003 Jocko Manual: You Must Accept it. And.. Don't Accept it.

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Some things in life you just need to accept... fully. But some things, DON'T ACCEPT. 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 manual podcast number three. Musashi, the sword fighter. He's got a quote, "Accept everything just the way it is."

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  And he's got an adjacent quote.

• 0:15Jocko Willink?

  "Truth is not what you want it to be, it is what it is. And you must bend to its power or live a lie."

• 0:26Jocko Willink?

  So we have to accept things.

• 0:29Jocko Willink?

  And I like those statements from Musashi. I believe those statements from Musashi. I support those statements from Musashi. And I have spent a decent amount of time backing them up, right? And probably the premier case I have of that was when I talk about Jim Searlsley and Louis Pollard Jr., right? Jim Searlsley was wounded in Vietnam, lost both of his legs, just below the hip, lost one arm. And he was able to thrive in his life. And the other counter example is Louis Pollard Jr., who was also severely wounded, lost both of his legs, had severe damage to his hands.

• 1:16Jocko Willink?

  But he did not thrive. He struggled with alcohol. He just struggled in a bunch of different categories. And he eventually spiraled down and killed himself. And when we talked to Jim Searlsley, they had been roommates, or not roommates, but they were both in rehab at the same time. And Jim Searlsley had completely followed Musashi's advice and just accepted the situation he was in.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  And he said that Louis Pollard Jr. didn't quite get there. He didn't quite get there.

• 1:54Jocko Willink?

  So we have to accept things. That you have to, and in fact, I even, even from a leadership perspective. Like people get in a bad situation and they try and ignore it. They try and act like it's something that it's not. It's like, no, actually you're losing money. Or you're out of money. Or your product is failing. Or whatever the case may be. And people will, I don't know if, I just like, no, no, no, no, no. Actually, this is the situation. You have to accept it.

• 2:25Jocko Willink?

  And once you accept it. Now we can start. Doing a good assessment of the true circumstances. You're not going to waste any time fighting things that you can't change. Right? It's going to allow you. To faster adapt to whatever the situation is.

• 2:45Jocko Willink?

  It's going to help you be responsive instead of reactive. It's going to reduce.

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  Frustration. And anxiety, because you get frustrated when you can't change the thing. You think it can be changed, you think it's not the thing and it is.

• 3:05Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 3:08Jocko Willink?

  You have to. Accept things and this will also, believe it or not, this will also give you the ability to say good.

• 3:16Jocko Willink?

  In bad situations, to look at the situation and say, oh. This is a problem. Things didn't go the way I expected. I'm out of money. My employees are leaving. No one likes my product. Good. Now I can make adjustments. Good, now I don't have to try that same product again. Good. Now I can tighten up my budget, right? It gives you the ability.

• 3:43Jocko Willink?

  To. Try and figure out what good is going to come from the situation that you're in.

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 3:52Jocko Willink?

  As a rule.

• 3:55Jocko Willink?

  Like Musashi says. You have to accept things. The way they are. Just the way they are. Got to accept it.

• 4:06Jocko Willink?

  But, and this is, it's, it's so bizarre to have these totally contrary views, right? To say you have to accept things, but there are things that you do not have to accept.

• 4:26Jocko Willink?

  There are situations that occur where you have to find another way.

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  I think a great example of this is Ernest Shackleton, who was on his ship. The Endurance was crushed by, this is a book that we have never covered on the podcast. And I've always said I would cover it on the podcast, but first I'm going to cover another expedition, which is the Greeley Expedition, which went to the North Pole, or attempted to go to the North Pole. And they ran into problems and they were caught in ice and they completely like did not succeed. And they, there's reports of cannibalism, they killed each other, like it was, it was the opposite of Shackleton. You know Shackleton was this incredible leader, but he did not accept the situation that they were in.

• 5:15Jocko Willink?

  Like their, their ship gets crushed by ice, there's 27 men stranded, they abandon the ship. They take whatever they can, they live on these like ice flows. But then the ice starts to break up and finally they take the lifeboats, they, they paddle the lifeboats and sail the lifeboats to this place called Elephant Island. And then Shackleton and five, again, this is all just, I'm not accepting this. I'm not accepting that are, that we're going to die because our ice, because our vessel's trapped. We're going to get out and we're going to set up business on these ice flows. Oh, those things are cracking and breaking up and sinking. Cool. We're not going to accept that. We're going to get in these lifeboats, we're going to, we're going to get somewhere. Oh, we're going to get to this Elephant Island.

• 5:56Jocko Willink?

  Once we get to Elephant Island, unoccupied, oh, what are we going to do there? Die? No. We're going to, we're going to set up camp, we're going to start working, we're starting hunting, we're going to make things work. And by the way, eventually Shackleton's going to say, you know what? I'm going to go get us help.

• 6:10Jocko Willink?

  And he's gonna go 800 miles in a freaking lifeboat.

• 6:16Jocko Willink?

  And once he gets to a place called South Georgia, he lands, but there's no one there. So he has to cross this mountainous, unmapped, uncharted terrain and get to an old whaling town. A little whaling station, not even a town, a little whaling station and convince people that, hey, we need to go rescue these 20, whatever, 20 guys are left on this elephant island. And he organizes the rescue. And they go and save everybody. And everyone survives.

• 6:49Jocko Willink?

  So there's like 14 times when, you know, all the situation is, we're all gonna die. And he said, no.

• 7:00Jocko Willink?

  So

• 7:04Jocko Willink?

  there are times when you are going to be caught off guard. Things are going to occur that you don't expect, that you don't like, you're gonna fall short.

• 7:15Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna hit an obstacle that you didn't expect. That's gonna happen.

• 7:22Jocko Willink?

  And although Musashi says, you gotta accept everything just the way it is. Sometimes you gotta say, no, I don't accept that. And this is something that you pointed out that I do.

• 7:35Jocko Willink?

  Don't accept it.

• 7:37Jocko Willink?

  There are times where you have to say, no, I'm not gonna accept this. I'm gonna do something different.

• 7:43Jocko Willink?

  And then it's very important to be able to take a step back and detach and and reassess the situation.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  Reassess the situation that you're in. And assess the path and assess your goal and assess your resources and find a freaking way.

• 8:05Jocko Willink?

  You have to do that.

• 8:09Jocko Willink?

  But what's difficult about this in life is you have to be able to discern which is which.

• 8:18Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's what you have to do. And in order to do that, you have to get out of procedural memory mode. You have to remove your unconscious habit. You have to take away your behavioral inertia.

• 8:35Jocko Willink?

  And you have to go into manual mode. Because you can look at a big obstacle and say, "I'll never be able to get over that." Because you've never made it over that obstacle before.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:44Jocko Willink?

  And you're used to that.

• 8:48Jocko Willink?

  And if that's the way you operate, you're not going to make the changes that are required.

• 8:55Jocko Willink?

  So you have to switch into manual mode. You have to decide, actively decide what you need to accept because something is truly unchangeable. And you're going to have to change your course. You're going to have to change your being.

• 9:17Jocko Willink?

  Or you're going to have to figure out what you need to reject. What things you will not accept.

• 9:27Jocko Willink?

  And then you've got to impose your will, or you've got to open your mind. Which are, again, these are two opposite things. "I'm going to impose my will, and I need to get through it." Or, "Open my mind, say, "Wait, how can I get around this? How can I avoid this?"

• 9:43Jocko Willink?

  But both those options are there.

• 9:47Jocko Willink?

  And if you allow your, your behavioral inertia just to guide your life, you, you're, there's going to be things that you're just going to, you're just going to accept. And you're just going to go with what happens.

• 10:04Jocko Willink?

  And there's gonna be opportunities where you could have rejected things that were occurring in your life and you don't, you just accept them.

• 10:14Jocko Willink?

  And that's not good.

• 10:17Jocko Willink?

  That is not good.

• 10:20Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes you have to stand up and say, no, I don't freaking accept this thing.

• 10:26Jocko Willink?

  It's not happening.

• 10:30Jocko Willink?

  Watch this.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yep, you're, uh, that was the, especially when you, when we actually talked about it, I always felt this. Cause remember, you know, the part of the cannon, right? One, that one day we were rolling and, and jujitsu, we're training, you know, it got, it didn't get heated, but it kind of got heated. And then I

• 10:50Jocko Willink?

  You and me?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a long time ago. They got, put it this way, you know, there's

• 10:54Jocko Willink?

  Good roll.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  It was a good roll and started to get escalated as far as like intensity, we'll say. And then, um, I, my knee

• 11:01Jocko Willink?

  Did you want to fight me?

• 11:01Speaker 01

  No, no, no, not, not mentally or emotionally, just kind of a physical, you know, good roll. This is all like, and my knee hit you in the face. Not the kind like glad, like it hit you in the face. So enough, it was hard. Yeah, I felt it on me. So I stopped, you know, you stopped the roll out of courtesy, you know, like, hey, oh shit, are you good? Like, you know, whatever. And you're, and you looked at me like, and you said, what, what happened? Like as if you didn't feel it, which I said, of course you felt it, but I saw, I saw what you were doing. I was like, ooh, that is some cool shit.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  If I can use this, and it didn't really like, like gel with me, but I always remembered that where I'm like, oh, I see what you're doing, but it's like, but you know how useful that is? If you can do that to yourself, you know, where, and then like later on, like years later, which was more on the recent side of things. Where we like, bro, you know who you are? It's sort of, it was like now that you're like older, we'll say for lack of a better term. I said, you don't accept like certain stuff, you know, like this. Okay. So this idea, this old idea of being over the hill. You know that right? Or it's like, yeah, I'm over the hill. So I'm gonna spend less time doing X, Y, Z, or whatever, you know, kind of a thing. But a big part of that is just kind of giving up, you know, on yourself, you know, kind of a thing like accepting like, oh yeah, I can't, um, you know,

• 12:22Speaker 01

  I, I, I can't work out as often as I could before, whether it because I'm physically, I physically gave up. Or because like my schedules and my responsibilities are a little bit more, you know, more robust nowadays. So I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna give up on this other thing. Where it's like, oh Brad, you don't have to accept that. You can still do that stuff. If you, if you, um, yeah, if you don't accept that, you know, and if that's like your normal way of doing it, you'd be surprised what you can do.

• 12:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And there's, there's a little, it's, it's, it's like a little psychological trick too. Because let's face it, you're going to get older.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Hundred percent.

• 13:01Jocko Willink?

  But to just accept that without like scrapping.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, bro.

• 13:09Jocko Willink?

  Like, don't do that, man. And you're gonna, you know, you might have something happen in your life and your world. It's like, hmm, you, maybe it's a, maybe it's a battle that you're going to lose.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:20Jocko Willink?

  But doesn't mean you have to accept it. Doesn't mean you have to roll over.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:24Jocko Willink?

  And listen, are there some things in life where, you know, you're gonna lose your business because you screwed up and you're in the hole and you're upside down, you owe a bunch of people and you, you try and hang on as best you can, right? And at a certain point you go, you know what? This is not working. And you, you're better off just to walk away. Does that happen? Of course it does. But there's also situations, you, you ever notice, you ever been in a, um, I was rolling with a dude the other day and I had him in a, in a, like a Cobra choke.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:51Jocko Willink?

  And I was like stabilized, you know, just fully stabilized, stabilized. And, and he ended up tapping, but it was like, it was like when, when he did, and he goes, dude, I was just. Like he was like hanging on, right? And I almost let go. You know what I mean? Cause it's just, well, I mean, is he gonna tap? I'm wasting strength. I need to improve my position. So that's, that stuff happens where it's like, if I can hold on just a little bit longer, just a little bit longer, you never know what's gonna change.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:26Jocko Willink?

  So, but if you just accept, and same thing like that guy, if he held on a little bit longer, I might've let go.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:31Jocko Willink?

  Now I know that I was stabilized. But you know, you're stabilized, you're like, oh, I'm not, not going anywhere. So, but if he held on, maybe I'm like, mm, now I'm starting to get like, maybe I start to lose position a little, whatever the case may be. So how long can you actually just hold on? You ever, you know, there's stories about people in boxing. I think there's one with Muhammad Ali, and I forget who it was. He was saying, hey, cut my gloves off. I'm done. And whoever's corner man is like, no, you go, you're gonna keep going. And then the other guy didn't answer the bell.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, those Hicks and that happened Hicks into, remember it was Zulu, I think?

• 15:07Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that happened with him?

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, that's right. Like, I can't do it, I can't do it. And then finally, finally got convinced or whatever. And the guy couldn't get up.

• 15:16Jocko Willink?

  So you hold on just a little bit longer.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 15:19Jocko Willink?

  Just hold on a little bit longer. They're freaking hurting too.

• 15:24Jocko Willink?

  But that's, this is just fighting, man. This is life. And sometimes you just gotta not accept these things. Just don't accept them.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is what it feels, seems like the differentiator is be, between like accepting things the way they are, like Musashi. That's like facts in the moment. You know, like where if it's like, hey, like we're losing money. We lost money again today. That's a fact. So you gotta accept that. Don't turn your back to these things like now, but don't accept the future. You know, this potential future, don't just start accepting the negative parts of it. Is you saying it's like, it's like a?

• 15:59Speaker 01

  The course of the, what do you call the path of least resistance, almost kind of a thing where it's like, well, you know, I lifted today. I did, uh, let's say I did shoulder press today and I couldn't get my normal 10 reps is what I deal with from time to time. And shit, I only got like nine and I was kind of struggling. Well, I'm 48 now, so I guess, you know, that's not really, that's not really for me anymore. You know, it's like I'm over the hill and I just accept it. No, nope. No, this is what I'm gonna accept. I accepted the fact that I only got nine today. I'm gonna accept that as it is, but I don't accept the fact that that's my fate. See what I'm saying? My, that's a, that's a potential future. So it's like, yeah, if you don't accept the negative potential, you know, downhill potential future, whatever, I feel like

• 16:42Speaker 01

  that's where you can succeed. That's where you can, um, yeah, change that, that trajectory, or sorry, keep the successful trajectory regardless of that painful day.

• 16:53Jocko Willink?

  To sum up what you're saying, accept your circumstances, but don't accept your fate.

• 17:01Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing. You've got to be in manual mode to discern those things. You have to be in manual mode to discern those things. You have to consciously think about that. Accept your circumstances. This is where you're at, but don't accept your fate. Fight it. That's all we've got for tonight. And if you want to support, you can go to JacoFuel.com, OriginUSA.com, JacoStore.com, or EchelonFront.com. Thanks for listening. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko, out.