157: When to Play The Game, When to Break The Rules. Ultimatums. Making Co-workers' Shape Up. Coping with Loss.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:09:48 - How to "play the game" but also break rules when needed. 0:22:00 - How to get better with taking smack talk among friends. 0:30:44 - Dealing with ultimatums. 0:38:18 - Dealing with family not being disciplined when you are. 0:50:08 - Expressing yourself vs. Normal Face. 0:57:15 - How to show co-workers they should have UNMITIGATED DISCIPLINE IN ALL THINGS. 1:09:24 - Seeking council with others while leading. 1:22:25 - How to deal with getting overwhelmed as a leader. 1:29:58 - How to deal with the loss of a child. 1:51:43 - Support: How to Stay On The Path. 2:10:29 - Closing Gratitude. 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 157 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  I was in a SEAL platoon, serving as the assistant platoon commander in the late 90s. Know what that means?

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:19Jocko Willink?

  No war going on. That's what it means. So we were training. We were training hard and this platoon that I was in at the time, we were going through urban training, urban combat training. And we were pretty far along in the training and we were starting to get our, our sim munition, which is like fake bullets, our sim munition and paintball wars on force on force training. And we were doing,

• 0:49Jocko Willink?

  like multi-day operations. So almost like a scenario, like you've got a full scenario going on, like there's bad guys in the city.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:58Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's the concrete city, the fake city with concrete buildings that are pretty much just the shells buildings. And we're going against OPFOR SEALs. We call them OPFOR. That stands for opposing force. So the opposing force, there are other SEALs who are role players pretending to be bad guys. They know our tactics. They know our techniques. They know our procedures. And on this particular day, they had captured one of our SEALs from our platoon, the bad guys, the role players.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Was that part of the scenario or just?

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  They made it part of the scenario. So whatever they did, they caused confusion. They caused mayhem. They end up with one of our guys.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Good. Okay. Just on their own though, that wasn't part of the overall training.

• 1:38Jocko Willink?

  Well, it is, you know, when I was running training, we always did that too. So it's just a longstanding kind of, hey, if you can capture one of the SEALs.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know, it's like never leave a man behind.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  Let's get him to leave a man.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Right. We'll see about that.

• 1:51Jocko Willink?

  So at this point, like I said, they had, they had captured, and I don't remember exactly, but they'd captured one of our guys and they had him in a building. And it was a big, a pretty big building, like a pretty big, but rectangular type building, five stories, maybe. Maybe it was four stories. But anyways, they had him, they didn't have him on the top floor, but they had him in like the, the floor below the top floor. So he's on the third floor or the fourth floor. I forget. But they have the guy in there. And remember, this is not, there's no power in the city and it's the city is out in the middle of nowhere. It's a fake city. So you can hear everything, right? Kind, you can pretty much hear what's going on. So they have our guy and they're like torturing him.

• 2:36Jocko Willink?

  Mock torturing him. And of course they're up there telling him like scream, you know, scream louder. And he's yelling and yet you know that they're feeding him what to yell.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44Jocko Willink?

  To try and get us all riled up. They're, they're, he's screaming, they're gonna kill me. They're gonna violate me, he's screaming. So they're having a good time with it. And so our standard operating procedure was like, oh, you know what? Okay. So there's a building needs to be cleared. We go and we clear the whole building. We start on the ground floor. We clear every room. Then we go up to the next one. We clear every room. We go up to the next one. And that means that there's not going to be any bad guys that get, get into your train. There's not going to be any bad guys in between your force, which can cause a blue on blue. So when you're going to clear every room, that means you're going to move down these hallways and you're going to go from the bottom to the top. And that's, that's kind of the plan, right? Sort of normal. And

• 3:27Jocko Willink?

  like I said, we, we knew where they were. So we immediately, okay, we gotta come up the plane. We gotta, we gotta save our guy.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:33Jocko Willink?

  We're all fired up. And as we were, were doing this, you know, the, the standard plan come up like, okay, we'll go in this east door and we'll clear the first floor in a second. You know? And as I'm sitting there kind of listening to this,

• 3:48Jocko Willink?

  I, I just said, hey, no, let's do this instead. Let's just sneak up to the building. Cause you can get to the building behind other buildings. You could find a little sneaky way to get there. I'm like, let's sneak up in the dead space. Dead space is areas where the enemy can't see you or where you can't see the enemy. It's just areas where there's no line of sight. I said, let's, let's go. And there was external stairs, like a fire escape on the outside. I said, let's go straight to the, to the floor he's on. We won't clear any of the other floors. We won't clear any of the rooms. We'll just go right in the hall. We'll go directly to where he's at.

• 4:23Jocko Willink?

  And that was the plan. So we did it. And um, yeah, and the thing was, it was, it was, we weren't, that was a kind of a new idea, right? Like, hey, let's do this. I'm not, dude, believe me, I'm not saying I'm the first guy that ever thought of this. I'm not. I'm just saying our mindset at that moment was, hey, this is what we're being trained to do. We'll do what we're trained to do. So for anyone that's listening, for any of my team guy brothers that are like, you didn't think, I'm not saying I thought of it. I'm saying at that moment in time, we were focused on doing it one way. And I said, hell, let's do something a little bit different. And, and then once I said it, everyone's like, yeah, yeah, because there was like, everyone knew that was the right answer, right? But you just had to have that different look at it for a moment. And so we did it. We went to the external stairwell.

• 5:06Jocko Willink?

  We went up really quiet. That's the other thing. We were like, we're not going to say, because you know, we call it clear and you say next room and all this other stuff. We weren't going to say anything. We're just going to stay quiet. So we went all the way up the stairs quietly. We walk in and we can hear him, hear him yelling out the window like, come on, you better get him quick and all this stuff. And then we go into the room silently and shoot all the OP4 in the back. We killed them all and we saved our hostage. And there was one, there was one SEAL cadre who we gave the, and I'm not going to give his actual nickname, but his nickname was along the lines of Semi Jimmy, because simunition was, was simunition of what we used. And Semi Jimmy was

• 5:49Jocko Willink?

  really good at being a bad guy. And so, and he would laugh at us. You know, we'd be moving through a building and you could hear him like, if he shot you in the neck, and he'd be aiming for your neck or your nuts, like he was gonna get something. He was having a good time with it. And that's what you want. You know, you want your guys to guard. So Semi Jimmy, we, but we got this moment with Semi Jimmy, shot him in the back. And they, you know, they were stoked, you know, they could see even though they want to win and they want to beat us, but they're still stoked. He wasn't cackling. He was, you know, he was stoked on it. And so they died. We saved our guy. So my point in this is that sometimes you have to do things that the enemy's not going to expect, that people aren't going to expect, that your competitor's not going to expect. The hard part about doing that.

• 6:35Jocko Willink?

  It isn't actually doing the thing that they don't expect, right? It's because like I said, other, this is not what I, what I said to do wasn't this, you know, miraculous eureka moment of tactical genius. It wasn't that.

• 6:52Jocko Willink?

  This was a, anyone that would have taken a step back would have said like, that's a good call. Let's do that instead. But we were all wrapped up in that situation. And so you want to learn how to do that. You want to learn how to, and again, it's about detaching, but a couple of things that'll help you with that. One is don't be the person that's planning everything. Don't be the person. And, and it's hard, especially we talk about extreme ownership, like, and everyone wants to be a leader and they want to step up. Don't, try not to be the guy that comes up with every plan. Literally try not to be that guy. Now, are there times when you're a lower member where you want to like step up and come up with a plan? Yeah, I'm talking about when you're in an actual leadership position.

• 7:33Jocko Willink?

  When you're a junior and you're, you're trying to learn and you're trying to bring forth ideas. Yeah, man, come up with some plans, you know, shoot that idea up because you're throwing out good ideas that are going to get bounced off the boss. But when you're the guy that's in charge, try not to be the guy that plans everything. Try not to be the guy that makes every single call. Let the subordinates plan or let the superiors plan. Let other people come up with plans. Now, are there situations where like there's, you've got to make calls? Of course there are. There's a dichotomy, right? But in that particular situation, I didn't feel the need that I had to be the guy that came up with the plan. Like let other people do that.

• 8:08Jocko Willink?

  And you know, if someone else had come up with, come up with that standard plan and it was, and I hadn't like detached, I would have been like, okay, cool. That's what we're doing. We're, you know, we're going forward, you know? But you, you have to allow other people to come up with plans. The other thing is recognize that the, the way that you know of doing something might not fit. You might not know everything.

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's a good thing to always think to yourself, you might not know everything, right? That's a good idea to have in your mind. Or is that what I know might not work? That's something else. What I know might not work. That's another really smart thing to constantly replay in your head. Hey, what I know might not work. That's it. Then, you know, so that, that means you've got to have an open mind. And then you've got to remember, of course, that rules.

• 9:02Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes you have to break rules. You have to be very judicious when you decide you're gonna break rules and there's some principles that that you cannot violate without massive reason, without a massively heavy reason and a way to mitigate the risks of breaking whatever those fundamental rules are like cover move, like they're cover move, you should never violate cover move, ever.

• 9:29Jocko Willink?

  Except for when it just makes sense that you need to violate it. So that and that story right there kind of leads into the first question of Q and A, which we haven't had Q and A in a while. And the first question is, uh, well, go ahead. First question.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  First question. You recently said Hackworth was a rule follower most of his career, but in About Face, the book, he always talks about how he went against his commander's rules. How do you play the game, but also act like Hackworth?

• 10:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and so this is a classic example of the dichotomy of leadership with regard to obeying rules and and Hackworth absolutely obeyed the rules and he obeyed them to the to the extreme sometimes. If you remember in the book, he, he, he worked in situations where they were like the strictest in garrison. So like not in combat, just in garrison, he would, everything's perfect, uniform. If you remember when General Mukuyama was on and we talked to, we talked to him about meeting Hack for the first time. And you know, I was kind of like, what was he like? And he was like, oh, he was high and tight haircut, totally squared away. That's following the rules to a T.

• 10:50Jocko Willink?

  And the other thing that he played, he definitely played, he played the game. Hackworth played the game. He developed with, he developed relationships with people that were senior to him, people that were influential. S L A Marshall, who he went on tour with, if you remember through Vietnam and S L A Marshall, he didn't really even respect, but S L A Marshall had such big influence that he said, hey, you know what? I gotta become bros with this guy. He played the game because Marshall had influence.

• 11:20Jocko Willink?

  And he even took some hits, you know, took a little frag for, from, for SLA Marshall.

• 11:29Jocko Willink?

  But at the same time, if his troops weren't getting the right treatment that they needed, he would do what he needed to do. He would break rules to take care of them if he had to.

• 11:38Jocko Willink?

  And at the same time, he would follow the rules to a T. If you remember when he took over the battalion in Vietnam, the hopeless and wanted to turn them into the hardcore. He brought all their crap into the middle of the thing and said, we're going to fly it out of here. No more radios, no more guitars, none of this other stuff, getting it out. So that's like following the rules to a T.

• 11:56Jocko Willink?

  But at the same time, if he needed to like steal food for them or steak something to get, he would do that stuff. So he's constantly balancing that economy. Another thing he did is he, he took these administrative jobs that he hated

• 12:12Jocko Willink?

  in order to rise through the ranks, in order to become, to get, to get places, to develop relationships. So, so he could have more influence. He was assigned to the Pentagon. He, he, in the book, he talks about the Pentagon being, working in the Pentagon being a claustrophobic hole, no more than 20 by 20 feet with 15 other people in it. And he talks about, he'd say, your paper, your inbox would be filled when you showed up. And you'd immediately, the phone would be ringing. You'd be talking to people all over the world, all the people in Vietnam, they're calling you at their, their time zone. And so he didn't like this job, but guess what? Got the highest possible evaluations when he left. Why? Cause he played the game.

• 12:56Jocko Willink?

  And he built these relationships with, with all these colonels and all these generals and all these people that it influences. Glover Johns and Pearson and countless others by doing what he needed to do. And then when he needed to, he broke, he broke the rules. And sometimes he went a little too far with breaking the rules and.

• 13:15Jocko Willink?

  When he, when he got out, when they kind of drove him out after he did the big interview where he said, hey, we're not going to win. They went and drilled down into his camps and looked at the things that he had going on there. Said, oh, you're allowing this to happen. You're allowing this to happen. So he left himself a little bit vulnerable. By breaking the rules a little bit too much. So the, a rule to learn from that is like, don't do things that people can hold over you. And for me, the things that people can hold over you are things where you can't stand up and say, yes, that's what I did. Yes, that's what I did. Hey, my guys didn't, hadn't had a good meal in four weeks.

• 13:55Jocko Willink?

  They've been in the field for three of those weeks. And when they came out, guess what? I, I figured out a way to get some steak and I took it from the rear and I had it flown up using mil, using our helicopters. And I had, yep, that's what I did. And if you want to, you want to drop the hammer on me for that? Got it. Now, if you do that, that's cool. But there's some things where you break the rules where maybe you wouldn't be able to stand up tall and proud and say, this is what I did and this is why I did it. So you want to be careful that you don't do things that will allow people to hold things over your head.

• 14:33Jocko Willink?

  And for me, things that are, things like that are things that you can't stand up with your chest out and say, this is what I did and this is why I do it. I know it wasn't within the regulations. This is what I did. This is why I do it. And if I get fired because of that, understood. Check. Now, here's where you get a little, here's where we can, we can

• 14:56Jocko Willink?

  question Hack for sure.

• 15:00Jocko Willink?

  Let me ask you this.

• 15:03Jocko Willink?

  If Hack would have, because, okay, so he, he didn't play the game at the end. He didn't play the game. He went on an interview and said, hey, we're not going to win the war. Not the way we're fighting. We're not going to win the war. Within a few weeks, he was driven out of the army. He didn't play the game at that moment, right? So let me ask you this.

• 15:22Jocko Willink?

  If he would have played the game, just a little bit, just said, look, we need to change our strategy if we're, you know what I mean? If he would have just, and then he would have stayed in. And then he would have perhaps gotten a promotion and got perhaps gotten to a position where he actually had influence over the way the war was being fought. If he had done that, would he have been better off? Would he have been able to better help the situation? Because I don't know, once they drove him out, it's not like that interview. Well, I don't know, we'd have to check the, check the historical sort of results of that interview. It certainly started to sway public opinion and maybe that, you know, maybe in his mind, hey, I need to tell everyone what's going on so we can get out of here. Right.

• 16:06Jocko Willink?

  Right? So maybe, maybe that was the intention, maybe that was the result, maybe that helped shut down the war eventually. But maybe if he would have played, continued to play the game, he could have gotten to a position where he had more, even more influence and could have changed the way the war was being fought. I don't know. I'm sure we could have a long debate about that. But that's as a leader, something that you are going to have to weigh out all the time. And there's situations where, and actually, breaking news today, General Mattis just put in his resignation for being Secretary of Defense.

• 16:50Jocko Willink?

  So is, that's, I'm, we're gonna have to talk about that when I get a little more information on. Is that him saying, look, I, it's gonna be better for me to make this statement by leaving? Or would he have been better off staying there where he can at least still have a massive amount of influence? Cause he's the Secretary of Defense. We'll have to drill down on that one. That's a, that's a good question. Both those are good questions. And the bottom line is, if you haven't read About Face, read it and learn from a guy named Colonel David Hackworth.

• 17:26Jocko Willink?

  Next question.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Next question. So the answer to that question was sort of another question. Kind of a question you got to ask yourself.

• 17:34Jocko Willink?

  Yes, and that's a question, and I've talked about this, where

• 17:39Jocko Willink?

  if I tell you Echo, hey Echo, I want you to do this mission. I want you to do it this way. Take your platoon and go do it. And you disagree with what I'm telling you. And you just say, hey, boss, I don't want to do it that way. And I said, hey, you shut up and do what I told you to do. And you go, you know what? You can fire me, but I'm not doing it. I go, okay, fine. You're fired. And I get knucklehead over here. Who's a yes man. It comes in and I tell him to go do the mission the way I told him to do it. And he goes and doesn't get to everyone killed. Would it have been better off if you said, okay, boss, I get it. I, I'll do it your way. Here's some things I'd really like to not do. And you go, no, I said, no, shut up. And then you take your guys, you mitigate everything that you can. Actually, there's an example of this in Band of Brothers. Where Major Winters is being told, hey, send a reconnaissance element across the river again tonight.

• 18:22Jocko Willink?

  And he doesn't want to do it. The, the war's almost over. They had taken some casualties, I think, the night before when they did the same type of operation. And he just says, got it, boss. And then the guys go and they sit in the, they, they pretend to go out, but they really just sit in the basement of a building on their side of the river. And then later on, they say, yep, we went, we came back, we didn't find anything. Okay, cool. There's a perfect example. Imagine if, if Major Winters, Dick Winters was like, we're not doing it. And now you're getting an ego contest with the Colonel who's like, oh, yes, you are. No, we're not. Okay, fine. You're fired. Let me get knucklehead over here. Who's gonna do what I told him to do. Who's a total yes man?

• 19:01Jocko Willink?

  And now we take that risk and guys get killed. So, so who, is it, there's a, there's, Dick Winters played the game. He played the game so he could still have that influence and power and, and still protect his guys.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Can get complex, yeah.

• 19:18Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's very, that's why leadership is hard. It's, it's weird though, because when you say it's complex, when you say leadership is hard. At the same time, like you, if you're a principled human being and you have principles and you know what's right and you're doing the right thing for the right reason. The decisions are actually usually a little easier.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Clear, yeah.

• 19:38Jocko Willink?

  Clearer, yeah, they might not be easy, but they're clearer. Like, I know what I'm supposed to do here. I got it. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna figure this one out.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this, this, I think applies to, to most scenarios where.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Like if you think of the big picture where if you're like, hey, I'm going to consider myself after everything's going to be said and done, you know, it kind of goes along with what you said like, oh, can you stand up?

• 20:06Speaker 01

  If you consider, okay, look back, you're gonna, because there's going to come a point where you're going to look back on this and you're going to feel the way you're going to feel right now. But later on, how are you going to feel about like how you handled it? You know, what decision you made and how you made it?

• 20:20Jocko Willink?

  It's a good thing to tell kids too. Like would you, if you're, if you're at a party or you're wherever and something's going on, would you be proud to stand up and be, hey, here was the situation? And I, this is what I did and this is why I did it. If you can't, maybe you should really reconsider what your actions are going to be.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  No, man, because a lot of the time, shoot, especially as a kid, as an adult too. A lot of the time, it's like they're literally the opposite decision. You know, like especially if it's one of those like go along with the crowd kind of scenarios, you know, where it's like, oh yeah, it's easy to go along there. And when you're kids, especially when it involves drinking and stuff, sometimes there's, there's really no consequence, you know, whatever you did something dumb, no one gets hurt or dies or nothing like that. But every once in a while there is, but so it's like, it makes it harder because you don't, like when you go do something, I don't know, dumb, I don't know, go jump off a bridge, I don't know, something, drink and drive or whatever, and no one dies or no one, nothing big happens. It sort of reinforces that maybe it might be okay, you know, you maybe be able to slide with this behavior a little bit, you know?

• 21:20Speaker 01

  But at the end of the day, you know, yeah, if you can clearly see that big picture where in the future, you're going to be looking back on how you handled it.

• 21:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Here's another thing, same concept I used to tell, I told my guys was you just might as well act like CNN is recording what you're doing and it's going to be on CNN. Right? So if you want to act like an idiot, guess what? It's going to be on CNN because someone's got a camera somewhere around there. And you might as well be saying that today as a kid, as a teenager, you might as well be saying, yep, this is, this is the next viral video. This is my 15 minutes of fame is going to be me doing whatever I'm doing right here.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  What you're about to do.

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So gotta watch out for that. Learn from hack.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Next question. Jocko, I struggle with receiving banter from other guys. Banter, okay. I'm naturally a sensitive guy, which lends myself to take normal smack talk from other guys personally. I'm trying to get after it. I wake up early, I work out, eat healthy, work pretty hard, but still seem to have some deep-seated insecurities which flare up when guys give me stick. I have some bloody good mates. And I want to get to the point where I can take smack talk for what it is and even give a bit of stick back to the guys. What can I do to help this?

• 22:39Jocko Willink?

  Here's one thing that you can try to get into your brain. And this is one of those things that's hard to get into your brain. And it's even harder to actually get it in your brain and functionally use this thought. Here's the thought. The more, okay, if you're paranoid about something, if you're insecure about something, the more you let things bother you, the more insecure you will appear. Let me say it again. The more you let things bother you, the more insecure you're going to appear. And the worse, whatever that thing that you're worried about, whatever that thing that makes

• 23:24Jocko Willink?

  you feel insecure, the worse it's going to appear to everyone else. So if you got a big nose and you're embarrassed because you've got a big nose and every time someone says something about your big nose, you get mad and you get offended, that big nose grows even bigger. So, think about that. If there's something that bothers you and you let it be known and you let it bother you, the worse it's going to get. And also, think about this. Another thing that will help, these are things I'm trying to help, help sort of smooth the edges of insecurity. Here's another one.

• 24:06Jocko Willink?

  People, even though you think, even though you think they are, and it's kind of egotistical to think this, but we all do it. People aren't sitting around and thinking about you and your weaknesses. They're not sitting around and thinking about you and your weaknesses. They're not. Like, that's your ego telling you that. So.

• 24:26Jocko Willink?

  Don't sit there and think everyone's looking at your big nose all the time. They don't care. They got their other problems. They got their own life going on. They don't care about your big nose.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  No, they don't.

• 24:35Jocko Willink?

  You know what makes them care about it? When they know if they say something to you, it bothers you.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. That's the first thing they're gonna think when they see you again. Like, oh, here comes a good time, some fun.

• 24:45Jocko Willink?

  And here's another thing. If you wanna kind of mitigate that, man, do what Mark does in Way of the Warrior Kid. When Uncle Jake says, hey, if you're getting made fun of, he's in Way of the Warrior Kid, he'd call him Plate Face.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:59Jocko Willink?

  Saying, Mark, oh, you got a round, this guy Nathan James is telling Mark, oh, you got a round face. You look like a plate. Calls him Plate Face. That's his insult. He insults him all the time and it bothers him. Cause he's looking in the mirror going, wait, do I look like a plate?

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:12Jocko Willink?

  Lets it bother him. And Uncle Jake says, hey, go, go make fun of yourself. And he finally gets a chance. He does a, they're in a class and they have to do a self-portrait and he draws himself as a plate, a plate face. And when the kid that's been making fun of it sees it, he laughs and then, guess what? Doesn't make fun of him anymore about it. Cause he realizes it doesn't bother.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  And they kind of bond a little bit.

• 25:34Jocko Willink?

  And they kind of bond a little bit.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Which is actually what he's going for in this question.

• 25:37Jocko Willink?

  That is, yeah, yeah. So you gotta, and it's, it's, that's why I said it's hard to do this. Because when you're insecure about your big nose or you're insecure about your big ears or whatever, and you let people know that, or you just think it's in your brain. You think if you say something, it's gonna get even worse. It won't get worse.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:55Jocko Willink?

  Might get worse for an uptick for a second, right? It might. You make fun of yourself, you know, people are like, oh, yeah, that's right. I didn't notice that. You do it. But then it'll kind of, no one really cares. And that's why in the teams, in the teams, you never let anyone know that something bothers you.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:10Jocko Willink?

  Or if they know it bothers you, you're gonna hear about it forever. That's just gonna be how.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  That's just how.

• 26:16Jocko Willink?

  That's just the way it's gonna be. And what that means, the polar opposite of that, or the flip side of that is, it's not fun to harass some, it's not fun to harass someone about something that doesn't bother them. It's not even fun. Right? It's not fun. Why would you harass someone when they don't get it, when you don't even get a rise out of them? It's not fun. You just leave that thing. You look for something else.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:38Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 26:40Jocko Willink?

  Poke a little fun at yourself. These guys are gonna back off cuz they're bored if you show no reaction. And like you said, that that kind of self-deprecating humor will form a little bond. You can give a little stick back to the guys. If you start giving stick to guys, be ready to take it back, though.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:57Jocko Willink?

  They're an escalate.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's just, I mean, I grew up with two brothers. Uh, one twin brother and that's like, uh, like, that's literally the foundation of our relationship. It's just you tease the other guy about some, li- everything. Like, he can come in with a new shirt on.

• 27:17Jocko Willink?

  That's a seal platoon.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, oh, we'll be like, oh, new shirt, oh, you know, like, that's not even something to tease someone about.

• 27:24Jocko Willink?

  Do they sell men shirts where you bought that?

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, whatever. It's li- that's, it's so bad to the point where one, um, when, when I got with my current wife, when we were, when we started dating or whatever, like, it's just habit, you know, like, even you, like, same thing, you know, like, you'll, you'll give me crap, I'll give you whatever. But it's so common that I do it to her.

• 27:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  And, you know, at first, she's like, oh, what, like, why are you teasing me so much? Like, you're, cuz I knew her even before we were together. I knew her for years, actually. And he's like, kinda annoying, you know, he's like, teases or whatever. And I had to, like, reel it back.

• 28:02Jocko Willink?

  Put yourself in check.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, because that's, because that is so, so much of how guys do it, you know?

• 28:07Jocko Willink?

  A hundred percent. And I've told this story before, when I got, when I was going to college and I wasn't around team guys all day, and I started doing the team guy thing with my wife. And after like three months, yeah, she's like, hey, I'm not in the teams. So, you can be quiet now. And I was like, wow, she's right. And I didn't even realize it, cuz that's just, you know, all day long, you show up in a, you show up in the platoon space and it's verbal sparring.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:29Jocko Willink?

  As soon as you walk through the door, somebody's gonna say something. They're gonna bring it.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  And what's interesting is how he's, how he's like, I wanna get to the point where, you know, he can specter with, the thing is, I would agree with this, probably even a hundred ten percent, which is hard to agree a hundred ten percent, but I feel this way, probably stronger than him, like. You ever been around someone who like you just can't really joke around with? Like I'm not, I'm not the kind of guy who all tease someone and try to like make them, you know, especially if I don't know I'm good or whatever, but um, but if you're around someone who like can't really take it, you can't joke around with them, it's like, man, I don't want that guy to be there, man. I wish he just wasn't, you know, I'm not mad at him, but I just, I don't want to hang around with that guy. You don't want to be that guy.

• 29:11Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  So, I even if like, especially at first, like, let's say, okay, I'm, I'm this guy right here.

• 29:17Jocko Willink?

  The worst is someone that can dish it out but can't take it.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:20Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean? Yeah, that is the worst.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  It's, I don't, I would, the only reason I wouldn't say he's the worst is because if, if he's dishing it out and he can't take it, it's kind of, you get a payoff of teasing the guy. I'm saying, if, let's say he doesn't dish it out, let's say he's just a guy you just can't joke around with, it's like, man, you're making me uncomfortable kind of thing. You know, but if this guy, cause you.

• 29:38Jocko Willink?

  That's a good point.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  If it's, yeah.

• 29:40Jocko Willink?

  Although it is annoying when people can't take it and you make a joke and they get all fired up and they, and then they're like actually mad.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 29:47Jocko Willink?

  That's not fun. That's, well, that's how you end up with people that aren't really your friends.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Aren't really your friends, yes, exactly right.

• 29:53Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  But yes, yes, so you get there, man. I, I say get there and at first just saying you kind of made it really clear to me, um, how, you know, when you make a change or something, it's not going to, whoop, boom, you're off the races with the change, going full speed, you know, what do you say, low drag?

• 30:10Speaker 01

  It's not going to be like that right at first, especially with this kind of stuff. If you, if you already know you're insecure, which is a big step ahead, by the way, some people they're like, I'm not insecure and meanwhile.

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  He's admitting it. They know it, but they just don't admit it.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So this guy, he knows so, but you're going to feel it, man. When they call you, you know, whatever they're calling you, whatever. You're going to sort of feel it on the inside still, but just don't behave, you know, in a way. Just be like, oh, I don't know, I don't know what to do. There's plenty of things to do, but yeah, man, you do want to get there. Hundred percent.

• 30:39Jocko Willink?

  Check. Next question.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Jock, oh, number three, sorry. How do you deal with ultimatums from customers, bosses, et cetera? That are unrealistic due to the nature of the situation and the ultimatum?

• 30:59Jocko Willink?

  What I'm gonna do with ultimatums is I am going to tell the truth about the situation to them. But first, I'm gonna tell the truth about the situation to myself. Because you gotta look at the situation and say to yourself, is this truly unattainable? Like truly unattainable? And, and sometimes, even though it seems truly unattainable, but then when you actually think about it, you realize, oh, I could attain this. I can make this happen. I'm gonna have to sacrifice whatever to make it happen. I'm gonna have to, to, it's gonna cost me, or the team, or the company, something in order to make it happen. Like, oh, you want that done?

• 31:44Jocko Willink?

  You want that, you want that project done by, you know, the 15th? Cool, we'll get it done. Uh, but here's what we're not gonna be able to do. Or here's what I'm not gonna be able to do.

• 31:54Jocko Willink?

  And I'm also gonna make sure that I pressure test the ultimatum against me giving the absolute full measure of effort. Right? Like, wow, if I go 110%, right? Not even 100%, beyond, you're gonna give everything you can, is it achievable? Cause a lot of times people, it's an ultimatum, you can't make it. Well, as a member of a team, I want people's attitude to be like, you know what?

• 32:26Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna do it. We're gonna get it done. No one else will be able to do this, but we're gonna do it. Watch. That's, that's, I like saying that sometimes.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Watch?

• 32:34Jocko Willink?

  Watch.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  I used to say, watch me work.

• 32:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Where I got it from some.

• 32:42Jocko Willink?

  So then, okay, so now you truly, you tell yourself the truth about the situation. You figure out that there's truly, under no circumstances that this is possible. Then it's my time to tell them the truth, which is like, listen, and I'll get my data together. I'll get my information together. I'll explain to them what, you know, what, why I can't, I'm not going to be able to physically get this done. It's physically not possible. And then, you know, what the shortfalls are going to be. Now, and once I explain that to them, if they're, if they're completely unwavering, because if you explain everything and you put your data together and you say, look, the bottom line is to, to, to assemble this many pieces by our best two people on the team.

• 33:27Jocko Willink?

  It takes them an hour each and you want us to assemble 14 of them in three hours. It is not possible for us to do that. And even if you gave me more people, it doesn't matter. They know how to do that. So it can't be done. I need at least whatever, six hours with those, whatever, whatever it is. If they're unwilling to, to waver on the ultimatum at all, like, no, go, you need to get it done. You need to get it done. Well, then what I'm gonna do? Okay, I'm gonna try my hardest. I'm gonna buckle down. I'm gonna do my best. I'm gonna see how much, how close I can get to achieving the goal. I'm gonna have fun. I'm gonna go so hard that it's gonna get nuts. Like, we're gonna get it done.

• 34:10Jocko Willink?

  And then, when, if we fall short, which we will, because I figured out there's no physical, humanly possible way to make this happen. Then what I'm gonna do is I will go to them and I'll explain the things that I am going to do differently next time in order to meet their goals. Right? I'm gonna say, listen, you know what? I, I should have asked you earlier if this was a possible thing and I should have had a backup plan. So here's what I'm putting into place now to make sure this doesn't happen again. Or, hey, I am going to need more manpower so that if we run into this again, I've got the people. It's my fault for not staffing us up correctly. Or.

• 34:50Jocko Willink?

  I need to pay more attention to what's happening in the future so that I can have a better aware, I have better awareness of when this type of situation will unfold. So I can have my team prepared for it. Or these complexities that happened, I didn't explain to them, I didn't explain them to you well enough. And so if you understood, if I do a better job of making you understand the difficulties of making this happen, hopefully you'll realize that there's, that's more time is needed. So I'm not going to go in there and throw up my arms and say, I told you so.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:23Jocko Willink?

  You were stupid. I was right. Cause then that's just sabotage too. Now they don't believe you anyways.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:29Jocko Willink?

  Now, when you say, well, we couldn't get it done. See, like I told you, I told you we needed more time. And they're like, yeah, of course you, you know, you, you, you went into it thinking you were going to fail. And guess what? Self fulfilling prophecy. Good job.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:40Jocko Willink?

  Good job. You proved yourself to be right loser. Demoted.

• 35:46Jocko Willink?

  And that's what I do. Up and down the chain, by the way, you know, ultimatums can come up and down the chain of command. Hold the line. Do your best. That's what you do.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that seems.

• 35:59Jocko Willink?

  And tell the truth. It all starts with telling the truth to yourself.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:03Jocko Willink?

  And then to your people that you're trying, customer.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:06Jocko Willink?

  You know, client, I want this foundation poured by such and such a date. Hey, we

• 36:13Jocko Willink?

  we will do our best. Here's the shortfalls. You know, whatever.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it is.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's a big on it. I like where I kind of learned this from you where it's, cause you could like to, to tell you like, oh, hey, I can't, this can't be done. Like you kind of, you get to the point in your mind where you're like, we both know it can be done, but I'm just, you know, given my current rest and sleep schedule and you know, I got this show I like to watch at night. That'll kind of, you know, it's like that kind of situation.

• 36:46Jocko Willink?

  Five oh out. We don't want to miss that one.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Exactly. So it, it, it kind of shapes up to be like that, you know, where it's like, look, we both know. And I don't know, you know, like if, if there's a boss who's like just grinding someone into the ground. Okay. That's a whole different scenario. But yeah, at the end of the day, like if you're truthful and it's like, hey, get this done or you're fired kind of thing. And then you start with the truth that you say, it'd be like, can I get it done? And then you really think, let's say like you were going to die or something. I don't know. You could get it done. A lot of the time, I'm not saying, I'm not saying all the time, of course, of course.

• 37:18Jocko Willink?

  The amount of times in my naval career, let's call it, when I was in the Navy, that guys said to me like, we can't do it. I, I can't even remember times like, cause guys, guys just be like, like, damn, like, I know.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:33Jocko Willink?

  They wouldn't be like, well, I don't know, Jaco. I'd be like, hey, look, here's what we gotta get done.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:38Jocko Willink?

  Think we can do it? And they'd be like,

• 37:41Jocko Willink?

  yup. Good, cause we're about to go get some.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  But yeah, and you know, obviously, situations, some situations are more like, more serious, you know, like, you're not gonna, I don't know. But yeah, that telling the truth thing.

• 37:56Jocko Willink?

  Tell the truth.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I do speak from a position of luxury where I have the truth reflected at me pretty accurately on a pretty, uh, regular basis. So I'm not saying it's that easy to tell the truth, but if you just try hard, try genuine, you gotta be genuine, right? Genuinely be like, yes, this is true about myself. Do it.

• 38:16Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Next question. Question for the next podcast, is your wife disciplined? How do you navigate a potential mismatch between you two? What about when family non-discipline costs you unexpected time and energy, taking from your goals?

• 38:33Jocko Willink?

  Family non-discipline?

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, what? Like my family's not being disciplined?

• 38:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Not on board or whatever?

• 38:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're not on board with the program. My wife is, she runs a tight ship and is disciplined in a little bit of a different way than me.

• 38:50Jocko Willink?

  Then she's not the same as me. And if that were to cause some kind of a conflict between us, well, then that's my fault for not communicating with her and allowing her to understand my perspective and understanding her perspective. So, for instance, what, what's the situation, right? Oh, my wife wants me, you know, she wants to spend time with me in the morning, whatever, right? What do you do? Wake up early and work out? Before she's awake, you work it out. It's not her fault. It's not her fault. It's my fault. Well, what about when, oh, I really wanna eat dinner with you at night?

• 39:31Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool. I'll eat dinner with you and I'll stay up later at night so that I can get my work done. And that's fine. You go to bed. That's not, that's not, that's not my responsibility. That's not your responsibility. That's my responsibility. It's not your responsibility to mold your life around my whole life, right? That's not, that's, that's not the way it is. And by the way, when the family is doing something that is taking away, what does he say, my energy, taking away my energy and taking away my time, then I fix that problem. And when I say that I fix the problem, I don't mean I fix them.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Do you?

• 40:12Jocko Willink?

  I don't mean that I impose my discipline on them. I might involve some adjustments or some attempts to get adjustments. But I'm not, be this really simple. I don't blame my family when things don't go right.

• 40:34Jocko Willink?

  I couldn't work out today cuz my kid was sick.

• 40:38Jocko Willink?

  My daughter spilled the milk and I was, it's like, hey, this is the same, this is just about ownership. Like if you just wanna blame your family when you're weak, or you make a mistake, or you didn't organize, or you didn't explain to people correctly, then that's the way it is. I can say this too, your family is not you.

• 40:59Jocko Willink?

  Your family is not you. They aren't on your program. That's not their, that's not their deal. Hey, if they're on it, great. That's cool. My family's not all on my program. That's not the way it works. You impose? Oh, that's fun.

• 41:21Jocko Willink?

  Where's that get you? You, oh, you wanna, you wanna impose your program on everyone in your family? What are they going to do? What, it's the same thing that happens with any team. If you start imposing your strict discipline on them. Cool, you can get them to do what you want them to do at that moment. Guess what they do as soon as they get the opportunity to rebel against you? They rebel. You get a mutiny. You get a kid that's rebellious beyond the norm. That's doing thing that's actually gonna, gonna really reject you. So you gotta, you don't blame your family. Fix the problem. You know who you have control over? You. You don't have control. You don't have control over your nine year old kid. You might think you do, but you don't. You gotta make, you don't have control over your wife.

• 42:06Jocko Willink?

  To just make her, you know, get in the game. Oh, you wanna, you wanna stay on the program? You wanna cook, uh, uh, whatever. 14 chicken breasts on a Sunday night. So you got two a day during the week. Honey, make it happen. No, honey, don't make that happen.

• 42:26Jocko Willink?

  If you are a good leader and you explain what your goals are. And you get her on board with the program. Then yeah. Guess what she's doing on Sunday night? Helping you cook some chicken breasts for the week.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:39Jocko Willink?

  But this is just like anything else, man. This is just like any other leadership situation. You wanna blame the team when something's going wrong? That's not gonna get you a solution. You need to take ownership of the problem. You need to get the problem solved. And when I say get the problem solved. You, you, this doesn't mean impose your will on the team. That means you need to lead the team. And there's a big difference. So.

• 43:05Jocko Willink?

  Get some.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 43:09Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, the better, just like anything else, just like Hackworth. The better relationship that you build with your wife and with your kids. Guess what? The more flexibility you have. The more the leeway they give you. The worse relationship you build with your wife and kids, the less flexible and the less leeway and the less chicken breast you're gonna have cooked for you.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 43:34Jocko Willink?

  They're not in the game with you.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:37Jocko Willink?

  So build a relationship. I know that might sound like, like, oh, well, we're married, so we have a relationship. Hmm, not necessarily true.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:45Jocko Willink?

  Build a relationship. Make them understand where you're coming from. Make them understand what the strategic goals are.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:50Jocko Willink?

  Make them understand, just like in a leadership situation, make sure they understand how the strategic goals that you're trying to achieve for yourself will then come all the way back down and impact them in a positive way. Cause by the way, if you're doing things strategically that are gonna help you, that are gonna screw over the rest of the team, or in this case, family, guess what? You're not gonna get support for those goals, cause they're not helping out the team. If you're doing it for yourself and yourself only, that's problematic.

• 44:16Jocko Willink?

  So if you're, hey, I wanna work out. I wanna get, you know, I wanna work out. I wanna change jiu-jitsu every day. Okay, well, how do I benefit from that?

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:24Jocko Willink?

  Honey?

• 44:25Speaker 01

  How does, yeah.

• 44:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, let me tell you how. Here's my plan. In six years, you know, I'm a purple belt right now. In six years, I'm gonna get my black belt, and when I get my black belt, we're gonna open a school. And when I open a school, guess what we're gonna do all day? We're gonna teach jiu-jitsu, we're gonna hang out at our gym, we're gonna have a good time. That's the strategic goal. I need you in the game with me right now. That's totally different than, I wanna train.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Yep. I'm a man, yeah. Don't keep me from this.

• 44:48Jocko Willink?

  Don't keep me from this.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, and that's depending on who you are, obviously, but I would even say that's, speaking from my own experience, that's even over saying it, really, like, let's say you take jiu-jitsu or working out or whatever.

• 45:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  You know, like, you know, to do that, but I get, I get the example for sure.

• 45:07Jocko Willink?

  No, you're gonna say something much more simple, like, hey.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Easier, way more.

• 45:10Jocko Willink?

  Babe.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Just say, hey, this, this, this part of my life, even if it's new, it's new. I know our family's chaotic. You need my help with the kids and whatever. Be like, but hey, this, this sort of, this means a lot to me, and it makes me feel good, makes me, you know, a happy person or whatever. Can me and you, can we make this work? You know, can, can we do it? What do you want from me?

• 45:27Jocko Willink?

  You know how you like this other thing?

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 45:31Jocko Willink?

  I wanna support you doing that. Here's where I need support. You're right. This thing puts a smile on my face.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:37Jocko Willink?

  You want me smiling around here? That's what, and people, I'm sure someone's gonna bring up the fact that there were times.

• 45:43Jocko Willink?

  When I was in the dimes and I would come home from work at seven thirty at night. I'd pick up my gym bag, I'd drop off my, my work bag and I'd just walk, I'd go, oh, hang on, I'm going to train. And there was a few times where she did not want me to go train, tears in her eyes. You gotta be kidding me. You've been gone all week. You've been gone for two weeks. You come home at seven thirty and you're going to go train instead of eating dinner with us? I was like, yep.

• 46:10Jocko Willink?

  That, the reason I bring that up, because I know someone's going to bring up, that's not good leadership. That's not me being cool. That's not me building the relationship. That's me moving in the other direction. So that's not what I'm saying to do. But if you come home, hey, look, here's the deal. Here's what's going on. Here's why. I, you know what? I've got a, I come home from work. I got a lot of stuff in my brain. I'm in a bad mood when I come home and I don't want to be in a bad mood around you. Don't want to be a bad mood around the kids. I'm going to go train for an hour. When I come back, I'm going to have a smile on my face. Watch.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Watch.

• 46:45Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 46:47Jocko Willink?

  And, and that's actually, my wife eventually told me, like, oh, when you don't train, you're not nice to be around. Not that I was intentionally going, oh, you get to train. No, but you just have the, uh, you don't, you don't have that release.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's that, that is a real thing for sure. I mean, it's manageable. Everyone's different, I think, obviously. But I would, you can even say something even more, because that's a hard one to, to sell sometimes to some people to be like, hey, I'll be happier, you know? Then they'll be like, mm.

• 47:18Jocko Willink?

  Well, or except for that, I'll be happier, means we'll be happier.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:23Jocko Willink?

  And you got it. You're right. Though you got to, you got to give and take, right? You got to say, okay, what do you, what can I do for you?

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Exactly right. That's, that's what it is. Be like, hey, this means a lot to me, you know, to, and usually, you know, in a relationship like that, they care. If something means something to your husband and wife or whatever, like, that's not nothing. That's something, you know? Look, if you, if the, if you're a husband and you say this, Jujutsu means a lot to me, therefore you need to sacrifice your whole thing to accommodate it. You can't do that, but it's not nothing. So you can say, hey.

• 47:54Jocko Willink?

  As a leader, you can't have the team sacrifice everything for you.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Thing, yeah.

• 47:59Jocko Willink?

  Hey, if I do a good job on this mission, I'm going to get promoted.

• 48:04Jocko Willink?

  You know, or hey, if we do a good job with this product, where I'm gonna make more money.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's more for our bottom line.

• 48:09Jocko Willink?

  It's more from my bottom line.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:10Jocko Willink?

  Profitability for our shareholders. No one cares. The frontline doesn't care about profitability for the shareholders unless they understand how it relates back to them.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:17Jocko Willink?

  The family doesn't care about you training jujitsu unless they realize how it's gonna

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:21Jocko Willink?

  come back to you.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  So what you do is you tell her like, hey, just can we make this work? And actually, whatever, however this gets in the way of us, you know, like whatever, like, I wanna just in general make that up to you some way, you know, like what can, what can I do for you? Like I said, or what do you wanna do something? Or let's, let's do this so we can both kind of have something fun. Come with me if you want, but hey, I'm don't, don't just automatically expect your wife to love jujitsu like you. Love jujitsu.

• 48:48Jocko Willink?

  Unfortunately.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, it goes for everyone.

• 48:50Jocko Willink?

  Even the most.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  It's possible.

• 48:53Jocko Willink?

  It's very possible.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But I'm saying, you know, if like how you're saying, like make it, make you gotta accommodate it, you know, so if you're doing like a workout, let's say, and it's your thing, right? Like a like to work out, you know, and that's my thing, whatever. Jujitsu, I think is a different one, cause working out is like, you can kind of do that whenever.

• 49:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, true.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. But jujitsu is like, if you don't get, you gotta go train with some people. Yeah, yeah, you know? So yeah, man, if, and constant communication too, by the way, like you, you know, cause after a while, it's like, oh, you're gonna jujitsu again. And like, the kids kind of need help with the homework and I'm swamped with this other family stuff, you know, kind of thing. But if you're constantly communicating and then she'll tell you, hey, do you mind not going on this day because of this? And you're like, mm, okay. Me going this specific day, is that more important than the, the help that they need with the homework? You know, and you can accurately kind of navigate your way through your new situation, you know? But yeah, you gotta keep talking on that one. Cause some people, they think, oh, I can go jujitsu now. And I don't have to say nothing about, I'm just rolling out under every circle, you know? Doesn't work like that sometimes.

• 49:55Jocko Willink?

  Don't, don't be like me in that situation.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Don't be like Taco.

• 49:58Jocko Willink?

  You probably, well, my wife is very understanding.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:01Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  That's crazy. Yeah, my wife probably would have murdered me, like.

• 50:06Jocko Willink?

  Rightfully so.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Like killed me as a crime. Next question.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Would love to hear your thoughts on the dichotomy of honest self-expression versus normal face and/or passion versus discipline.

• 50:20Jocko Willink?

  Uh, if you aren't caught up on all the podcasts, Normal Face is a game I used to play with my kids where they would have to keep an expressionless face, or what I called the normal face.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Good game, by the way.

• 50:31Jocko Willink?

  And you, I would line up my kids and they would have to keep that face. And then if they changed their expression anyway, I would hit them in the head with a, with the inside cardboard roll of a thing of wrapping paper. And, or I had eventually made like foam pieces for it because they were a little bit more durable. And, and you could hit really hard and it wouldn't hurt at all. So anyways, I know it sounds like you should call child services on me, but it's fun game to play because as you hit one kid, it makes the other kids laugh and then you end up hitting them all and everyone's laughing and it's fun. So, and there's also a pragmatic reason to do it because it teaches people to control their emotions. And there are times, there are many times where you have to learn to control your emotions.

• 51:16Jocko Willink?

  And as kids, if you learn to control your emotions, it's going to be beneficial for you in many ways. But does that mean that you should keep a normal face all the time? Never show emotions? No, it's not like that at all. There's like everything else, there's a dichotomy that you have to balance. If your kid wins a wrestling match, you should be happy and great and smile and yeah, high five, right? That's cool. If you bite into a amazing piece of prime rib that your wife cooked for you, then you should raise your fist to the air and say, yes!

• 51:58Jocko Willink?

  My wife, the first time she ever cooked prime rib, she, she, she's, we didn't know this, but she has a talent. She, you know, she cooks dry chicken, prime rib, she knocks it out of the park. First time she ever cooked prime rib.

• 52:11Jocko Willink?

  And I took my, it smelled amazing. I was like, oh, this is, I took my first bite. I looked at her and I looked up at her and I said, I want to re-vow, redo our vows for marriage.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Renew the vows.

• 52:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, renew the vow. What is it? Renew, renew the vows. So, yes, um, you know, scenarios like that, yeah, you want to show your emotions. And if, here's something, if your team slacks off.

• 52:37Jocko Willink?

  And if you fail the mission, you fail the task. Of course, you're gonna own it, but you might, you know, you might wanna show a little anger about what happened. So that everyone knows like, oh, this choco doesn't normally get mad and he's mad. And so we really did something bad. And, and you know, even though you're blaming on yourself, like, I can't believe I let this down. You know what I mean? Like you show a little bit of that, people go, okay.

• 53:00Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Show some most you, if you get bad, and well, if you get news that, that, you know, you got a friend that died, we know that's, you gotta let those emotions out. There's all kinds of situations where emotions are not only acceptable, but they're needed and they're required. And in fact, if you don't have emotions in those situations,

• 53:21Jocko Willink?

  that's horrible. You need to have them, not only as a person, as a human being, you need to let out your emotions sometimes, but as a leader, if you don't show any emotions at all, no one's gonna follow you. There's no connection between you and the people on your team. And if you ever, if you just sit there and think about people that you've worked for that didn't show emotions, you had no connection with them. You don't care about them. You'll leave, you won't go the extra mile to get the job done. So you have to show emotions, but of course, there are many times in life, in the world where showing your emotions are gonna have a negative impact on your situation. You're, you, you give up the takedown in a jujitsu competition.

• 54:05Jocko Willink?

  And you show it in your face. That person just thinks I just broke you, right? You wanna show any emotion there? Boss tells you, you're getting stuck with the underperforming team.

• 54:17Jocko Willink?

  Don't show any emotion, right? Don't, don't, oh man.

• 54:22Jocko Willink?

  Don't do that. But hey, what about this? There's a good one. Boss is giving you feedback that you don't agree with.

• 54:30Jocko Willink?

  Roll your eyes, you know what I mean? The, the heavy sigh, the clenched teeth as you're trying to listen with this person. You don't even respect him. He's telling you, what's that gonna get you? Not gonna get you anything. Then showing that negative emotion there, you need to keep normal face in that situation. Your kid's doing something that's annoying. It's trying to test your patience. And they're just trying to piss you off. Don't let them. Keep it in check.

• 54:56Jocko Willink?

  Get told to go to the other line in DMV. After you've been waiting for an hour and one, don't freak out, don't show any emotions. Got it.

• 55:07Jocko Willink?

  Here's, here's another one. We already talked about this one. Your friends are poking fun at you. Because you missed a shot at the range or you got lost on a land navigation course or whatever. Get all mad. Don't get frustrated. Don't show any emotion. You know, they make fun of your haircut, they make fun of your accent, they make fun of whatever. Don't show emotions, don't freak out.

• 55:32Jocko Willink?

  That's the other balance. Now, there are also times where you might have to force yourself to show some emotion just to get the point across, right? Your kid hasn't listened to you after five or six violations.

• 55:46Jocko Willink?

  You might have to show some anger. Or they, or they do something that's gonna get them hurt, right? You gotta show some emotion so that they realize that was real. But flying off the temper, flying off the handle and losing your temper is almost never does you any good. So, yeah, you have to be balanced in order to be balanced. You have to be in control and in order to be in control, you have to detach from your emotions. So you can control your emotions and not let your emotions control you.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  I think we already talked about this one part before where like, you know, like with your kids or whatever. And you're, you fly off the handle, not fly off the handle, but you, you show emotion. You raise your voice and yell at them because this one is important. This lesson that I'm teaching you, obviously they didn't get it before, whatever. You think you can't do that every single time, you know, every single lesson like, okay, oh, it was effective when I raised my voice. Let me just raise my voice now, right? Logically, let me, if that, if that is what induces their compliance, let me just do that. But it doesn't work that way because after a while, I like, oh, brat's all just dumb noise now. So, yeah, you gotta be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, yeah, just be like normal face, normal face, normal face, everything, you know?

• 56:56Speaker 01

  And then like the one time you use it, it's like the, what do you call the, there's this video game I used to play. It's like you could just press the button and blow up everybody anyway. Long story, but yeah. Don't use it all the time is what I'm saying. Just use it like sparingly, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, judiciously.

• 57:15Jocko Willink?

  Cool. I do know what you're saying.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Next question. I'm in college.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  And I'm working towards going to OCS after I graduate. I work a food service job. I was trying to teach a 17 year old at work, why she shouldn't half ass cleaning a fryer. I said, because of unmitigated daily discipline in all things. That includes cleaning the fryer.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  She still didn't quite get it. I didn't say to her that I make the, I make the fryer spotless, because if I can't manage to clean the fryer, how can I expect myself to lead people in the military? Ipso facto, war. Because I didn't think that, I didn't think that was appropriate to say to that 17 year old girl. I try to lead by example, but I'm not sure that is enough. How can I best explain or show my younger coworkers? Why they should have unmitigated daily discipline in all things? When she, when the stakes are only a fryer and not lives.

• 58:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 58:26Jocko Willink?

  Let's see. This is, we're kind of in the same vein on some stuff tonight, which is good, right? It's good. First of all, because unmitigated daily discipline in all things should be first and foremost, applied to you, not, not everyone else around you, to you. Let's start with yourself. Imposing discipline on other people is not leadership. It's just an authoritarian person barking orders. So to answer your question, well, first of all, read, if you haven't read the book, The Dichotomy of Leadership, you might want to check that one out. There's a couple of chapters you could focus on. One of them is called Resolute, but not overbearing. One of them is called Disciplined, but not rigid.

• 59:08Jocko Willink?

  One of them is called Hold People Accountable, but don't hold their hands. And, and this is pretty much why we had to write The Dichotomy of Leadership. Because you're out there, good on you, trying to take extreme ownership. And that's great, but you're not, you're not paying attention to the dichotomy of leadership. So let me, let me break it down for you a little bit more clearly. And then you can go read the book as well, which will help you. You say that the stakes are only a clean fryer and not lives.

• 59:41Jocko Willink?

  And you're right.

• 59:44Jocko Willink?

  Lives are not at stake and neither really is the functionality of the fire itself. Cause it doesn't have to be completely spotless. And in fact, if you're trying to keep it completely spotless, it might actually waste time that she could be doing something that's more important. Like prepping the potatoes or washing her hands to keep the food sanitary.

• 1:00:07Jocko Willink?

  So you need to think about that, how truly important, like when you say on, when I say, cause I say this all the time. And I apologize for throwing you a little bit too far in one direction, unmitigated daily discipline in all things. There's no, there's no departure from that, right? That's what it is. There's no departure for that.

• 1:00:27Jocko Willink?

  But here's the deal, if you were in the military and you got spun up about little things that don't really matter. You are wasting your leadership capital. And when something in actually important is what you were just talking about Echo, when something actually important comes up, your troops aren't even going to listen to you. Cause they don't know what anything, they don't know what's important and what's not, because you say that everything is important. Like, hey, why do I need to stay on watch? Why do I need to stay awake during watch?

• 1:00:54Jocko Willink?

  That's not any more important to you than whether I have a stain on my shirt. Cause you're freaking out about everything. So, so how do I know what's what?

• 1:01:06Jocko Willink?

  Now here's the deal, you can go too far in the other direction and you can let people do whatever they want and they completely lack discipline and the little things do matter. The little things do matter, but you gotta remember they only matter a little. And if you waste your time and you waste your leadership and you waste your energy on things that don't matter or things that matter very little, then you won't be able to lead your team when it really counts. What happens is it's a slippery, it's a slope, it's a, it's a slippery slope. And if you let something slide, then you let something else slide, then you let something else slide, eventually you've got no discipline. So you have to be careful of that.

• 1:01:46Jocko Willink?

  But at the same time, it's the other direction. What you end up in in the other direction, if you if you impose unmitigated daily discipline in all things, you're gonna end up like, um, here's a movie reference, Echo Charles, Animal House.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:02:02Jocko Willink?

  Have you seen it?

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was young though.

• 1:02:04Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you don't remember Niedermeyer?

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Niedermeyer.

• 1:02:07Jocko Willink?

  The ROTC guy? That's yelling at everyone. You're worthless and weak. He's like that. He's a guy that's just barking and going crazy. And that's a comical example, but I'll tell you what, you want a real example? A real, a real good example that you can check out? Once again, go and watch the first episode of the Band of Brothers series and check out Captain Saul Bell.

• 1:02:32Jocko Willink?

  The company commander of Easy Company. He is hardcore and he has, he imposes absolute unmitigated discipline in all things on his whole company. He holds the line.

• 1:02:48Jocko Willink?

  Oh, dirty weapon. No, no liberty for you. Pass revoked. Rust on your knife, pass revoked. Uniform, out of uniform, creases in your boots or creases in your pants, pass revoked. Oh, that guy's doing it. He's doing that unmitigated discipline in all things. And guess what happens to him? He gets fired. His troops hate him. He's worried about things that don't matter. Dick Winters, totally squared away, worries about things that are important.

• 1:03:20Jocko Willink?

  And he, and as an individual, and if you remember, I don't even know if they show this in Band of Brothers, but as an individual imposing discipline on himself, guess what he's doing during the Battle of the Bulge? Battle of the Bulge, middle of the winter, snowed in, don't have winter gear, they're freezing, they're dying. What's Winters doing in the morning? He's up and he's shaving. He's getting up and he's shaving. His battalion commander comes up and was like, "Bro, are you sure you need to shave?" He's like, "Okay." Just holding the line. So.

• 1:03:54Jocko Willink?

  That's why we wrote the dichotomy leadership. This stuff is a balance and you have to learn to balance. You don't want to end up going and ending up like Captain Sobel and I hope everybody that's has that tendency to want to control things and they want to use discipline and they want to use unmitigated daily discipline and all things. You want to use that as your slogan to beat people down. Go watch the first episode of Band of Brothers and get your act together.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, the fry. That reminded me of when you were talking about your gym floor.

• 1:04:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  You know, you don't. I mean, sure. You don't want the, you don't want a bag and your dirty clothes and socks and shoes all over the floor while you work out. But it is for a reason.

• 1:04:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Same way, the whole reason you got to clean the flyers or the fryer for a reason, you know, so you know, whatever the reason is, I'm not as familiar with fryers, but.

• 1:04:53Jocko Willink?

  Cause you didn't work at Wendy's like I did. I can tell you that the external, the external cleanliness of the fryer is not a big deal. Do you want, like you said, do you want it to be caked with grease where it's a fire hazard? No.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:07Jocko Willink?

  But guess what? It's a functional item that you're using all day. There's going to be some spots on it. And if I'm freaking out about that, guess what? I got somebody that's not washing their hands or even worse. I got someone that's intentionally sabotaging the food. So we get bad reviews. Now we're going out of business.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:21Jocko Willink?

  Or whatever.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's essentially like, hey, man, identify the use, the, the optimal use of the fryer. And let's target that as like the, the right way to clean it kind of thing, you know? And that's sort of it. Like, don't, you don't have to sweep your gym floor and mop it and make sure you can see your face in the.

• 1:05:39Jocko Willink?

  I'm getting more chalk on that thing in 23 hours.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:42Jocko Willink?

  22 hours.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Right. It makes no difference.

• 1:05:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  To why I have a gym floor. I have the gym floor so I can drop weights and walk. That's it kind of thing. Not so, you know, I can, I don't know, be super disciplined and waste my time mopping it and you know, all this stuff. Because I'm unmitigated daily discipline and all things, you know? You have a functionality you have to uphold.

• 1:06:02Jocko Willink?

  Imagine how many. Hours of my life I would have thrown away if I was mopping, cleaning, sweeping and vacuuming my gym floor every day when I got. It would take as long as my workout or take probably a half twenty minutes, I guess.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:15Jocko Willink?

  So there's, there's what, almost two hours a week, two, a little over two hours a week, gone.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  Gone.

• 1:06:21Jocko Willink?

  You think I got two hours a week? Think about what two hour, two hours is like a massive amount of time.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a, that's a good.

• 1:06:28Jocko Willink?

  Two hours is a huge amount of time.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Unless.

• 1:06:31Jocko Willink?

  Give that away.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  You own a commercial gym, then you wanna mop that floor. Cause it adds to the functionality of the gym, getting members, you know.

• 1:06:38Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna, the floor is gonna be clean.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:06:42Jocko Willink?

  But guess what? Here, go to the extreme. Hey, we just cleaned that floor. Don't walk on it. Hey, that part of the gym is shut down for, you know, cause we just mopped it. It's like, no.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Jocko Willink?

  You just mopped it. We're gonna use it.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's kinda at the end of the day. It's kinda like, what? Unmitigated daily discipline in all things that what, that are functional.

• 1:07:04Jocko Willink?

  That are functional for sure. That are, are, are for yourself. For, put that on yourself. Put that on yourself. And here's, here's, you really wanna take this to the next level?

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:14Jocko Willink?

  Be disciplined in how you impose discipline on people. Don't just let it run wild. You have to have discipline in it. That's the way it is.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it kinda does, huh? Paint that picture how you're saying.

• 1:07:30Jocko Willink?

  Every time I get these questions, it's like, I'm so happy we wrote the dichotomy of leadership. Because there's the answer.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Jocko Willink?

  That's the answer. The answer is this, all this is a dichotomy. Everything is a dichotomy. And people don't want it to be a dichotomy because it's, dichotomies are complex. Dichotomies are hard. Dichotomies take.

• 1:07:52Jocko Willink?

  It takes skill to learn to balance them. It takes awareness of the situation.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Jocko Willink?

  It's hard. It's so much easier to say, oh, you just impose your discipline and make everyone do what you want them to do.

• 1:08:03Jocko Willink?

  You can't do that. You'll end up with a mutiny. My, my second platoon. The, when, when we had a mutiny, we worked for a guy that made us do everything his way. My way or the highway. Guess what? Didn't work. Mutiny. It was the highway, but not for us, for him.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:08:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And not a bad guy. Wasn't a bad guy. Wouldn't have bad intentions.

• 1:08:26Jocko Willink?

  But that's where this guy is heading. He's heading to OCS and if he keeps with that attitude, he's going to end up in those situations. It's beautiful. I'm so glad he asked this question. Because I'm glad he asked this question because it's not his fault. He's listening to what I said and I didn't communicate it well enough. So now he asked a great question and now he can take a much, much better approach, a much more balanced approach in his leadership.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, like flying a kite kinda. You ever flew a kite?

• 1:08:55Jocko Willink?

  I had flown a kite, but this has nothing to do with flying a kite.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  No, no, it does.

• 1:08:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay, no, I should have said that because I'm gonna bring it back on you, aren't you?

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. No, but the fundamental principle, right? You know, well, it depends on what kind of kite. I get it. But you know the kind with the two handles, the two strings? You know, you gotta, see what I'm saying? You gotta kind of pull one and let one go a little bit and then it depends on the wind, you know, depends on how strong the wind is and you gotta pull.

• 1:09:19Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  Let slack out. But I'm telling you, try to fly a kite. Now, I just flew one like, maybe like, you know, five, six, seven weeks ago. It was good. Windy day, by the way. Next question. As a leader, do you ever confide in anyone or seek counsel from anyone? Or do you just wrestle with issues within yourself and try to figure things out on your own?

• 1:09:37Jocko Willink?

  Another really good question and I do both. Of course, I try and figure out things on my own, but here's a little secret. Is it a secret? It's not really a secret because I'm about to tell everyone, but it's something that I wouldn't really talk about because it's just something I wouldn't instinctively do. When I'm figuring things out on my own, at the same time, I, I seek counsel. Is that how they said it? Seek counsel from the trusted teammates that I have or peers or superiors or, or subordinates that I trust.

• 1:10:11Jocko Willink?

  But when I counsel them, when I, when I seek counsel, when I ask for feedback, while I'm trying to figure out things on my own, I actually keep those thoughts to myself.

• 1:10:24Jocko Willink?

  In the beginning, right? I let other people tell me what their ideas are first. I want to hear what they come up with because if and if somebody comes up with a good plan, we're going with it. Like if it's, hey, you know what? That's a pretty good plan. We'll go with that. Because as I've said many times, I prefer to use one of my subordinate's plans, one of my subordinate's plan over mine. I would rather use my subordinate's plan rather than mine. As long as it's tactically sound because then they they believe in their plan, right? And if it's not tactically sound, yep, I give them a little nudge to make some corrections and still use their plan.

• 1:11:04Jocko Willink?

  Because I want them to use their solutions and their plans. So that way, like I said, they have ownership of the plan.

• 1:11:12Jocko Willink?

  And when they're coming up with a plan, guess what's going to happen? They're going to get too close to it. They're going to do what I talked about in that opening story, which is they're gonna, they're gonna be at low altitude. They're going to be staring at it right in the face. And I'm going to be allowed to remain detached or remain at altitude. So I have a better perspective of the overall plan than they do. And that ends up making me look like a tactical genius, which is awesome.

• 1:11:37Jocko Willink?

  So, so I guess this is the secret. This is the trick or whatever. Don't talk so much.

• 1:11:44Jocko Willink?

  Don't talk so much. Don't feel the need. Don't feel the need. This is something you have to resist as a leader, as a person that wants to be a leader.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:54Jocko Willink?

  They've always said something about people, aspiring leaders, right? If you're an aspiring leader, don't feel like you're the person that has to always come up with a plan or come up with a solution. Even when you are the leader, don't feel like you're that guy. In fact, it's better to not do that. It's better just to to think and to just listen to what people are saying and watch their plans. Come out and get shot down and get reformulated and be improved. And if you hadn't said anything yet, guess what? The longer you don't say anything, the more people are going to listen when you actually open your mouth. So just kind of keep your mouth shut. Now here's, this is a little bit different because we're talking about like a plan, right? A strategy or something. What if it's something political within your team?

• 1:12:38Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? Then what do you do? What I do is the same thing. Like I will think, I will listen, I will discuss things with people and gather intelligence from them. I'll ask them some probing questions. But I'm not going to divulge what my position is because number one, that will influence them. It will make them react and I don't want to influence anyone or make them react until I'm gonna be able to influence them and get them to react and act the way that I want them. That's going to benefit the team.

• 1:13:11Jocko Willink?

  So I'm going to ask some, some questions. Hey, what do you think about, what do you think's going on with Jimmy? Is he, he seems to be acting, is he okay? I'll ask you, I'll ask him, I'll ask Mike, I'll ask Bill, I'll ask Jennifer, I'll find out what's going on. Oh, Jennifer and Bill, they say something a little bit different. Okay. See, I'm going to gather the political perspectives and

• 1:13:38Jocko Willink?

  listen, I'm going to let things unfold. I'm going to observe.

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  And relax and detach and listen and think and calculate. That's what we're doing. And dichotomy, if something needs to happen and I have to be decisive, I'm going to make a decision. We're going to go with it. I'm going to, I'm going to put it out there. So oddly enough, as a leader, don't talk so much. I know that seems crazy. The more you talk, the less people listen.

• 1:14:15Speaker 01

  What about in like everyday stuff? I guess maybe this wouldn't really apply to as a leader, but maybe like as a person, you know how like, like you, you know, confide, you know how like I'll have a pro, I'll come in and I'll be like, hey, let me get your advice, whatever, about some thing that obviously I didn't feel like appropriate to like, just ask all my friends kind of thing, you know? Like, do you ever do that?

• 1:14:41Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  You just mainly think about it yourself.

• 1:14:45Jocko Willink?

  What I would do is, you know, I like I do what I what I just said I would do. I'd be like, hey, man. Wha- what's going on with this? You know, now, I guess if you were, see you, when you come and ask me something, you're asking me something. You always ask me about something I'm not a part of in any way.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:04Jocko Willink?

  So it's different. So, yeah, if it's like that, if it's something I'm completely, if something, if there's someone that's completely outside the situation. Yeah, I'll say, hey, this is what's going on. You know, this is what's going on here. We had this happen. I got this situation. And just, yeah, for sure. I'll do that. Yes. So that is, that is good. But, um, but if it's within the team, then I generally just won't come out and ask like, hey, what do you, you know? I want to change this. Instead, I'll be like, hey, what, what do you, what would you change about? You know what I mean?

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:35Jocko Willink?

  Ask them what they think first. Cause you might have to make some adjustments. If I come in and like echo, we're changing the way we record this thing now. Here's what's happening. And you're like, oh, okay. Then you're listening. And the first thing you say to me is like, that doesn't make any sense. Now I feel, now I'm an idiot, especially when you say, well, here's the, here's why it won't work, Jaco. Boom, you lay out three things. Instead, if I was like, hey, man, what would you think about this issue that we're having? What solutions do you think we could do to solve that? And all of a sudden I get to listen to your ideas. And by the way, when you come up with one of those ideas, and one of them sounds pretty good to me, guess what we're doing? That one.

• 1:16:13Jocko Willink?

  Now who's got ownership of that idea? You do. Now who's all fired up to implement it? You do.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:20Jocko Willink?

  And I didn't waste any leadership. In fact, I gained leadership capital because now you're like, man, Jaco, so you trust me, dude? It's pretty cool. He's letting me run this.

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah. And as speaking from a person who doesn't necessarily, well.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  It doesn't seem like I necessarily get that big of a payoff to have that add to like I'm running this, you know, like I don't know for whatever reason didn't I I never felt like that was a big thing to me to be the guy running it. But I don't know, maybe it is maybe in my subconscious, because I know that you do that to me. And I'm that's why it's actually kind of funny, because you don't do it in big with big things necessarily, you know, maybe maybe you will whatever. But so most of the time it's just some little teeny small thing. I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, just totally falling, not falling for it. I get it. You know, it's a good tactic. But now that how you just fully just illustrate it. And meanwhile, I should know this. I do know this really that you do that.

• 1:17:11Jocko Willink?

  Here's the thing, it's not a bad thing.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:17:13Jocko Willink?

  I'm not screwing you over.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  No, it's actually perfect.

• 1:17:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm not, I'm actually, it's actually beneficial to you.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:19Jocko Willink?

  You're actually actually are running things.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:22Jocko Willink?

  You know, if I come and say, hey, we're, you know, hey, what do you think kind of table we should get for the podcast? Or what, you know, I mean, what do you think? What do you think would be the best lighting system? You know, like, I know what I think. That's the see, that's the thing I don't really divulge is I know what I think.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know what, though, which you're, I know, I understand.

• 1:17:44Jocko Willink?

  But by the way, the table thing that I tried with on that one, it didn't work.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  Didn't work. No, I failed a little bit, little bit.

• 1:17:52Jocko Willink?

  Actually, I failed because I should have put much clearer parameters around the table scenario.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:59Jocko Willink?

  For those of you that don't know what we're talking about, which is no one in the world except for us too. We had, we got a different table for our for our recording studio, which is right at this moment being expanded. And but when we were still in the small recording studio, I forget why we needed a new table, just because the other one was too big.

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  No, we're adding another camera.

• 1:18:18Jocko Willink?

  Okay, we're adding another camera and possible guests. So. So hey, man, you know, go grab a table and the one, the table that I had gotten in the past. Let's face it, it was.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  It's legit.

• 1:18:29Jocko Willink?

  It was legit. Echo goes and gets a table.

• 1:18:34Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if that thing costs forty eight dollars, but it wasn't worth it.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:18:38Jocko Willink?

  This thing was wiggly and small and weak. And anyways, that's an example where I didn't do a good job. And it's also an example of occasionally your, your vision isn't aligned. Like my vision, normally you and I have very aligned vision about something, you know, well, when it comes to the technical nature of the podcast, the table, we weren't aligned. I wouldn't have bought that table ever. Well, I wouldn't have bought that table for like a, like a prop to be used in a one scene scenario.

• 1:19:17Speaker 01

  I don't know what that, but well, okay, so I'll admit, I don't know if I told you this, but I'll admit that the thing is you probably, when you got your table, you probably went somewhere and was like, yeah, that's the table. You felt it and was like, yeah, I can imagine in your eyeballing it.

• 1:19:33Jocko Willink?

  I actually ordered it online, but I, I'd say I have more, even though I know you worked for a moving company. Nonetheless, I think I have more.

• 1:19:44Jocko Willink?

  I'm more worldly when it comes to furniture.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  You might be right.

• 1:19:48Jocko Willink?

  Cause there's something wrong.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  Well, I saw it on Amazon. I was like, hey, that's a cool table and that, that's, that fits the dimension. It fit the, yeah. When it came in, it's the old story, you know, it's like, oh, it looked good in the picture. You know, kind of thing that when it shows up, it's like.

• 1:20:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It looks good in the picture and it's only thirty nine dollars. Should last, the other table we had was like a thousand bucks. Yeah.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  All right. Yeah. It wasn't a thousand, it wasn't thirty nine.

• 1:20:14Jocko Willink?

  Next time I'm gonna put a minimum price.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Just to ensure quality.

• 1:20:17Jocko Willink?

  To ensure some kind of quality.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. No.

• 1:20:21Jocko Willink?

  Anyways, the point is, yes, when you give somebody, you let it be their idea, you keep your ideas to yourself. I, I'm not trying to be all secretive. I'm not trying to be all secretive. It's not like I'm not gonna tell this person. Because eventually my ideas, if it needs to come out, it comes out. Hopefully it doesn't come out. Hopefully it never needs to come out because my team comes up with a great plan and I can just be quiet and they can go execute it. That's my goal.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:44Jocko Willink?

  Occasionally they can't find a solution and it's like, hey, man, okay. Hey, guys. And then maybe, you know what I'll do? I won't even divulge my whole idea. I'll say, well, what about, you know, what about this? What about an idea like this? Oh yeah, that's not bad. Hey man, when you see someone get a good idea. They get so happy.

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:21:03Jocko Willink?

  It's so rewarding.

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:06Jocko Willink?

  And so you want to give them that gift. And the way you do that is by letting them come up with their own ideas. You've just got to make sure that they have a worldly experience with furniture.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  Gift stuff.

• 1:21:15Jocko Willink?

  That's the situation.

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  Alright, well, there you go. And I dig it. And because in a way, it's not really even about the idea. It's more about, okay, well, you need a solution to this problem. I don't care what that, you know, there's a bunch of potential solutions kind of thing. And yeah, you might have one in your head, but you don't want to just start saying, just throwing it around as the one, you know?

• 1:21:33Jocko Willink?

  And also, yes, you're right. Also, when you divulge your idea, guess what happens to everyone else's ideas, especially when you're in a leadership position? When you're in a leadership position and you divulge your idea, everyone kind of gravitates towards that idea as being the best. If you keep your idea to yourself, you let the true growth of ideas develop, true things come out, and people aren't just trying to say like, oh, great idea, Janko. Yeah, or even even if they're not like a kiss ass, but you just you just put an idea in their head and they can't see it a different way.

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:01Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  And even if they do, you put them in a position where now they have to shut down your idea. Not a big deal, but it's still an added element that you have to, you know, you got to kind of put them in as far as that position goes. Yeah, rather than you, you'll just kind of open up the floor. It's kind of like back in, you know, who who has something to say? Kind of kind of the atmosphere, you know? And we all can, you know, throw around ideas and the best one comes up.

• 1:22:25Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  Thanks for bringing the man. I'll get a better table next time, I promise. Next question. As I get ready to graduate from college, I would appreciate your input on the following question. I've always loved to take part in a variety of projects and I have ended up in in a leadership position in multiple organizations. Be be it in the student VC firm, the student body, my professional fraternity, etc. In a way, this is, this was natural to me. It's about extreme ownership, right? I love what I was doing.

• 1:22:55Jocko Willink?

  You shouldn't just slough off that that phrase. It's about extreme ownership, right?

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, that's how it should have been. So, okay, this is, okay, all this stuff is about extreme ownership, right? Can't be that hard, right? Kind of, kind of a thing.

• 1:23:07Jocko Willink?

  No, it's like, of course.

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Extreme ownership, right? Okay, I loved what I was doing. I had a vision where to take things and I was chosen to lead. So I felt that I was doing the right thing. Recently, though, I've started to feel overwhelmed and feel that my productivity has diminished. By being in a managerial position, it seems harder to see the direct output of my work. But it's as easy, it's as easy as always to see what's not working. I don't want to be let go of any projects because I'll still love to make, love to take ownership of them.

• 1:23:35Jocko Willink?

  No, he says, I don't want to be let go. It says, I don't want to let go of any projects because I still love to take ownership of them.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, yes, yes. Love to take ownership.

• 1:23:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got you. I'm identifying symptoms.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, you like the word ownership. That's like a, like a really.

• 1:23:52Jocko Willink?

  I definitely like the word ownership. And as you also know, I also like another word and that's dichotomy.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Dichotomy.

• 1:23:58Jocko Willink?

  And we're seeing violations here.

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  All right. Well, either, either way, this guy, he, he doesn't want to let go of any projects because I still love to take ownership of them and lead these organizations. But I think I'm no longer able to handle this much. How do you balance those things?

• 1:24:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So there is a chapter in the dichotomy leadership called Own It All.

• 1:24:21Jocko Willink?

  But that's not the title of the chapter. The title of the chapter continues. It's the title of the chapter is Own It All, comma, but empower others. And it sounds like this individual, uh, who's getting after it for sure. Props, getting after it, leadership position, multiple organizations, going hard, taking ownership. Very cool. But it sounds like he needs to lean more towards decentralized command. Because just because you take ownership of things, doesn't mean you're supposed to do everything that you take ownership of. It doesn't, it doesn't, it actually doesn't work. What this, what you need, individual, is you need subordinate leaders

• 1:25:03Jocko Willink?

  inside these multiple organizations that you're in charge of, that you trust, and you got to let them run with the broad guidance and the mission, the broad guidance of the mission and with your commander's intent. That, that's how you're going to work this. So for instance, when I was in charge of training on the West Coast, I was responsible for a lot of stuff for land warfare, for maritime operations, dive operations, air operations, close quarters combat, urban warfare, training, mobility, training, heavy weapons, defensive tactics, combat leadership, and every other block.

• 1:25:38Jocko Willink?

  Four guys that are getting ready to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan. And on top of those tactical things, I'm in charge, I'm actually also in charge of safety and actually also in charge of maintenance and actually also in charge of the administration of the command.

• 1:25:55Jocko Willink?

  That's a lot of stuff to be running, right? I know that Holmes is in charge of, you know, the VC firm and the student body, that's stuff too. This is a lot of stuff. Could I personally manage and conduct all of those things that I was in charge of? Not even close. Not even close. Now, you, you talk about feeling overwhelmed, you wouldn't last 15 minutes if you tried to be the person that made every decision and all those different divisions that were inside of the training command. So I couldn't manage and run them all myself, but I had great leaders that I trusted that were going to make

• 1:26:36Jocko Willink?

  things happen and I gave them the broad guidance of what we were trying to do, what their part of the mission was, the parameters that they were allowed to work within, and then go get some. And it's the same thing, Task Unit Commander, I was Task Unit Commander, got two platoons. Plus you got a squad of augmentees, plus you got CBs and you got an intel fusion cell and you got interrogators and you got radio communications crew and you got the IT crew and you got, you got the whole tactical operations center that you're running. And it's the same thing. I can't run all that, no, no human can run all that. So what do you do? You have subordinate leaders that have the broad guidance, they understand what the mission is, they

• 1:27:18Jocko Willink?

  understand the commander's intent, they go forward and get after it and they, they know the parameters. And sometimes they have issues and when they have issues, you step in and you give them a hand. Or sometimes they get a little out of box, you've got to put them back in the box.

• 1:27:32Jocko Willink?

  But it's the same thing even right now, I got Echelon Front, I got the podcast, I've got the, the store, got the supplements, the apparel, the online training coming out, we got the tea, the real estate, the gym, the list goes on and I can't, I can't run all those things.

• 1:27:50Jocko Willink?

  But I got people leading those things and running those things and I could do the same thing. It's like, hey, here's the guidance, here's the mission, here's the commander's intent, here's the sanity check on something, here's the parameters we're trying to move within.

• 1:28:04Jocko Willink?

  And then go, go and get some. So if you do well with decentralized command, you can handle a lot. Now, could you possibly bite off more than you can chew? Yeah, you could get involved in so many things that you don't even have time to monitor the situations at all. And you don't have time to tell when people are getting out of their zone or out of their parameters that they're allowed to work within, or you don't have time to help when something goes sideways. You don't have, so you could get there. And that will happen especially quickly if you have failed to train and mentor and give directions and give guidance to the leaders that you have that are actually on the front lines running things.

• 1:28:50Jocko Willink?

  So

• 1:28:52Jocko Willink?

  that's part of it. Now, the other part of it is you can't do any of this if your ego will not allow you to let things go. I mean, you literally said, I don't want to let go of any projects. I've said this before. If you want to be in charge of everything, you have to be in charge of nothing. Your goal should be in charge of nothing. Only if you're in charge of nothing, can you truly be in charge of everything. Cause when you're in charge of every single thing, guess what you can handle? Nothing. Your task saturated, it doesn't work. So that's what you need to do. Get some good, solid leaders, subordinate leaders.

• 1:29:37Jocko Willink?

  Empower them, train them, trust them. Make sure they understand where they're going. Make sure they understand what the mission is. Make sure they understand what the goals are. Make sure they understand what things are outside the box that they need to come and talk to you about. And then let them rock and roll. Boom.

• 1:30:01Jocko Willink?

  Do one more.

• 1:30:05Speaker 01

  My wife and I suffered three weeks of turmoil, which including losing, which included losing a child. How do I expedite that moment when we pick up ourselves, pick ourselves up and keep moving forward? Because I'm done sulking and we need to move forward. Basically, how to push through.

• 1:30:29Jocko Willink?

  So

• 1:30:33Jocko Willink?

  I mean, obviously, that's heartbreaking and I can't even imagine the pain that you are going through in this situation. And it's one of those things, we've talked about this before. The fact is, we don't really have a cultural protocol for what to do when we lose a loved one.

• 1:31:00Jocko Willink?

  And you have to basically make up that protocol. I can't

• 1:31:10Jocko Willink?

  I can't dictate what that protocol is going to be for you. But I can tell you some things from my perspective, from some of the things that I've been through. I can tell you my perspective on loss.

• 1:31:33Jocko Willink?

  And the first thing is that you already know it's going to be wretched.

• 1:31:41Jocko Willink?

  And you're not going to escape it.

• 1:31:46Jocko Willink?

  And that pain, and this is, this is something that I've identified. The pain that's going to come, it's going to come in waves. And at first, you won't even notice that they're waves because all the waves are going to be so close together and they're going to be so continual and they're going to be right on top of each other. And the pain and the sadness is going to feel like it's so heavy. It's going to feel like you are drowning in sorrow, like you're not going to get any air and like you're not going to be able to escape that sadness. That's what the waves feel like at first.

• 1:32:33Jocko Willink?

  And then at some point, there's gonna be a little break, just a little break, just a little bit of light in the darkness. Something is gonna make you smile, something is gonna make you laugh. Something's gonna just show you just a little bit of light. And I don't know when that's gonna happen. And then you're gonna see that little, that little smile, that little light, and then the, another wave of pain is gonna come back again, and it's gonna be strong, and you won't have any control over it. You won't be able to say, "No, no, I'm, I'm, I'm in the light now, or I'm smiling right now, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go back there." No, you're not gonna be able to control it, and that's scary.

• 1:33:18Jocko Willink?

  It's scary because we, we get used to as adults, hey, we can kinda get control of things, and now all of a sudden, you're not gonna have control. It's gonna hit you, and you're gonna feel it.

• 1:33:31Jocko Willink?

  But, again, like a wave, like a wave in the ocean, that is gonna eventually subside again, and you'll see a little bit of light, and you'll get a little bit of a smile, and you'll feel okay for a second, and then guess what, another wave's gonna hit you.

• 1:33:47Jocko Willink?

  It might not be as strong as that other wa- wave, and you might not even notice that it's not as strong, but again, you can't control your emotions, and you'll find yourself, this is what I'm talking about, factually. You're gonna be sitting there, and all of a sudden, you're gonna be just crying uncontrollably.

• 1:34:09Jocko Willink?

  That wave is gonna hit you, you're gonna go from normal to just crying uncontrollably and being sad.

• 1:34:17Jocko Willink?

  That's what's gonna happen. And again, you're, in your mind, you're gonna be thinking, "I can't control this, it's a wave, and you're, you're at the mercy of this ocean of sorrow." But don't let that scare you.

• 1:34:31Jocko Willink?

  Don't let that scare you, cuz I'm telling you that that wave is going to subside again, and this is gonna go on. It's gonna go on, and the waves,

• 1:34:42Jocko Willink?

  they will become weaker.

• 1:34:46Jocko Willink?

  And what you need to realize is just because the waves are becoming weaker, this doesn't mean that you love your child less, or you miss them less, or that you aren't crushed at their passing. It just means that you're starting to be able to deal with it, which is what you're supposed to do.

• 1:35:10Jocko Willink?

  And as the waves get weaker, which they will, they'll also appear less frequently.

• 1:35:19Jocko Willink?

  And again, that's okay. It doesn't mean that you don't think of your child all the time. It just means that it's being dealt with.

• 1:35:32Jocko Willink?

  And while this is happening, while you, when you can't, when you start to, when the, when the storm waves start to calm a little bit,

• 1:35:47Jocko Willink?

  what you can do is you can row the boat.

• 1:35:51Jocko Willink?

  You can row the boat. Well, and what I mean by that is start doing something productive to get your mind moving forward. I don't know how long this is. This, this is, you know, when you feel a little bit of a break, then let's do it. A few days go by. Five days go by. Three days go by. At some point, you can't cry anymore. Okay. Let's do something productive. Let's sort out the drawers in the bedroom. Let's vacuum. Let's finish a product. Let's do something productive. And if there's something

• 1:36:34Jocko Willink?

  that distracts you, that's fine. Do it. Let, let, let there be some calm in the water.

• 1:36:45Jocko Willink?

  And also, as the, as the calm comes,

• 1:36:52Jocko Willink?

  also you're going to find moments where it's like you can, you can have things that are going to bring on the waves.

• 1:37:01Jocko Willink?

  And that's okay to bring on the waves. Go look at the pictures, write down the memories, read the letters, read the notes, read the emails.

• 1:37:12Jocko Willink?

  Remember.

• 1:37:16Jocko Willink?

  And then there's that standard service. You're gonna do the memorial, you're gonna do the burial.

• 1:37:26Jocko Willink?

  And when that's over,

• 1:37:30Jocko Willink?

  let a little bit of more time go by.

• 1:37:34Jocko Willink?

  Give yourself another week

• 1:37:37Jocko Willink?

  of washing around, of feeling that sorrow, of letting the waves

• 1:37:45Jocko Willink?

  toss you around in the ocean.

• 1:37:51Jocko Willink?

  But after another week, what you do is you go and you write a letter. You write a letter to your child and you explain to them.

• 1:38:02Jocko Willink?

  Explain to them how much they meant to you.

• 1:38:10Jocko Willink?

  Explain to them how heartbroken you are that they are gone. And then explain to them why you are going to carry on.

• 1:38:25Jocko Willink?

  Why you are going to keep going with them in your heart.

• 1:38:33Jocko Willink?

  Explain to them

• 1:38:36Jocko Willink?

  why you're not going to dwell in their loss.

• 1:38:45Jocko Willink?

  And explain to them how in losing them, you have learned without a shred of doubt how truly precious life is.

• 1:38:56Jocko Willink?

  And that they have taught you

• 1:39:01Jocko Willink?

  the immeasurable value of your own life and your wife's life and your family's life.

• 1:39:14Jocko Willink?

  And explain to them that you know

• 1:39:21Jocko Willink?

  that you know that they loved you and that you know that they would want more than anything for you to be happy and productive and impactful in the world.

• 1:39:41Jocko Willink?

  And explain in that letter what you will do to make them proud of how you live your life.

• 1:39:55Jocko Willink?

  And then take that letter

• 1:39:59Jocko Willink?

  and go to their grave

• 1:40:04Jocko Willink?

  and read it to them.

• 1:40:08Jocko Willink?

  And cry

• 1:40:12Jocko Willink?

  and kiss their soul.

• 1:40:18Jocko Willink?

  And tell them that you'll see them on the other side.

• 1:40:26Jocko Willink?

  And then

• 1:40:29Jocko Willink?

  go live your life.

• 1:40:34Jocko Willink?

  And those waves are still gonna come. And there's still gonna be pain and there's still gonna be sorrow.

• 1:40:45Jocko Willink?

  But you go and live your life and live it well.

• 1:40:51Jocko Willink?

  And make them proud.

• 1:41:07Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's

• 1:41:12Jocko Willink?

  all I've got for tonight.

• 1:41:22Jocko Willink?

  So, Echo.

• 1:41:25Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:41:32Jocko Willink?

  Go ahead.

• 1:41:34Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:41:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, like something like that. Is like. It doesn't always have to be like with, you know, losing a child, it can be losing anyone.

• 1:41:47Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  So like. Uh, my wife had a, you know, she lost someone that she was close to or whatever. So even if you're not in the, or if you're in a situation where someone's close to you like lost someone, it's good to keep like something like this in mind, you know, that that's gonna come and go, you know?

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  Cause it's easy to be like, oh yeah, like, oh yeah, they're over it, you know? So it's kind of cool now and then it comes back and you're like, wait, wait, I thought you're over it kind of thing like you can't.

• 1:42:16Jocko Willink?

  Yep, that's a unfortunate lesson I've learned is is just that.

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:22Jocko Willink?

  And you think it's it's a really great description of what it feels like. It feels like waves if you surf or you've been in the ocean. And and you've been getting hit by waves and like, there's nothing you can do. When that wave hits you, you're gonna do what that wave wants you to do for a little while.

• 1:42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:40Jocko Willink?

  And sometimes when it's bad, like you're gonna get hit with a wave, wave, wave. You can barely even tell you come up for breath, you're getting hit again.

• 1:42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:47Jocko Willink?

  And that's what it feels like. It feels like and and the other weird thing is you can be, you can go from one extreme emotion to another in in a minute. You can be laughing and that laughter can trigger thoughts that make you sad and you get hit with a wave.

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:06Jocko Willink?

  And one thing, and I think this is important is that.

• 1:43:12Jocko Willink?

  You know, you know, when I've talked about like the the person that's in a turmoil in their heads in a cloud of like a storm cloud and no matter where they look, they they just can't see, they don't see that there's a way out and anyone that's standing on the outside can see like, no, come on, just walk over here, just just get away from that storm cloud, you can do it. But when they're standing in the middle, they don't even know which way to walk. So they just stand there and they just sit in the storm cloud and they think that they're never gonna get out and it's the it's the initial feeling after loss is like, oh. This isn't gonna go away. And what I'm telling you is i- it's going to. And there's a certain level of guilt. Of like, wait a second, how can I be not thinking about, I just didn't think about, you know, this person for five minutes.

• 1:43:57Jocko Willink?

  I'm a, I'm horrible. It's like, no. You have to process this.

• 1:44:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:02Jocko Willink?

  And no one wants you to dwell on this. No one. They never want you to forget, but they don't want you to dwell as well. There's a dichotomy in that. And that, that's why, you know, obviously it's heartbreaking to get that note. But. Hopefully, you know, that, that recognition. That those waves are gonna subside eventually. There's, you're still gonna get hit with some of them. But.

• 1:44:32Jocko Willink?

  They are. And it's okay that you're gonna, that they're not gonna be there.

• 1:44:42Jocko Willink?

  Rough.

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, for sure.

• 1:44:46Jocko Willink?

  But. You know, when I, when I wrote. Mikey and the Dragons. I. I have the, you know, the king dies, right? The king, you, you don't know him, but the king is dead. And there's certain people, you know, I, I figured if, if. I actually thought to myself, like, well, do I really wanna talk about death? And there's also, there's a couple of lines where the dragons wanna kill you, you know, the dragons wanna kill, right? There's a couple of times where I was thinking, well, do I, you know, this is a kid's book. But here's the deal. There's little kids that's parents dies, that grandparents die. I mean, those, the death is a real, death is a hundred percent part of life. And you gotta learn, you gotta learn how to deal with that.

• 1:45:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:29Jocko Willink?

  Or else there's gonna be, you know, and I'm not saying you gotta dive into it with a little kid.

• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:45:35Jocko Willink?

  But you have to at least, they have to hear the word. They have to understand that that's a reality.

• 1:45:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:41Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good.

• 1:45:44Speaker 01

  My, I had this video, it was like yesterday or the day before that my wife took of my son. He had a dragon costume on. He's two, by the way. And he's like, oh, I'm gonna go kill daddy. I was like, whoa, kill like, where did he even kind of? And it's the reason I bring that up, cuz dragons that are ready to kill, right?

• 1:46:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the line.

• 1:46:05Speaker 01

  Mike is in Mike and the Dragon. Cuz that's kinda how you feel, you know, even though you don't know, as a kid, however old, whatever, you don't know what the magnitude of that is, but you know, you know, like, well, what are you scared of? Whatever, the unknown, sure, but you're scared of the monster in the closet. Why are you scared of him? Not cuz he's gonna bore you to death with bad jokes or something. He's gonna kill you. That's what you're scared of, you know, kinda thing, as even if you're six years old, kinda thing. So, yeah, man, makes sense, for sure.

• 1:46:34Jocko Willink?

  And, and even, think about, you kill a bug, right?

• 1:46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:39Jocko Willink?

  Like a little kid, they kill a bug, they're eating a chicken. That chicken was alive, and now it's dead, you're eating it, right? The death is a real thing.

• 1:46:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:48Jocko Willink?

  And you have to, you have to, you have to deal with it, you know? And like I said, we don't have a great protocol. And I know we talked, we joked about making a protocol for breaking up with a girlfriend.

• 1:46:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit more lighthearted, for sure, but it's something.

• 1:47:02Jocko Willink?

  But I'll tell you what, hey, you talk about lighthearted breaking up with a girlfriend. Think about the tragic situations you've seen unfold from somebody breaking up with their girlfriend, or breaking up with their boyfriend. It's, it's horrible. And there should be a protocol. And there should be a protocol for, hey, lost a loved one, here's the protocol. Here's what I'm gonna do. And you know what part of that protocol should be? You write a letter to that person and you explain what I just said. That is a real, uh, that, that will clear a lot out of you. It will bring you in touch with that person again, it'll give you permission from them

• 1:47:46Jocko Willink?

  to, to go and do what you're supposed to, you have to. They want that, you know they want that.

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz I'm like, it kinda feels like, hey, I'm gonna go, I don't know, I'm gonna go.

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  Back to school or something like that. It's kinda like, whoa, how can you think about going back to school when you're,

• 1:48:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  You know, when you, when this just happened kinda thing. That's what you feel like, you know?

• 1:48:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  But yeah, on the other side, it's kinda like, no, yeah, you should, that would, that's, that's what they would want you to do kinda thing. It doesn't feel like that, but when you kinda step back and be like, wait, it does kinda feel like that.

• 1:48:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  You know, if you can see, just see fit to see it that way.

• 1:48:25Jocko Willink?

  Rough. Well, to those out there, hey, um, stay strong.

• 1:48:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:32Jocko Willink?

  Live your life.

• 1:48:34Speaker 01

  Cool. Well, we can talk about Origin, you know, it is a rough transition. Bear with me.

• 1:48:40Jocko Willink?

  Well, well, we're talking about living and living well.

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:48:42Jocko Willink?

  We wanna live well.

• 1:48:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:44Jocko Willink?

  We wanna move forward.

• 1:48:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So, is jujitsu part of your life? That's a question you can ask yourself.

• 1:48:53Jocko Willink?

  There's no way, there's no good way to do that.

• 1:48:55Speaker 01

  I know, man. I know. I'm just saying, hey, okay, look, Origin, look, originmaine.com. This is where you get your gi if you still need a gi, or if you want a new gi, go ahead, get it from Origin. It's the best. They're the best and they're made in America. They're not necessarily the best because they're made in America.

• 1:49:10Jocko Willink?

  You're going for it, aren't you?

• 1:49:11Speaker 01

  They're great. No, I'm telling, I'm reminding myself why I really like Origin gees. Cause I just busted one out the other day.

• 1:49:18Jocko Willink?

  I was, no, I was thinking you're really going for it. You're like, okay. When I, I was thinking as you were doing that, I was like, hey, I'm sitting here telling people like, hey, sometimes you gotta, you know, you gotta move on. And we were literally having a hard time moving on.

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  Until I just.

• 1:49:32Jocko Willink?

  From just simply talking about.

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:34Jocko Willink?

  This, talking about a little loss of a loved one and you're just like, okay, we're gonna move on.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:49:40Jocko Willink?

  And you just laughed.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:49:42Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no. I'm saying that in a positive way.

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:49:45Jocko Willink?

  Like you got to.

• 1:49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, this situation, you know, you, you got me talking about jujitsu. You know, I just trained yesterday. So it's like, you know, you kinda get.

• 1:49:55Jocko Willink?

  You're feeling good about that one.

• 1:49:56Speaker 01

  I feel good about that one. It's true. Yes. Which is what jujitsu does, by the way.

• 1:50:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that's, that's another thing. It's like, you gotta move on.

• 1:50:07Jocko Willink?

  You gotta, you got, you're gonna go through a rough transition, but like you said, you gotta look at your kid and be like, okay, we, you gotta go back to school, but what about, you know, what about my sister? What about my brother? What about grandma? Whatever? Whoever died? Yeah, that's part of life is death and we gotta move on. We're gonna go.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:27Jocko Willink?

  And then they're gonna reference Echo Charles transition, a rough transition to talking about.

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  Jujitsu gees. Yeah. All right.

• 1:50:36Jocko Willink?

  But you see this? I'm smiling. So you know what I mean?

• 1:50:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:39Jocko Willink?

  It's a positive thing.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:50:40Jocko Willink?

  You're bringing me out. That, the reason we started doing the, the, the long extended support was to kind of decompress. I remember there was some, the, the first time, I think it might've been a podcast number 12. No, no, it wasn't. I don't know what podcast it was where I was like, I need a break.

• 1:51:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:51:01Jocko Willink?

  I just need to, like, you need to talk for a little while.

• 1:51:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I remember that.

• 1:51:05Jocko Willink?

  Stupid and lighthearted.

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  Uh huh. Thanks for, yeah.

• 1:51:08Jocko Willink?

  No, that's, that's a compliment. No, it's not a compliment.

• 1:51:11Speaker 01

  No, especially not at the time.

• 1:51:13Jocko Willink?

  Talk something, but that was the reason.

• 1:51:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:16Jocko Willink?

  Cause there's no way to rough, how do you transition?

• 1:51:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:19Jocko Willink?

  And the other thing you don't want to do is just close on that note, turn off and leave.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:26Jocko Willink?

  That's not cool.

• 1:51:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:27Jocko Willink?

  So there's, there's plenty of people that say, thank you.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:31Jocko Willink?

  For going through the transition and then doing something a little more lighthearted at the end of the podcast.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:40Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:51:41Speaker 01

  Makes sense.

• 1:51:42Jocko Willink?

  I, I support that and we carry on with the tradish.

• 1:51:46Speaker 01

  The tradish. All right.

• 1:51:47Jocko Willink?

  The rough transition.

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  I'm on board. Cool. So back to jujitsu. Makes us feel solid, good, solid, you know, train yesterday. Thought about origin the whole time.

• 1:52:01Speaker 01

  Got after it. Nonetheless, you want to eat gi or rash guard, go to originmaine.com. They have some other cool stuff on there as well. Joggers, if you're into it.

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  T-shirts, if you're into it. Supplements. That you need to get into and this is why. So krill oil, okay, joints, krill oil, super, uh, krill is what it's called. Joint warfare.

• 1:52:26Speaker 01

  Discipline.

• 1:52:27Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. Discipline go.

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  Discipline go. Molk.

• 1:52:32Jocko Willink?

  All right. Discipline go. I'll tell you two minutes. No, I'll tell you thirty seconds. Discipline, cognitive and physical enhancer drink, right? I really like it. I like the way it makes me feel. I, for a living, one of my jobs is to go out and talk to companies and talk about leadership and get in the game and do podcasts. Like I gotta get, you know, mentally in the game.

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:52:59Jocko Willink?

  But going on, talking to a company where I'm gonna be up, you know, on stage for two hours. If I'm pounding some drink beforehand, guess what's gonna happen, you know, forty eight minutes in? I gotta use the restroom. I don't like to use the restroom. That's a sign of weakness.

• 1:53:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:15Jocko Willink?

  So I talked to Pete Bryant. I was like, hey, we need to take what's in discipline and put it in a pill so I could just eat it.

• 1:53:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:22Jocko Willink?

  And, and don't have to use the restroom forty eight minutes after I start talking to a company. That's where Discipline Go came from, and it's awesome.

• 1:53:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:29Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  And not to mention, you don't gotta do the whole, which I don't mind, by the way. I do like the ritual, but the whole, you know, you gotta put in the water and the mix and the whatever, you know, all that stuff. You would just, if you're on the go.

• 1:53:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, there you go. That's why Discipline Go. And, and we actually, speaking of mixing, we are gonna, we have a, we have a discipline in a can coming out.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:51Jocko Willink?

  Which you won't have to mix.

• 1:53:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:53Jocko Willink?

  You'll just crack it open.

• 1:53:55Speaker 01

  Crack it open, man. That's good. Kind of, and then Molk, of course, if you need additional protein, this is the way to get it. Best way to get it. Most pleasurable.

• 1:54:04Jocko Willink?

  The most delicious way to get it.

• 1:54:06Speaker 01

  Delicious way to get it in chocolate.

• 1:54:10Jocko Willink?

  I think a ribeye is, is equally delicious, although it's different, because I'm telling you, this, this makes me mad when I'm on the road and I go get a nice ribeye and I'm totally happy, but I'm not, I'm not totally happy. I'm really, I'm ninety six percent happy, but I want something, I want a little at the end, a little, you know, just to kind of close the deal on my palate. And I want something. Tasty.

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:35Jocko Willink?

  What do they call it savory?

• 1:54:38Speaker 01

  That's like salty, right?

• 1:54:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, what's, oh, I like something sweet then. Yeah, I have the savory ribeye and then I want to close the deal with a little bit of.

• 1:54:49Speaker 01

  But don't, well, if you were like, hey, I want some additional protein. You don't go ribeye because ribeye you get additional protein, additional whatever else nutrients in there, which is cool. But if you just want additional protein, more isolated, we'll say.

• 1:55:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:03Speaker 01

  Boom, get the milk plus the sweet, uh, pleasurable.

• 1:55:08Jocko Willink?

  And, and if you got kids. And it's hard, look, we got a problem in America. I'll just throw it out there. We got kids that are just not eating correct. They're out of shape.

• 1:55:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:19Jocko Willink?

  So what do you do? Well, what you want to get him something that tastes good to eat. What tastes good to eat? Candy bars?

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:25Jocko Willink?

  What else tastes good to eat? Ice cream? What else tastes good to eat? Cheetos?

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:30Jocko Willink?

  Guess what? Those are all bad for you. Go, guess what else tastes good to eat? Warrior kid milk.

• 1:55:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:55:38Jocko Willink?

  Warrior kid milk.

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. To drink, would you say, would you say eat, drink?

• 1:55:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's to drink, but I mean, if you mix it thick, you got yourself a little. It's basically food.

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  Put some coconut shards in there. Right, see, you didn't think about that one. You like that one.

• 1:55:54Jocko Willink?

  Like that one. Coconut shards.

• 1:55:56Speaker 01

  There you go. Warrior kid milk also at origin main dot com. By the way, that's all this stuff.

• 1:56:03Speaker 01

  But we do have a store. We have a store, Jaco's store. Jaco store dot com. If you want to represent the path, wear some shirts more indicative. Directly to the path. Jaco store dot com. Get after it. Discipline equals freedom. I was at twenty four hour fitness. I go there to lift sometimes, maybe once, twice a week. Trainer there in the game, happens to be in the game. Yep. Found out his name is Justin, by the way, firefighter up in San Bernardino.

• 1:56:31Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  Lifts up his train, you know, you have the trainer shirt on, he lifts it up, get after it.

• 1:56:36Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 1:56:37Speaker 01

  Puts it down.

• 1:56:37Jocko Willink?

  Rashgar?

• 1:56:38Speaker 01

  And he goes, good evening. Uh, the shirt. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:43Jocko Willink?

  There's, sometimes people want to represent in a more.

• 1:56:49Speaker 01

  Covert.

• 1:56:50Jocko Willink?

  Covert way.

• 1:56:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, or he, I mean.

• 1:56:52Jocko Willink?

  No, no, what I'm saying is. Defcore.

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:56:57Jocko Willink?

  Like, if you wanna see a, a, a sub, uh, subtle way.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:57:04Jocko Willink?

  This, this shirt that I'm wearing right now can only be, be, can only be PID'd, positively identified by someone that's completely in the game.

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. Yes. Yeah.

• 1:57:17Jocko Willink?

  And you.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:18Jocko Willink?

  As you wear it, you're like, mm hmm. I don't have a reason to.

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's a new level.

• 1:57:23Jocko Willink?

  I got no reason to tell anybody what's up. I know what's up.

• 1:57:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:25Jocko Willink?

  Defcore. Check.

• 1:57:28Speaker 01

  Also.

• 1:57:28Jocko Willink?

  Plus truckers hats.

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:57:31Jocko Willink?

  Or, uh, the other kind of hats.

• 1:57:34Speaker 01

  Flex fit.

• 1:57:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:57:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Equal, equal. Don't, don't discriminate against a flex fit. They're equal. Also hoodies, some beanies on there, some women's stuff on there. It's really good. Yeah. If you wanna represent, choco store dot com. Some good stuff on there. Also, Jaco White Tea. Yeah.

• 1:57:52Jocko Willink?

  Just having some.

• 1:57:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. In the can, preferred by me. But if you like to seep, is it seep or steep?

• 1:57:58Jocko Willink?

  Steep.

• 1:57:59Speaker 01

  Steep. We're sure about that.

• 1:58:01Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:58:02Speaker 01

  Is seep a word? Seeping, like something's seeking, like leaking.

• 1:58:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we're not leaking, we're steeping.

• 1:58:09Jocko Willink?

  Steep.

• 1:58:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Steep, like a steep hill. There's.

• 1:58:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Multiple meanings.

• 1:58:14Speaker 01

  Same, same word. Nonetheless, if you like to steep, the, uh, what do you call the dry, the bags? I don't know the terminology, but.

• 1:58:22Jocko Willink?

  The tea bag.

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  It's good. Tea bag in, in the deal. Yeah. Cold, hot, whatever. Anyway, and you did lift eight thousand pounds. Yeah, it's true. I know I just added that as like a little thing, but it's a big deal. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already on iTunes and Stitcher and Google Play and wherever you listen to podcasts. There's a lot.

• 1:58:41Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. Lot of options out there.

• 1:58:43Speaker 01

  People will email me. I don't know how they give me email of their new podcast app. They say, hey, put your podcast on our app.

• 1:58:50Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't that happen automatically?

• 1:58:51Speaker 01

  Some, yeah. Some, apparently. I, here's the thing, I don't know. Evidently not, cuz they're asking me to do it.

• 1:58:57Jocko Willink?

  And don't forget about the Warrior Kid podcast, of which we just released a couple more, twenty and twenty-one are live. Here, some questions for Uncle Jake and here's some stories from Uncle Jake, him explaining how he got his values in life through stories. Also got YouTube.

• 1:59:18Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget about YouTube. YouTube is where you can see this video of this podcast. And then you can see cool videos from Echo Charles that he makes on his computer thing.

• 1:59:34Jocko Willink?

  And you can check his style and give him feedback if he went too far.

• 1:59:43Jocko Willink?

  I think there's, there's some videos that violate good taste.

• 1:59:47Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:59:47Jocko Willink?

  There's only one really.

• 1:59:48Speaker 01

  Well, it is Christmas.

• 1:59:51Jocko Willink?

  Don't.

• 1:59:51Speaker 01

  Christmas is coming up. I'm gonna release, I'm gonna repost it. I'm gonna remind everyone.

• 1:59:57Jocko Willink?

  Is that still live?

• 1:59:59Speaker 01

  Oh, it's live. Been live. In fact, people have been contacting me, say they appreciate it.

• 2:00:04Jocko Willink?

  Where's that Warpath? It's a Warpath, is it called a Warpath Christmas video?

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  It's called Warpath.

• 2:00:09Jocko Willink?

  You need to indicate. What's the other one called? Revised?

• 2:00:12Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 2:00:13Jocko Willink?

  Cause then you made a good one. A one without.

• 2:00:15Speaker 01

  We'll just say one with different, uh, music, some slight variation. Anyway, thanks, bro. For, you know, saying that. Nonetheless.

• 2:00:26Jocko Willink?

  That, well, that song is right up there with your podcast table.

• 2:00:32Speaker 01

  Alright, noted.

• 2:00:34Jocko Willink?

  Just saying, just saying. And then there's Psychological Warfare, which is an album with tracks in it. Kinda help you get through some rough moments of weakness.

• 2:00:41Speaker 01

  More than kind of.

• 2:00:43Jocko Willink?

  Help you a lot. Hundred percent proven by Echo. Who's, has moments of weakness.

• 2:00:47Speaker 01

  I have moments of weakness for sure.

• 2:00:48Jocko Willink?

  He overcomes them.

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially with the stuff you're talking about. I mean, yeah, not so much with the eating donuts thing, but like waking up or getting up, like, you know, that's a, I have a deep history waking up. If I don't have to wake up for something specific, like, you know how you'll be like, hey, I gotta get up, cause I gotta.

• 2:01:07Jocko Willink?

  I can't even remember what it's like to have my eyes open up in the morning and not feel the, the fire of just like, not, I'm not talking, I'm not talking like, I'm not trying to say I wake up in the morning, I have this internal fire. I'm talking about the heat from external sources of things I gotta do.

• 2:01:28Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:01:30Jocko Willink?

  So, I'm glad that you, the connoisseur of comfort, Echo Charles.

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:01:35Jocko Willink?

  Often wake up and say, hmm.

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know.

• 2:01:41Jocko Willink?

  All is good. Aloha, world.

• 2:01:45Speaker 01

  Well, thanks for helping me. How about that? And skipping workouts too. Thanks for helping me with that. Not skipping, postponing. That's the problem. Postponing workouts. Skipping a workout. No, that's a psycho thing. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna not do it.

• 2:01:59Jocko Willink?

  If you don't do a workout, it doesn't get postponed, it just got skipped.

• 2:02:02Speaker 01

  No, but well, yeah, no, it does get postponed. Cause look, if I'm gonna do X movement, this, you know, if I'm gonna do the, you know, and I'm gonna run.

• 2:02:09Jocko Willink?

  Does it happen the same day?

• 2:02:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:02:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay, then you lost it. It's gone. Can't get it back.

• 2:02:14Speaker 01

  Okay, I get it. Actually, you're right. Cause look, my workout goes day one, day two, day three, day four, day five. Like in days, it's by day is what I'm saying. So if I skip.

• 2:02:23Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna make a book of your workout. How's that?

• 2:02:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. I have, I have all the, every, I have, I made it a long time ago. I used to give it to my friends.

• 2:02:29Jocko Willink?

  The name of the book is going to be How to Get Jacked with seven As in the Jacked.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 2:02:38Jocko Willink?

  Who's not gonna buy that? How to Get Jacked by Echo Charles.

• 2:02:41Speaker 01

  Nobody. Everyone's gonna buy it, apparently.

• 2:02:43Jocko Willink?

  It's.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  Nonetheless.

• 2:02:45Jocko Willink?

  Kettlebell curls.

• 2:02:45Speaker 01

  Back to.

• 2:02:46Jocko Willink?

  Barbell curls. Sandbag curls.

• 2:02:49Speaker 01

  If you do day two on day three, you skip day two. You went to day three just because you reformulated the movements on day three. Doesn't, doesn't negate the fact that you skipped it. That's what I'm saying.

• 2:02:58Jocko Willink?

  No skipping workout.

• 2:02:59Speaker 01

  No skipping workout. You won't do it anymore. Psychological warfare. Also, speaking of workouts, improve, vary up your workout with Onnit stuff. Go to Onnit.com slash Jaco. Get the kettlebells. It was on the yes, day before yesterday. No, yesterday. Got some socks and some other cool items. I need a rope though.

• 2:03:18Jocko Willink?

  Get one.

• 2:03:18Speaker 01

  I will.

• 2:03:20Jocko Willink?

  And if you're getting things, get a book called Mikey and the Dragons. How's it being reviewed in your fam?

• 2:03:27Speaker 01

  Reviewed?

• 2:03:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, what's this, what's the?

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  Oh, like, is it good?

• 2:03:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, my daughter uses lines from Mikey and the Dragon. Yeah.

• 2:03:36Jocko Willink?

  Jamie just sent me a video of her daughter getting ready to go get a shot.

• 2:03:42Speaker 01

  I saw that. Yeah. I watched that video with my daughter too. We both enjoyed it.

• 2:03:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Talking about, she's gonna be brave.

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:49Jocko Willink?

  Actually, she says, I'm gonna be pretty brave. I thought that was, that was pretty cute.

• 2:03:53Speaker 01

  No, she goes, I was scared last time, but, but I'm, this time I'm gonna be brave, pretty much.

• 2:04:00Jocko Willink?

  But she's there. I mean,

• 2:04:01Speaker 01

  It's a story of my life.

• 2:04:02Jocko Willink?

  I forget how old she is, but she's talking about Mikey and the dragons. Like you can understand this. You can understand that how you can overcome your fears. Mikey and the dragons. Sorry, it was out of stock, but we in stock now, boy. We got plenty of stock. So order one for you. Order one for be like Sarah and order 10. Be like Andrew Paul and order 20. Yeah, I, I think it was Sarah was making fun of my math. The, the Jaco math is like, oh, Andrew's gonna order one. Sarah's gonna order one. Echo will order one. When it's really like, oh, Sarah's gonna order 10. You wonder why we went out of stock.

• 2:04:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:36Jocko Willink?

  Anyways, we are fully in stock now. We will not be out of stock again. So Mikey and the dragons, get some and way the warrior kid. Both way the warrior kid, one and two. Number two is called Mark's mission. Number three is coming out in the spring. I will get it up for preorder. And believe me, I understand now why we preorder books. I kind of made that mistake with Mikey and the dragons. You all please preorder when I put it up so that I know how many I'm gonna print or at least a decent estimate. And I'll, I'll take Sarah's order and multiply it times 10. I'll set aside 10 for her and 20 for Andrew Paul and everybody else that ordered stacks of those books. So appreciate it. Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual.

• 2:05:22Jocko Willink?

  How to get after it.

• 2:05:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:05:24Jocko Willink?

  New Year's. Everyone's on their big rev- was it resolution? Revolution?

• 2:05:29Speaker 01

  Both, yes.

• 2:05:30Jocko Willink?

  Let's do a new year's revolution.

• 2:05:31Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 2:05:32Jocko Willink?

  Oppose the discipline. Cause you can't just say, well, tomorrow I'm gonna, you know, on January 1st, I'm gonna change it. No, today.

• 2:05:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, between now and then I'm gonna keep slacking or whatever. That's kind of what you're saying. That is what you're saying.

• 2:05:45Jocko Willink?

  Long way of slacking too.

• 2:05:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:47Jocko Willink?

  You can just get in the game right now. Extreme ownership, obviously reference that a bunch today. And get the dichotomy of leadership so that you don't just get one perspective and forget about the dichotomy. You need the dichotomy. In your world as a leader. Echelon Front, that's my leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. We will come into your company, assess and align your team so that they dominate. Go to echelonfront.com for details.

• 2:06:21Speaker 01

  Yes, also the muster. Twenty nineteen musters, I will say twenty nineteen, Chicago, Denver and Sydney, Australia. Jocko will be at all of them.

• 2:06:32Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I will. I will. I will be live and I will be getting. And they've all sold out. So you're thinking, well, you know, I'll just, I'll wait and see.

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, don't wait and see.

• 2:06:42Speaker 01

  Didn't work out.

• 2:06:44Jocko Willink?

  We are doing a podcast live.

• 2:06:48Speaker 01

  Live podcast.

• 2:06:49Jocko Willink?

  In New York City, January ninth, I will post the tickets as soon as they're available. If you haven't seen them yet, check my, what is it? Social media platforms.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  Instagram, Twitter.

• 2:07:05Jocko Willink?

  Twitter.

• 2:07:09Jocko Willink?

  So you set that date aside. It's a Wednesday night. It's in New York City. It's in a nice cinema or nice.

• 2:07:16Speaker 01

  Theater.

• 2:07:17Jocko Willink?

  Theater with, it has the red velvet seats, right?

• 2:07:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, indicative.

• 2:07:23Jocko Willink?

  Now, you know, sometimes people say like, did you ever think you'd be a children's author? Or they'll say like, hey, did you ever think you'd be, you know, speaking to groups? And I'm always like, whatever. I don't know. I'm like, maybe I like writing. But if they said, hey, would you ever think you're going to be speaking in a symphony hall with red velvet seats? I'd say.

• 2:07:46Jocko Willink?

  But I am, and so are you.

• 2:07:48Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:07:48Jocko Willink?

  Whether you like it or not. So there's that. Here's something new. EF online.

• 2:07:54Jocko Willink?

  EF online, so.

• 2:07:57Jocko Willink?

  I guess I have to explain a little bit. We have the muster. We have the echelon front where we go and work with companies. At the muster, you travel and you go and it is a pretty high price point. Some companies have a lot of people. Some people have smaller budgets as we recognize. Some companies asked us, hey, we want you to train everyone in our company. We have 150,000 employees and they're located dispersed around the globe. Can you get that done for us? This is one of those things where it's like, no, I can't. We can't get to 150,000 people in a, in a, in a short enough period of time that it has the impact we want to deliver.

• 2:08:40Jocko Willink?

  So with all that, how do we overcome this barrier? We go to technology. So we've created online leadership training course. It's called EF online. It's going to be available through direct consumer. If somebody will just want, like for instance, let's say you can't go to the muster for whatever reason. This is a virtual, I guess it's a virtual muster. Yeah. Or it's, it's a, it's a similar simulation. That's like, um, yeah, that's what it is. The original idea for me was you go to the muster without having to go. Right. You get that information. You get that interactivity without actually having to go

• 2:09:22Jocko Willink?

  to the muster. So there you go. EF online. And we made it for individuals. We also have it for enterprise. So we're, we're now getting it. We already have it with our clients. They're stoked on it. And so efonline.com. It's going to be available to the masses. New Year's Day, January 1st, 2019. And of course, there's EF Overwatch where we are connecting proven leaders from spec ops and combat aviation to companies in the civilian sector that need combat proven and tested leaders, experienced leaders to come in into their organization with the principles

• 2:10:05Jocko Willink?

  of extreme ownership, with the principles of the dichotomy of leadership and helping them lead and win. That's efoverwatch.com. Whether you're a talent seeker or a career seeker.

• 2:10:18Jocko Willink?

  We are there for you. And if you want to continue communicating with us, we can be found and we can be communicated with on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on -

• 2:10:34Jocko Willink?

  Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And finally, thanks to all our folks out there in uniform. That includes, of course, our military that protects us from foreign threats and here at home, our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics and EMTs, correctional officers, Border Patrol, and all other first responders that keep us safe from evildoers and sometimes they keep us safe from the wrath of nature itself. And everyone else out there. Life can be hard and one of the hardest things that life can put you through is death.

• 2:11:16Jocko Willink?

  Death of someone you care about. And when that happens, it is a reminder to all of us that the clock is ticking every day. And every day that we have here is precious. So when death visits upon your life and tries to rip you apart and drown you in those waves of sorrow, don't let it. Drive on. Drive on and live on. For those that you have lost and live your life to

• 2:11:57Jocko Willink?

  the utmost by getting out there every day. And getting after it. And until next time. This is Echo and Jaco. Out.