Jocko Underground: Subconscious Excuses May Be Holding You Back

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Find time to get in an uninterrupted workout. Balancing fatherhood and a career in Special Forces. Battling subconscious excuses. How to put loved ones minds at ease. How to apply discipline to ensure success in learning and examinations. 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 129, sitting with Echo Charles. We're gonna jump right into some Q and A tonight. Echo, go. Read. What do you got?

• 0:10Speaker 01

  All right, first question, Jocko. Time management. I have a two-year-old with primary physical custody and little to no family support. Whenever I'm not at work, I have my daughter. I've tried integrating her in with my workouts, but she's a danger to herself if I don't keep an eagle eye on her. I've always had an all-or-nothing mentality, which has made blocking out distractions so I can get after it a lot easier. Over the last two and a half years, though, it seems like it seems like it's just been a steady stream of factors outside of my control that even when mitigated, keep interfering with my workout routine. Is the all-or-nothing mentality the problem? And should I just accept inconsistent workouts? Or am I missing something?

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  That's real?

• 0:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it's definitely real. And it definitely a mindset shift is needed, right? Because your daughter is now the priority and not a perfect workout, right?

• 1:11Jocko Willink?

  You're not gonna get the perfect workout that you used to be able to get with the rest, the recovery, the time in the gym. It used to be an hour and 22 minutes for chest day, right? It's not happening anymore. It's not happening.

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  It's definitely not happening because you need to rearrange. So

• 1:28Jocko Willink?

  it's not gonna be perfect. But even though your daughter is a priority, part of the priority that you have for your daughter is staying healthy yourself. So you still have to work out for her and for you. So what are we gonna do? You know what I'm gonna say right out of the gate, wake up earlier? You know what I mean? Like, wake up before she's gonna wake up and get that done. Which also could mean you need to get some kind of workout equipment in your house. Like, if I was a single dad, I would 100% have a squat rack and a pull-up bar, or whatever equipment, in my house. So I'm not even in the garage anymore. Like, in the garage, you've got a two-year-old, you might not be able to hear, baby monitor, all this stuff.

• 2:07Jocko Willink?

  No, I would be working out. I would set up my house, probably my bedroom would be a small bed and a squat rack.

• 2:18Jocko Willink?

  So get some workout equipment in the house. At a minimum, get a pull-up bar and you can do everything else, right? You get a pull-up bar, you do everything else. Cause then you can hang rings from it. You can do dips. You can do all kinds of stuff. Uh, but be working out whenever you can, right? That's another thing is two-year-olds take naps.

• 2:40Jocko Willink?

  But now you're might be at work when she's taking naps. Okay. Cool. Two-year-olds are gonna eat dinner. What do you do? What are you gonna do when they're eating dinner? They're in the little, uh, the seat with the tray in front of it that's made of plastic and they throw everything everywhere?

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  You're sitting there doing kettlebell swings while that's happening. You know what I mean?

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, fully.

• 2:58Jocko Willink?

  So workout whenever you can. Yeah, your all or nothing attitude's not gonna work anymore. Not gonna work anymore. You need to get rid of that attitude and get into do what you can when you can. And make time. That's a big one. Make time. You gotta make time for stuff.

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing. It's real simple. It's real straightforward. You're gonna figure it out. Many people have figured it out and you're gonna figure it out too.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that I think that first answer, by the way, is a massive problem solver.

• 3:30Jocko Willink?

  Which part?

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Wake up earlier.

• 3:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Or do it after they go to bed if that's your jam, which I know you're not, you said, but I'm actually more used to that.

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Like waiting for it and then doing it afterwards. Um, but either I've done both and they both literally work. Here's the thing I think, I don't know, my opinion, because I've been in the situation where anytime I get frustrated with my kids interrupting my workout, or let's face it, anyone work, uh, interrupting my workout, I've my, you know how you get like, oh, you get that frustration like, hey, I'm busy. But it's like, man, I always revert back to your solution. Like when you think, man, how can I, what can I tell them to, to make them understand my workout is important, right? I'm thinking that. I'm like, wait a second. I'm looking at it backwards.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  If I do this workout at a time that they it's impossible for them to interrupt, generally speaking, that'll solve my problem. So why don't I just do it like in, you know, before everyone wakes up, that'll hundred percent. Yeah, that'll hundred percent solve the problem. Like, put it this way, very reliably solve the problem. Of course, stuff happens or whatever, but, but that's how. Here's the thing, and I'm admitting this on air in front of you and everyone else is listening. I'm like intimidated by making that huge schedule change, not by like a massive thing, but it's just one of these things like eh, if I don't have to like, I'll just suck it up kind of a thing. But it doesn't change the literal fact that if I just, hey,

• 4:56Speaker 01

  that's the, that's the schedule now, four thirty AM or whatever, whenever before everyone wakes up, it'll literally solve any of that problem, pretty much permanently too. So that's usually, and of course, there's exceptions. Everybody's schedule is different. So we don't know this guy's schedule, but all those tips, I think, um, I think you even went kind of hard. I think just the, the waking up is gonna solve it.

• 5:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  And even the whole, uh, well, I'm assuming he has a workout scenario in at his residence. I'm assuming, because you can't just leave the kid.

• 5:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  You know, while you go to the gym and also, but he said, I try to incorporate her into the workout. So it's not like you can bring a two year old to the gym anyway. So you can't.

• 5:35Jocko Willink?

  So he's got something at home.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, you'd think. And even if it's in the garage by a baby monitor, freaking all day, bro. When, when I first had our first child, when me and my wife worked, when it was just me at home and the kid, I gotta monitor the naps and all that, bro, that baby monitor.

• 5:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a gym.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, fully. So, yeah, I think can, can be done, but the mindset, start with the mindset of like, hey, you know, this all or nothing, because I'm, I'm like that too. Or I'm like, right, this, them interrupting versus them not interrupting is like nine and nay, as far as the workout. But I think it was my mindset that was like.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  I'm like, it's almost like I'm committing to that mindset. I'm committing to the idea of if I get interrupted, it ruins my workout. But if you're like, no, Brad, this is part, this is part of the whole challenge. Kids, I have kids now. I'm still gonna work out hard and I'm gonna do both. I'm gonna pay attention to them and I'm gonna work out, you know? Let's face it, way more comfortable when I can just put in the freaking headphones, put on whatever music, not have to worry about any kid, anybody in or I get it. Yeah, that's ideal or whatever. But if you're like, hey, it's not gonna be ideal. I'm still gonna freaking go hard on my workout and make it like a priority with the kids around. But you'd be surprised how easy that works if you just make that mind shift.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  That's my opinion. Next question. Hi, Jocko. I'm sending this email because I was curious how to balance fatherhood and service in the SEAL teams. Uh, my question to you, how often did you have time to see your family? Did you have to deal with frequent, frequent moves? If so, how did you find ways to keep them in, in sports and activities with a consistently fluctuating schedule? Did elements of SEAL training influence your fatherhood? Did you teach your kids things you learned in the SEAL teams or made them train, or made them train or do PT with you? Any advice for active duty infantry who wish to start a family but want their kids to have some stability and not move around constantly?

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  Let's see. I was gone a lot. I was probably in a SEAL platoon, probably gone 200 days a year. So gone.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Or more than half.

• 7:39Jocko Willink?

  More than half, yeah. Yeah, when you're in a platoon, you're just gone a lot. And so deployments then are six, seven months long, you know? And you do a little pre-deployment site survey. So there's two weeks. So it's like, you're gone a lot.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  So, uh, sorry to interrupt, but what's the average, or even if this is even an appropriate question? Like, what's the average age of a member of a SEAL team? Or is it just all over the place?

• 8:08Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, well, you asked for an average and you can take numbers that are all over the place and find an average, but

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:14Jocko Willink?

  You know, in a SEAL platoon, if you took a SEAL platoon of 20 guys, there's, there's like, the platoon chief is 35. There's a couple older first classes that are... So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen.

• 8:36Jocko Willink?

  Go to jockounderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we 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, 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. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen

• 9:21Jocko Willink?

  this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jockounderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.