Jocko Underground: I Hope You Can Accept Reality.

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Underground Podcast, number 85, sitting here with Echo Charles. And I hope that people can accept reality.

• 0:14Jocko Willink?

  And what makes this necessary in life is you can't really make a plan or move in the right direction if you can't accept reality of what's happening. And if you talk to other human beings on a regular basis, you're going to see times where they do not accept reality. And it is the root, one of the roots of the problems that they're having in their life. Look, and this happens in all, it can happen in all aspects of the world. Happens in combat where guys will ignore intel that's coming in, or they'll ignore what the enemy is doing. They'll ignore significant gunfire because they, it doesn't fit with what they were wanting.

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  So they don't accept reality. Happens in business where people are looking at the market data, they're watching what the, you know, some obvious move that the competitor is making. That they, clearly it's going to have an impact on their business, but they don't, they don't accept that as reality. They deny what's actually happening.

• 1:21Jocko Willink?

  So I think, and I think it's a good thing to focus on, focus on accepting reality. Just focus on that. It's a good thing to focus on. There's a thing, it's, it's harder than you think it's going to be to accept what reality is. And that's because the reality that you think is what you think is reality. You see the little trick here, the little conundrum that we end up in?

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  You, the reason you think it's reality, because you think it's reality. It's the freaking Truman Show. Is that what it is?

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51Jocko Willink?

  The Truman Show? He thinks that's real.

• 1:54Jocko Willink?

  Until he realizes it's not, until he sees the little hole, he thinks it's real. And that's where you might be in combat. That's where you might be in business. That's where you might be in relationship. Have you ever seen, this is a real obvious one? You know, some guy's going out with a girl?

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, hell yeah.

• 2:13Jocko Willink?

  And clearly to all parties, this girl's not doing right by him. Maybe she's cheating on him, maybe she's treating him disrespect. There's all kinds of things that she could be doing wrong. And he doesn't see this as a reality.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  He's not dealing with reality.

• 2:30Jocko Willink?

  So there's a decent chance that whatever you think is reality is not. You are lying to yourself, or by the way, you don't have to be actively lying to yourself. You don't have to actively be lying to yourself. You just might not see reality. I mean, imagine someone that is colorblind and they've never known it, right? Like you get people that want to join the military and they go to take the screening test and they fail the colorblindness test. And they don't understand what's wrong. They didn't know that there was other colors out there. They didn't know that red and green were two distinct and separate colors. They didn't know that to them, it kind of looked the same.

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  Or someone that's nearsighted or someone that's farsighted. You've seen the videos that they got now, the little, uh, uh, I guess they're not even clickbait. They're just, they're just, they're just algorithm magnets. Where they like put glasses on a little kid for the first time and they can see their mom's face, right? That they're real, they, they didn't think that that wasn't reality. They thought that was reality.

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  So that can happen to us where we just, we just can't see. We don't, we're nearsighted or we're farsighted or we're colorblind.

• 3:46Jocko Willink?

  So we, we have to pay attention to that. And in order to overcome that, what we have to do is open up our minds. We have to open up our minds. You have to open up your minds, which is not easy because nature has trained you genetically and biologically to close your mind. That's what nature, that's what the world, that's what your instincts want you to do. Your instincts want you to close your mind because when you close your mind, you're safe.

• 4:14Jocko Willink?

  When you close your mind, you're secure. When you close your mind, you're protected.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  When you close your mind, you have control over what's happening. And you learn that at a young age and you learn it over and over and over again. That there's risk to the open mind, that there's new ideas, that there's ideas that are contrary to what you thought. That there's danger.

• 4:40Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  On a short-term level, the open mind is harder. Cause it's so much easier just to close the mind. That's why tactically speaking, we close our minds.

• 4:55Jocko Willink?

  And it's, and it seems like it's better, we seem like we win that tactical war when we just close our minds. When the first time that someone had, that had been studying karate for 24 years. And got tapped out by a blue belt in jujitsu, the easiest thing to do. Was just to close the mind and say, yeah, but I'm never going to the ground or yeah, but that's not many people. Yeah, but it takes forever. The easiest thing to do is close that off. Protect the ego, short-term. The hardest thing to do is, oh, there's something that I don't know that I need to learn. I need to get on that path. That's the open mind.

• 5:33Jocko Willink?

  The closed mind. In jujitsu is 20 years ago, oh, foot locks are disrespectful, right? Those aren't real attacks. That's a closed mind attitude. Instead of like, oh, I just got tapped out by someone that did something to my leg. I should figure out what that is. That's what happened with John Donahue, right? He sees that Dean Lisch.

• 5:58Jocko Willink?

  He sees Dean Lisch. Getting people to tap. By doing something to their feet, doing something to their knees, doing something to their heels. And John Donahue, instead of saying, oh, we need to compete in tournaments where there's no foot locks, no leg locks. Instead it's, oh, this is. A part of the game that I did not understand. I need to open my mind.

• 6:25Jocko Willink?

  So it is a fight to keep your mind open. You have to pry your mind open and you have to keep it open. Why? Because in the long-term, in the strategic. The open mind is more adaptive and the adaptive creature survives long-term.

• 6:42Jocko Willink?

  Longer than a strong one. Look, it's, it's, it's, it's stronger move, short-term to close my mind. It allows me to power through things. But the long-term. The strong. Things that can adapt will lose. It's the same thing with ideas. You can have a really strong idea, but if you don't adapt that idea over time, it's end up going, it's going to end up being a losing idea.

• 7:07Jocko Willink?

  Adaptation means survival. Open-mindedness means adaptation.

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we need to do. Pry our minds open and keep them open so that we can see reality for what it really is. Or at least as close to reality as you can possibly get.

• 7:33Jocko Willink?

  And if you do that, if you open your mind, you will be able to see reality and then you can make a plan. You can move in the right direction.

• 7:47Jocko Willink?

  So, there you go.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you really want to do that. Cause there's a, uh, so the expression, "reality check."

• 7:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, reality check.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Reality check is essentially when, and I'm not educating you, you probably, you know this obviously, but it's, it's one of those things that comes from if you're not in touch with reality as much, and then you're forced to be in touch with reality all at once.

• 8:06Jocko Willink?

  Reality check.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  One big thing. That's a reality check.

• 8:09Jocko Willink?

  We support, we support reality checks.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, when needed, that's how, but look, if you're the receiver, you'd rather be in touch the whole time. So you don't suffer those checks.

• 8:16Jocko Willink?

  You don't want the check.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Those checks kind of suck from time to time. I mean, they're useful, but you know what's more useful? Being in touch with reality the whole time.

• 8:23Jocko Willink?

  Keeping an open mind all the time.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:25Jocko Willink?

  Not having your mind get opened up.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, forcefully or whatever.

• 8:30Jocko Willink?

  Forcefully, yes, by a reality check.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, good point. Good point. All right, let's get some crash. 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.

• 9:17Jocko 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 JacoUnderground.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.