Jocko Underground: If You Think Tension Is Bad, You Might Be Wrong

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Tension is a form of balance. Can loyalty get in the way of your personal success? Making successful career decisions. The "Tell them I told you to do it" approach. Nerdy with allergies. Should I start Jiu Jitsu and Lifting weights? What to do if you wife has given up on you and you want to get her back. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast number 104, sitting here with Echo Charles, EC in the house, post Jiu Jitsu.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Sure, yes.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  How was it today?

• 0:09Speaker 01

  It was good today.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  Good?

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Good today. Um, a lot of ups, a lot of downs, you know?

• 0:13Jocko Willink?

  But, net?

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Net, net, good. We're there. It was, it was one of those days where you feel like going, when you're going in, because let's face it, some days you're like, oh, I don't feel like good, but today I felt like good. See, but, and you know, I haven't seen a lot of the guys for a while.

• 0:32Jocko Willink?

  And then, you know, there's a, good rolls.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Good, great rolls today, yeah.

• 0:37Jocko Willink?

  There's a, uh, a, a time, period, for me, and it's like, two rounds deep.

• 0:48Jocko Willink?

  I'm sweating, I'm warm, feeling the Jiu Jitsu in my body.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Slowly, yeah.

• 0:55Jocko Willink?

  And then, maybe seven rounds later, six rounds later,

• 1:02Jocko Willink?

  now it's like, now everything's just like sweat everywhere and everything's slippery.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06Jocko Willink?

  But that time period, those middle rounds, it's like probably about six rounds.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13Jocko Willink?

  Where you feel like you're not thinking about anything, and it's just, this is the Jiu Jitsu.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  You're kind of just freaking in there.

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  What is it? Slap, bump, roll. It's just like, who's next?

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Frick, I was talking to some bros the other day in training, after training, you know, the post-training freaking debrief of life, you know, kind of thing? And he was talking about work and work, you know, can be stressful sometimes. He works down at the border. And, you know, it's like stressful sometimes. He was like, bro, but I need like, I need this Jiu Jitsu. And I was like, bro, I was thinking about that. So, then this is why, I know why. There's probably a million more reasons why, but let's say I'm stressed at work, at home, or whatever, right? And it's all, it's, and so when an incident happens that stresses you out, or that makes you mad, we'll say, and, or both, and it goes in your brain, you don't remember the incident from moment to moment to moment to moment. It just leaves you with this thing in your brain that's like stress, or piss off, I'm pissed off, or whatever.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  And then you forget about it, but that feeling of piss off or whatever stress remains there, because it's like association, right? You know why it's there if you have to reference it. But you just hold the feeling.

• 2:17Jocko Willink?

  And you're mad at everything now.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Right, because that feeling is driving your overall mood, overall state, we'll say. So you got that. So you get one thing happen, two things happen, five things happen at work, one thing happen at home, two things happen on the street, all this stuff, and now your brain has all these little stress patches on your brain. And you know which each little one, you can reference them, but they're not constant, it's just a little stress patch on your brain.

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  It's compounding, compounding anger and frustration.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Exactly, right. Now you get to jujitsu. I roll with Jocko, I roll with Wes, I roll with whoever, I don't care, I'll roll with a white belt, a lower belt, I don't know, whatever. This guy's trying to choke me. So all that, that compounding stress or whatever, you kinda have to push that aside. Because this is a new stress, a new very acute stress that takes its place. Jocko trying to choke me, well, I better, I better do something about that. And have the opportunity and capability to do something about that most of the time. Right? So I gotta deal with that stress. Jocko trying to pass my guard, I'm getting tired, freaking. All the stress that comes with the, the, the jujitsu round, right? You get one, you get two rounds, you get three rounds.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, all those little stress patches that were, they gotta get pushed aside. We don't have time, your brain doesn't have time for that kind of stuff because Jocko's trying to choke me right now. Or I'm choking Jocko. See what I'm saying?

• 3:39Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, this is the way it works.

• 3:45Jocko Willink?

  Trying to choke Jocko.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  We are trying, and that trying, it creates a certain kind of stress, good, bad, whatever you wanna call it, but it's there. It takes precedent over all these little stress patches that were in your brain because they're slowly getting pushed, pushed aside. You can't think about what happened at home, at work, or whatever, while I'm trying to defend this choke. It's hard, it's very hard to think about that kind of stuff. And in fact, I can't even feel the feeling that that stuff created. Because I'm feeling the feeling of Jocko trying to choke me, me trying to defend, me trying to pass his guard, me trying to do all this other stuff. Me being tired, his sweat dripping in my eye, me slipping on the mat, like, all this stuff is taking precedent over all of that stuff. And after a while, all that stuff is gone.

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, that's the big thing. It's, it's, it gets, it gets removed from the system.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Now, here's another thing.

• 4:29Jocko Willink?

  Picture this, picture this, you were gonna, um, you were eating dinner. And you had, uh...

• 4:36Jocko Willink?

  Meat, you know steak on your plate. And then you get done with your steak and now you put salad on on the same plate. But there was like juice and blood and like whatever.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:47Jocko Willink?

  And now your salad's got some of that left in it, right?

• 4:51Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of like what's going on day to day. So when you do jujitsu, that plate's getting cleaned.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Getting cleaned.

• 4:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  And this and here's the good thing and you're right about it being cleaned because all those we'll call them stress patches, they get pushed aside and actually at the end of the, if you do one, two, three rounds, they get pushed out of your brain.

• 5:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  They're like, you can choose to remember them later. You can if you want, but that's later, whatever. Forget about that right now. Now they got replaced with.

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  By the way, you have to literally choose because they won't creep back in like they're gone.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Right. That it takes effort for them to especially to reengage like the way that they were. But anyway, forget about that for right now. So now, because they got replaced with the stress of Jocko trying to choke me, me trying to make choke him before the round ends and the string and the string and all this stress of a round of or two, three, four, five, six, 10 rounds of jujitsu, all that stress replaced the stress patches, right? Replaced them. Here's the magic part of jujitsu. Once the 10 rounds are over, you're done for the day. All that stress disappears too. Jocko's no longer trying to pass my guard. That's all a memory. I'm not tired anymore. I'm recovering.

• 5:54Jocko Willink?

  Wait, have I ever have I ever stayed in your head even when you left the match?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  That's a whole different story. That's a whole different story. So it's saying this whole different conversation. But I'm saying the the stress of you trying to pass my guard is not there because you're not trying to pass my guard. That was the round we did. That's not happening anymore. Me trying to choke you, that's not in my in my brain anymore because that's done with. It's not currently going on, so it's not leaving me with any feelings. Now, if you want to evaluate your performance and you get, you know, your you have goals attached to jujitsu, that's a whole different thing. But I'm saying that's why jujitsu eliminates the stress.

• 6:25Jocko Willink?

  Because you sent me, you sent me a meme the other day. And it was a cat that was driving a vehicle. And there was music playing and he kind of looked. Uh, but the the caption was when you leave jujitsu after getting tapped out by everybody.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Everybody, yeah.

• 6:44Jocko Willink?

  And you said it was a deep, like there was meaning.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Brett, there's layers to that thing. And this is it's that is like one of the funnier ones. And I was like.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  It has a lot to do with how the cat looks and just he's just going about his business, but you can tell he has an internal struggle. That's like the look on his face, but he's still, it's really funny. It's me leaving the gym after I get tapped out from everybody. It's just like, yeah, it's freaking funny. But yes, hey, that's real too. But that's a different kind of stress. Like, no one's really, I mean, unless you have jujitsu goals that you're very attached to, which is a thing, I get it. But unless you're like that, you leaving the gym, I don't care if you get tapped out by everybody. You don't care. You feel way better. It's way better than the stress of life. I'll tell you that. Jiu-jitsu is just, jiu-jitsu is just for fun. And you know, even when you get tapped out by everyone, which I have before, I've gone to jiu-jitsu and got tapped out by everybody before. When I leave, the feeling of that is way better.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Because there's so many good things that like, you know overtly, that came from it. So it's, yeah, it's different. I mean, yeah, it sucks that freaking, yeah, it sucks even tapped out by you a bunch of times, and then the text message reinforcing, remember when I tapped you out today? I'll freaking all night. Yeah, that sucks. But, you know, whatever. Just some fun, dude, for sure.

• 7:57Jocko Willink?

  Check. All right. Well, there's a little jujitsu, unexpected jujitsu intro.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  That's real.

• 8:02Jocko Willink?

  From your patch, stress patch free brain. I'm glad, glad to hear about that. I was thinking, also, it's a little bit from jujitsu, but tension. Even what we're talking about is tension. And what I want to say, I think oftentimes, people, they don't like tension. They think tension is bad. And I wanted to say, in many cases, tension is not bad. It's actually, in a lot of cases, good. Let me give you an example. You're shooting a pistol. One of the ways that they teach how to shoot a pistol, is they call it the push-pull method. Have you ever heard of that? So you, your dominant hand is pushing, and your support hand is pulling. So you create this like dynamic

• 8:46Jocko Willink?

  tension on your weapon. Jujitsu, which we just talked about, you're creating tension. But you have a hook and you have a frame, right? I'm holding your neck, but I also have a crowbar in your, I also have my forearm in your shoulder. So there's a dynamic tension. There's a tension there. You can't get away from me, but you can't come closer. I want to keep you there.

• 9:09Jocko Willink?

  I want to keep you in the right spot. I do that. If I let go my hook, you walk away. If I let go my frame, you smash me. I gotta have those, both those forces acting at the same time. People on teams will have tension as well. You have the person that's a big risk taker versus the person that's conservative. Right? Look, we should just, we should just go and execute this thing. Well, hold on, we need to consider, you see what I'm saying? There's a tension there. The micromanager, it's like, we need to make sure that we're tracking everything that they're doing. Versus the hands off person, they could just kind of do what they want. There's going to be a tension there. The person that's detail oriented, like, we need to make sure we run the numbers on this. Versus the person that's like big picture oriented. That's like, well, we'll be good.

• 9:52Jocko Willink?

  There's strategic approaches that have tension. Right? Uh, you got one person saying, look, we need to keep the price down. You got another person saying, we gotta keep the quality up. Those are, there's tension between those two.

• 10:08Jocko Willink?

  In the SEAL teams, speed versus security. You can either go fast, but we have less security. But sometimes we say our security is our speed. But there's a tension. Someone's like, hey dude, we should not, we, we need to set up uh, security over there before we bound across that thing. Someone else is like, hey dude, while we're setting up security, we could already be across. So there's a natural tension there. There's a natural tension, high margin versus high volume. Right? We just need to sell as much as we can. No, we need to sell stuff with a higher margin. High quality, high margin, or like low quality, high volume.

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  Long-term versus short-term. All day. There's a tension between those two things in business and life.

• 10:51Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and then even within a company, you can have departments and divisions that there's tensions between. SEAL Team Three Task Unit Bruiser, tension between Charlie Platoon and Delta Platoon. There's a tension, a natural tension. In a normal company, you get tension between sales and operations or tension between sales and marketing. There's tension between these things. And this is the thing.

• 11:20Jocko Willink?

  These things are okay and these things are normal. And, and actually, I think they're beneficial because in that tension, you find balance and you find solutions.

• 11:33Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing as leaders. We are balancing these opposing forces. Did I say dichotomy? Maybe. But that's what, that's what we are doing. We are balancing the tension between sales and operations, between quality versus cost, between speed versus security. We are balancing these things. And I would say, as a leader, lean a little bit into the underdog. You know what I mean? Just to make sure that it's being heard, it's being understood. Lean a little bit, like, let's support the underdog a little bit. Don't go overboard. Don't lean too hard. But lean a little bit to make sure that you're, that there's enough tension on the underdog. You know, kind of

• 12:18Jocko Willink?

  root for the underdog a little bit. You know, if, if sales has these real dynamic personalities and operations doesn't, and they kind of are like winning the argument, lean, let's figure, let's, let's support. Let's, let's balance out that tension a little bit. So that's what we're doing. We are constantly balancing these tensions and we're utilizing tension. Unfortunately, like I said, people often see tension as bad. And, and that causes problems because what we're trying to do. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jockounderground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this, we're

• 13:03Jocko Willink?

  doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control. And we're doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you.

• 13:29Jocko Willink?

  More control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So, thank you. It's jockounderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.