but you can't leave them out of the decision. And sometimes you gotta press the gas on your emotions and sometimes you gotta press the gas on your ego. You ever seen some, an MMA fighter, as they're getting closer and closer to the fight, they start, their ego starts growing. If it grows too early, they stop training. If it grows too late, they're not ready for the fight. They doubt themselves. They have got to figure out how to modulate these things. We have to figure out how we modulate these things. When someone can do that, that's a rare person.

• 1:34:50Jocko Willink?

  And that's going to be the person that rises to the top. But you know, we, we're not counting on that over here. I'm not, you know, Daco's not over here just counting on all the doing it right. We're just trying to do better. We're just trying to do better. And in order to do better, in my opinion, we truly have to learn, first of all, to detach from that gray slop, that animal instinct,

• 1:35:20Jocko Willink?

  which by the way, drives so much in our lives. Okay, but by the way, the workout that you didn't do, gray slop. That's animal instincts, telling you you're tired, telling you don't need to do it. The donut that you ate, immediate gratification. Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, that's all it is. The gray slop is if we're not out of it, if we're in it, we're not doing the right thing.

• 1:35:49Jocko Willink?

  That's what happens. Letting our stupid animal instincts make decisions about our long-term lives. Or without considering our long-term lives.

• 1:36:01Jocko Willink?

  We cannot allow this. We have to get control. We have to detach. We have to elevate above the gray slop. We have to take control of our lives. And when needed, we artfully utilize the emotion and the ego and the passion like a, you know, it's like a little, like a little fuel, little nuclear reactor. It's real like it's burning. Those things are burning.

• 1:36:30Jocko Willink?

  But you can't let that fire get out of control. It's like a meltdown in a nuclear facility. You gotta keep it. You gotta know when to put the carbon rods into the reactor to cool it down sometimes.

• 1:36:42Jocko Willink?

  You can't let it just run out of control or you're gonna have a meltdown. Which is terms that people use about someone having a freaking meltdown. Why is that? They let their emotion, they let their ego, they let their passion get out of control. Set him on fire. But if you can control that, if you contain that energy and utilize it properly, you're gonna have a win.

• 1:37:05Jocko Willink?

  So think about that. And if you can do that, it is going to elevate every aspect of your life.

• 1:37:14Jocko Willink?

  And that's what I got. That's what I got for today. So pay attention to it. It's there. The chimpanzee mind is strong and it is loud.

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  You know, that it factor or whatever. I feel like, and I was kind of going deep as you're explaining. I was like, brother, that's true. You know, like the ability, and you said something actually, which was spot on a little bit later. He said artfully, artfully like, you know, take from the gray part, the gray slop. And then, you know, and kind of interchange them and whatever to create this kind of thing.

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  It feels like this is like with five minutes of thinking, but the it factor that, you know, that intangible, that what is it? The 10%, the something 10%?

• 1:38:02Jocko Willink?

  The irrational 10th.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, the irrational 10th. I think it has to do with some kind of lack of restraint or boundary.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  Whatever that looks like, you know how like, um, I think in acting, they call it like self, self-consciousness, you gotta let go of the self-consciousness, you know? And I think, and even in sports, right, where you like, you doubt, you're like, any competition, you, you have a healthy level of doubt for yourself, you know, kind of a thing? But then, if you can, some people have it just naturally where they're like, I don't follow those rules. Like even all the way down to their subconscious, like they don't follow your etiquette, like Brad doesn't apply to me, you know, kind of a thing. So like, okay, remember, okay, this MMA guy, he was, um, he was a black guy, he used to fight in, I wanna say, he would like, he'd do weird, crazy stuff. What was his name?

• 1:38:56Jocko Willink?

  Ed Nine Mill.

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  No, no, yeah, no, it was, it was a different guy. We don't, I don't think we know him personally. He's a, he's my younger brother's favorite guy. I think he had like silver teeth, maybe?

• 1:39:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, um, yep, Crazy Horse.

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  Crazy Horse.

• 1:39:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:12Speaker 01

  The Bennett, Charles Bennett.

• 1:39:14Jocko Willink?

  Charles Bennett, yeah, he was wild.

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  Exactly right. So he's in, that's exactly what I'm saying, but he had this very specific thing where he wasn't like, he, he was the opposite, as far as his style goes, it wasn't this highly disciplined, you know, like think GSP, right? If you, if GSP comes out to win this fight, you're like, bro, this guy's game is just tight, you know, like he's making all the right moves.

• 1:39:37Jocko Willink?

  Bro, you, you're even more right than you know you are. I, I've been, uh, back in the day, uh, UFC on the same card, GSP fighting, you could see like cutting weight, you'd see him cutting weight like, uh, like a machine.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  Machine.

• 1:39:52Jocko Willink?

  Just a machine, just like, you know, checking weight, like no big deal, like no expression on his face, you know, just, just so disciplined and professional.

• 1:40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:02Jocko Willink?

  You're like, okay, cool.

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  Like clockwork, even, even his fights, like, and you know which fight was really like, this guy came to like 100% win, like no risk, no this and that, like this was like, it, it's almost like, hey, if you're gonna increase the probability of you winning, but to 100%, you have to do all the right things, take zero risk and do the right things and finish the fight. This is how he'd fight, you know, it was his rematch against Matt Sarah, when he lost to Matt Sarah, that second one, it was like, bro, this guy's not losing, there's no way he's gonna lose. So anyway, it was so calculated and so tight versus Crazy Horse Bennett.

• 1:40:40Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:40:41Speaker 01

  Bro, the exact opposite, but that motherfucker still still won sometimes.

• 1:40:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and by the way, he connected emotionally with so many people. He was a fan favorite, right? He's a fan favorite, but he didn't modulate it enough. And by the way, it didn't only apply to in the cage. It was also like, what was his lifestyle like? Was this a guy that was like on the mats, training? No, he was like not on the mats. He was obviously a very gifted guy and he trained, but like that next level of discipline, there was more emotion. There was more crazy. That's why his literal nickname was Crazy Horse.

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  So maybe his irrational 10th was like an irrational 30 or something like this. It was it was bigger than it maybe should have been as far as ideal, but as far as identifying that thing, he had a lot of that thing where he was like, he didn't have boundaries. He didn't have internal boundaries like, hey, maybe I shouldn't. Nah, he was sending it all just full send like, good, good. This is what we're doing. This is what I'm doing, you know? And it wasn't like I'm gonna timidly send it, because you know, some guys, they'll timidly send it.

• 1:41:43Jocko Willink?

  Jeremy Stevens, another like, he, he was losing a fight, you know, and I was in his corner. And I had to, I had to go emotional with him and get him emotional. And dude, he got a mo-, because he's an emotional dude, you know? And dude, he tapped into that emotion and freaking almost murdered a guy, you know what I'm saying? Just KO'd a brother, but it was one of those things where his, he needed to tap into that at that time. And, and that's a positive thing to have, but like you're saying, like GSP, like there was no, I don't remember, maybe we could find a, a fight where he had to get into some like emotional level.

• 1:42:26Jocko Willink?

  But a lot of times dude, GSP was just a machine. It's same with like Fedor Amelyanenko. Like you, did you ever see an expression on his face? It's like, no, not really. He was not fighting with any type of emotion at all. And that kind of became his, uh, made him so popular, right? Like, like, like, just like a Terminator. But yes, this, this thing is being able to figure out how much of this fire you're gonna let out and when you're gonna let it out. And how you're gonna let it out.

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  The guys who, just like I said, can put it together perfectly or because it has to be the perfect, uh, Combination and then the first perfect like back and forth with all the training, discipline, competitiveness, self-confidence, like all that stuff. And then on top of it, that like lack of restraint where you can be like, no, I'm not going to follow the protocol. I'm gonna, I'm gonna step outside of the protocol for this one. You see what I'm saying? So like, you know, Michael Jordan, or the best one, I think, I can think of the top of my head is John Jones. Cause you know, like, bro, he finished fights with a spinning elbow. And just like how you said, uh, who was it? Coach Jackson, right? Yeah. We were like, yeah, I never seen him do that. But he has been, he's so creative like minded with

• 1:43:40Speaker 01

  everything within the confines of his discipline for sure. Where he'd be like, no, no, I can send this and make it work. He doesn't have that constraint that I would have. Bro, if I'm like, bro, I've never practiced that spinning elbow, bro. I'm not gonna try in a fight. Doesn't make sense.

• 1:43:51Jocko Willink?

  Well, this is an interesting thing because I was, uh, you know, in the, in the publishing world right now, there's a lot of AI being published. And one of the things about publishing, or one of the things about humans is humans have an irrational tenth. Right? And I don't know that they can successfully put the irrational tenth into a AI. I'm, can they say, by the way, I want you to throw in some random thought and process it in there? But it's, it's that, it's random, but it's, whereas AI is gonna take, AI is predictable. You put in the input, it's going off of, it's going to be, here's the story, here's the thing.

• 1:44:34Jocko Willink?

  Because it's based on other things that have existed before, but a human is gonna hopefully have this irrational 10%. The it. That's what makes a writer right. You know, I was talking to my literary agent a long time ago and she's really smart, studied at an Ivy League college, studied history and literature. And one day I was like, you know, like, why are you a literary agent and not a, not like a writer? And she says, you know, I look at a paper and I don't really have anything to write about. And I was like, oh, okay. And which is weird because for me, I have like all kinds of like ridiculous ideas

• 1:45:15Jocko Willink?

  that I need to figure out which one I'm gonna invest in, you know, um, but that's a similar thing.

• 1:45:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that that we're, I think, yeah, it was you. We just weren't recording. Where we're a while ago, we're we'll talk about like, you know, creative people, right? And there's all different kinds of creativity. I get it. But like, you know, a lot of these people who we regard as like highly creative, they have this odd, this weird past. You know, where they've been through something, whether it be traumatic or just super dynamic in one way or another, that they can kind of draw upon. Which and whether they know it or not. And I think that that's the struggle. I think that AI is gonna have a hard time like replicating. I whatever with enough time, who knows, but it's hard to replicate like

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  someone's actual pay. Yeah, okay, so AI will play a video, right? I make an AI video and say, hey, do this, make them feel this and another. And they'll do it and they did it. But I'm like, I wouldn't really look like that. It wouldn't really feel like that. You see what I'm saying? You're doing it too perfectly. So when you really Yeah, predictably. Exactly right. If you really went through it, oh, you would know. There's little details of someone, you know, like if someone's telling a story about like their friend and be like, you're talking about yourself right now. You see what I'm saying? Because you know, like, there's something that kind of comes with it that is like so like inherently human. That it's like you, you can't just replicate it. I can't describe it, but once you experience it, you're like, oh, okay.

• 1:46:43Speaker 01

  And it's like, it's hard to like predictably recreate it out of nothing or imagination. Like you kind of got to do it.

• 1:46:50Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's kind of like

• 1:46:53Jocko Willink?

  I, I, we were before we hit record. The, you know, we know what is in an amoeba. We know all the components that are in amoeba. We can put all those in a little dish and stir them together. But it doesn't come to life. It takes some other element. And so the idea, like everything that you can put all these things into the AI dish. But like, there's something that just like you said, like there's something that can look similar and sound similar. But at the end of the day, you're kind of like, well, it's not quite that thing. It's not quite there. So you gotta tap, you gotta be able to tap into it appropriately. Most people don't have a problem with this, by the way, but I do think

• 1:47:36Jocko Willink?

  most people have a problem with their, they're too emotional. They're letting their ego and all these emotions and everything run the show. But I think if you can detach more, I think people that detach properly, they find a way to better recognize the power of that emotion and funnel it and get it to a right spot where it can be utilized properly. Now, look, the, you know, like crazy artists, right? That burn in and they, they better to burn out and fade away, right? That's like, these people are crazy. And when they get enough success, they kind of, they can kind of carry on. But a lot of like, how many people, you know, uh, I, I talked about Jeff Lang, the kid I grew up with, um, who was smarter than me.

• 1:48:21Jocko Willink?

  I, I, in the book Final Spin, I kind of dedicated the book Final Spin to my friend Jeff Lang, who was smarter than me, funnier than me, better athlete than me, like just, just a creative, just a spark, just, just like fire. And he killed himself when he was 19 years old. And you're like, it was that fire was just burning so, it was too much, right? And sometimes, you know, how many people are like that? And it doesn't necessarily mean they have to kill themselves, but you know, they, their fire wouldn't allow them to be in a band. It wouldn't allow them to even practice their instrument. It wouldn't allow them to, to sit down in front of a video thing and learn how to edit the stuff. They got too much of it.

• 1:49:06Jocko Willink?

  And it just doesn't like, it can't, like, what, you, you know, uh, Ozzy Osbourne, like Ozzy Osbourne.

• 1:49:14Jocko Willink?

  He was like, like, he, he, just like this intense creative energy. And luckily, like, he got into Black Sabbath and, and became like, but if he, if that wouldn't have happened to him, if he wouldn't have found those guys, if he wouldn't have found Bill Ward and Tony Iommi and Giza, but if they wouldn't have, if that wouldn't have happened, where would he be? I mean, I can guarantee you, he wouldn't, we wouldn't know who he is, you know? He might've done a band here, there, whatever, but like, you gotta get in that moment and have the right ingredients. And then you gotta get a little bit of luck and you gotta survive it, like the fact that Ozzy lived so long. Like, why didn't he die when he was, you know, 23 years old, all drunk, fall into a train? Like, there's so many, that fire is gonna burn bright and occasionally people can survive with it.

• 1:50:00Jocko Willink?

  But a lot of times, and, and they can be successful with it, but a lot of times that fire ends up with people in jail, with people, you know, uh, committing crimes, with people ODing, with people just, just ruining their lives. The fire in the emotion and the ego, and by the way, we can say the same thing about ego, like what ego drives a person to achieve things, but then when it goes out of control, all of a sudden they're embezzling money and they're doing all this, you know, they're doing terrible things because their ego can't be shut down, that fire is just too much, they can't control it, they don't know how, they never learned to modulate it.

• 1:50:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, the Ozzy, actually, a lot of the, the musical, it makes sense, dude. Jim Carrey went through a version of this where, so they have this, we'll just call it for lack of a better term, a fire, right? So Ozzy has a fire, this fire inside of him and he goes, he's, he goes crazy, right?

• 1:50:55Jocko Willink?

  Is this Jim Carrey?

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  No, we'll say Ozzy Osbourne. And then, you know, he finds music or he, he gets into music early on, right? So there's something about like music. And maybe I would imagine just performing for the for the world, you know, like, but truly performing, not being performative, but like truly doing your art as a performer for the people and they're just loving it. There's something about that. So in music, let's face it, like, bro, I don't even really play music. And bro, I'll listen to music and be like, man, this is like, you know, yeah, you know, to the point where it affects you emotionally.

• 1:51:27Jocko Willink?

  That's what I was gonna say. You know why? Because they, whoever that musician was, they tapped into that emotion. They pulled it out. They put it, they recorded it. And now when you hear it, this is the same thing to you. But they had to have the discipline and the control to make that happen. Now, look, occasionally you get a band that just takes, they have that one member. This is why like the lead singer dies, the whatever, the guitarist kills himself, like crazy stuff happens. You know, like, we've had incredible musicians that they, like Chris Cornell, like from Soundgarden, here's this guy, he's at the top of his game, 50 years old or whatever. Iconic. But that fire caught up and then killed himself. You see what I'm saying? Like it's, it's wild. So sorry I cut you off, but yes,

• 1:52:11Jocko Willink?

  the reason that you, Echo Charles, that doesn't know how to play an instrument, you know, doesn't collect records, but you will hear a song and go, dang dude, this one hits.

• 1:52:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's a collection of songs that, and my kids will tease me about this, where like if I find a song that I really like, I'll just play it over and over and over until I just don't like it anymore or don't like it as much. But, and I remember thinking to myself, I think, I think there's something wrong with me in that way where, like, I don't like all music, you know, people are music lovers. I'm not a music lover, but I like certain songs, like just still right now, kind. So I don't know, maybe there's plenty of people like that. But now consider that, right? Where I think music has a way to affect people in that way. And a lot of people, I think across the board, that's the way music works mostly. Now you're a person with all this fire in you and you get to not only.

• 1:53:07Speaker 01

  Consume that, but you get to harness it and create it. You know, and that fire is just driving it. So now it's this like, you're almost like this lightning rod of fire and creativity. And then the medium is music that just affects, and you know, it's affecting themselves too. Is you saying, cause this company, let's face it, bro. A good song comes on that you really know, bro. You're seeing it like if you're alone in your car or whatever, bro. You're singing it like you're singing it and it feels like you're actually singing it. See what I'm saying? Now go one step further is you are the person really singing it. Bro, it's like, bro, that can drive you crazy, I think. See what I'm saying? Especially if it's like, if it's literally coming from you. It's like, bro, it's too much power sometimes. See what I'm saying? And then not to mention all the fame and all this other stuff discombobulating your whole freaking mind and life. You see what I'm saying?

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  So it kind of makes sense.

• 1:53:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know what that, that's how you end up, I think with that fire just. You're getting rewarded for that fire, right? Like you're getting, so then you just unleash it and boom. If you're not careful, it's gonna get you.

• 1:54:06Speaker 01

  Jim Carrey said, he got to the point, I'm paraphrasing, that he didn't even know who he like was. Cause it's kind of like, you know, he started off with, um, I just wanted to make the people around me laugh and happy. So he's like, starts doing this and he likes doing it and he's, it's working. So he takes it to the next level and he's, you know, his creative mind is like doing this and it's to this next level. And everyone just wants that Jim Carrey making them happy and laugh. Then he's like, wait a second, if I'm not doing that, like who am I? He focused so hardcore on it that he said, like, he didn't even know who he was anymore. Kind of, and I was like, oh, I could, I could see it. I totally could see it. See what I'm saying?

• 1:54:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just getting, uh, getting, not only are you unleashing the fire, but everyone else is just throwing gas on it.

• 1:54:46Speaker 01

  I know, man. Totally throwing gas on it.

• 1:54:50Jocko Willink?

  Check, check. Well, detach from that emotion. Use it, but don't let it get out of control. Oh, that's what we got. Um, by the way, when we do that, when we impose discipline into our lives. Which by the way, you know, when we crank up the music when we're working out. Your music, your, your workout can legitimately go better. That can happen. That's when you're tapping into your emotion. Sometimes when you let the emotion be, hey, I feel like sleeping in today. Echo Charles, which I know happened today, actually.

• 1:55:30Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:55:31Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:55:31Speaker 01

  Hey, sometimes we need a little bit more rest.

• 1:55:33Jocko Willink?

  I'm not trying to call you out, but I'm calling you out.

• 1:55:36Speaker 01

  Please.

• 1:55:36Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? Why? Because the emotion was, I'm tired. The emotion was, I feel sore.

• 1:55:44Jocko Willink?

  And you let it win. You didn't impose logic, knowing that a good workout before you came in here would have been better.

• 1:55:55Speaker 01

  I went for a run.

• 1:55:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay, oh, okay, good, good. Well, hey, listen, if you're on the path, you're training, you're lifting, doing jiu jitsu, you're gonna need fuel. We recommend Jocko Fuel. Check out JacoFuel.com. We have, uh, we got protein.

• 1:56:10Speaker 01

  Best protein.

• 1:56:10Jocko Willink?

  The best protein, the tastiest protein. We got, is it Cinco de Mayo today?

• 1:56:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Get some of that horchata.

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  Horchata. It's my mom's birthday today, too, by the way. Happy birthday, Mom.

• 1:56:21Jocko Willink?

  Happy birthday.

• 1:56:23Jocko Willink?

  We got hydration, we got energy, we got supplementation, we got Time More, Super Krill, Joint Warfare, one of our best, uh, products. If you look at the people that subscribe, like myself, subscription to Joint Warfare, you know why. You don't have years of subscription, thousands and thousands of people subscribing to a product that's not GTG good to go. So we got it all. So check out JacoFuel.com and fuel yourself properly. Also, check out OriginUSA.com. We have jiu jitsu geese, jiu jitsu rash guards, jeans, boots, hoodies. We've got a new shirt coming out, which they just sent me a sample of, which is legit.

• 1:57:08Jocko Willink?

  So we got everything that you need. It's 100% made in America, because we are not making communist clothing. We are making freedom clothing, American clothing. 100% made in America with 100% American-made materials. Check out OriginUSA.com and get your wife or your significant other a pair of women's jeans, because they're coming. And apparently...

• 1:57:32Jocko Willink?

  They, they do it right.

• 1:57:34Speaker 01

  They're all the hype.

• 1:57:35Jocko Willink?

  By the way, Big H got one of the initial pairs. And I'm gonna say they are GTG.

• 1:57:41Speaker 01

  GTD approved.

• 1:57:42Jocko Willink?

  Form and function.

• 1:57:43Speaker 01

  Form and function, yeah.

• 1:57:45Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, uh, girls can be quite picky about their genes.

• 1:57:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. They know what they want and don't want, by the way. So it's actually a good guideline. Like, let's face it, you're a bad guideline, bro. You're just like, oh, yeah, they function, you know, all this other stuff. I was like, bro, what about us who care about the aesthetic a little bit more than, say, Jocko? See what I'm saying? I think that's most of us.

• 1:58:04Jocko Willink?

  Jack.

• 1:58:05Speaker 01

  So it's good.

• 1:58:05Jocko Willink?

  OriginUSA.com, get some.

• 1:58:07Speaker 01

  Good to go. Also, don't forget about Jocko's store we're representing while we're on this path. Right? Discipline equals freedom. We've got some good shirts. Five versions of Discipline Equals Freedom shirts on Jocko's store. Uh, the idea of good, which is, let's face it, the classic. From the beginning, if something happens that's bad, there is some good that comes out of it. See what I'm saying? You wanna represent? We've got three versions of good. Other stuff too, good stuff on there. Uh, I made the shirts functional in a way so well that people say, "This is my favorite shirt." Not necessarily because of the design, but how it fits on me. I said my job was done well then.

• 1:58:44Jocko Willink?

  Proud of that.

• 1:58:45Speaker 01

  Thank you for that. Also, Shirt Locker, which is different design every month. That's a subscription scenario. Um, but I am releasing one more shirt from the Shirt Locker.

• 1:58:54Jocko Willink?

  Which one?

• 1:58:55Speaker 01

  Into the main.

• 1:58:56Jocko Willink?

  Into the wild.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  Stream.

• 1:58:57Jocko Willink?

  What is it?

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  Sugar coated lies.

• 1:59:00Jocko Willink?

  Is that that one right there?

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  Nope. This is a different one. Sugarwood Light, the one that first came to everyone. Yeah, I'm releasing that one. Uh, be, uh, on the lookout for that if you want to be notified. Put your email, go JacoStore.com at the bottom, put your email in that. I'll email you when it comes out.

• 1:59:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you can spam everybody?

• 1:59:17Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't spam anyone. I've never spammed anyone ever in my whole life, ever, and I never will.

• 1:59:25Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 1:59:25Speaker 01

  I don't mean that.

• 1:59:26Jocko Willink?

  I like that.

• 1:59:27Speaker 01

  But I will let you know when it's live and when it's going live, even before it goes live, so you can jump on there whenever you want.

• 1:59:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? You wanna get it? You wanna get the jump on it? You can. If you wanna get back to it, you can. You do run the risk of it selling out, though. Because they do tend to sell out nonetheless. It's all on JacoStore.com. Check it out.

• 1:59:43Jocko Willink?

  Uh, also, we got some books. Check out Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones. Check out Need to Lead by Dave Burke. I've written a bunch of books about leadership with my brother Leif Babin. I've written some other books for adults and kids. Check all those out. Warrior Kid, movie coming. Movie coming November 20th.

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:00:01Jocko Willink?

  Right? Way of the Warrior Kid movie starring Chris Pratt, who has it, by the way.

• 2:00:05Speaker 01

  Has it big time.

• 2:00:07Jocko Willink?

  Directed by McG. Kind of has it too, you know?

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Legitimacy and authenticity.

• 2:00:14Jocko Willink?

  Excellence.

• 2:00:15Speaker 01

  Excellence.

• 2:00:15Jocko Willink?

  Excellence and legitimacy. That's what Echo Charles, oh, because Echo Charles is in it too, by the way.

• 2:00:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:21Jocko Willink?

  Acting.

• 2:00:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Stretch of a role.

• 2:00:23Speaker 01

  You know.

• 2:00:24Jocko Willink?

  Playing a jujitsu black belt up there with the gi on.

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  Been very supportive.

• 2:00:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Dude, you did a, you did a great job. You brought a lot of excellence and legitimacy to the situation. And we, we were all very happy.

• 2:00:35Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 2:00:35Jocko Willink?

  Uh, primalbeef.com. You need steak. Check out primalbeef.com and coloradocraftbeef.com. Also, Echelon Front, we have something called the muster. We just got done with the muster. The muster is a two day conference educational scenario where we teach the skills of leadership as a skill. We teach the skills of leadership. Leadership is not something you're born with. It is something that is a skill that you can learn and you can improve. If you need leadership inside your organization, it would be an outstanding opportunity for you to come to the muster. The next one is in July and it is in San Diego. So that is a very cool place. We did it in the summertime. We know that people like to come to San Diego.

• 2:01:18Jocko Willink?

  So if you want to make it into a little family scenario, bring the fam out, you learn about leadership. And the family gets a little Sea World, a little San Diego Zoo, a little beach. We're here. Dago, as they say. So echelonfront.com if you want to check that out. Also, Extreme Ownership, we have an online academy where we teach these principles and skills as well. And then of course, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, want to help 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 Americas MightyWarriors.org. Also check out HeroesAndHorses.org. And finally, Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org.

• 2:02:02Jocko Willink?

  If you want to connect with us, you can check out jocko.com and then on social media, I'm at jocko link echoes at echo charles. Just be careful because that whole thing is filled with a bunch of spam crap trying to manipulate your brain. It's what it is. People paying money to get into your brain and get control of you. And you know how they attack you, by the way? They appeal to your animal instincts.

• 2:02:30Speaker 01

  Brain gray slop.

• 2:02:31Jocko Willink?

  Your gray slop. That's why the thumbnails are what the thumbnails are. And I apologize for the freaking dumb ass thumbnails that echoes made when he was experimenting with AI. And I'm like, bro, I asked you to stop doing those in no less than, I would say eight times. I was like, bro, this is the dumbest looking AI looking slop. And then I think I'd shut it down. And then the next one would come out and be me like on a stack of gold coins with a crown on or me in a business suit. I'm like, bro, and I get it because it was early in the AI.

• 2:03:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:03:07Jocko Willink?

  It was early in the AI generation. So you were kind of like flexing in a way.

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:12Jocko Willink?

  But it didn't take long before you were, you were not flexing anything.

• 2:03:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. I reversed.

• 2:03:19Jocko Willink?

  So anyways, but that's what people do. They create these thumbnails. You didn't create thumbnails specifically aimed at your animal instincts, but whenever you see a thumbnail, it's got like a female. You know, that's, that's in some skimpy outfit. That's or they put some fear into you, like a fearful title. Or, uh, you can win now, like defeat anyone like those kinds of things.

• 2:03:45Speaker 01

  The things you're missing.

• 2:03:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  If you notice that.

• 2:03:47Jocko Willink?

  Yep. That's, those are real AI. Those, sorry, those are real gray slop attacks. And you fall for them. We all fall for them. That's why they get so many views. So just be careful when you're in that zone. Just be careful. Try and scroll with your, with your prefrontal cortex. And you'll spend, if you, if you engage your prefrontal cortex, you'll be, you'll shut it. You'll go do something smart. Three. Three scrolls later, you'll be like, what is this crap?

• 2:04:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:16Jocko Willink?

  But if you just let your, let your, uh, your limbic brain just, it'll look at that shit all day. Just like, oh, wow, it's amazing. Oh, it's incredible. Oh, that looks like a good meal. Oh, I'm gonna learn something new. I'm doing, learn anything. I'm gonna learn something that's gonna change my mind. That's what it is.

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  It's real.

• 2:04:32Jocko Willink?

  So just be careful. That's what's happening there. And finally, thanks to all of our service members, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Thank you for your service and sacrifice that allows us to live in freedom and live in security. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all of the first responders. Thank you for your service and sacrifice that keeps us safe here on our soil. And everyone else out there. You gotta be the one that's in control. Not your impulses, not your emotions, not your ego, but you, your enlightened self.

• 2:05:10Jocko Willink?

  You with plans and goals and hopes and dreams and things that can only be achieved if you are holding the steering wheel. If you force yourself to overcome the short-term, immediate gratification of the mind that satisfies, satisfies you right now, but robs you of your future. And I'm not saying don't have emotions. You gotta have emotions and you should utilize those emotions, but don't let those emotions utilize you. Do not allow that. And if you do that, you will improve your lot in life.

• 2:05:51Jocko Willink?

  That's all we've got for tonight. And until next time, Zeko and Jocko out.