Jocko Underground: If You're Not In A Good Spot In Life...

What to do if you're not in a good spot in life. Is my lifestyle messing up my physical progress? What strength goals should you set? How to separate personal interests and group interests. How to set yourself apart from the rest. What to do with a cheating wife. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 123, 123. Echo Charles, sitting here with me. So I was talking to an individual the other day.

• 0:13Jocko Willink?

  This individual was not in a great spot. He was at a, we'll say, an event. The individual's not in a great spot, and he kind of said, "Yeah, I listen to podcasts. I wonder if you have any recommendations?" And I was like, "Uh, for what?" And he's like, "You know, just like,

• 0:31Jocko Willink?

  my, you know, just career-wise and kind of relationship-wise and like finances, just kind of, he's just like looking for broad life guidance." "Okay, cool. I'm in the game, you know, like, let's go." So he didn't have a great job.

• 0:46Jocko Willink?

  He was, had been bouncing around in various relationships. Didn't have a lot of savings. Renting a condo, you know, leasing a car. And she's kind of giving me a lowdown, and I said, "Well..."

• 1:04Jocko Willink?

  Because I asked him what you need help with, and he's like, "Well, you know, I don't have the best job right now, and I'm, you know, I can't find the right girl, and I don't have much, you know, don't have much savings, and I don't own a house or anything." And she's going through this.

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  And so I'm like, you know, "Okay, well, how, you know, how'd this happen? Like, how'd you end up here?" And I wasn't looking for like,

• 1:27Jocko Willink?

  I wasn't looking for a cause. I was actually just trying to get the context of the scenario, right? How did you end up, like, how'd this happen? Like, because, you know, sometimes it's, "Hey, I got divorced, I had to restart," like, looking for that kind of thing. "Oh, I changed careers," or whatever, you know, whatever. I'm looking for sort of how we ended up here, so we can sort of figure out a course of action to go. And so he starts giving me the, the, the life story type thing. And so I'm listening.

• 1:58Jocko Willink?

  And this entire thing, this entire life story was, I'm not kidding. His entire life story was a litany of all the people, places and things that had put him in his current situation. The whole thing. Starting when he was young, like his dad left, right? His dad left, his mom.

• 2:20Jocko Willink?

  That's where this story begins. And then his mom had a bunch of different, uh, boyfriends coming in and out and teachers in school. In where he lived, didn't care. The football coach. Football coach didn't like him. So he quit, I think like his junior year quit. In, uh, in two days, right? During two days, the coach just didn't like me.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  Counselor in school. Recommended that he go to trade school after high school. Like, hey, you should go to trade school, you should get a. And he didn't want to go to trade school. He wanted to go to college. So guess what he did? Neither. But this was, you can probably see where I'm going with this. This was the fault of the counselor.

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  He. He went to see recruiter, recruiter lied to him. In some way. And so he just didn't join the military. Cause the recruiter told me it was gonna be like this. And then I found out that he was actually lying to me. So I'm not going in the military. So the decision that he made was because the recruiter had lied to him.

• 3:35Jocko Willink?

  Fiance scenario. She was crazy. Now he doesn't trust women anymore. Cause she acted this and she did this and she cheated on him. And then she lied to his face and then they made up and then she did it like, so we had this whole thing going on.

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  And then there was this boss. And there was that boss. And then there was this industry and that industry. And there was this company and there was that company. And then there was the dot com. Uh, burst. And yeah, this guy was not quite my age. But that's why, cause I don't know if they talk about trade school anymore. They used to. It's a freaking good thing. But he's, you know, he had the dot com, the dot com bubble burst and then in oh eight, the economic thing.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  And this just went on and on and on.

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  For, you know, probably five minutes. And

• 4:31Jocko Willink?

  none of it.

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  Not one time did he say, I messed up. Like normally, if you say, you know what, the recruiter lied to me and I just, I, I was an idiot and I got all mad and so I just didn't join the military. I should have joined. He didn't say that. The recruit. It wasn't like, um, you know, my football coach didn't like me. Cause I was kind of a punk and I acted like an idiot. I couldn't say that because there's no lessons learned. That's the thing. There was no ownership of anything that had happened. It was just everyone else and everything else. The, the, the dot com burst, the dot com, like who got, okay, I get it, dude. I get it. If you were a freaking

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  person with a startup that had funding and you had value and you had invested some money, but dude, some normal dude doesn't lose in the dot com bubble. Right? Dude, I had eighteen hundred dollars invested in freaking WWW dot dot com dot com.

• 5:35Jocko Willink?

  And I lost my eighteen hundred dollars. Like that's what happened. That's the worst case scenario that happened to this dude.

• 5:43Jocko Willink?

  Not one time did he say, here's the mistake that I made.

• 5:51Jocko Willink?

  And of course, bro, I, I'm talking to this guy. He listened to the podcast. He read Extreme Ownership. He read Dichotomy. He read everything.

• 6:04Jocko Willink?

  And he talked a good talk when we were talking about that. But when we talked about the situation that he's currently in, it was all about everyone and everything else.

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  This is a very, it's a very subtle, it's a very subtle thing that occurs.

• 6:30Jocko Willink?

  You know, like the way that the devil maneuvers. And the devil, you know, dresses up like a pretty girl. And the devil does these things that you don't really notice. And all of a sudden, you're doing things that you shouldn't be doing. And the next thing you know, it's too late, you're going to hell.

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  The demon is a liar. I used to say that to Seth Stone quite a bit. Cause there'd be something going on. I'd see him getting pulled off the path.

• 7:06Jocko Willink?

  The demon is a liar. These are little lies that are coming in. Gotta watch out for these things. Because you don't know that. Cause the demon doesn't look like a demon, bro.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:19Jocko Willink?

  The demon doesn't look like a demon, doesn't have horns, doesn't have fangs, not red. It's actually probably attractive. You see what I'm saying? This is what's going down. And, and that attraction can be every different type of thing, whether it's that money, whether it's that freaking, uh, uh, what's the, the car? The, the Bugatti car, whatever that thing is, like those things look good.

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  Whether it's the job and the, the status, those things can look really good. That stuff can be a lie.

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  And notice I said can be a lie, cause sometimes it's like, oh yeah, yeah, guess what? Bugatti's a good car. It's fast, I'm sure it handles well, I haven't driven one. There's jobs that are really good and you can help a lot of people and you can grow businesses. That's awesome. That's not a lie, that's true.

• 8:15Jocko Willink?

  So there's things out there and we can't tell. So what I'm saying is this is a sneaky thing. This is a thing that, that gets into your head.

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  Then you gotta be careful for it.

• 8:27Jocko Willink?

  You gotta be careful of it, you gotta be careful. Because if you don't watch out.

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna end up not taking ownership of what is going on in your world. It's, it's going to seep into your bloodstream.

• 8:46Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna seep into your bloodstream and it's gonna pollute your body. It's gonna pollute your mind and it's gonna pollute your soul. And, and, and you won't know it. This guy.

• 9:00Jocko Willink?

  It was like, it was like he was on fire and he didn't know it.

• 9:07Jocko Willink?

  He did not know it. He did not see, he did not see the obvious thing that what he was saying was completely

• 9:17Jocko Willink?

  opposite of what he thought he was saying.

• 9:26Jocko Willink?

  It's not on everybody else. It's on you.

• 9:30Jocko Willink?

  You have to make things happen. Nothing is going to be given to you. And that's, should I say nothing? No, I shouldn't say nothing.

• 9:40Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna have things, some things, you're gonna get lucky sometimes. You can't count on luck. You're gonna be given some things. You can't count on being given things.

• 9:50Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna be, you're gonna win a couple easy games along the way. But no one's gonna, someone might give you a little bit of money. But no one's gonna hand you a dollar. You can't count on it. No one's gonna hand you a dime. No one's gonna hand you a job. It's not gonna happen. You cannot have any part of your mind that thinks, oh, someone will just do this for me.

• 10:19Jocko Willink?

  You cannot have that in your mind. You have to do things yourself. You have to create things. You have to make things happen.

• 10:30Jocko Willink?

  You have to do it yourself. No one's gonna give it to you.

• 10:36Jocko Willink?

  No one is gonna give it to you. And this doesn't mean you have to take from someone else. You have to build for yourself.

• 10:46Jocko Willink?

  So think through what you are saying. Think through what you are thinking. Stop blaming other people.

• 10:57Jocko Willink?

  Start taking ownership and start taking ownership of everything and I'll tell you what. It hurts.

• 11:04Jocko Willink?

  It hurts. Like chemotherapy hurts. It's terrible when people go through that, but that's what removes the cancer from their system. And you're going to feel some of that. And look, if you're like this guy, probably 48 years old or something like that.

• 11:26Jocko Willink?

  This is going to be some serious. Some serious pain. When you look around at your relationships, at your savings account, at your finances, at your relationships, at your skillsets, when you look at all those things and they're not where you

• 11:48Jocko Willink?

  not where you think they deserve to be. Now, you didn't get what you deserve to get.

• 11:55Jocko Willink?

  You didn't get what you deserve to get. Because of that coach, because of that recruiter, because of those teachers, because of your mom and dad. You didn't get what you deserved.

• 12:14Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna get what you deserve.

• 12:21Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna get what you deserve.

• 12:28Jocko Willink?

  And it's based on you.

• 12:34Jocko Willink?

  So, there you go.

• 12:40Jocko Willink?

  Let's get to some Q and A.

• 12:45Jocko Willink?

  It's just bizarre because I have these conversations fairly regularly.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do they, so you been in this outfit for a while now? Did you, oh, you know how like, obviously, and I'm with you now, even, even me just being around you for this long. Like, you know, when someone's like, hey, you know, like, even when my kid is like, hey, you know, your example of the milk spilled. It's crazy how I see every single time they do this, the exact same thing, exact same thing. She was like, he was like, oh, yeah, it, you know, it spilled or whatever. They don't want to say, but.

• 13:18Jocko Willink?

  The TV broke.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:20Jocko Willink?

  Yep. You know what I mean?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Shit does just magically break in my house all the time. Yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  So do you, you know how like we'll see it everywhere, like the smallest little extreme disownership? Like you see it. It's almost like you can smell it from the next room almost kind of like that's where you always that sensitive to it? Or, or is it, you know?

• 13:41Jocko Willink?

  In the SEAL teams?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, like before this and stuff.

• 13:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Oh, in the SEAL teams?

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:46Jocko Willink?

  This is, I, I, I, I'll try and think back through my life, but when I was a enlisted guy,

• 13:56Jocko Willink?

  that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jacood underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us.

• 14:35Jocko Willink?

  And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jacood underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email assistance@jacood underground.com and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.