530: The 8 Life Lessons to Keep Your Head Above Water. With Andy Stumpf

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Throughout his 17-year career, Andy executed hundreds of combat operations throughout the world in support of the Global War on Terror. He was medically retired in June of 2013. His awards and decorations include 5 Bronze Star Medals (Four with Valor), the Purple Heart, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, The Navy and Marine Corp Commendation Medal with Valor, Three Navy and Marine Corp Achievement Medals, Two Combat Action Ribbons, and the presidential Unit Citation. 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 530 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. If you're ever given the choice between being ambushed or ambushing someone else, go with the latter. It is infinitely more enjoyable. When you are ambushed, you're often caught unprepared and in an environment that favors your enemy. Fear in these situations is normal. If we can agree that fear will be present, it is no longer a question of whether or not you will be afraid. The question becomes whether you are going to allow it to control you, or are you going to control it? When you are ambushed, the single most dangerous thing that you can do is remain in place and do nothing. If you do, your enemy is bound to maneuver on you and destroy you.

• 0:44Jocko Willink?

  The likeliest way to sustain your life and to turn the tables on your enemy is to maneuver. When you maneuver, you change the angles on your enemy, you change the geometry of the problem, and you start forcing them to react. In a perfect tactical world, you would maneuver, flank, and destroy your enemy. The first step in that sequence is the most critical, and it answers the question I have received countless times, "How do I get started?" The answer? You move. And that right there is an excerpt from a new incredible book called Drowned Proof, Drowned Proof: Eight Life Lessons to Keep Your Head Above Water, is written by my brother and

• 1:27Jocko Willink?

  retired SEAL Andy Stumpf. And our paths crossed briefly while we were both in the teams, and we actually got to know each other more once we both retired. Andy was one of the first guests on this podcast. I don't know if you know that Andy. You were guest number 12. I counted it out.

• 1:44Andy Stumpf?

  I thought it was like episode 64.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  You were episode 64, but I used to just read books more. And then eventually I started getting the people that wrote the books on, which turned into-

• 1:53Andy Stumpf?

  That's a good call.

• 1:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Eventually started his own podcast. Oh yeah, that's episode 64. So if you want to hear a bunch of background about, you know, Andy and his time in the Navy and whatnot, you can check out episode 64. But eventually he started his own podcast, Cleared Hot Podcast, and he's now also an author. And this new book, like I said, it's called Drowned Proof, and it was an honor for me to be able to write the foreword for the book. Incredibly taxing on my mind to try and figure out how to make you look good.

• 2:23Andy Stumpf?

  Is there a more difficult task?

• 2:25Jocko Willink?

  But no, truly awesome to be able to do that and honored to have you back here again. After a nine year hiatus. Yes, nine year, nine years from podcast 64 till now is nine years.

• 2:37Andy Stumpf?

  I would have guessed five tops.

• 2:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it goes by quick, man.

• 2:41Andy Stumpf?

  Wow. Okay.

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:43Andy Stumpf?

  We should probably get together more often.

• 2:45Jocko Willink?

  Well, we've seen each other at hunt camp. We've seen each other jujitsu stuff. We've seen each other other random things, but we just never got down and recorded again.

• 2:52Andy Stumpf?

  Wow.

• 2:52Jocko Willink?

  Didn't I do? I did your podcast.

• 2:54Andy Stumpf?

  Once in origin. Yeah, we were out there at the origin.

• 2:56Jocko Willink?

  Yep. I think I recorded one with you here too, at the gym at some.

• 2:59Andy Stumpf?

  You did for one of my episodes. Yeah.

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  Yep. So there you go. So we've done it. Yeah. But anyways, welcome back. Uh, why'd you write a book?

• 3:08Andy Stumpf?

  Man, first off, I think what you wrote, I probably just cut and pasted that out of your book. It sounds super similar to things that you would say. It's almost like there's a lot of lessons that a lot of people from our community learn. It's a different way of expressing it. Uh, I have been asked that question a lot recently because I have talked a very voluminous amount of smack about seal authors in my younger days and said that I would never write one. The honest answer to that is Mike Glover tricked me into it. And nobody believes me, but I finally had him back on my show and he admitted to it. We were supposed to do a collaboration.

• 3:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, by the way, I can confirm this because you guys talked to me about it.

• 3:45Andy Stumpf?

  Yes.

• 3:46Jocko Willink?

  You guys talked to me like, hey, we want to write a book. And I was like, cool, you know?

• 3:49Andy Stumpf?

  And this was his idea?

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Whatever guidance I may or may not have given, but like, yeah, I totally remember getting on a phone call with you two. Yep. You're, you're going to write a book and you had your take on what it was going to be. And you're both going to eat, write like, you know, half the chapters.

• 4:03Andy Stumpf?

  Couple of chapters. We had a date on the calendar where we were going to come together and compare our work. And I came prepared to share my work and Mike showed up and said, yeah, I didn't write.

• 4:17Andy Stumpf?

  He was talking about coming up to Montana and spending time. He's like, he's just like gonna just go full Hemingway and like have an owl on his shoulder and smoke a pipe and like just be out, you know, watching the sunrise and set and riding. Zero words. He, so he had found though, and I, so this was my first time doing anything like this. And I still don't even necessarily understand the full process yet because it's not even out yet. That's, what do they call that? An arc?

• 4:41Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Advanced Reader's Copy.

• 4:43Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah. Are the, are the hard covers bigger than that? Or is that the size of the book?

• 4:47Jocko Willink?

  Uh, might be a little bit bigger, but it's pretty much, this is pretty accurate to what it's gonna be.

• 4:51Andy Stumpf?

  Again, highlighting, I have absolutely no idea about this process. So he found somebody who takes an idea and turns it into a PDF document. And the guy was, thankfully paid him five grand. Awesome document. And then Mike had found a literary agent who takes it to publishers. Our friend Mark over at St. Martin's was one of the recipients of those. And when I showed up and had my sections, Mike was like, hey, you've already gotten some stuff written. Just hand it over to the guy, let him create a pitch. Maybe it'll be something. So I said, okay, because I think I had 45,000 words written. I really enjoyed writing it, actually. Hand it over to the guy. He created that document, handed it over to Esther, the agent, who shopped it around and Mark came back. And I actually talked to you on the phone as I was speaking with Mark because he's like, yeah, I do Jocko stuff. I'm like, hold on, I don't want to talk

• 5:36Andy Stumpf?

  to you anymore. Jocko, what's the story with this guy? Like, straight to the source. And that's how it came about. But it wasn't my idea. It was legitimately going to be this collaboration. And we didn't really know how we were going to do it. Like, he would write in italicized or bold, or some way to, to form the two in there. So yeah, as with everything in my life, not, not my idea.

• 5:55Jocko Willink?

  Had he already written?

• 5:57Andy Stumpf?

  Prepared was already out.

• 5:58Jocko Willink?

  So this was gonna be his sex. We kind of knew what he should have been getting into.

• 6:02Andy Stumpf?

  I am convinced he 100% reverse engineered this with never having any intent whatsoever to write a single word.

• 6:10Jocko Willink?

  And then did you go full Hemingway and have an owl on your shoulder or whatever?

• 6:15Andy Stumpf?

  They're hard to catch. No, um, I, so how did this go? I talked with Mark. They agreed that they wanted to do the book. It wasn't finished yet, though. I signed a contract that I very briefly looked over and don't even necessarily understand what's in it. Um, but there was a date associated when you have to have the manuscript in. So I kind of reversed engineer it from that, but I would only write stuff when I wanted to. And I would take a couple of weeks off in between, maybe 500 words or like maybe 1500 on a good day, but I would usually in the mornings and then just put it away. And I, and I did it over a couple of months. I didn't find it to be hard at all. It wasn't easy by any stretch, but the process I didn't find to be laborious.

• 6:54Jocko Willink?

  And you had written before, cause you had that.

• 6:56Andy Stumpf?

  In the blog.

• 6:56Jocko Willink?

  Confessions of an idiot.

• 6:58Andy Stumpf?

  So aptly titled.

• 6:59Jocko Willink?

  Is that thing still around?

• 7:00Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, I never took you down.

• 7:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 7:02Andy Stumpf?

  Only cause I don't know how, but.

• 7:03Jocko Willink?

  And you had good, you had good writing in there. You know, clearly you're a articulate guy and your writing looked like that for sure. So.

• 7:10Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, that's, yeah, the very first time I was actually on your show, you read one of the blog posts from that, which was the first thing I think I did publicly after getting out of the military.

• 7:19Jocko Willink?

  Was right.

• 7:20Andy Stumpf?

  Was right. But then it, the blogs and then, uh, the podcast for me is a quicker medium. I, I enjoy writing, but I can't do it quickly. I'll often kind of vomit stuff out and then I go back and I trim stuff away from that, which takes time. Whereas you know, you can sit down and have a multi-hour conversation and.

• 7:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Podcasting is definitely incredible. It's all, there's a, I guess the negative to that is that you can just, pretty much anyone can make a podcast tomorrow and you have to sort through like, if it's worth listening to or not. And that can be a, a challenge.

• 7:49Andy Stumpf?

  Is it though? I think you can tell.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I guess you can tell. They rise to the top. But it is weird how some people just think, oh, well, I'll just make a podcast and they think they're gonna be talking like Joe Rogan, you know? Oh, I can sit down and talk to people like Joe Rogan does. They don't realize what the hell Joe Rogan is doing. It's.

• 8:03Andy Stumpf?

  Well, after they've worked through their family and friends, they realize how am I gonna do this? So at guest number six, they go, oh boy, this is a little bit harder than I thought. And I have an episode that's due out on Monday and I don't have anybody. So end of podcasting journey.

• 8:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, cool. All right. Well, um, let's get into this book here. Um, I'm just jumping.

• 8:24Andy Stumpf?

  Just as a disclaimer, the foreword is probably the most fictional section. I paid Jocko, I still owe him some Bitcoin for the kind things that he said.

• 8:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, highlights of the, of the foreword.

• 8:34Andy Stumpf?

  Oh, boy.

• 8:35Jocko Willink?

  No, I'm not gonna read the highlights of the foreword. Um, other than to say, you know, the story that I told is true. It's like I was in charge of trade at and we were, you know, we get like a little package of who's going through the training and I'm looking at all the, you know, normal guys and I see like this dude who's, you know, came from, uh, the special missions unit, been wounded in combat, combat experience. Uh, we, it, and had gone up through the ranks and I'm like, okay, this could be awesome.

• 9:01Andy Stumpf?

  Poor guy.

• 9:02Jocko Willink?

  This could also be terrible. And they know that's exactly what I wrote in the forward because I had dealt with guys that what, you know, within the SEAL teams, you get some guys that got some massive egos and it, it can suck. Generally speaking, it's cool. Generally speaking, guys like, yep, I get it. But you know, definitely I'm like, oh, I hope he's one of the guys that is cool. Because if it's not, it's always just turns into a gut check. But sure enough, you were totally humble and cool and like listened and were on board with what we were doing and helped guys out. You weren't a dick to people, which is, I might be surprising for some people to hear.

• 9:32Andy Stumpf?

  Shocking.

• 9:33Jocko Willink?

  But, uh, but yeah, you were just super cool, super humble. Despite all the experience you had, you, you were a, a real value, not only to the guys that you were working with, but like the trade at guys as well were. So I thought that was the most impressive thing about you was the fact that you didn't think you were all that impressive.

• 9:48Andy Stumpf?

  I was trying to figure out how to be an officer.

• 9:50Jocko Willink?

  That's true too.

• 9:50Andy Stumpf?

  I never got out of the new guy cycle my entire career.

• 9:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Andy Stumpf?

  I mean, I got, you know, most E5 with a machine gun, let's just be clear, best job on earth. Little to no responsibility other than to not kill your friends or people that you're with. And then, I mean, I picked up O1 after E6 and then got out as an O3E. I mean, that is complete middle of the road. From a leadership perspective, your entire career.

• 10:13Jocko Willink?

  Did you do an LPO slot?

• 10:15Andy Stumpf?

  The reason I became an LDO.

• 10:17Jocko Willink?

  No, LPO. Did you do an LPO slot?

• 10:19Andy Stumpf?

  Well, the reason I went to the LDO program is that when I got hurt overseas, I was on my LPO tour, which they counted as incomplete. So when my package went to the chief's board, two years in a row, it got swiped off the table. And a guy finally called me. He's like, clearly you're not supposed to share this information, but I saw what happened to your record. It wasn't even looked at because the LPO, for people who don't know, like E6, E7 is the big enlisted jump in the Navy. You have to have done your leading petty officer tour, or you're not even eligible.

• 10:47Jocko Willink?

  Dude.

• 10:48Andy Stumpf?

  So it got swiped off and I'm like, I don't. And I was at second phase where a new LPO had just started and for sure duty, that's 24 months. So I would have had to wait for that to get into that role, to do it for 24 months, to put my package in the next cycle, assuming that it lined up. So five more years of like spinning my tires. So I was like, how about all of you can call me sir?

• 11:12Andy Stumpf?

  I found this art like antiquated program, which I don't think is even optional anymore.

• 11:16Jocko Willink?

  That's not.

• 11:17Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, that didn't. That didn't require a college degree because spoiler alert, I do not have one. And put in for it and got picked up on the first look.

• 11:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was similar in the fact that I couldn't make rank as an E dog. Back in the old days when you were competing against the fleet. And so I got, I got E four out of buds, merit or whatever, not meritorious, but like automatic E four out of buds. I got capped to E five and then I was, I was watching like my friends, my peer group was getting advanced and I'm like, shit. And I looked around and I was like, well, and plus I had worked for a, an officer that was a prior enlisted guy and he was the best guy ever. And so I was like, oh, that, that would be a cool thing to do. And so that's, that's what happened to me. But yeah, it was definitely a, an interesting career line for the prior enlisted guys on the officers, when they switch over the officer side. All right, uh, let me get into this book here.

• 12:09Jocko Willink?

  As we were corralling platoon members across the street, the individual who moments before had been in the back of a cop car went directly toward a different bouncer and began another verbal confrontation. By this point, we were at least around the corner of the building from the initial incident and not in the direct line of sight of the officers. But they were less than a hundred feet away. I ended up pulling out a folding knife.

• 12:31Andy Stumpf?

  Spider.

• 12:31Jocko Willink?

  These are police officers. These are police officers, by the way. I ended up pulling out a folding knife, holding it against my leg and threatening the bouncer and then running from the police. I don't know how to rate my escape and evasion, but I feel like I put my best foot forward. It involved a sprint down an alley, clearing a razor wire fence that left me with a souvenir on my right hand. I still have to this day hanging from the side of a building, then falling through a tree directly in front of the teammates I had just separated from. What would one likely do after evading the police? What would have been the smart decision in that moment? That's right. Keep drinking at yet another bar. I swapped shirts with a friend. God, this is just freaking classic.

• 13:12Jocko Willink?

  I swapped shirts with a friend, crossed the street and sampled the cold beverages of our newest drinking location. It was a relatively mellow dive bar, but it was tough to relax and enjoy with the lights and sirens of the local police constantly passing by. I guess they were looking for someone. And again, I'm just reading little excerpts from this, but you know, typical uh nineties night out for a team guy, a new guy, an idiot, uh which we all were. You end up getting rolled up by the cops. Um, you go to captain's mass. And again, this, this is freaking all in the book and it's, it's all, it's.

• 13:49Jocko Willink?

  I can relate to it, but it's just good to read and it lands. But one of the, one of the things that stuck out with me is you're commanding officer. So you, you're in captain's mast.

• 13:59Andy Stumpf?

  After chief's mast.

• 14:01Jocko Willink?

  After chief's mast.

• 14:02Andy Stumpf?

  XO's mast. Yeah.

• 14:03Jocko Willink?

  It's a total nightmare, but you have on your camouflage uniform, we have our, you know, our name tape and it says US Navy and then it says, you know, Willink or Stumpf. And then above that, there is the most sacred thing to us, which is our trident, especially when you're nineteen, you're how old were you? Nineteen, eighteen?

• 14:23Andy Stumpf?

  Yes. And also I had just been issued said trident six weeks before.

• 14:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah. So this is the thing that you suffer for. It's what you want so badly.

• 14:32Andy Stumpf?

  First trip with my trident.

• 14:35Jocko Willink?

  And so your commanding officer hands you a pair of scissors.

• 14:39Andy Stumpf?

  Slid them. I still remember the sound of the.

• 14:44Jocko Willink?

  Across the table and says, cut your fucking trident off your uniform.

• 14:50Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Jocko Willink?

  God damn dude.

• 14:53Andy Stumpf?

  Not my best moment. Thanks for opening with that one.

• 14:57Andy Stumpf?

  I mean, there's a reason why it's chapter one, but yeah.

• 14:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, what a horrific moment. And you've got to be thinking like you, you're getting kicked out.

• 15:05Andy Stumpf?

  You have ever had those moments where you think other people can hear your heartbeat? Like, I don't know if, I don't know what my game face looked like at that time, but it did that like the is like every, I don't know how many veins people have in their forehead, but I feel like all of them were thoroughly exposed at that time. I thought I was done.

• 15:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 15:21Andy Stumpf?

  I really did.

• 15:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is the nineties. They don't need you.

• 15:24Andy Stumpf?

  He could have easily just said, I'm going to take your NEC instead of, because he didn't, he didn't really take it from me. He didn't let me wear it for six months, which is, and you know as well as I do, that's about as bad anyway. But if I had done anything, Jay walked in that six month time period, gone.

• 15:43Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit to your, kind of your lesson from this. And again,

• 15:48Jocko Willink?

  get the book. There's so many, so many good lessons. It's eight life lessons. It is my hope that no one finds themselves staring over the edge into the abyss with the balance of their life in their or their hopes, dreams and aspirations resting in someone else's hands and judgment. I personally do not think that you need to take it that far to recognize that the first and most critical step in a young man or woman's life is to change their perspective of who they are and the role they play in their own life.

• 16:17Jocko Willink?

  Here's the eureka moment. You are responsible for your behavior. You are responsible for the emotional reactions you have to the things that happen to you. Integrity cannot be outsourced. Until you view yourself as the author of your life, you will be the victim of it. You won't be a participant. You will merely be an observer in what happens to you and around you. So, did you have that clarity? At 19 years old, once you got your trident revoked?

• 16:48Andy Stumpf?

  I almost went into the chief's board with the mentality I had that particular night, which was, it was the cops fault, the bouncer's fault. Anybody but my own. I almost did that. And if I had done that, you and I definitely wouldn't be sitting here because they would have ejected me for sure.

• 17:10Andy Stumpf?

  I look back at that. That was probably the most pivotal moment in my life, shifting who I was and what I wanted to be up until that point. And what I'm about to say, people will say, well, that doesn't sound reasonable. But they've also never walked a mile in a guy's shoes who wanted to be a SEAL since he was 11. Made it through training, made it to a team and is with people that you look at as if they're walking gods. If they would have told me we're gonna go rob a bank, like, can I at least be on the roof with a 60? You know, you're gonna crawl through burning coal. Like, how far do you want to go? Hey, we're all about to get into a bar fight. Okay, like, let's go. And that was the mistake that I made that night. There were so many things that could have stopped that night from happening,

• 17:53Andy Stumpf?

  which I was present for all of them and didn't say anything. Because in my mind, I'm like, I'm the new guy, I'm the youngest guy. It's, I need to do things that these guys will appreciate. And all of that is just like external bullshit, as opposed to looking in the mirror and be like, hey, this isn't correct. You know this isn't correct and you need to do the right thing. And I didn't listen to that voice. It was in my head, but I didn't listen to that voice. And that's what I almost went into the chief's board with, but instead, I went in there with the exact opposite and just owned 100. I think I opened with an apology. I'm sorry, I apologize for bringing a poor light upon the SEAL community. Because it was the late 90s, not as much knowledge about SEALs back then, but,

• 18:35Andy Stumpf?

  you know, the apology of that, like, I'm completely responsible for what happened. This is what I learned from it, and I hope that you guys will give me a chance and an opportunity to show you who I want to be.

• 18:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, very similar to the story of the blue on blue for me. You know, I had my ex, my commanding officer, command master chief, the investigating officer all coming out to like, get a debrief from me and I'm sitting there trying to figure out what I'm gonna say and who I'm gonna blame. And I just felt like nauseatingly sick about, like, why can't I figure out who to blame? Like, there's all these different people that made all these little mistakes, you know? What the hell? Why is this so hard for me? And I was like, oh, jackass, because you're the senior guy and this is on you. And it's funny, I had another friend that was, that got fired from a position in the SEAL teams. And he called me and he's like, hey, I'm getting ready to go to, you know, the big boss. What do I say? And I'm like, you say, I'm sorry that I got fired and I will try and do better.

• 19:31Jocko Willink?

  Here's the mistakes I think I made. And that's it. And that's what he did. And, you know, it worked out for him. But yeah, it's incredible.

• 19:40Jocko Willink?

  How much it hurts to do that, but it also is incredible the way it's received. And I'm sure you in your career, you know, got to see the other end when people did not come in with that attitude. Yeah. Where it was like, you just wanted to freaking slap them upside the head.

• 19:54Andy Stumpf?

  They slid their tridents across the table.

• 19:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they did. Yeah.

• 19:58Andy Stumpf?

  And I thought I would, I mean, it was, it was so funny. The Chiefs board. I was the last, they interviewed everybody in that room. And if, and I'm like standing, you know, there probably my dress blues or something, maybe Cami's, I don't know. And I didn't realize there was a whiteboard off my shoulder. And then they started asking me, because I went through all that. And I, I didn't talk to any of the Chiefs after this, but there was an essence of them, like, not bad, you know, pretty good. Because I look over and a portion of the E and E map is written up. They've been asking the platoon members. So what exactly happened? So then they're like, they started asking me like tactic was like, well, draw where you went over the fence. And I was like, I went over here. Well, how'd you get on the roof? I was like, I climbed this tree up onto a conics box and then jumped on

• 20:42Andy Stumpf?

  the roof. They're like, you know, so one of them was like, super, like, trying to be like, Mike Mayer was one of them, just being a total, just coming at me. But all the other Chiefs were just like, you know, so they would take their turn being pissed, but also at the same time, like, yeah, we get it. And by the end, I had drawn this whole map. They're like, all right, get out of here. I thought I was, I thought I was completely done with it. I go to the interview process for the East Coast. It's this single question that they open with, asked by the Master Chief of the Command. He goes, hey, what happened in Tucson? So I tell the whole story, same thing, what I learned from it, and that I appreciate that it happened. He goes, okay, let's put ourselves back in that situation. But it's me that's the one who is acting out of sorts. What are you gonna do? It's like, oh, that's actually an easy one. Now, I don't care who you are, how much combat experience you have, what rank

• 21:25Andy Stumpf?

  is, I'm gonna grab you and take you home and we're gonna be done with it. It's the last time I ever got asked about it.

• 21:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Squared away.

• 21:35Jocko Willink?

  This is just kind of a continuing thought here. When you wake up, you will realize it doesn't matter if someone's older than you. This is what you just got done saying. It doesn't matter if they're senior didn't rank to you, your mentor, your friend, or your parent. When words need to be spoken, when actions need to be taken, you are the one that needs to be stepped, that needs to step forward. We have control over very little in this world, but make no mistake, you have complete control over yourself and the actions you take. You will never feel ready to take them until you reframe how you see yourself in the world. My path to reframing required handcuffs and scissors. Hopefully, yours does not. So there you go.

• 22:11Andy Stumpf?

  There are other ways, people.

• 22:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this kind of reminds me of the, you know, the, the Mila massacre. So the Mila massacre, you know, these guys are out there with Lieutenant William Kelly, just murdering, raping, mutilating bodies, like to the tune of 500 women and children. And finally, this helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, he's like doing flyovers, they're trying to help out, they're trying to get some people out there. He sees what's happening, actually brings his helicopter in between civilians and US Army guys to protect the civilians, flies back to camp, and is like, hey, there's a massacre going on right now. You need to put a stop to this. And they got on the radio, they called the company out in the field and like, hey,

• 22:56Jocko Willink?

  stop killing people right now. And immediately, they all stopped. And it took one person having the intestinal fortitude to not, to, to, from a detached perspective, tell people to stop. So it's just what you're saying right now. Like, it doesn't matter, you're a new guy, it doesn't matter your, and I'll tell you what, if you're a new guy and you get overridden, at least you tried to freaking speak up. And usually, if you're saying something that makes some semblance of sense, people will go, you know what, this is actually a pretty good call right now. We need to get the hell out of here, or we need to stop what we're doing, or whatever. So that, that idea that one person can step up and really change the, the direction that that group is going. And I always talk about from a leadership perspective,

• 23:40Jocko Willink?

  like, there, there's a mob, you're in charge of a mob. And if you're in the mob, you're going to be having the mob mentality like all of them. And if you... Can detach from the mob and not be a part of it, you're going to be able to be, you're going to actually be able to lead. And it, it comes into play whether we're winning, like, oh, we're winning. Guess what happens when, when the team, when the mob starts winning, everyone gets cocky. We didn't need to work as hard. We don't need to train as much. We don't need to worry about anything. And the leader needs to go, hey, actually, yep, we're doing good. But let's, let's, let's see what we can get better at. Let's, let's make sure we don't get cocky. When the team is losing and the morale's bad and like this sucks, it's the leader that goes, hey, you know what? We had a bad mission last night, but we learned some lessons from it. Here's what we

• 24:22Jocko Willink?

  can do to fix it. So not participating in the mob is a huge part of leadership and being a good human being.

• 24:29Andy Stumpf?

  I don't know. I don't know if you read the inscription. There are no bad leaders, only bad teams. Which is the second book I'm going to write called Extremely Limited Ownership. Chapter two, Leif gave me, the boss didn't tell me that.

• 24:43Jocko Willink?

  My team and then chapter three is my team didn't do what I told them to do.

• 24:47Andy Stumpf?

  How many people do you know late into life though, that have never had that shift in mentality? Where everything, they have no, nothing is in their control, everything, they're just, I, I, I would like to believe had that not happened to me, I would have had that shift where I was on my way to it. For me, that was just a super concrete shift in who I thought I was as a person. I know people in their 50s and 60s who haven't had that yet.

• 25:08Jocko Willink?

  No doubt about it.

• 25:09Andy Stumpf?

  And their life is just, it's like they're under an avalanche of boulders, just getting nuked.

• 25:13Jocko Willink?

  I was talking to a guy a while ago, and he went through his life story, starting with, football coach didn't like me. Wrestling coach wouldn't, wouldn't focus on me. Parents, you know, got divorced. They, it was, it was thing after thing after thing, you know, the ex-wife, it was just everything. What, the reason he ended up where he ended up was because of all these other circumstances. And I'm like, bro, like it hurt to listen. And, you know, when, at a certain point, like you've dug yourself a really deep hole. And I'm not saying you shouldn't, you know, square yourself away and at least start, at least stop digging deeper. But it's, it's hard. You know, people reach a certain point in life where they look around

• 25:54Jocko Willink?

  and it's like, hmm, what am I going to do now? Like, even if I completely do everything right from here on out, I'm barely going to get my head above water, which is a hell of a lot better than not getting your head above water. But it's tough. It just, it's another thing that piles on and makes people continue to blame the world.

• 26:10Jocko Willink?

  Uh, fast forward a little bit.

• 26:13Andy Stumpf?

  Some jujitsu?

• 26:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Six years ago, I started training jujitsu. So you, the first time you came on this podcast, you weren't training.

• 26:20Andy Stumpf?

  When did you break Dudley's neck?

• 26:22Jocko Willink?

  That was, I was well after that.

• 26:23Andy Stumpf?

  Okay. So yeah, I hadn't started because I had just started. I was a white belt and watched you attempt to kill a man for no reason whatsoever.

• 26:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 26:35Andy Stumpf?

  The old hammer fist choke is such a solid too now that I know it.

• 26:38Jocko Willink?

  It's funny too, because like I remember, you know, because I was, I've been training jujitsu for a long time. And I remember you were like just getting started.

• 26:46Andy Stumpf?

  A hundred percent.

• 26:47Jocko Willink?

  And I remember watching you going, oh yeah, I know. He's looking at this like going, hmm, this is puzzling. Like that, like you have a little bit of understanding, but not quite enough to really understand. You just got that like sort of inquisitive look on your face. And I'm like, oh yeah, he's, he's gonna be really hooked on this shit.

• 27:01Andy Stumpf?

  Putting that in the rolodex. Dudley's defense was interesting. It was the bear hug and pull closer, which applies additional pressure to the Adam's apple area.

• 27:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 27:10Andy Stumpf?

  Oh, man.

• 27:11Jocko Willink?

  I wasn't around for when he called you and told you he had cancer.

• 27:15Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah. Did you hear this part, Echo?

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Didn't you say it on Joe Rogan?

• 27:19Andy Stumpf?

  I hope so. Cause I'll say it again on Joe Rogan. I don't even care. Jocko needs to be exposed for attempted murder. Now Dudley thought, he was going to like an ear, nose and throat doctor. He thought he was dying. And you'd hear him on his podcast for months later.

• 27:34Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 27:35Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, he, I did an Ezekiel, uh, Nogi Ezekiel choke on him. And in order to try and defend it, and the thing is also John Dudley's like a stud of an athlete, like.

• 27:45Andy Stumpf?

  And not tiny. Especially then this was before like starvation, John Dudley.

• 27:49Jocko Willink?

  So he, and to try and stop me in his mind, at the, the big mistake, the biggest mistake that I made, and we were talking about this earlier. It's called the delta, right? Is there's a delta between like you and other people. And I didn't even think to explain to him, hey, you know, if you feel like pressure, tap. That's, that's how we tell each other that we're done. I didn't tell him that. I thought, you know, he, he's into UFC. He knows Joe Rogan. Like if you understand what tapping is. And so I put this choke on him and he starts like squeezing me closer, which is literally applying more pressure to the choke. And.

• 28:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it like it made a like a hairline fracture in his hyoid bone.

• 28:31Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 28:32Jocko Willink?

  And as it healed, there was an extra some extra calcium in there. So he was like bothering him. It felt like a tumor. So he calls Andy is like, I'm dying.

• 28:41Jocko Willink?

  And the crazy thing about Dudley is he never said a word to me about it. Like he never over like, and I talked to Dudley like regularly. And he never said like, dude, you know, when you he I didn't find out until we were on your freaking or Dudley's podcast or your podcast.

• 28:54Andy Stumpf?

  It was the three of us and I forced I brought it up. I forced it into the conversation.

• 28:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man.

• 29:00Andy Stumpf?

  Epic. Jiu Jitsu.

• 29:03Jocko Willink?

  So six years ago, I started training Jiu Jitsu. And since that time, I've had heard many coaches that I deeply respect, say that the hardest belt to achieve is your white belt.

• 29:12Andy Stumpf?

  Do you guys tell people that too?

• 29:13Jocko Willink?

  I know that there is a clip of me saying that out there. So this might be directed directly at me. For those unfamiliar with Jiu Jitsu, the belt ranking system, white is the lowest ranking belt, black is the highest, almost no one starts Jujitsu. Almost no one who starts Jiu Jitsu makes it to their black belt, but everyone who walks the door on their first day is going to be handed a white belt. With that being the case, why do coaches say the white belt is the hardest to achieve? Simple. It requires action, not only action, but action into the unknown, action towards something you know, nothing about, something you know, others will be better than you, something you may be afraid of, uncertain about, and with an end state that you may not be able to precisely define. I do agree that walking through the door on the first day and making a commitment to start is difficult.

• 29:59Jocko Willink?

  But the rest of the trope is bullshit and not just for Jiu Jitsu. What is truly hard and the heart and the place where so many people give up is the grind after you start. So there you go. Yeah. And it's and again, I think there's a, you know, what you say is accurate and you know, you're like, yeah, it is. Most people don't even start Jiu Jitsu. Most people don't even start like it's.

• 30:22Andy Stumpf?

  They're repulsed by the idea, like the physical proximity to another human being. Like you put sweat from your body goes into their eye or mouth. I don't want to do that.

• 30:31Jocko Willink?

  Ear.

• 30:31Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah. And also it might get hurt. I'm they're going to try to kill me. They're going to try to break me.

• 30:37Jocko Willink?

  And I'm going to have to submit over and over and over and over again to people that I think I'm better than. Either physically, mentally, spiritually, and it doesn't matter. I'm sorry. I hate to break the news to you. It doesn't matter. You will be submitting.

• 30:55Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 30:56Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and, and you're right, though, like, most people, the jokes in jujitsu are like, oh, you made blue belt cool.

• 31:02Andy Stumpf?

  Black belts.

• 31:03Jocko Willink?

  It was, it was nice knowing you, you know, because when people get their blue belt, they just never train again for, and then the same thing happens with purple belt and the same thing happens with a brown belt where you're kind of getting close.

• 31:13Andy Stumpf?

  I know a guy who quit at brown belt.

• 31:15Jocko Willink?

  Damn, dude.

• 31:16Andy Stumpf?

  I know, and, and we're talking legit 10, 10 years into the process, some time off in between. But I get why people quit at blue belt because they have this, and speaking even from my own experience, when you know nothing, getting to blue belt, you're like triple digit growth. Almost every class you're like, oh, I didn't even know that was an option. I'm now surviving 0.5 seconds longer. And then at blue belt, I think it, it slows a bit, right? And so people's enthusiasm, like you're refining a little bit. It's like, oh, the curriculum is repeating itself now. I'm seeing these things again. Maybe the outcome of the role isn't that, you know, it's just, it's just this trajectory goes lower and lower and lower and lower and lower. Nobody talks about that. It's like, oh, just come in. It's, that's the hardest one. It's like, no.

• 31:59Andy Stumpf?

  You're six years in wondering what the hell is happening to you. That's the hardest part about it.

• 32:04Jocko Willink?

  Would you, did you get addicted day one?

• 32:09Andy Stumpf?

  Uh, I do remember my first class. It was, they were doing takedowns. Takedown defense, actually, we were doing a body lock takedown and the guy who I was partnered with was a purple belt at the time. He's now a two stripe black belt.

• 32:23Andy Stumpf?

  It was, I definitely enjoyed it. I was looking for a physical outlet. Um, and it was just fun and I was, it was really cool just how happy everybody was that they were like laughing and even if stuff didn't go right, they're just like, whatever. They're just laughing about it and there was no rolling at all. So at, at the gym that I train at in SBG, they start with about two to three months, depending on how often you can come in with foundations. So it's exactly that and no live rolling. You don't get introduced to live rolling at, until you join the, uh, the midday or advanced classes. And there is a difference between those two, but I think having an understanding of the alphabet is going to help you write words and sentences and paragraphs later on. So. It wasn't even rolling. It was just, it was fun. It was a physical outlet that I was looking for. Was I addicted to it at that point?

• 33:08Andy Stumpf?

  I don't think so.

• 33:09Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, if you didn't get to roll.

• 33:10Andy Stumpf?

  I didn't.

• 33:10Jocko Willink?

  Then you probably wouldn't get the, the full addiction.

• 33:14Andy Stumpf?

  When I did start getting to roll though, I was like, can you come three times a day?

• 33:20Jocko Willink?

  So that's what it took. Yeah. You know, it's so weird because I was having this conversation with my daughter, Rana, the other day. And we were actually, we were at a competition that she was competing in and we were out for dinner after she weighed in. So it was very glorious for her, uh, because she get to eat. But you know, my, my daughter is totally, and actually all my kids are like totally addicted to jujitsu. And you know, like, like I was talking, my, my oldest daughter was talking about like where she lives and like where she, her whole life is like, well, it depends on the jujitsu there. You know, it's all about jujitsu and where you can train and, and I was, you know, and my middle daughter like trains, you know, all day long and teaches.

• 34:03Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I was just, man, I'm like, isn't it crazy that as much as you love jujitsu right now? I tried to convey that to you when you were a kid and I couldn't, I was not capable of doing it. And in fact, not only did I not.

• 34:18Andy Stumpf?

  The other direction.

• 34:18Jocko Willink?

  I pushed her in the other, and pushed all my kids.

• 34:21Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 34:21Jocko Willink?

  In the other direction because I was so overly enthusiastic and the delta. I've been talking about the delta with Echo earlier today. I mean, like realizing that there's a difference between you and me and you and me and like other people. It's so hard, like I cannot comprehend that you wouldn't understand how beautiful and amazing jujitsu is. So I'm just like, oh, bro, no, just, you gotta do it, man. It's good. And like, that creates the barrier. So as much as someone, as much as you love jujitsu, I couldn't convey to my daughter or, or my other daughter when they were young, like this is the funnest thing you're gonna get to do in your life.

• 35:01Andy Stumpf?

  I wonder if the approach you took had anything to do with that.

• 35:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, a hundred percent, dude. A hundred percent. And you know, we.

• 35:06Andy Stumpf?

  The how matters.

• 35:07Jocko Willink?

  That, that was part of the conversation was because me saying, hey, this is so fun.

• 35:12Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 35:13Jocko Willink?

  And then putting him in a competition against a kid that's 20 pounds heavier and older and better and having them get their ass kicked in front of a bunch of other, you know, in front of a big ass crowd when you're six or seven or eight years old, that shit ain't fun. It ain't fun. And look, there's a small group of people in the world that that is fun. There's like even kids in the world that will go, oh yeah, no, I get it. This is what I want to do. I want to get, I want to be the person that that's humiliating other people. I don't want to get humiliated anymore. But for the most part, man, kids want to have fun. And as much as I said the words fun, the actions were not fun at all.

• 35:50Andy Stumpf?

  I don't think they should actually teach children jujitsu.

• 35:53Jocko Willink?

  What do you think they should teach them?

• 35:54Andy Stumpf?

  I didn't find until I was 40. So that's the starting age for everybody because if you learn how to move on the mats, I can't do anything about that. And it's not fair.

• 36:03Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Kids these days are so good, the next generation, and it's just going to keep getting exponentially better. You know, I really, just when you think some, some mode of jujitsu is kind of topped out, there's, there's always just someone that figures something else out. There's a new way to approach it. There's a new way to do it. There's a, there's another counter to it. So it's just, to me, that's one of the most amazing things about it's like, oh yeah, I, I will still learn something. And I actually feel like the learning curve, because there's so much growth in jujitsu right now, like you can still, I can still go, and I've been training for a long, long, long time, and I'll still go and like learn something that is

• 36:47Jocko Willink?

  kind of shockingly revealing to me where I'm like, oh, that is sick. You know, that is freaking sick right there. Oh.

• 36:54Andy Stumpf?

  Followed up by, why couldn't I figure that out myself over the last two decades? Yeah. What, I'll ask a question and the answer is so ridiculously simple that I question my own intelligence on my drive. I'm like, why wasn't I able to figure that out?

• 37:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that is really bizarre. It's, it is one of those things that it helps to have an instructor so much. And by the way, this right now, you know, your instructor can be YouTube. And you still got to go do the thing.

• 37:20Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, you gotta feel it.

• 37:21Jocko Willink?

  But you can, you can learn a lot from it. Um, and you didn't get. That's actually funny because I've heard you talk about the fact that one of the reasons you didn't get super into jujitsu.

• 37:34Andy Stumpf?

  Probably was because you, I could have started in the nineties and you dorks were so enthusiastic. And anytime I see somebody that enthusiastic about anything, I have an immediate allergic reaction. So yeah, I could probably be, I don't know what it takes to get a coral belt, but I'm gonna say I'd be a coral belt or whatever you would be at right now. Cause I'm sure I would have gotten addicted then, but they were so pumped about it. My only response was, sounds gay.

• 38:02Jocko Willink?

  The funny thing is, I was not, I was very open minded the whole time. Like, I was never like, oh, Brazilian jujitsu is the thing that you need to know only. Like, I never really had that attitude. I knew that it foundationally, like, you better know what the hell this is. But I was always about wrestling, Muay Thai, boxing and jujitsu.

• 38:22Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, it's incomplete by itself.

• 38:23Jocko Willink?

  I've always had that thing. But yeah, there was definitely, like any religious belief, like there's people that would full religion on jujitsu. And there's people that go full religion on, you know, Muay Thai or any other martial art. It's getting less and less now. I think people realize that, man, you gotta just train a lot in a lot of different shit. So, um, what do you like about it now?

• 38:48Andy Stumpf?

  I can't master it. I, uh, you get a black belt and I don't know if you guys have had this experience, people will come up to me and say, hey, how do you do this? I'm like, I don't actually understand the words you just used because I don't know what that is. They're like, but you're a black belt. Don't you know everything? It's like, no, I actually feel like I know way less than when I started almost. And I have more questions than anything. Actually, what I probably spend more time on is fundamentals, not flashy stuff. Not that I don't like the flashy stuff, but I find that solid fundamentals is not the complete answer to things I don't understand, but it's a good starting point, especially when people are like throwing stuff at you you've never seen. Like, go back to something like pretty simple and see if that shuts that down.

• 39:30Jocko Willink?

  The, the black belt, I know that there's areas of jujitsu for people that they're a black belt in. Like for instance, I know there's areas of my game where I am legitimately like a black belt. I can teach it. I understand it fully. I can teach all the offenses, all the setups and all the defenses. And then there's, you know, some other move over here that I can do that with. And there's very few people that are just, oh, no matter what question you bring, I'm going to be able to answer it. That's a pretty rare per- that's like world champ. That's like Dean Lister, Jeff Glover, where they go, oh, no, no, no. Here's what, here's, here's the way you do that. That's what the level you gotta be at.

• 40:06Andy Stumpf?

  And a lot of those people I've found, they might physically be at that level in their game, but they struggle to develop an athlete or to teach that. Very, very often I have found that the same thing is not found in the same person. It's a rarity when you can get both. They can do it and they know it and they can teach it.

• 40:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. That is a, that is a rare gift. And man, you gotta be a little bit like touched if you're that into jujitsu.

• 40:31Andy Stumpf?

  Little tism?

• 40:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Andy Stumpf?

  Little side of a tism at the buffet?

• 40:34Jocko Willink?

  You gotta have a little bit because it's a weird thing to be super into.

• 40:38Andy Stumpf?

  Is it? I mean, you don't have to get creepy with it.

• 40:41Jocko Willink?

  It is a weird thing to be that into. I guess it's a

• 40:45Andy Stumpf?

  You should be into it, but not that into it is what you're saying.

• 40:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, but, but I guess it's

• 40:49Andy Stumpf?

  Like you shouldn't wear your gi when you're walking to class. That one freaks me out. We have some people that do that and they come in like, and they're changed before. I'm like, whoa dude. Did you walk in here in that game? They're like, yeah, a hundred percent. Didn't you have some food? Like, yeah, I stopped at the store on the way. I'm like, oh.

• 41:07Jocko Willink?

  You train mostly gi, no gi or both?

• 41:09Andy Stumpf?

  It doesn't really matter to me. I think, uh, our, my school is more gi than no gi, but I have a deep appreciation for both. And I try to roll in the gi with no gi grips a lot of the time. So I don't become reliant on the door handles that the caller provides.

• 41:21Jocko Willink?

  I've always had a no gi-ish gi game. I mean, but you know, obviously you're going to grab that. You're going to grab that gi sometimes because boy.

• 41:29Andy Stumpf?

  How can you not grab the collar?

• 41:32Andy Stumpf?

  It's right there talking to you.

• 41:34Jocko Willink?

  Uh, fast forward a little bit. Every successful person I know, and I mean every single one had periods of time in their life where they were extremely unbalanced. There was no work-life balance. There was only the grind. I do not suggest anyone live their entire life in that space, but to accomplish the goals that keep you up at night, you will need to embrace periods in your life where you are comfortable being unbalanced. You'll have to prioritize your goals over life experiences. You'll have to prioritize your momentum over time with your friends, family, and loved ones. You're going to have to make difficult decisions and place long-term success over short-term desires. I will be the first to admit that the happiest and most fulfilled I have been in my life is when I have found a true balance. But I would not have achieved what I have and in turn found my way to that balance

• 42:16Jocko Willink?

  without periods of the exact opposite. It takes sacrifice and often mulling over difficult decisions, but along the way you will discover an incredibly powerful business and personal tool that I did not find or perhaps didn't realize the effectiveness of until much later in my own life. This tool is simple, but very difficult to use at first. It is the act of saying no.

• 42:43Jocko Willink?

  People say yes to everything sometimes.

• 42:44Andy Stumpf?

  I used to.

• 42:45Jocko Willink?

  How's that work out?

• 42:47Andy Stumpf?

  Pretty awesome if you want to accomplish nothing.

• 42:49Jocko Willink?

  At what point in your life, at what point in your life were you saying yes to everything?

• 42:53Andy Stumpf?

  Uh, it had come, it was usually economically based. When I would get to a place where I was uncertain of economic stability or what the future would look like. So you get, you talk yourself into, and again, I think this is important too. Are you really in an emergency? Or are you telling yourself that you're in an emergency? Is it really a crisis? Or do you just feel like you're in a crisis because you're emotionally attached to what's going on? I mean, I would say your house being on fire, that is a crisis. Wondering economically about where the next paycheck is going to come from is important, but solvable. Uh, mid 30s, probably.

• 43:27Jocko Willink?

  Were you still in the teams?

• 43:30Andy Stumpf?

  No, because in the teams, I mean, and you know, I think I could probably speak for you here a little bit. The teams is a pretty good example of an unbalanced life. Uh, buds is a great example. The married guys that were in my class going through that, how, what, relationship with significant, like what are you talking about? First platoon, training cycles, deployments, post, like, okay.

• 43:53Andy Stumpf?

  A lot of the recognizability that you and I both have is from our previous job, right? And so you can find your way to this incredibly stable place and build upon that, but it required that instability upfront. So it was almost required. So I would say my time in the team was very unbalanced. Getting out of that in my mid 30s is when I started having more options because dude, you know how awesome it is on the old first and the 15th? You know, the matrix like, oh, the first is on a Monday. I get paid on Friday. No big deal. I've got this completely figured out. Get out of the military. That kind of goes away a little bit, other than your, you know, your pension and benefits, depending on how you get out. And then I, family's growing, right? Multiple kids, quality of life kind of goes up as you start making a little bit more money, uncertainty about that and just

• 44:38Andy Stumpf?

  became, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I can't personally do 50 things very well, but I can do five pretty well. But you have, you have to carve it away. You have to start saying no. And it's hard to do.

• 44:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it is pretty an awesome time period when you're like 19, 20, 21, 22 years old and nothing else in the world matters at all than your platoon.

• 45:00Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah. Or the moment you're in, or whatever it is you are doing in the moment. Like this is actually life and there is nothing beyond this.

• 45:08Jocko Willink?

  Nothing else matters. And yeah, it's just.

• 45:12Andy Stumpf?

  And your parents are like, hey, did you lose my phone number? Like, no, I didn't. Who are you again? Because this is like, you know what I mean? So incredibly unbalanced.

• 45:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 45:22Andy Stumpf?

  But so much, as much as you and I would ever want to try to escape our past, not that I'm saying that we should, the foundation of where we came from is built off of that. Then it helps or it can hurt, you know, depending on how you use it.

• 45:35Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit here. This is from a, from a chapter called, "The Deep End." "In my small social circle, growing up, I was unique in only one way. I knew exactly what I wanted to do from the age of 11. I had one focus and it consumed me. I did not apply myself in school and I think it is fair to say that I scraped by in the educational setting. It did, it just did not interest me. When my peers were studying for the SAT and submitting college applications, I was working or training for my entry into bootcamp and the journey beyond. I dove, I drove headfirst down the path and it wasn't until nine years into that journey that I finally lifted my head."

• 46:14Jocko Willink?

  You know, you, you end up, you're wounded in 2005 and you end up in this like, if I'm unable to continue being a SEAL, what am I going to do with my life? What am I going to become? What do I want to do? It was a truly pivotal moment in my life and I honestly never thought about what my life would look like when I hung up my military uniform and had to redefine who I was. If you allow yourself to be defined by the uniforms you wear or the insignia that sits atop of your uniform, you are going to be in a difficult place when the time comes to hang it up. And that time is coming for us all. I don't care who you are or what you do. There is an expiration date to your usefulness. You will cease to be of value

• 46:53Jocko Willink?

  to the community you are part of and it will move on without you. It is not the community's responsibility to figure out what the next steps are for you when that occurs. It is yours. The more you tie your personal identity to your occupation, the harder that transition will become. I know of so many specimens, specimens of men, absolute legends on the battlefield who are stuck in that transition. They lived their lives in the rearview mirror, unable to let go of who they were and what they used to do and the world passes them by. I had a constant mantra for myself that I used to, as a reminder and an attempt not to get stuck in the same valley I have just described. Being a SEAL is what I did, it was, and will never be who I am.

• 47:40Jocko Willink?

  That's a rough one for people.

• 47:41Andy Stumpf?

  You know, anybody stuck in that valley?

• 47:44Jocko Willink?

  It gets wild, man. It gets wild.

• 47:46Andy Stumpf?

  The longer you're in, I think the more enticing it is. Like the gravity pulls you into that. It's the best thing, I think I told you this the first time I was on, the best thing in hindsight that ever happened to me was getting shot. Because I, I was, remember laying in a hospital bed, asking myself, uh, is this the end? And I had not thought about that. I had not considered since I was, I mean, I had no plan B going into, but somebody asked me the other day, well, what were you going to do if you didn't make it through bus? I'm like, why would you even ask a question like that? What do you mean? There's clearly only one option. Like, well, did you ever think about quitting? Like, no, I had nothing else to do. You know? And that's not a very scalable or what I would recommend people have. But I also wouldn't recommend that plan B is too sexy either. Yeah. Cause of old instructor stumps there's in the middle of the night with a nice cup

• 48:31Andy Stumpf?

  of coffee. We're going to talk about plan B until it's really enticing.

• 48:37Jocko Willink?

  I had a friend who is part of a special operations unit overseas in another country. And he was like thirty something years and he was finally getting ready to retire. And I was giving him like that talk of like, hey, man, you're gonna retire and they're gonna keep going. And you gotta let it go, man. Like, it's not gonna be a part of, it's not gonna be part of your life anymore. And look, you know, it's funny because I talk about, when I read this part of your book, I talk about like when you lose guys, like when you lose your friends, right? And I, what I tell people is like, remember, but don't dwell.

• 49:14Andy Stumpf?

  Yep.

• 49:15Jocko Willink?

  And

• 49:15Andy Stumpf?

  Easier said than done.

• 49:16Jocko Willink?

  It's definitely easier said than done. But if you just dwell on the past, you're not making forward progress. It, it just, it, it's not, it's not good. I'm not saying forget it, but so you want to remember what happened in the past, but you don't want to dwell on it. It's, and that reminded me of this attitude that you're talking about here. Like, look, you and I both spent our adult life and our formative years in the teams. And there's not like, can't walk away, like can't change that. I can't just like,

• 49:48Jocko Willink?

  Men in Black my mind and make all that disappear. Like, no, that stuff happened. It was cool. I had a good time doing it. But to wake up every day and be like, ah, that was, you know, that, that was it. I can't, I can't go back there. You end up like Uncle Rico, right? From Napoleon Dynamite, like, you know, if I would have had that, just that one, one interception in that state finals game, I would, we would have been champion, you know, like, which is a rough place to be. And I get it, man, because it's, you know, I love the teams, like,

• 50:14Andy Stumpf?

  Same.

• 50:15Jocko Willink?

  It's the best and

• 50:17Andy Stumpf?

  Did anybody give you that talk, though, on your way out? Like, hey, or as you were looking at the door of leaving? Like, hey, you might have some identity issues or even earlier on in your career, like, hey, guys, check in with yourself. And I think a warning sign that I've identified now mostly in getting to know a lot of law enforcement people is, is your entire social circle comprised of people that do the exact same thing that you do? That is an early warning sign that when you detach from that job, you're going to struggle because the only people that I knew were team guys because I only spoke team guy, which is English that nobody else understands because we're unique specimens in many different ways. But most guys, when they get out, they will go back to where they came from and their social circle is then now drastically different.

• 51:01Andy Stumpf?

  I think you would be incredibly healthy about, I don't know, say you do 20 year career, but every five years it's like, hey, just so you know, this is going to come to an end. I'm not saying disregard what it is that you're doing, but like check in with yourself. Is your entire identity wrapped up in this? Because even the bullfrog at some point is going to retire. What are you going to do then? I hadn't thought about that a single time until I was laying in a hospital bed in Iraq going, huh? I don't know if I can do this job anymore. And then the second question to that is what are you going to do? I was like, I haven't really thought about that.

• 51:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'd say for me, obviously I didn't have the rude awakening that you had of getting wounded and being like, oh no, you might not be able to physically do this job anymore. I had to come to that conclusion of my own like, hmm, what is it? What does the next 10 years of my life look like if I stay in?

• 51:49Andy Stumpf?

  When did you start asking yourself that though in your career?

• 51:52Jocko Willink?

  So I got home from Ramadi and in 2006 and I went to Trade at. And when I got there, because I hadn't even, I had never ever thought about getting out. Like I'd never thought about it. It was just like, this is what we're doing, you know? It was just the best job ever and this is what I'm doing forever. So I get to Trade at and of course, you know, you start looking at, okay, well, what's next? And I started looking at what's next and man, I realized that there was a long time of. Jobs that didn't appeal to me in a super positive way.

• 52:29Andy Stumpf?

  How dare you talk about a disassociated tour in Germany like that? Or a tour at Africom as the ops officer.

• 52:35Jocko Willink?

  And you know, you and I were talking about this before we hit record, like the career path for an officer is

• 52:41Andy Stumpf?

  It's abrupt.

• 52:42Jocko Willink?

  It's abrupt. And, you know, I had really been as lucky as a human could possibly be with the the tours that I had and the way my career went, you know, like doing deployments as an enlisted guy. And then once the war starts, get to do more deployments. Like I'd been very, very, very lucky. And so now I'm looking at, um, I think the number that I finally put together was it was going to be seven years uh, before I was like in charge of a SEAL team, right?

• 53:12Jocko Willink?

  And meanwhile, my kids didn't know me. Um, some other dude taught my son how to swim. Uh, you know, it was just, it was just, I had to, I had to look around and go, okay, what are, what are we doing here? And so that's, that's why I made that decision, you know, it's just.

• 53:28Andy Stumpf?

  How many years did you, you did got out at your 20?

• 53:31Jocko Willink?

  20, yep.

• 53:31Andy Stumpf?

  How many guys do you know though? And maybe this is more on the enlisted side. They're at 19 years and six months. Like dude, I just started my associate's program. Or my bachelor, I'm just, yeah, I'm just starting online school. I'm like, well, if you said online school, I mean, I know guys who were crushing out degrees that were overseas. Which I didn't have the bandwidth to do, but I would definitely advocate people taking that look up. Um, like I said, it, it changed for me. I always had the sense that this will end. So it got me thinking about the things that I could do.

• 54:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's another thing. Another big mistake that guys make is, um, you know, you, you just think it's going to last forever. And so financially, you're just like, oh, I do need a new Ford F-350 Super Duty, immediately, brand new, off the lot.

• 54:20Andy Stumpf?

  Limited.

• 54:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the Harley Davidson one, right?

• 54:23Andy Stumpf?

  Totally.

• 54:24Jocko Willink?

  Like guys just do the dumbest things financially because you're going to, like you said earlier, it's the first and the 15th. I can cover this. We're going to be good to go. And that is.

• 54:32Andy Stumpf?

  Any loan you want to, like how long you been in the military? What's your contract for? No problem.

• 54:37Jocko Willink?

  We got you.

• 54:37Andy Stumpf?

  17% interest rate. Don't worry, we'll pull that over 37 years for this car.

• 54:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And so I think that's where guys also, because if you do it right, you can do 20 years in the, in the Navy or in the Army and you can a hundred percent, you can a hundred percent retire and never work again.

• 54:54Andy Stumpf?

  Yes.

• 54:55Jocko Willink?

  If you do it right. Uh, the amount of people that I know that actually did it right is probably like, probably like three or four guys.

• 55:01Andy Stumpf?

  Well, I was gonna say zero.

• 55:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it might be zero, but I knew a couple of guys that were pretty savvy.

• 55:05Andy Stumpf?

  I know a couple of guys who are trending in that direction.

• 55:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, you, you know, you take your entire per diem check and just flush it down the toilet.

• 55:16Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah. At the bar of the first night.

• 55:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Day one. And so then you're just tapping into it. It's ridiculous. So you get paid good money and you blow it all because you're young and stupid.

• 55:24Andy Stumpf?

  Then you get reenlistment bonuses.

• 55:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. God.

• 55:27Andy Stumpf?

  I mean, to an E5, I think my first reenlistment bonus was eight. Pretty sure I spent 12.

• 55:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:33Andy Stumpf?

  You know?

• 55:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:33Andy Stumpf?

  But first off, eight was more, I'm like, no one human being has actually ever had.

• 55:36Jocko Willink?

  I am the richest human.

• 55:37Andy Stumpf?

  This much money. I'm gonna go get a pirate ship and bury this somewhere because this is treasure. No, it was gone the next day.

• 55:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's unfortunate. And as much as, you know, uh, when I went to OCS, they had like a full financial class. And of course I was now 28 years old, married and I was kind of a little bit more of an adult. And I was like, oh wow, this stuff is, and I'm looking around the class, not one of these 21 year olds is paying a bit of attention to anything that these people are saying.

• 56:04Andy Stumpf?

  Perfect.

• 56:05Jocko Willink?

  And it's just such a bummer. Uh, so that ties in, you know, that keeps guys in a bad place because when they get out, they don't, they're not prepared for it.

• 56:13Andy Stumpf?

  That's not unique to the military. I've become really close friends with a lot of local law enforcement where I live. I see the parallels there. I see it in federal service. I see it, um, whether, you know, any of the agencies that support, if, if there's a uniform tied to it or some sense of, I guess I'll say status. Man, keep track of it. Do not let it become all that is who you are because that's rough on the end. The trap door is coming.

• 56:40Jocko Willink?

  Um, yeah. And you fast forward a little bit, you talk, you know, you, you were at a strength and conditioning company you were working at?

• 56:48Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, highly litigious strength and conditioning company, questionable morals.

• 56:53Jocko Willink?

  You had a, you had a training role there in the beginning and then you end up in a business role and you're freaking miserable because the leadership sucks. But you're, you kind of got addicted to the money.

• 57:03Andy Stumpf?

  A hundred percent. I call it golden handcuffs. But and this is what you're talking about though. The people who do it right versus the people who do it. I'm not going to say wrong, but differently. Almost everybody I know will define wealth by the amount of money that they make as opposed to looking at the amount of money that they're spending. I know some broke ass millionaires. Cause if you make a million and spend 1.1, I mean, I guess that looks great on the front end, but when you're getting, you know, your assets seized. How's that looking out for you? So I, and you know, I'd get a little bit more money. Let's just have a little bit of lifestyle creep. You know, we do need the new Tahoe. I feel like the leather seats bucket, of course, not bench, because that's pedestrian. You know, I mean, we have, we need to have this. It's got the new entertainment system. And the next thing you know, you're just, you're like bumped right up.

• 57:47Andy Stumpf?

  For so long in my life, I lived like that bumped right up to the edge. And I, and I look back, it was all optional misery, completely optional misery.

• 57:58Jocko Willink?

  I did not do that. I was like,

• 58:03Andy Stumpf?

  You and I, I don't know if you've recognized this yet, are not the same.

• 58:06Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I drove a 19, I drove a 1997 Dodge Grand Caravan with the, with a team issued riggers tape on the door window on the driver's side.

• 58:17Andy Stumpf?

  That is actually stealing from the United States government. So.

• 58:20Jocko Willink?

  Exactly. And I was always, um, I, I've always, I don't know why, but I was always paranoid about like debt.

• 58:30Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 58:31Jocko Willink?

  I was always paranoid about, you know, having big bills. Well, I shouldn't say always.

• 58:35Andy Stumpf?

  Not me.

• 58:36Jocko Willink?

  I would shouldn't say always because when I was younger, you know, young team guy.

• 58:39Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 58:39Jocko Willink?

  I was like, oh, wait, I can buy this vehicle. Like you said, oh, the guy's like, oh yeah, we can definitely give you a loan for that. Oh, how nice of you. Cool. Sign me up. So I, I made those moves, but I also looked around after a little while going, dude, wait a second. This doesn't make sense. And I got a little bit paranoid about debt. And so I always avoided that and lived, uh, like a poor person.

• 59:00Andy Stumpf?

  Let me tell you what the other side of that car looks like.

• 59:04Andy Stumpf?

  I need a seatbelt for this one. This is when your boss calls and says, hey, I'm going to give you a raise. And completely optionally, you spend the rest of the day calculating the difference in your paycheck and trying to determine it, what it is that you need that fits inside of that delta to the point where you end up refinancing your home to pay off credit card debt multiple times. That's the other side of the coin. I'm not saying that happened to me, not saying it didn't.

• 59:30Jocko Willink?

  It was crazy too, the fact that like a lot of guys got caught by the housing crisis.

• 59:36Andy Stumpf?

  Is it crazy?

• 59:37Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's not crazy.

• 59:38Andy Stumpf?

  Are we always the smartest? Yeah, but we can move quickly, very well and make decisions. Fine print not taught in the SEAL community, like, oh, this is an adjustable rate mortgage. Let's just focus on the M, not the A.

• 59:53Jocko Willink?

  One of my buddies who I'm sure you know, I won't say his name, but he tells the story of when he was, he had eight houses.

• 1:00:00Andy Stumpf?

  Please tell me he was in E5 doing stated income loans.

• 1:00:02Jocko Willink?

  He was in E6 doing stated income loans. He had eight houses and he's telling me, he's like, yeah, I'd be walking into work just looking at everyone like, what a bunch of idiots. I can't believe everyone's so stupid and I'm so smart. And, and he said, you know, there was like some little ripple in the, in the economy. And he talked to his, you know, investor friend and was like, listen, if things start to go sideways, don't worry. You can just sell the houses and you'll be good to go. And every one, when it, when it finally like tipped over, every one of his houses was completely upside down in 30 days. And he ended up the only, he was able to keep the house that he actually lived in. But all of his, you know, you have eight houses in San Diego, he probably had four or $5 million worth of real estate.

• 1:00:44Jocko Willink?

  At a minimum, and it was all gone in 30 days.

• 1:00:51Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah. Get some. I tell people, when team guys do good, we go big. When we do bad, we also go big. Not known for moderation.

• 1:01:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. God, crazy.

• 1:01:08Jocko Willink?

  This is still on that same thing. I tried to view the situation from a different angle. I asked myself what advice I would give to one of my children if they were in the same situation as me asking for help. This is the situation being that you hate this guy that you're working for, but you're kind of addicted to the money. The answer was very clear. I would tell them to change their situation. The actions I took in the moments after that realization, I do not recommend to anyone.

• 1:01:33Andy Stumpf?

  Just try to be honest, man.

• 1:01:34Jocko Willink?

  They can and should be considered irresponsible. I texted my boss, told him I was done. In that moment, it went from good income to $0 per month. So boom, you just called it. You'd had enough. Were you still active duty at this time?

• 1:01:48Andy Stumpf?

  No.

• 1:01:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh shit.

• 1:01:50Andy Stumpf?

  And I hadn't, I think I was on a 70% VA rating. I was like maybe 1600 bucks a month, something like that. Zero, six figures, mid six figures to zero overnight. And I mean, I talked about it in the book, Craigslist is a wild place. We started putting up things for sale. I literally went and stood in my garage and asked myself, what do I need here? And the answer was absolutely none of it. Stand up paddle boards that had been gathering dust. I lived in Chula Vista, by the way. I don't know if you know this, not a lot of stand up paddle boarding out there. Of course, I had a truck that I could, you know, take it to the beach and if I wanted to, did that zero times. I mean, all sorts of crazy stuff in there. And so I just looked at it.

• 1:02:31Andy Stumpf?

  But I started looking at it like an operation, like let's prioritize here. What do we need to do? Burn rate, get it as low as possible. So just like cutting things out, selling all the stuff that I could sell. And then I was in kind of in that crisis space of that's where I started saying yes to a lot of stuff, which is a double edged sword because it led me to a lot of the stuff that I do now, but it was also a little bit of a time suck in other places as well. But that was one of those times because that was when I was in my mid 30s of just feeling like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And probably a decade later, I found myself in a place where I could start saying no.

• 1:03:03Jocko Willink?

  How, how old were you when you retired? Medically retired after 18 years, 17 years?

• 1:03:07Andy Stumpf?

  17 years.

• 1:03:08Jocko Willink?

  And you joined when you were 17. So you were like 34, 35?

• 1:03:11Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah. I mean, in the Kennedy era, we got to be really clear. So it was 16 years, 11 months and three days, right? I don't want to have somebody come out here and be like, was it 50 grenades? I don't know. So I feel like the gov can spot me an additional year.

• 1:03:25Andy Stumpf?

  But yeah, so I was thirty four, thirty five.

• 1:03:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, that's like a little, that's just a, those five years between thirty five and forty.

• 1:03:35Andy Stumpf?

  They're huge.

• 1:03:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, those are big years.

• 1:03:37Andy Stumpf?

  I might have learned the vast majority of the concrete lessons post military career in that five year time period. It was actually the time that I struggled the most, probably because I was saying yes. But again, double edged sword. My buddy was teaching free fall to the tail end of the PJ and CCT pipeline. Hey, do you want to come do this? I'm like, yes, sure. But of course, that was in Florida, so time away from family, but good money. I had been flying for CrossFit and I had been doing some charter work on the side and I would do that stuff, but super infrequent. The paycheck was okay when they called, but a lot of the times they don't call. So I had to back away from that. Public speaking, but the skydiving thing led to being a sponsored athlete, which led to meeting Joe, which led to starting the pod,

• 1:04:19Andy Stumpf?

  you know what I mean? So there's, there was good and bad, but I, you want to talk about crippling anxiety? Because you're just waiting for something to come in so you can say yes to it and you have no idea when it's going to come or what it's going to be. But your answer is going to be yes.

• 1:04:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. How long did you spend in that? Like, I don't know how I'm going to pay my mortgage this month mode?

• 1:04:39Andy Stumpf?

  What month is it?

• 1:04:44Andy Stumpf?

  Three years.

• 1:04:45Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:04:46Andy Stumpf?

  About three years. But there, I mean, the one thing I think most team guys would agree with is that if you put something in front of us that is meaningful enough, you're not going to stop us. The training program selects for people that look at obstacles as an adversity, not something that can't be figured out. Like, we might break our head open going through the wall as opposed to just walking around it, but we'll get our way through it.

• 1:05:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. So you end up doing all this kind of crazy shit that you just mentioned. You're flying airplanes, you end up teaching.

• 1:05:16Andy Stumpf?

  You want to sweep floors?

• 1:05:17Jocko Willink?

  You get into base jumping, you get into wingsuit flying, like all this stuff. My journey through professional skydiving and base jumping introduced me to some massive brands and through those brands and the projects we completed together, I found myself sitting across the table from Joe Rogan. Our first discussion covered a lot of ground. I was sitting there because of the skydiving fundraiser. Joe eventually suggested I start my own podcast, an idea that was, I was originally resistant to.

• 1:05:41Andy Stumpf?

  I believe he also suggested to somebody else they start a podcast.

• 1:05:43Jocko Willink?

  He certainly did, but then the the thing is, he, if you go back to that time period, like he suggested everyone.

• 1:05:49Andy Stumpf?

  Oh, I tell people that thousands.

• 1:05:50Jocko Willink?

  Everyone he told told everyone like you should start a podcast and he was right, you know, to a lot of them.

• 1:05:55Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Jocko Willink?

  A lot. There's probably, there's probably some, I wonder what the number is. I wonder how many people actually started a podcast.

• 1:06:02Andy Stumpf?

  I do think he probably told thousands, less than three, like probably high twos, high two digits, we've been like, I guess. Again, as you know, there's the concept of having a podcast and there's the reality of having content that's due every week. The two are not the same.

• 1:06:18Jocko Willink?

  No doubt. Um, speaking of base jumping here, Alex was an amazing man and I feel fortunate in so many ways that I was able to spend time with him that I did. Alex also served in the Navy as EOD Explosive Ordnance Disposal Tech. He also screened and completed selection for development group and was assigned to a squadron just down the hall from mine. We did not work directly together and I do not remember our paths crossing while we were there. We connected when we were both stationed in back in San Diego. First over skydiving, then through base jumping. Post-service, he had attended the Wharton School of Business and was preparing to move into a CEO role in the gas and oil industry in Texas. Alex learned to base jump before I did,

• 1:06:59Jocko Willink?

  but I was able to dedicate more time to it due to pursuing it professionally and we progressed in the sport at different levels. Both learned in Twin Falls, Idaho. You can end up doing a bunch of trips with him. You go to Switzerland, you go to Italy. And Alex becomes your main jumping partners, partner. Countless hours hiking through some of the most beautiful terrain on earth. Having multi-hour conversations about life, our past, our futures and everything in between. We shared fear, fear at exit points together, exhilaration and landings and tears of laughter when one of us did something stupid. I've always had a few friends. I've always had few friends, but he was one of them. In June of 2018, I was camping with my family for a weekend in an area that did not have cell service.

• 1:07:43Jocko Willink?

  As we were driving out, my phone exploded with notifications as soon as we reached coverage. I remembered stopping the car and looking at the locked screen of my phone. I could only see the names of the people who'd reached out, not the messages they had sent. But before I unlocked my phone, I already knew what had happened. The combination of names was not random and they were all tied to a specific social circle. I knew Alex was dead before I read the messages. Alex had gone to France with his wife to attend a wedding. While he was there, he arranged to meet a mutual friend for a quick jump at a well-known location. The jump did not go as planned. Alex impacted a ledge and was killed instantly.

• 1:08:23Jocko Willink?

  I felt a sense of responsibility for his death because I was in a way responsible for his involvement in the sport. I had introduced him to Miles, made sure he was on the trips and given him the suit he was eventually killed in. I've asked myself countless times if he would be alive today had I not done those things. I suspect he still would have found his way. And perhaps the outcome wouldn't have been the same, but I was deeply involved with his progression and cannot shake the sense that I have a fingerprint on his death, even though I was thousands of miles away. I spent a lot of time considering my own path forward after Alex's death. Was the benefit of base jumping still worth the reward for me?

• 1:09:07Jocko Willink?

  I came to the realization that I had moved past the place where I needed to silence, needed the silence that base jumping had provided. I still needed the silence, we all do. I've just found other outlets that provide it. I have not base jumped since Alex's death and I do not think I will ever return to the sport.

• 1:09:31Andy Stumpf?

  It's a tough one. It was a tough day. You ever had one of those where you were out of coverage and you come like it was, I can, I know the exact road and spot I was on and it just exploded and I looked down. I'm just thinking, that's weird. I haven't heard from that guy in a while. That's weird. I haven't heard from that guy in a while. That guy I'd never hear from. And, uh, yeah, I knew he was gone before I swiped it up.

• 1:09:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've had those. I've had, you know, the get done with something and have seven missed calls from, you know, Warcom or-

• 1:10:04Andy Stumpf?

  Traditionally, not to tell you happy birthday.

• 1:10:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. No, definitely know what's happening and you, you just dread. Like you, you look through the number of people that called you and like which one of these guys wants to give me this shitty news that I'm about to hear. God knows what it is, but I know it's not going to be good. The, how long did it take you to recognize, you know, I'm probably not base jumping again?

• 1:10:28Andy Stumpf?

  When we moved to Montana, there's no drop zones up there. So my currency in skydiving was limited or decreasing, which is okay. As long as like if I was gonna put on what I'm wearing now in a parachute, I could go jump 10 years from now, skydive San Diego would be fine. The wingsuit stuff is all tactile based and it's all visual based. There's no altimeter you're looking at. You're literally in flight, like, do I have the angle to clear that tree? And if not, hopefully you planned and gave yourself an out, or you can change your trajectory and increase speed and lift and all those things. So you gotta be super current. So I already knew that it was gonna be tougher.

• 1:11:07Andy Stumpf?

  I talked to the other person, I don't know if I put it in the book, but there was a, yeah, there was a mutual friend that was there who watched this happen live. And actually dedicated a really immense amount of time to go back to make sure he got his video cameras, because he didn't know what was gonna be on them, but he didn't want that to end up on the internet. And he and I talked about it really deeply, because he, when I spoke to him, he's just like, I'm never, I'm never doing this again. Like, and I can't even imagine watching that happen in, in real time. And that really got me thinking about it. And then I ended up on the phone with Alex's mom a few times. And, you know, she's asking me like, why did this happen? Why was he doing this? And those are questions that are hard to answer to somebody else. But I left those conversations asking myself the same questions. And what is it that I'm actually getting out of this?

• 1:11:52Andy Stumpf?

  Is it that I want to be able to call myself a base jumper, or I want to like, put a brand logo on a wingsuit? You know, or is it, is it the content that matters? Again, do I define myself by what it is that I do? Because people really will try to romanticize the risk associated with base jumping. And it's not a safe sport. It can be done as safely as possible, but it's not a safe sport, and that has to be taken into account. But you can also romanticize that a little bit, right? And try to leverage that against whatever it may be, a bigger paycheck or a larger project or whatever it is. And after those conversations, I just, you know, and then I was, I had spent a weekend with my kids, we were young at the time, and just kind of looking at them and. I would say within 30 days, I knew that I was gonna, that I was gonna hang it up and I love doing it.

• 1:12:37Andy Stumpf?

  I mean, I'd be open to going back to the bridge and jumping with miles in that controlled and contained environment, but zipping up in a suit in Switzerland and you know, it's, it's an odd moment when you rock forward and you realize you passed that point where there ain't no rocking back. So you better push as hard as you possibly can and perform. It's just not worth it to me anymore.

• 1:12:57Jocko Willink?

  So you're hauling ass like through those like, like ravines and shit, right?

• 1:13:04Andy Stumpf?

  Which are way steeper than it looks like on GoPros. On GoPros, it looks like they're really flat. The angle of most of those is incredibly steep. The steepness in the speed is your margin to detach from the terrain.

• 1:13:16Andy Stumpf?

  Broadly, what happened to Alex is, is he misjudged the angle and got his suit to a place where it, it kind of stalled out. So he was over terrain that he could not escape and impacted it.

• 1:13:27Jocko Willink?

  I was skydiving and as you know, I'm not a great skydiver.

• 1:13:32Andy Stumpf?

  Tell me more.

• 1:13:32Jocko Willink?

  Cause we went in the wind tunnel.

• 1:13:34Andy Stumpf?

  I should have, if I send you the video of that wind tunnel, would you mind adding this to the?

• 1:13:40Andy Stumpf?

  This was in the same, it was the day after this that he broke down these nerves.

• 1:13:44Jocko Willink?

  I, but what, what this makes me think of is I was, you know, like a team guy and we were parachuting and like, we all sucked, you know, we were a bunch of, you know.

• 1:13:54Andy Stumpf?

  Well, if you do it for two weeks every year, that's what's gonna happen.

• 1:13:57Jocko Willink?

  But I was whatever, the last guy to go out and I'm trying to link my buddy, you know, like, hey, let's link up, you know, cool. So I go into like a full track to link up with him and he jumped out quite a bit before me. And like, I was hauling ass and I

• 1:14:18Jocko Willink?

  tracked past him, like I, I, I saved myself and him, you know, from myself, right? I don't want to make a little hair up.

• 1:14:26Andy Stumpf?

  Changed your direction a little bit and went past as opposed to through.

• 1:14:29Jocko Willink?

  I was barely able to do it. Cause again, I sucked. And, but the man, I remember thinking, holy shit, like you are an idiot. And but that's the kind of feeling I get if you I can't even imagine what you feel like when you're going by trees and shit like oh, there's a moment where you go, oh, I'm not going to be able to turn anymore. And I imagine that's quite exhilarating. And I also imagine it must be followed up sometimes by hmm, this is a really risky business that we're getting into right now.

• 1:14:59Andy Stumpf?

  Especially when you have close calls and it happened. And one of the things that I question or questioned a lot and probably still do is I was with Alex when he had some close calls. And I wish that I had taken it like almost grabbed the dude, not slapped him around a little bit, but maybe depending on how we were like stupid close calls. And again, it's all tactile. It's all vision. Why did you make that choice? Did you in could you have to go out there? Like if you're standing on the edge, you want to feel the air, you want to be there at a time of day where the air is rising and coming up. You can jump if it's if it's descending, but you're going to have a way to it's called the start. It's the difference between vertical and then the lateral separation away. And it's like somebody's hand pressing on your back. And if you have a non consequential exit where there's thousands of feet like you're going to be okay.

• 1:15:45Andy Stumpf?

  But if you have rising air and you have a good start, I mean, you only need a couple hundred feet and you can jump over stuff where as you're in the middle of that start, you're like, this is the end. Like, I'm actually going to die now. And then your suit kicks in.

• 1:15:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, because you need to gain enough speed where you can maneuver.

• 1:15:59Andy Stumpf?

  There's a couple where you've put pushed off and I'm looking down the rock and I'm like, well, this was a fun ride. And then you're like, oh, I got it. And you're out of there. And then, you know, you got a little pee ring, maybe change your pants. Not a big deal. Always hike with an extra pair of pants. Wear dark clothing. You know what I mean, Echo?

• 1:16:16Andy Stumpf?

  Those have to leave a mark on you, though. And if they don't, and you don't learn from that.

• 1:16:22Andy Stumpf?

  I wish I had been more forceful in some of the feedback, the mistake that he made. It was a mistake that he made that took his life. I had seen him do it before.

• 1:16:34Andy Stumpf?

  And it's like, so I was sponsored at the time. Right. So I get all these wing suits. And it's like, I don't know if I hadn't been able to give him so many suits, would he have been there that, you know, I mean, but those are the questions I ask myself. Yeah, it's tough. It it in all the conversations I had with other people, I left most of them with just questions for myself where I landed at the answer. It just, it doesn't provide for me what it used to. And it's just not worth the risk.

• 1:17:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of that.

• 1:17:06Andy Stumpf?

  I mean, you've never tried it. It's a super uneducated position to come from. You know, it's like, we should go give it a try.

• 1:17:12Jocko Willink?

  Not, not, not, not, not my jam.

• 1:17:15Andy Stumpf?

  It is not most people's jam, and I fully support that.

• 1:17:20Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. In 2007, I said goodbye to a friend, a man far better than myself. We completed buds together, and later stood shoulder to shoulder as we received our tridents. He was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, and his body told the story of that death. I didn't want to look at him. I tried not to. If you didn't know him, maybe you would have not have noticed the difference. I did. I wanted to. I tried to remember him for who he was, not what remained. I watched his wife hold his hand. I watched her kiss his lifeless head for the last time. I watched his eldest son, as his eldest son stood on his tiptoes, his hands on the edge of the coffin, straining to look over the edge. What he saw was the remains of a man who would never again have a chance to hold him, to comfort him, and to raise him.

• 1:18:04Jocko Willink?

  A man who would miss the highs and the lows, his trials and tribulations, his own journey from child to man. He saw his father for the last time. It tore my heart out. It hurt more than failure, more than disappointment, and more than getting shot. Every American needs to witness that scene. Every American needs to experience that pain. We would be a better nation for it. Once you've seen it, once you have felt it, you will never forget.

• 1:18:34Jocko Willink?

  Jason Dale Lewis, June 30, 1977 to July 6, 2007, father, son, husband, friend. Seal.

• 1:18:45Andy Stumpf?

  Hardest part of the job, in my opinion at least.

• 1:18:49Jocko Willink?

  Where was that? Where was the service?

• 1:18:51Andy Stumpf?

  Connecticut. Uh, you know, the people at Dover, they do a good job. But sometimes they're starting with a

• 1:19:01Andy Stumpf?

  incomplete building block. And if, again, nah, I think you would have known. I, I don't know your thoughts on this. Is it better to remember them as they were?

• 1:19:13Andy Stumpf?

  Or is it better to go see them as they ended? I'm curious your personal thoughts on that. Because both lead to, for me at least, really different geometry and how I am able to kind of deal and process with it.

• 1:19:32Jocko Willink?

  I'm not sure, man.

• 1:19:33Andy Stumpf?

  I'm not either.

• 1:19:36Jocko Willink?

  I had one of my, you know, one of our guys got killed, not, not, not one of my guys, a team guy, got killed and I was at the memorial service and I was with one of his, I wasn't close to this individual, but one of his friends was there, who I'm good friends with, and he was like, you know, like the service is going on and, and my buddy is like telling me, you know, that's not him. He's not in there, like that kind of thing where

• 1:20:08Jocko Willink?

  you know, I think that leaves a mark as well.

• 1:20:10Andy Stumpf?

  Especially when they look drastically different than the person. And what's wild about that is that son who was reaching over the coffin, I follow him on social media. He's like off living his life, posting pictures with women.

• 1:20:24Jocko Willink?

  God bless him.

• 1:20:25Andy Stumpf?

  Looking exactly like his dad.

• 1:20:28Jocko Willink?

  Crazy.

• 1:20:28Andy Stumpf?

  And it's like, fuck. That the fact that Jason will never get to know or see that. Yeah, I've always, I've struggled with funerals. It's not that I don't have the respect and that I don't want to go, but I'd also, like, I didn't want, he had an open casket funeral and I didn't want to walk up in front of that and we were kind of talking with people and got kind of

• 1:20:52Andy Stumpf?

  navigated into the line of walking by. And then before I know it, it was, so it was unintentional. Another guy wrote it back about in the book was Dave Hall and

• 1:21:03Andy Stumpf?

  he, he died by suicide, but again, we're at the service and they, and they open the casket. And again, they do the best job that they can, but like a new day pretty well. You know, an unnatural look in position for sure. And I, I just, I don't know, I don't know what the right answer is. Cause I struggle to remember what they were before. And maybe that's just me. I don't know. Maybe some people can. I have so much more experience with them before that last visual.

• 1:21:37Andy Stumpf?

  That last visual has its hooks really deep.

• 1:21:42Jocko Willink?

  I actually think I think more about guys as they were like as they were.

• 1:21:48Andy Stumpf?

  I try to, but that thought always for me tail. And again, maybe this is just me and I'm sure the answer to that question as to which one you should do or which one had better is completely dependent on the individual making that choice, but hardest part of the job for sure, I think.

• 1:22:02Jocko Willink?

  I think maybe in my head, just that idea of like, that's not them is sort of like the resounding thought of like, yeah, that's not them. Like they're not, that's not that guy, you know?

• 1:22:19Andy Stumpf?

  Echo, do you have anything funny to say before Jocko and I start crying? This is where you step in and stab yourself.

• 1:22:25Jocko Willink?

  Your job, dude.

• 1:22:26Andy Stumpf?

  Stab yourself accidentally so we can laugh at you for poor knife skills.

• 1:22:32Jocko Willink?

  That used to be like a key part of Echo's job in the early podcast was like, we would do the most heavy freaking podcast and it would be like, I would not want to go home.

• 1:22:45Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:45Jocko Willink?

  Like thinking about this horrible thing that we had just talked about, you know, from some atrocity or whatever. And, you know, be like, Echo, say some dumb shit, you know, and

• 1:22:56Andy Stumpf?

  Please, somebody, yeah.

• 1:22:58Jocko Willink?

  And it actually was good, you know, because I felt like people, even people like listening to the podcast would be like, dude, I don't want to like, I don't want this in my head for the rest of the day.

• 1:23:08Andy Stumpf?

  They're driving straight to work and just quitting their job and going to a bar.

• 1:23:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, we don't want that. So, you know.

• 1:23:15Andy Stumpf?

  It's rough.

• 1:23:16Jocko Willink?

  Anything Echo Charles?

• 1:23:18Andy Stumpf?

  What are your thoughts on that Echo? Have you ever had to go to funerals, open casket versus close?

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did. Actually, as a kid, one of our friends died in a car accident, like in the back of a truck scenario. Yeah, I think you're right because since that's like, I think there's like a bias in your head, people, people experience a different, but it's called availability bias where the most accessible image is gonna have the most sticking power, you know? So since that's such a jarring image, it's always gonna kind of take precedence a lot of times. So I don't know, man. Kind of both make sense to me.

• 1:23:52Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna be weird when now that there's so much more imagery and video of everyone and you have. You know, and they're recreating shit like you can make someone come alive with AI like legitimately. They I've seen some AI stuff that is great. I mean, you see 10 years ago or five years ago, like you'd see it in the movies. They'd make someone come to life, right? But but they're going to be able to do that now with with people.

• 1:24:17Andy Stumpf?

  I don't know if our brains are ready for that.

• 1:24:19Jocko Willink?

  I don't know either, man.

• 1:24:20Andy Stumpf?

  I don't think the human brain is evolving at the pace of technology. We might really outstrip our ability to deal with this stuff.

• 1:24:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's you don't need that much either to make someone come to life and that, you know, people you seen those like there's a there's a app right now that can just take your family picture from 1952 and just like make them do some kind of basic movements. And they look like they're looks like a short five second video, right? And all meanwhile, everyone in the picture is dead, except for maybe one person.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did it for that video that I did for you guys for the 10 year anniversary.

• 1:24:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:51Speaker 02

  So, yeah, you know, that, uh, I thought it came out good, but I knew going in, I was like, hey, this is a gamble. Cause I don't know how people are gonna feel about it.

• 1:24:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, and and by the way, so he's talking about a video that he made for the 10 year anniversary of Extreme Ownership. And he made a video and it had like Mike Monsoir, Mark Lee, Ryan Jobe. And the original one that he made, they there was there was

• 1:25:17Jocko Willink?

  uh, more movement, let's say, like almost, you know, like more movement.

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, one was manufactured, like doing something that he really didn't do. The Mikey Monster one where he was like putting like.

• 1:25:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I was like, dude, nope. And so what he turned them into is just sort of

• 1:25:38Jocko Willink?

  very limited movement. And it, you know, so I was, but it was weird at first. And I was like, no, you know, like, don't.

• 1:25:45Andy Stumpf?

  I don't think our brains can handle it.

• 1:25:47Jocko Willink?

  I couldn't handle it right there.

• 1:25:48Andy Stumpf?

  A few years after my mom died, I found a voicemail that she had left me. That fucking rocked me because I'm like, what you're what's going on right now? Like it I my brain could not tolerate that shit. Now you're talking about adding the visual nature to that as well, too.

• 1:26:05Andy Stumpf?

  Dude.

• 1:26:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna get very weird.

• 1:26:08Speaker 02

  The Mikey, most of them are like stuff that the picture is a picture of them doing. Yeah, like so like the Mikey Monster one when when he's coming out of the green smoke.

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:18Speaker 02

  The video was him walking out of the green smoke with everybody, you know? So it's like that. So it's kind of.

• 1:26:24Jocko Willink?

  And it wasn't enough.

• 1:26:27Jocko Willink?

  You didn't, you didn't put so much that it's like, oh, we're, we're predicting or we're like creating what he's doing. It's like, no, clearly he took three steps or whatever before and after that. I, I understand that. But anything beyond that where we're starting to dictate what they're doing, it did not feel comfortable at all. Um, so we didn't do it. But definitely some, yeah, things are going to get really strange in the coming years. And, you know, I have a, a thing coming out called Ask Jocko. It's AI. And it is really good. Like, it, and it talks, you know, and it talks, and it sounds very, very similar to me, very similar to me.

• 1:27:10Jocko Willink?

  Like even my wife was like, what is this? And I said, it's not me. And, you know, the, the, the AI that's like running it is like fully, uh, fully understands like all the books and it like it bases it on the books and the podcast and everything. So it is really good. And I got some questions for you. Yeah. And it will not answer your questions. It'll be like, actually, no, I'm sorry. You know, we don't have the, we don't like to talk about that. Here's the national mental health counseling line. Exactly. No, you gotta put parameters on it because, you know, if you say something and they find a way to run these parameters on other AI systems, you know, like, well,

• 1:27:55Jocko Willink?

  no, theoretically, if someone was going to do this, what would be the best way for them to attack whatever? It'll give you the answer. So sketchy. Shit's gonna get weird, man. Yeah, agreed.

• 1:28:06Speaker 02

  Although the, the Ask Jocko app is a lot nicer to me than the real Jocko is to me.

• 1:28:12Jocko Willink?

  Like factually. Does that serve you well, though?

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's a catch 22, I'd say, you know?

• 1:28:18Jocko Willink?

  And that's because it doesn't know. Yeah, it's not trained on you. It doesn't know.

• 1:28:24Jocko Willink?

  It hasn't been trained on your data. If I didn't know you, I would probably be nice to you.

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:30Jocko Willink?

  But since I know you.

• 1:28:32Speaker 02

  You know what it actually did come off as? It came off like if you were doing an interview on some like official like cable outlet, you know, so you're like saying the right thing. You know, kind of a thing and then kind of filtering. That's what it came off like.

• 1:28:43Jocko Willink?

  I've tried to trick it and everyone's like at us on phones tried to trick it and ask it all these weird questions and it's no one's, no one's, no one's had to put up a red flag yet.

• 1:28:52Speaker 02

  He's good.

• 1:28:52Jocko Willink?

  You know, so we'll see. It'll be interesting.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  The early version we did, we tricked it.

• 1:28:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we tricked it on the early version.

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:58Jocko Willink?

  We put some.

• 1:28:59Speaker 02

  The thing started gaslighting us.

• 1:29:00Jocko Willink?

  On what? What was the subject?

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  We're like, hey, I forget what it was. My son won't remember. He's nine, by the way. And so he'll be like, oh, wait, Jocko just blamed us for something he did. He's like, no, you're wrong. I didn't, you know, it said something like that.

• 1:29:14Jocko Willink?

  So it got defensive. Got to the second tier of membership. Even, even ask Jocko AI has an ego. No, no, I didn't say that. You're wrong. I'm right. I watched something yesterday about a guy was like talking to chat GPT and it was clearly wrong. And it was just like, no, no, no. And it's really weird, man. Yep. It's really weird how even the emotion of ego of like, I'm not going to admit that I'm wrong. A freaking AI gets that. Kind of psycho.

• 1:29:46Jocko Willink?

  See, we're back from the trenches. We had to do your job for you. It's not a big deal.

• 1:29:52Jocko Willink?

  One of the most powerful exercises I have ever done. Oh, boy. Requires a simple piece of paper and a pen or pencil. I wish that I could take credit for this in any way, but I cannot. I also cannot remember where I first heard of this concept. So I'm trying to pass along as something that has had an immense impact on my life. Draw a vertical line from the top to the bottom of your paper centered on the middle. On the left side, put concern at the top and on the right side, put influence. The left hand category will be comprised of everything that you could possibly spend any amount of time, energy, or effort worrying about. Let me give you an example from my own life where I spend my time being concerned.

• 1:30:31Jocko Willink?

  People's perception of and reaction to what I do, other people's behavior, current events, social media posts, business competition. Will I make enough money to pay my bills? Am I a good enough partner for my wife? Am I a good enough father to my children? What will people think of me? Will I fail? Will I succeed? What is going to happen tomorrow? Who's going to be president? As you can tell, the list could go on and on forever. The right-hand column, influence, is going to be much shorter and far more powerful. What can we as individuals actually put down on the right-hand side of the paper? I've tried to look at this from every angle possible, and I keep coming back to a single answer. Literally, the only thing we have, we each have absolute and total control over in our lives is ourselves. What do I mean by that?

• 1:31:13Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you can control your behavior, you control your reactions, you control how you speak to yourself. You can control how you set and approach your goals. You can do your best to control your thoughts, but that's it. Why was this so shocking to me when I first tried the exercise? Well, I created the list for the first time. I came to the realization that I spent nearly all of my time and most of my effort trying to control things that I was definitely concerned with, but had zero influence on. A simpler way to put it, I was wasting my time.

• 1:31:44Andy Stumpf?

  High 90th percentile of time, by the way. That one sucks, and I actually will literally do this when I, if I get to a place where I'm struggling, like, okay, what is, I'm like, oh, whatever, payroll, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, list it all out. Cool, this is, and I can actually bounce it off my calendar, like what I've been doing with my time. And then I have to go over here and be like, okay, me.

• 1:32:06Andy Stumpf?

  It sucks. It's the same thing as the realization when I had my bird taken the first time. Like, you can't control what happens to you, but you have complete and total control in how you deal with it. And that sucks because it's right back into your court.

• 1:32:18Jocko Willink?

  That stings, doesn't it?

• 1:32:19Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:20Jocko Willink?

  It's also, man, like, the list that you were rattling off.

• 1:32:24Andy Stumpf?

  I could have wrote four pages.

• 1:32:26Jocko Willink?

  And how many, how many, how much time are people wasting, you know, on social media today? It's totally insane. And getting aggravated and get, you know, we, we did a podcast one time, and I was talking about like, because I was reading some comments, and it was, you know, some political comments, you know, and, and, you know, the blah, blah, blah, blah, and fuck you. And I'm like, I said to Echo, I said, when's the last time you looked at another person and said, fuck you?

• 1:32:54Andy Stumpf?

  You never do in person, because right after that, you fight.

• 1:32:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Like, what does it take to get you to say that? Now, can you imagine you're in your house? And you're looking at a computer screen filled with bots? And your random stuff? And you get so freaking emotional? That you write, "Fuck you." That's crazy.

• 1:33:15Andy Stumpf?

  I don't have to imagine it. Just go online right now. It's like greetings and salutations.

• 1:33:20Jocko Willink?

  Freaking crazy.

• 1:33:22Andy Stumpf?

  It's insane. And they'll blame it on, "Well, this person did that." Or said that. Or this person, or the... And like, all, again, that's all left-hand side of the category stuff. And I wish I could say, well, actually, pretty much nothing in that book that I wrote is of my unique creation. Because I don't think I've ever had a unique idea in my entire life. I try to repurpose things that have helped me. I don't remember when I found that. But it is, if people actually spend the time to do that, it's kind of... It's pretty shattering, especially if you think you have your stuff together. Because the left-hand side of that column really sucks up a lot of time. And it doesn't do anything.

• 1:33:55Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't get you anywhere.

• 1:33:56Andy Stumpf?

  No.

• 1:33:57Jocko Willink?

  Besides emotional, frustrated, wasted time.

• 1:33:59Andy Stumpf?

  Or out of time, having accomplished nothing. Yeah, that's a rough one. That's a good tool, though.

• 1:34:04Jocko Willink?

  Freaking scary.

• 1:34:09Jocko Willink?

  And again, I'm reading the total highlights of this book. Get the freaking book, people. Order it.

• 1:34:16Jocko Willink?

  This chapter is called, "I solemnly swear." "The horrors of war and combat are real. Fortunately, so is the treatment and help. Everyone has a cup, unique in both dimension and capacity. Some can hold more than others, but eventually, if unchecked, regardless of who you are, it will overflow. When that happens, you will need the help of others. Thankfully, this country is bursting with patriotism. There are countless organizations, initiatives, and individuals lining up, ready, willing, and able to help. I can't imagine the struggle and pain that many veterans face on a daily basis. I know it is real. Hard numbers tell me so. I cannot fathom a place where the thought of taking your own life seems like the most viable option. But I do, but I know that for many, it is their reality. We will all have struggles.

• 1:35:00Jocko Willink?

  It is your choice whether or not they define you. Embody the principles and ethos of your previous service and face them head-on." Many think that reaching out for help is weakness when in reality it is a sign of incredible strength. Although there is no shortage of outlets for help, the first step must be taken by you. It is not the responsibility of others and organizations to help you get better. It is yours. If it doesn't work the first time, try again. If it doesn't work the second time, keep trying. Giving up is never the answer.

• 1:35:34Jocko Willink?

  What a freaking crazy scourge that this has been for the veterans. Something that is almost like totally foreign. And I was talking to an old Vietnam SEAL.

• 1:35:51Jocko Willink?

  After a SEAL killed himself, one of our generation, and he was like totally irate on the phone with me. Like, what the fuck is going on? Why the fuck is this happening? And I'm like, man, he's like, we never would have thought about this shit. We never would have fucking done this. What is going on? It's freaking crazy.

• 1:36:09Andy Stumpf?

  He might have said that in the moment. If you look at the veteran suicide numbers, a lot of them are actually from that generation as well. And that may be as they're, you know, my dad was in Vietnam. He's turning 80 next year, right? So it might be a little bit more as people are getting to that phase of life where their body is just painful and hurting. But I don't understand necessarily what's going on with it either. I think military service is absolutely a privilege and not a right. I think it should be very hard to get into. And if you go down that path, I think you should go into it with eyes wide open. But the trauma that will be associated with military service, it doesn't have to destroy you. And that seems to be the narrative. I hate the veteran broken toy narrative. Like, if you served in combat, well, we have to make every accommodation for you. And

• 1:36:51Andy Stumpf?

  the accommodations are great. And there are like 50,000 service-based organizations for, are loaded with cash that will help you. But nobody can make you do that. And you don't have to, you don't have to live with that for the rest of your life. I personally feel that whatever you would describe my experiences as, whether they were traumatic or scary, or whatever it is, they made me a better version of myself. And I know that a true disorder for some people, they can't make their way through it. But if you look at the data, it's about single digit percentage that will have those lifelong struggles for life if they put the work in. So post-traumatic growth is just as important as post-traumatic stress, but almost all of that emphasis is on that front end and not on, on the tail end or focusing people on

• 1:37:36Andy Stumpf?

  that journey towards that because I do think you can, it can make you a better person.

• 1:37:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, I absolutely agree. And I also think it can totally wreck you. And that's one of those things where you see like when someone has whatever, whatever little rupture in their system, right? And sometimes going through something hard can, can solidify that little rupture and sometimes going through something hard like completely blows apart and they, they get destroyed.

• 1:38:06Andy Stumpf?

  And there's experts out there that can help you on both sides of that though. I mean, asking for help for guys, at least from our community, at least when we were in, probably not talked about, you know, very much. I wouldn't say that there was like a stigma associated with it. I remember when I was getting out, they were really talking more about integrating family units and counseling and therapy and all of those things. And those things are all great, but if people think that they go to therapy and that's actually where the work is done, sorry, like that's where you get sent home with homework and you have to work on yourself and it's a super long path. And some of the things that the country asks us to do are really gnarly. You know, maybe don't expect to be doing high fives and backflips on a rainbow, you know, after talking to somebody for an hour, it could take years, but you also could be

• 1:38:50Andy Stumpf?

  such a better version of yourself and therefore a better husband or parent or father and all of those things. I have never been told no when I have asked for help in almost every phase of my life. And somehow we have an incredibly large cohort of our peers that gets to a place that they either think that they don't have anybody to say, I need help from, or they're not willing to. I don't understand it.

• 1:39:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I would say when I was in, I think I retired about three years before you. What year did you retire?

• 1:39:21Andy Stumpf?

  Thirteen.

• 1:39:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so in 2010 I retired and like, I don't even remember any like, mental health being discussed in any way.

• 1:39:32Andy Stumpf?

  That's probably not good.

• 1:39:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't remember, I don't remember anyone saying like, I remember we filled out some kind of a um, form before we left.

• 1:39:42Andy Stumpf?

  Which I'm sure guys did, super honestly.

• 1:39:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:44Andy Stumpf?

  Depending on what they had to do after filling out the form.

• 1:39:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, Tony Fraddies, he showed me his form that he filled out and his opening line was, this is a cry for help.

• 1:39:55Jocko Willink?

  So I do that this was being taken very, very seriously because he was not being serious. He was like literally just making fun of the whole process, which is probably not the best thing to do, but that's what he did because we were having a good time. But yeah, I don't, I don't remember any like, like uh, thought that these, that guys were gonna need, you know, help. Now, I do remember guys that we, that had some, they got in trouble, you know, and

• 1:40:20Jocko Willink?

  the thing is, guys got in trouble in the nineties.

• 1:40:23Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:23Jocko Willink?

  You know, your jackass got thrown in jail in the nineties. You didn't look around and be like, well, I have PTSD from what? No, no, I don't. I'm actually just a freaking young jackass.

• 1:40:30Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:31Jocko Willink?

  And at some point, it's pretty, it makes it a little bit more uh, digestible. When they go, what the hell are you doing? Like, well, you know, I'm freaked out or I was mad or I was got whatever. And people start saying that and then people are saying, well, is that an excuse or is that, is there something real here?

• 1:40:49Andy Stumpf?

  Two things can be true.

• 1:40:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:51Andy Stumpf?

  You know, and plus, how can you tell? Because you can't read somebody's mind. Yeah, uh, how could they possibly have ever thought that with an occupation that asks us to do the things that they did, that mental health wouldn't probably be a component in that? Like, hey, guys, you have a super normal job.

• 1:41:11Andy Stumpf?

  And we're not the only people who struggle. Again, first responders, people who deal with that, I mean largely just we'll call it trauma. The stats are what the stats are. I mean,

• 1:41:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I told this story on one of my podcasts, but I was in, I was out for dinner and I have a guy come up to me and he's like, hey, like, I need your help. And I was like, yeah, man, what's up? And he tells me a story and I want you to go through the whole thing. But you know, he'd been in a hostage situation, hostage got killed, partner got wounded, perp got, I forget, I forget he got killed or whatever, but it was just shitty. And he, of course, when they go through that, what do they do? They take his badge away, they take his gun away, they get to put on admin, like, so they're basically telling him, you're all screwed up. And I'm like, oh, are you second guessing your decisions right now? And he's like, yeah. And I go, cool, that's

• 1:42:03Jocko Willink?

  normal. And I'm like, are you having some bad dreams that you wish you would have done some different, different things? And he goes, yeah. And I go, that's totally normal. Do you, do you think that everyone's looking at you like you did something wrong and you feel bad about that? He's like, yeah. And I go, cool, that's totally normal. And the look on his face is I told him, like, bro, this is just normal. You've gotten an incident where a hostage got killed and a perp, you know, your partner gets wounded. Of course, you're gonna have some nightmares. I was like, you're having some nightmares? Yeah, that's totally normal. And I think for guys to recognize, like, oh, this shitty feeling that you have, that's normal. And that is, to me, very helpful for guys to realize that. It's kind of like, I used to tell fighters, taking them before they

• 1:42:47Jocko Willink?

  would fight and be like, oh, you know how you're super nervous right now? And you've like got bubble guts and all that stuff? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, that's totally normal. Totally normal. Totally normal that you're having that. And when you tell people that it's normal, people go, oh, okay. Like, oh, got it. Oh, when you're going into combat for the first time? Oh, you're feeling nervous and scared? Yeah, yeah. Guess what? That's normal. It's okay. You got done with combat, you're home and you're driving down the highway and you're looking at this car that's trying to get close to you? Like, you might want to drive it off the road right now? Cool. That's normal. Don't do it. Yeah. But that is normal. And I think when people realize, and I think that's one, you know, one of the things that Happened after World War Two, those guys got to drive home on the big ships together and debrief and like, oh, you were scared shitless? So was I.

• 1:43:27Jocko Willink?

  Uh, oh, you freaking had to kill some person that you maybe think didn't deserve it? Cool. So did I. Like, yeah, I feel bad about that. Yep. Okay. That's cool. Me too. Okay, cool. We're on this boat for six week, six weeks. We're going to debrief all of our problems. We're going to get home. And then we're going to carry on with our lives. And we realized that all that shit that was running around in my head was the same shit that was running around in your head. And okay, that's kind of normal. Oh, and you know, hopefully we can talk in three months ago. Still having some weird dreams? Yeah, dude, for sure. Okay, cool. That's normal. That's normal. Cool. Got it. And I think a lot of times what people feel is. I'm not normal. There's some, the, the thing that they feel is there's something wrong with me.

• 1:44:07Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, they're holding themselves to a standard that's not realistic. The stoic person that is in like unaffected by anything, right? Teflon and just bounces off. It's really okay to not be okay at times.

• 1:44:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's bizarre, you know, when you, when you. As a grown adult, you're supposed to be able to like control your emotions. And it's very scary when all of a sudden you're like, you know, you hear the national anthem and you start getting tears in your eyes. Oh, there's something wrong with me. I'm telling you, there's nothing wrong with you. Oh, there you, oh, you got some feelings when you look up at that flag? Or you hear some certain song or whatever happens that reminds you of somebody that you had? That's freaking normal, man. That's just the way it is. And I realized this at a guy on my podcast. I was in World War Two, Korea and Vietnam. And he got a Purple Heart in World War Two, Korea and Vietnam.

• 1:44:57Andy Stumpf?

  Three, three Z's.

• 1:44:58Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Tom Fife was his name. And he was, and he was started off as a private soldier enlisted guy. And then he moved up through the ranks. Uh, like a second lieutenant in Korea and then World War Two, or sorry, in Vietnam, he's a battalion commander. And I'm sorry, you know, we're going through the whole thing. We're having the podcast. We're talking about war and you know, all the stuff. And I, you know, he's all good. And we get to Vietnam and you know, he's talking about what his battalion do, what kind of operations they were doing, what their op tempo is, like all the normal stuff. And then he says, um. And I said, oh, well, how many casualties did you take in your battalion? And he got choked up. And I was like, oh.

• 1:45:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. I'm always gonna feel like this when I think about my guys. And that's perfectly okay.

• 1:45:41Andy Stumpf?

  I think it would be abnormal.

• 1:45:44Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:45:45Andy Stumpf?

  Didn't.

• 1:45:46Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:45:47Andy Stumpf?

  At the perfection, again, I think people are holding themselves to an unrealistic standard. And I think what you just described and being open and honest about that is probably the most important thing that people who are dealing with that can actually do. And so recognizing that it's like, oh, this is normal. It's maybe been going on longer than I think it should have been. Let's reach out to these resources that are all gonna say yes to you, by the way. If you reach out, but nobody can make you make that call.

• 1:46:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think another huge beneficial thing is talking about it, talking about these things. I was, I realized this from writing eulogies. Which I was always seemed to be the guy to write the eulogies and, and

• 1:46:34Jocko Willink?

  when you write a eulogy, like you're gonna sit down there and you're gonna freaking cry all, you can barely be able to write. But you're processing it.

• 1:46:42Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:42Jocko Willink?

  And then you're gonna, you know, you're gonna show it to your buddy, make sure, hey, what do you think of this? Did I miss anything? Cool. All right. You're crying with your buddy and then you get up and you stand up in front of a bunch of people and you gut through it and you get mad so you don't, you know, act like a bitch in front of your bro.

• 1:46:58Andy Stumpf?

  So now he's actually, he's going backwards now. So we're now, now we're actually causing generational trauma in people.

• 1:47:05Jocko Willink?

  Like, hey, you gotta get through that thing, man. You gotta get through that thing. And so you do. And then you get done, you turn around, you walk off stage, you cry your eyes out again. It's like, okay. But when you do go through that process and then you're talking about it and you see your buddies and eventually, you know, that emotion starts to quell. It starts to relax a little bit. And again, there's nothing wrong with that.

• 1:47:27Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:27Jocko Willink?

  Like, I think some people feel guilty because they don't feel as bad as they felt, you know, a year ago. Well, I'm, I might forgetting. No, you're not. You're processing. You're human. This is what's, this is what's, this is normal.

• 1:47:39Andy Stumpf?

  Life shouldn't be a competitive game of suffering. Like there is no suffering Olympics. I know, I, you know, doing the audio book, interesting journey, by the way. Sometimes I'm like, this is actually not that bad. Who wrote this? You know, other times I'm like, who, who wrote this? I don't know. Maybe change the words here. I get to the last chapter about my mom. Holy shit. I thought I'm just like, it was Alex too. And then talking about Dave, like I'm just, guys like, oh, we're doing great. We're ahead of schedule. And I'm just like,

• 1:48:09Andy Stumpf?

  I'm gonna need about seven days off right now. It's tough, man. It's tough.

• 1:48:14Jocko Willink?

  It's tough and it is, it is forward momentum. Like it's forward movement. It's processing and it, and it ultimately is helpful. And

• 1:48:27Jocko Willink?

  you have to, you have, it hurts to do it.

• 1:48:29Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, every time.

• 1:48:30Jocko Willink?

  It hurts to do it, but if you don't do it, I think it causes way more hurt and way more damage. So get it out there. This next section, use with caution. And it says, not everything from the military is applicable to the civilian sector. Many things, whether equipment or systems are not designed for and do not perform well outside the military ecosystem. Some things can be used with caution and some things should be avoided at all costs. The AAR process, the ARR process is an example of what I believe has immense overlap and value. But that is not true of all things. In my opinion, the milita, the quote, military leadership model is at the top of the things that should likely be avoided.

• 1:49:15Andy Stumpf?

  Sorry, I know that's the kind of your jam, but.

• 1:49:17Jocko Willink?

  Well, you know, it's, it's actually perfect. It nails it because that's one of the, one of the most difficult things that I had to overcome. Especially early in, after I left the military was overcoming the stereotype of the quote, leadership, military leadership model, which people think is like, oh, if you just bark orders and tell everyone what to do, everyone just does, does what you tell them to do.

• 1:49:41Andy Stumpf?

  It's the Full Metal Jacket.

• 1:49:43Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:49:43Andy Stumpf?

  Honestly, it's like the best worst movie for setting stereotypes.

• 1:49:47Jocko Willink?

  And what's interesting is there were some people, especially in the beginning, and I still get it occasionally now. Like I remember I was, one of the earliest companies I worked for is a, a guy, you know, the, what the CEO of the company says, I can't wait till you come in here and whip these people into shape.

• 1:50:04Jocko Willink?

  And I said, hey, man, if you're looking, if that's what you're looking for, you should find someone else because I'm not whipping anyone into shape. You whip slaves and slaves do not perform optimally. They actually rebel against you and kill you. Uh, but that idea of military leadership and what people think that is,

• 1:50:25Jocko Willink?

  it's dysfunctional. Does it happen in the military? Yes, it does. Does it happen in the civilian sector? Yes, it does. Is it functional in the military? Nope, it's not. Is it functional in the civilian sector? No, it's not. It happens. It people get away with it more in the military. And the reason they get away with it more in the military is because you only have to survive for two years. You have to survive for two years. If you're working for an authoritarian leader in the military, he's only going to have his job for two years. It takes you six months to figure out that he's an asshole. Then you start saying, wait a second, we need to confirm that this guy, oh, this guy's definitely an asshole. Well, should we have a mutiny against him? If we do that, our platoon's going to look bad. We might not get the best deployment, so let's just keep our mouth shut. The guy continues to be an asshole.

• 1:51:09Jocko Willink?

  You still do a good job because you're a bunch of squared away guys. You accomplish whatever mission you get tasked with. You make your boss look good despite, despite his terrible leadership and he gets promoted. And that's what happens with the oftentimes, doesn't happen all the time. And usually there's generally speaking, that does cap out at some point because you can only burn so many bridges and look out for yourself so much before you get that reputation. But.

• 1:51:35Andy Stumpf?

  But in what you just described is nested what the civilian world can't see. Cause all they see specifically from spec ops is success, success, success. Cause I think I almost wrote your exact words. The team succeeds despite who the leader is, but the outside, it's like you guys are tasked with doing the impossible. And you always succeed. So therefore, and this is the jump that they make that is a mistake. Any leader in the SEAL teams therefore must be a great leader everywhere and you guys have this secret sauce and I had worked for the best leaders of my life in the SEAL

• 1:52:16Andy Stumpf?

  community and the absolute worst and from a if we were standing there out at quarters, you know this as well as I do, almost everybody at the command could be like, awesome dude, awesome dude, awesome dude, piece of shit. But in the picture, if you show that to civilian, they're like, these are the most impressive leaders and warriors we've ever seen.

• 1:52:34Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, that's the guy that's in charge and that's why they were so successful.

• 1:52:37Andy Stumpf?

  And so if you think, and again, there's something else too, and I've heard you talk about this a lot, so I know that you agree, it's the buy-in. Like for our community, the crucibles that you go through to even arrive at that place, like you're there for the right reasons, right? You understand why you're there. You've been through multiple years of training, you're with your peers, you're a high functioning team, you're high functioning individuals. You can get away with a little bit more of being directive in nature at times because everybody there is so incredibly bought in. I have 40 people who work for me at a coffee shop. The average age is 20 and they're female. That is way harder than leading

• 1:53:17Andy Stumpf?

  at a SEAL team. Let me just tell you right now, yes, consequentially, probably not as dangerous, but oh my God, the complexities of leadership in that environment far exceed the SEAL community.

• 1:53:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the interesting thing about that is like, you know, and we were talking about this a little bit before we hit record today, but the SEAL teams is filled with a lot of, a lot of individuals, you know, a lot of individuals with their own ideas, their own egos, their own emotions. And if you ask, you know, generally speaking, if you say, hey, we're gonna hit this target and you ask 20 guys in a platoon, how you think we should do it, you're probably gonna get like 20 different courses of action, right?

• 1:54:08Andy Stumpf?

  I was gonna say 30.

• 1:54:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you might get 30. And so, so, you know, one of the, one of the black belt moves that I talk about, um, when you want people to buy into something is, and I did this throughout my career and I learned this from one of my platoon commanders was, he didn't tell us what the plan was. He told us what the goal was and then said, come up with a plan. And therefore the plan wasn't his plan. It wasn't the command's plan. It was our plan. And we were a hundred percent bought in. And that's kind of the way I always tried to operate because, you know, I don't even have to ask you this question to ask you if like, when your boss told you to do something, are, are you telling me that you were a hundred percent bought in with every,

• 1:54:53Jocko Willink?

  you know, every time anyone told you to do that? Low thirtieth percentile. Yeah, it's like low thirtieth percentile. And that's another thing that people think like, oh, when you're in the military, oh, you just tell someone what to do and they're going to do it. No, it's so far from the truth. What you actually have to do is lead. Now, listen, again, can I get away with it? Look, if you're an E6 and you work for me and I'm a chief and I'm like, hey, Andy, I want this done like this. And you're like, well, that doesn't make sense. I go, shut up and do it. You're going to shut up and kind of do it, kind of half ass. And when something goes wrong, you're going to look back at me and say, this is what you told me to do. It's just terrible. It's terrible. It's terrible leadership. Doesn't, it doesn't, look, it'll work for a moment in the military. It'll work for a moment in the civilian sector to be that kind of tyrannical authoritarian leader, but it is not a long-term solution. The idea of this, the thing that you put

• 1:55:38Jocko Willink?

  in quotes of military style leadership or whatever, it is not real. And not only is it, not only do you not want that, not only do you, should you not want that, but it's not the right thing. Because if I'm telling Andy, hey, go do this thing right now, the way I'm telling you, I actually want you to say, hey, John, that doesn't make sense. That, well, why not? I told you to do it. No, but here's, here's the secondary effects that you're not thinking about right now because you're not on the front lines with me. So here's some adaptions, adoptions we should make to what you're saying.

• 1:56:07Jocko Willink?

  Oh, thanks, man. Appreciate it. Go, go do what you think is right. So that's the kind of thing where, you know, there's a great book I covered on this podcast. I think, I think I did four podcasts about this book called

• 1:56:19Andy Stumpf?

  What?

• 1:56:19Jocko Willink?

  About one book. It's called, it's called The Psychology of Military Incompetence. And yeah, it's so

• 1:56:25Andy Stumpf?

  I'm gonna add to cart.

• 1:56:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, add to cart, add to cart. And, and what's crazy about is when I first saw it, I was kind of like, oh, what's some, some psychologist gonna know about military, right? And this is guys, I'm not gonna read this. But of course, I was like, well, let me do a little research. Yeah, the guy was in World War II, was wounded, was then he became a psychologist afterwards. And what he laid out is again, this is something that we talked about before we hit record is people have like, certain personalities, right? And there's some people that have a very authoritarian mindset. And those people, when they see the military from the outside, they're like, oh, I'm gonna go do that because when I'm in there, everyone's gonna follow me. They're gonna have to follow me. They're not gonna be able to question me. And they, that, the military attracts

• 1:57:10Jocko Willink?

  that kind of person. And what sucks is that person can actually do well in a garrison environment, when it's like, oh, we're gonna get ready for this inspection. I want you guys out here at this time. But where their brain implodes is in combat, when all of a sudden, you don't have control of everything. The enemy gets a vote, the weather gets a vote, the weapons systems get a vote. And by the way, the people that you bark orders at and they listen to you when you're in garrison, I want you out here for inspection at zero four hundred. Andy's gonna show up because he doesn't want to get in trouble. When I'm like, Andy, go charge that machine gun nest. You're like, bro, I ain't charging that fucking machine gun nest.

• 1:57:41Andy Stumpf?

  That is the correct answer.

• 1:57:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, exactly. So, so those people that have that authoritarian mindset, they perform well in non combat situations, but in combat situations, they fall apart. And meanwhile, the guy that is like, open minded and free thinking, that guy does terrible in the garrison mindset. He's like, why the hell do we gotta be in here at four o'clock? It only takes us three minutes to get our uniforms on. That guy is terrible in garrison, but in combat, he's like, wait a second, why would we go charge that machine gun nest? We could just set over here on the flank and put, you know, indirect fire on them. Okay. And so you get this, this mindset that, that is, is a stereotype of military leadership, and it's so bad. And again, this is at Echelon Front, one of those things that, you know, we had to fight, we're

• 1:58:25Jocko Willink?

  pretty, pretty much through, we don't have to do it too much now because there's enough information about us out there. But yeah, the The idea that you're going to bark orders and everyone's going to be on board. It just ain't happening, man.

• 1:58:41Andy Stumpf?

  For that garrison leader too, I would say be really cautious using your coffee cup.

• 1:58:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:58:49Jocko Willink?

  Because people like Andy have a very creative mindset.

• 1:58:52Andy Stumpf?

  Give it a wash if you're going to leave it at work. You know what I mean?

• 1:58:57Andy Stumpf?

  There are other ways to be insubordinate.

• 1:59:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, Lord.

• 1:59:06Jocko Willink?

  A little bit of SEAL training you talk about here. There are five potential outcomes for a BUDS trainee. Graduate, the holy grail for all graduates, for all students. Number two, quit. Number three, performance drop. Number four. And the performance drop, each phase of training, there are very structured test gates. You know, you get to run this one in the obstacle course, all these testing things. Number four is medical drop. Injuries happen during training, death too. I don't think there's ever been a student who attempted SEAL training who is not nursing an injury of some kind. And some injuries cannot be worked through. And then five is admin drop.

• 1:59:43Jocko Willink?

  Academic tests in BUDS as well as physical tests, not college level courses, and the aptitude test given to attempt the pipeline generally ensures an ability to pass the academic requirements. So, but things like tragedies, personal life, those things can happen. And then the disciplinary issues.

• 2:00:01Jocko Willink?

  And so you talk through through those various things and you say, although there are five potential outcomes for a student, one is clearly the most common. And by multiple orders of magnitude, and that is the quitting.

• 2:00:14Andy Stumpf?

  Sweet, sweet sound of the bell.

• 2:00:17Jocko Willink?

  And you were a BUDS instructor, you know, after you got wounded, you needed to heal up. And so you went and became a BUDS instructor. You talk about some of that, some of the things that surprised you, how structured the training was.

• 2:00:29Andy Stumpf?

  Shocked. When I was, I don't know your experience, but going through as a student, I just assumed that the instructor staff had carte blanche to do whatever they want.

• 2:00:37Jocko Willink?

  A hundred percent. That's what I felt like.

• 2:00:38Andy Stumpf?

  And I also think that when we went through.

• 2:00:43Andy Stumpf?

  That might have been a little bit more true. Because, or they were more crea- I mean, the first remediation, to use the acceptable term, the term by Mike Mayer, who was beating the ever living shit out of us at the time at the 618 barracks on a weekend. Yeah, he used the term beating. We were there for hours. So he either was operating outside of the purview of the CO's desk, which is what I think it was, or out of the guidance. But every day is basically a three ring binder. I was shocked. You know, you're out there surf immersion, like you're gonna be out here forever. And you know, at nighttime, the lights are on facing the students. There's a suite of doctors back there. Like, there's, there's a guy over checking the temp and an instructor like, well, we got six more hours and we can have you in the water.

• 2:01:28Andy Stumpf?

  But then a guy whispering in his ears like, you got 90 seconds. And then you gotta pull them out. All right, burn sprints, which you think that you're punishing them, but you're warming them up. So you, you know what I mean? So there's a lot of stuff that you think that they're just making up and it's literally just, okay, one alpha, then we'll do one bravo and then work our way to one Charlie. And it's just, it's shocking, actually.

• 2:01:49Jocko Willink?

  The thing you were talking about with Mike Mayer, that they had a name for that. It was called extra buds, which wasn't, they didn't call it that when I went through, but I, I've heard that term. And I think that got tightened up in the, in the past couple of years. The extra buds was very, becoming very, very extra.

• 2:02:04Andy Stumpf?

  The curriculum works. The job of an instructor is to apply the curriculum. You don't need to do anything on top of that. I mean, it's been the same since whenever the training started largely. It works.

• 2:02:16Jocko Willink?

  And then the injury rate, you talked about how that surprised you.

• 2:02:18Andy Stumpf?

  Shocked me. Well, you know, as a student, if somebody either quits or get hurt.

• 2:02:22Jocko Willink?

  Just disappear.

• 2:02:23Andy Stumpf?

  See you later. Like run into, I mean, this scenario would definitely play itself out. Echo and I would be running to chow, chatting. You would stop training after chow, so I'd run back and have a conversation with Jocko because we successfully made it through. I would, in that scenario, I probably would never think about you again or ever see you again. And that's just the way that it was. It's not like, you're just, it's an individual team journey, right? Like you need a bell crew, but it's your personal journey to get through training. You just don't see the guys. You get a lot of time around the injured people as an instructor because they augment the classes, but man.

• 2:02:55Jocko Willink?

  Obstacle course chews people up. I was talking to, uh, Jason, who's the PT guy that eventually came to the teams and, but the guys that would work at BUDS, like, uh, I forget what injury it was. It was like patella from moral syndrome, right? Happens to, like, the, the BUDS medic guys, they would see literally dozens and dozens of cases of patella, patella from moral syndrome a week. Which is probably a career for somebody else. And yeah, and he said, like, in the, the guys that work in, you know, professional athletics would literally see like one of those every six months. And here you see patella from moral syndrome, dozens of cases a week. Yeah. Cause that's what the grind is there. Uh, fast forward a little, there was additional cohort

• 2:03:38Jocko Willink?

  of students that I had the opportunity to spend more time with than when I went through training. And it was this group of students who had made the decision to quit that I learned the most from. The departure from BUDS training command can make, can take days, even weeks during that time when these students were grappling with the decision they had made and the consequences that came with that decision. I had time to talk to them. For the most part, I found them to be incredibly open and honest about the why that led them to quitting. I suppose that I was catching them at an emotionally vulnerable state and I always approached the conversation with no judgment and only a desire to understand. Very rapidly, I recognized there was a pattern in what they would tell me. They didn't use the same words and the stories were certainly not all the same, but a singular theme rose to the surface repeatedly. I would say things like, I was too, they would say things like,

• 2:04:23Jocko Willink?

  I was too tired. I was too cold. It was too hard. Although the reasons may sound different, they all, they are all verbal expressions of the same thought process and mental failure. What those students were describing, whether they realized it or not, was not only the moment that they broke, but the reason for it as well. As an instructor, I had a variety of tools at my disposal. I had water in the form of the Pacific Ocean, sand, physical exertion, sleep deprivation, telephone poles, boats, obstacles, runs, swims, and a variety of physical exercises. I could also combine those tools, assuming I stayed within our acceptable training guidelines. When, what I came to realize over time, especially when, especially time spent with students who had quit, was that it wasn't the tools used in

• 2:05:07Jocko Willink?

  isolation or even in combination that drove students to the point of making the decision to quit. It was the students themselves. What these students are describing is the exact moment in which they allowed their view of time to override their decision-making process. They are describing the moment that they, the student, allowed the optic and lens on their goal to be forced open to its widest possible aperture and then decided that the distance between where they were and where they wanted to be was too much. They stopped focusing on where they were and started focusing on how much further they had to go. If the lens gets wide enough and the distance seems

• 2:05:49Jocko Willink?

  far enough, a tsunami is coming. If you let it, it will smash you into the rocks and before you know it, the bell will be singing you a lullaby.

• 2:06:01Andy Stumpf?

  It's honestly as simple as that. Shockingly enough, it's the world's best laboratory on why people quit. And it was, I mean, not every student, sometimes the life happens, but almost always, they just, I couldn't take it anymore. Quitting on Monday of Hell Week, I couldn't make it to Friday. Quitting on the second day or first day of First Face, which to this day still shocks me, like, what the fuck did you think you were signing up for? At least make it to the lunch of the first day. Do you think I'm joking? I am not joking. It sounds funny, that's all. If you're not a student, it is funny. But like, what? God, a paper could be written on what you thought this was gonna be. It's all versions that I just couldn't take it

• 2:06:46Andy Stumpf?

  anymore. And once you realize that, that's all I would do, would just talk to students, like, man, you look cold. And it'd be Monday of Hell Week and my watch is set to Sunday at like 2:00 a.m., you know, so, because they're looking at your watch, too, like, yeah, guess what, dude, I was a student also. Like, man, we got a lot more to do. We're gonna be here for a really long time.

• 2:07:10Jocko Willink?

  Did you catch that echo trial? So he would set his watch back so they'd think four hours had gone by, but it didn't.

• 2:07:16Andy Stumpf?

  Do you know how I learned that trick? Because instructors lied to me, too. And as with all good generational trauma, it is passed down.

• 2:07:25Andy Stumpf?

  I mean, you could scream at the students, you could get them physically exhausted. But it's if you can get them to a place where they start asking themselves, how much longer can I do this? The likelihood of them quitting just went through the absolute roof. Shocking. And then, once you get one and other people, especially if they have put some level of faith into the guy who just quit. If he can't do that, what is he, what am I not paying attention to? If he can't do it, there's no way that I can. It's all it is. It has nothing to do with any of the tools. It's just the student is actually the student's worst nightmare. It's the most powerful tool you can use against them. And that, to me, applies to everything in life.

• 2:08:09Jocko Willink?

  How would you PID like a weakness?

• 2:08:13Andy Stumpf?

  Like, physical or are we talking like mental?

• 2:08:15Jocko Willink?

  When you, would you just pretty much every guy in the class, you'd be like, hey, man, this is gonna be a long week.

• 2:08:21Andy Stumpf?

  For, oh, yes, every, multiple times. You can tell when somebody's paying attention to you and when they're not. And the person who would just shut me out, which is the correct move. Or minimize, you know, the deal. Whatever I ask you, the question is, who y'all, of course. But get through that environment. The ones that would sit there and engage with you at a deeper level and they're the ones who are starting to think about it. That's how you know that you have cracked the door a little bit. The ones where it's just Teflon, you're like, next, moving on to the next one. The guy, the guy, huh, I don't know how long I can do this. Like, well, you're in the middle of a nine day evolution. This is like the third day into hell week, right? Which is actually only five days, but they don't, you know, and they know that too. But it just, you just slam it open. And you know, it doesn't have to be hell week.

• 2:09:05Andy Stumpf?

  I, I mean, just imagine the likelihood of being able to graduate if you have a stack of 3M. You know, little notepads and the first one says 182. And you put that on your wall and after the first day, which does suck, by the way, you rip that off and it says 181. Like, how many, how long are you gonna be able to look at that mental picture? Which is exactly what I was saying in the book, like, this is where I am and this is where I want to be. But this is all I'm gonna focus on. Versus a dude who's like, oh, I don't actually have that. I just, I just, you know, do what we're doing and we get to the end of the day. And you don't have to count at all, because at some point, one plus one equals two, plus another one and another one. And you're at 182. But I tell you what, the dude who was counting down the other direction, he's not there.

• 2:09:43Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever have a guy that, that you talked to, that you got to quit? That you were like, damn, that might've been, oh, okay, dude.

• 2:09:52Andy Stumpf?

  Buds isn't selecting for okay dudes. If I was looking for good dudes to fill up the SEAL teams, I could go to your average 7-11 on the street corner and find okay dudes. You're looking for guys that can do the job.

• 2:10:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I had that conversation with someone the other day, like you. You, that's what we're trying to find out.

• 2:10:12Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:12Jocko Willink?

  That's literally what we're trying to find. As a matter of fact, I talked to Dakota Meyer the other day and I was like, hey, man, if guys are like afraid to die,

• 2:10:21Jocko Willink?

  then they don't really want to do this job.

• 2:10:23Andy Stumpf?

  Actually, I think it's okay to be afraid to die. If you can control that and do what you still need to do, it's, you know, if you're paralyzed by that.

• 2:10:29Jocko Willink?

  Fair enough, fair enough.

• 2:10:31Andy Stumpf?

  Psychopath. Well, there's a little peek into Jocko's psyche there.

• 2:10:36Andy Stumpf?

  You know, to go to add on to what you're saying, like, and I, cause I did have that question as to, huh, that kid probably could have been awesome. Come back when you're ready because they may not just be ready. You might just need a few more laps of life experience. And I wrote about Mikey in the book because his story about quitting the first time and coming back. People forget that you can do that. That's never talked about. And so again, you don't have to define yourself by these failures. He made a decision. I was able to record a podcast with his dad, which was awesome. He's honest to me. He's like, yeah, it wrecked him. By putting more logs on the fire until he was able to go back. So yeah, if you're a good dude and you don't make it on the first try, the come back, you know?

• 2:11:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Mark Lee, by the way, same thing.

• 2:11:18Andy Stumpf?

  Really?

• 2:11:19Jocko Willink?

  Mark Lee quit first time he went and was like, totally distraught over it.

• 2:11:24Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:24Jocko Willink?

  And worked his ass off and came back and kicked ass and was a freaking awesome guy on a platoon.

• 2:11:29Andy Stumpf?

  That just means they weren't ready the first time through. That's all it means.

• 2:11:31Jocko Willink?

  No, that, that makes total sense. And I, I mean, you do not, that's, that's, that's the thing that we have in the teams is like the guy, look, man, it's going to be shitty. It's going to be cold. It's going to be wet. It's going to be miserable. It's going to be scary. And we're going to have to get our shit on and go again. And like the feeling that you just know that that team guy is, is with you, man, that, that is as good as a feeling as you could get. And very rarely would you hear about a guy that's like, would not. Drive on, you know?

• 2:12:03Andy Stumpf?

  I had one in my first platoon.

• 2:12:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like I said, very rarely. It happens very rarely. And when it happens, it's like, dude, like, it's a shocker. But it does happen. And that's the whole reason that Drake or Draper Kaufman made Hell Week is like, I want this shit to be so bad that on, you know, when we're getting ready to go on the beaches in Normandy or wherever, like, guys aren't going to give up.

• 2:12:25Andy Stumpf?

  Did he put himself through it?

• 2:12:27Jocko Willink?

  He did, indeed.

• 2:12:27Andy Stumpf?

  Good.

• 2:12:28Jocko Willink?

  Did you know that?

• 2:12:29Andy Stumpf?

  No.

• 2:12:30Jocko Willink?

  So he got, he made it. And then they had a massive attrition rate and the Navy was starting to look at what the hell's wrong with you? And he went.

• 2:12:38Andy Stumpf?

  Funny, they're still looking for that.

• 2:12:41Jocko Willink?

  He went through the program himself and he was like thirty five years old or something like that. When he went through it himself. And it just so happened when he finished, literally secured Hell Week, it just so happened that the base commander had gotten a call from whoever. And said, like, what the hell is wrong with this training? Look, why aren't any guys making it through? And he, the base commander, I think it was the base commander, don't quote me on this story, it's in Ben Milligan's book, uh, By Water Beneath the Walls, freaking outstanding book. Calls him in and he's like, you know, what's happening with this training? Why are so many people quitting? He's like, uh, I just went through this training. It is totally makeable and I'm thirty six years old or whatever.

• 2:13:17Andy Stumpf?

  So, yes. It is, it is very makeable.

• 2:13:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:20Andy Stumpf?

  It is what I would call actually relatively simple, yet not easy.

• 2:13:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, don't quit.

• 2:13:25Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:25Jocko Willink?

  This is the whole thing I've been hearing.

• 2:13:26Andy Stumpf?

  So you know what people will ask me, uh, cause I talk about this concept, they'll say, well, why don't you teach this theory of breaking things down like that to begin with? Which I don't think it would actually make a difference. Because it's something that requires practice or that you have already inherently learned in your life. And there's a huge difference between understanding a concept and living it. This makes things digestible, how I break it down and talk about like breadcrumbs and chunks. It makes it digestible, not less painful.

• 2:13:52Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:13:53Andy Stumpf?

  So you still have to go through the pain, but you are working through it in a digestible chunk that you're still fighting against yourself with. I don't think it would change attrition rate.

• 2:14:01Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, I think they do tell that to guys.

• 2:14:02Andy Stumpf?

  They might.

• 2:14:03Jocko Willink?

  They tell guys like, hey, just make it to the next meal, whatever the, you say that in the book, they make it to your next meal. I think that's where you were focused on.

• 2:14:08Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just make it to your next meal. Like, that's totally. Like obvious and they tell guys that hey, you know, like just, just go do the next evolution. Just make it through the next evolution. That's all you gotta do, especially in hell week. Cause in hell week, like you don't fail a run. You don't fail a, you get punished for it, but you're not gonna get dropped from it. So like just keep freaking going and you're gonna be all right. And that's kind of what you say here. If you can recognize and weaponize the most effective tool to make people quit, you should be able to reverse engineer the process that has the opposite effect. And then you talk about some examples from your life of uh, chunking essentially. Chunking things up, you know, like whether it's moving a pallet of bricks, whether it's uh, making it through hell week, which I just talked about. You know, those are things that you have been able to chunk up.

• 2:14:54Jocko Willink?

  Um, the personal one, you say, I've never been, had a lower sense of my own self-worth and place in the world than I did about halfway through the nearly two-year divorce process. I do not possess the vocabulary needed to describe what it feels like to be reduced as a human being down to a number on a piece of paper and then have that number be argued over. Add young children into the mix who are being fed a narrative that has at best a casual relationship with the truth paired with limited time together. And you have a very heavy situation. There were days where I felt, where it felt as if the force of gravity had increased threefold. Days where I woke up more exhausted than my lowest moments in the SEAL community, lying in bed, trying to figure out how I was gonna make it through the day.

• 2:15:38Jocko Willink?

  There were days when I questioned whether I was a good enough human being to deserve to be a father, to deserve finding another partner and days where I pondered whether or not the world would actually be a better place without me. There were days where I questioned everything that I thought about myself. Days where I stared into the abyss of heartbreak, wondering if there was a bottom. There were days where time seemed to slow, where it seemed like every piece of information, every interaction I was having were only negative. There were days where I felt like I was standing at the bottom of a mountain and boulder after boulder continued to tumble down the mountain, only to crush me. And there, and others where it felt like I was being pulled under in quicksand.

• 2:16:20Jocko Willink?

  In those moments, the single largest threat and the biggest enemy that I was facing was not someone on the other side of a divorce proceeding. It was myself, myself. It was and remains the lowest point I have ever been in my life. Dude, that's a freaking.

• 2:16:36Andy Stumpf?

  I actually think we should abolish seal trading and just force people to go through divorces.

• 2:16:39Jocko Willink?

  Dude.

• 2:16:40Andy Stumpf?

  The attrition rate would be higher. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. It was the absolute worst.

• 2:16:48Andy Stumpf?

  Not from a physical perspective, but from an emotional perspective is the single hardest thing I've ever done. It's gnarly.

• 2:16:54Jocko Willink?

  And it's just day after day after.

• 2:16:55Andy Stumpf?

  Never ending for almost two years during COVID.

• 2:16:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, and then you got the kids involved. So there's all there's like parameters on what you can do and say, and

• 2:17:06Andy Stumpf?

  there's supposed to be, not everybody follows parameters, Jocko.

• 2:17:12Andy Stumpf?

  Imagine your entire life, though, literally that Excel spreadsheet thing, that's real. I remember that that was actually the crux of all arguments in the mediation that lasted almost.

• 2:17:25Jocko Willink?

  This is basically money.

• 2:17:26Andy Stumpf?

  It's money. What is? What are you worth as a person? Okay, how do we spread this out? Amicably, or depending on the state that you live in, you'd hope it's 50 50. It's not 50 50 in Montana, let me tell you. And it's just like everything you've ever done, you've ever tried. Gets jammed in this Excel spreadsheet. And then you argue about whether or not you're worthy to get a percentage of that or somebody else is it's it's insane. It's the absolute worst.

• 2:17:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you gotta be looking at like, kind of what I was saying earlier, how you dig yourself a hole. And at some, some point you look in the hole and you're like, wait a second, I don't know if I can get out of this thing.

• 2:18:07Andy Stumpf?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, I didn't even know where the top of the hole was at the end of that process. There's not, there's not even any sunlight. You're just like, okay. And somehow I got down here and I forgot where my shovel is. So it's just me.

• 2:18:20Andy Stumpf?

  No, it's the worst, man.

• 2:18:22Jocko Willink?

  And so you talk about, the reason you talk about that is you talk about like how you basically one step at a time.

• 2:18:27Andy Stumpf?

  How to use this concept regardless of what's going on.

• 2:18:30Jocko Willink?

  What did it look like when you're going through this horrible divorce?

• 2:18:33Andy Stumpf?

  So again, because of the COVID stuff, we'd have Zoom calls, right? And, you know, let's say hypothetically, one side hires a financial expert to try to value you as a person. If you don't agree with that, then you have to hire your own financial expert that values you as a person and argues against their value and. You're paying for both. It's pretty fun. And then you're having these calls where people are arguing back and forth. And you just feel like less and less and less of an actual human being and more and more and more about a number. And I remember just sitting there thinking, I don't know how much longer I can sit here and have people talk about me in this manner as if I'm not on this call. Which is the dangerous headspace that those students get into. And I just flipped it. I'm like, okay, you know what?

• 2:19:17Andy Stumpf?

  No, we're not going to do that. First, I'm going to get up, go for a quick walk here. I'm going to come back. I'm just going to get through this call. This call sucks. I'm going to get through it. We'll see what comes next. And not think about the remainder of the week that has three more days that were scheduled for calls exactly like that.

• 2:19:33Andy Stumpf?

  One step at a time. Yeah.

• 2:19:37Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any outlet? Like?

• 2:19:40Andy Stumpf?

  Did Jack Daniels was a good friend.

• 2:19:43Jocko Willink?

  Were you drinking hard?

• 2:19:44Andy Stumpf?

  I didn't drink anything during that. That was one of the first things that I realized that I couldn't do that. Jiu Jitsu.

• 2:19:50Andy Stumpf?

  People are like, why did you go train for like seven days a week and four times a day?

• 2:19:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:19:55Andy Stumpf?

  I mean, honestly, yeah, it was during that was right during that time period. And again, couldn't travel very much. Not that Jiu Jitsu was supposed to be happening, but I mean, whatever. It's a social club. It's hard to say what was going on behind the door. And there was a group of people who took health very seriously. And it's like, hey, if you're not feeling well, don't come in. And we would get together almost every day and just train our asses off. Helped tremendously. And, you know, to go back to the base jumping chapter, one of the things that base jumping always gave for me was not like disassociation, but you can only think about what's going on in the moment. So you don't have to worry about if you had an argument or bills or any of that stuff because you're like, am I going to hit this tree or not? I live in life at three seconds in front of my face. That for me helps clear a lot of the stuff out of the filter. Jiu Jitsu, not the same level of intensity.

• 2:20:41Andy Stumpf?

  But I don't know how it is for you guys. It's a little bit harder for me to get there at this point because I'm thinking about a little bit more stuff just because I understand a little bit more stuff. But you can be in the moment, which is the same thing. It helps pull away that stress.

• 2:20:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, my, my Jiu Jitsu mind is very, very, very empty. Yeah, like, like I'll literally get done training and someone will be like, hey, what was that thing you hit over here on that? Second round. I'm like, I have no.

• 2:21:04Andy Stumpf?

  You and I are similar. And people will ask me that after all. I'm like, I actually don't know what you're talking about. How did you do that thing where you got around to my back? I'm like. I'm gonna need you to replicate what you did and there's a good chance I'm not gonna do the same thing.

• 2:21:17Jocko Willink?

  Which is like, that's the meditation thing, right? You know, because people are like, oh, you need to meditate so you can clear your mind. I'm like, freaking get out there and have somebody trying to kill you for,

• 2:21:25Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:26Jocko Willink?

  you know, eight, five minute rounds. You, your mind's gonna be pretty clear.

• 2:21:29Andy Stumpf?

  I don't know what I would have done absent that because I had found jujitsu before that process started. I,

• 2:21:37Andy Stumpf?

  I don't know, maybe I would have become a botanist or something or long walks out in the Montana hillside.

• 2:21:42Jocko Willink?

  And you said alcohol cutoff was a conscious decision?

• 2:21:45Andy Stumpf?

  Hundred percent.

• 2:21:46Jocko Willink?

  And what, what, how'd you get there?

• 2:21:48Andy Stumpf?

  I mean, I don't know if you know this, but we drank a lot in the SEAL teams and

• 2:21:56Andy Stumpf?

  I have seen it destroy enough people's lives and I've made enough bad decisions when drinking, i.e. first chapter, um, that I knew that it was going to be hard enough. And that one, it's like, why would you want to wake up feeling like shit having to go through any of those conversations? I need to be able to think clearly because this is probably going to be the time where I need to have the clearest level of like lens and objectivity, not only in this situation, but also in myself as well.

• 2:22:22Jocko Willink?

  The more I did jujitsu, the less I drank.

• 2:22:25Andy Stumpf?

  I've always had like, like I can casually drink or not, I can turn it off for years. It never had its hooks in me like that. And as I've gotten older, I don't even have the desire to drink anymore.

• 2:22:34Jocko Willink?

  Me neither.

• 2:22:34Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:35Jocko Willink?

  Definitely don't. And it's, yeah. Very lucky, I think, because I think there's some guys, when I talk to them, they're like, dude, how do you do it? Like, I'm like, damn dude, I don't, don't even think about it anymore.

• 2:22:45Andy Stumpf?

  Well, there are some people also who are genetically predisposed through, you know.

• 2:22:49Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, one thing you mentioned here is developing a mentality that doesn't allow you to quit is actually quite easy. Knowing when you should is truly hard because there's plenty of examples and, you know, some people get that mentality of, hey, I'm never going to quit. And they're digging a hole.

• 2:23:06Jocko Willink?

  And you had to make that call, you know, basically with your relationship, your, your ex-wife, like,

• 2:23:11Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, but I'd made it 10 years too late, a decade, because I would stand there, literally stand in the mirror and be like, really? You're gonna quit? It was the currency that we were judged by for almost two decades. I'm, I'm really good at positive self-talk. Wake up in the morning, be like, good morning again, you piece of shit. What is it today you're gonna fall short of?

• 2:23:35Andy Stumpf?

  So you're just brushing your teeth away?

• 2:23:36Jocko Willink?

  If you legit looked at your marriage as like, if I get divorced, I'm quitting.

• 2:23:41Andy Stumpf?

  Jocko, there was a time in my life where I looked at giving up on anything that was quitting. It was the only currency that mattered with the people that I cared about most in my life. And that doesn't work. I mean, toxic really, I hope everybody has a fantastic relationship, but toxic relationship exists. Let's take a no quit attitude to that. Where's that gonna go? You know, and also what example, and what I realized, and this one pisses me off to this day. And I never give any details really about the divorce. There's two parties inside of that. I have a larger platform than she has the access to, so I just always leave it very bland. And I own my, I own my share of the divorce as well, too. But if I waited 10 years too long, what example did I set for my kids?

• 2:24:26Andy Stumpf?

  When it comes to if the relationship, which, and I've had very deep conversations with my kids and they're all like, yeah. Just so you guys know, when you guys were arguing, we were just sitting on the stairs, listening, right? The kids are way more attentive. They hear more, they see more, like, don't think you're hiding anything from your kids. They see it. Like, what example did I set for them by trying to be Johnny, no quit? You know, like, yeah, you're on the football team, don't quit. You're in a relationship now for over 10 years. It's really falling apart. It's unhealthy in many, many different ways, but you know, just stay in there, buddy.

• 2:24:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I actually wrote about that in the book, Leadership Strategy Tactics. It's like, no one wouldn't quit and you definitely need to look around. There's some times where it's like, oh, if you don't quit, it's only gonna get worse.

• 2:25:10Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:25:15Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, there's nothing I value more than my children, but I do not tell them they are special. Instead, I tell them that I am proud. I tell them I am proud to be their father, proud of who they are and proud of who they are becoming. When they fall, I don't rush to pick them up. I rush to make sure they are okay. And then I do my best to teach them to pick themselves up. I teach them to value work, honor, integrity and family. We discuss accountability, responsibility and the consequences of words and actions. I do not shield my children from the ups and downs of my own life. I want them to see me challenged physically, mentally and emotionally. So that they understand that it is okay, that it should be expected, that it is essential. My kids are the single most important job I will ever have. It keeps me up at night worrying

• 2:25:59Jocko Willink?

  about whether I'm doing a good enough job. I hope it keeps you up at night, too. The most important lesson they will ever learn to me is to never, under any circumstances, give up. When they succeed, it will be due not to luck or good fortune. It will be from hard work. It will be because they know that the rent is due every single day and they're prepared to pay it. They will learn these things from me. At least that is my hope. And then you have this author's update.

• 2:26:25Andy Stumpf?

  Oh, yeah, my kids were super young when I wrote that.

• 2:26:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:26:28Andy Stumpf?

  I was giving you a verbal update on this before, talking about my oldest son and his choices.

• 2:26:36Jocko Willink?

  When I wrote those first few paragraphs, my children were much younger. My oldest had just become a teenager a few months prior, and their problems, now that I have the ability to look into the rearview mirror, were far less complex. I hear parents saying all the time that they cannot wait for their kids to grow up. I understand the sentiment, but all I can say in response is be careful what you wish for. I obviously don't love my children any less, and it's certainly fun to enjoy activities they were unable to participate in at a younger age. But as they grow in age, the potential problems and issues they will face grow in complexity. Your kids are going to be exposed to drugs, alcohol, and sex, just like we all were. At this point, I think the best you can hope for is that it doesn't all happen in a single experience.

• 2:27:17Jocko Willink?

  Their social circles will develop into an influence that dwarfs your ability as parents, and they are going to be connected to them nearly 24/7. I heard an amazing quote recently about smartphones, and that is something that I think all parents should consider, especially when you, when your children approach you, because everyone in their friend group is online and they communicate via social media apps. When you give your children a smartphone, you are not giving them access to the world. You are giving the world access to them. It is a terrifying concept, and it is 100% true.

• 2:27:53Jocko Willink?

  I feel like a failure as a parent. I know of no other way to put it. I've done my best to model to my children, everything in the opening paragraphs, and more often than not, it seems like water hitting the side sheet of a metal building, sliding off to the bottom and forgotten about. My children have seen me reinvent myself multiple times as opportunities present themselves. They have seen me at my low points and when things appear to be going well. I do everything I can to model an example of hard work, doing what needs to be done to allow for us to live the life I think we want, spending the time to needed to accomplish the work that needs to be done, sacrificing personal wants and desires to make sure that they have what they need, and being responsible with my time, energy, and effort. They have seen me sweat, bleed,

• 2:28:36Jocko Willink?

  cry, succeed, and fail, and yet it seems like the majority of the lessons I am trying to pass on them are lost or just simply discarded. I do not want anyone reading this book to think I am, I have parenting figured out, or that I am even a successful parent, because I truly do feel like a failure. The more I try to help, the worse things seem to become. When I step in to be of assistance, it often ends up being an opportunity to be taken advantage of, or at least that's how it feels. I have three children, each on their own unique trajectory. I know they will find their own way in life. I just no longer know how much of an impact I am able to have on them. It is so easy to write those first paragraphs, talking about parenting in a virtuous manner, laying out a playbook for developing the perfect child, prepared for life and ahead of, ahead of them and

• 2:29:19Jocko Willink?

  ready to tackle any obstacle. For the parents out there struggling, I feel you, I'm right there with you, and maybe this is the way it's supposed to be. Maybe this is the only way it can be.

• 2:29:30Andy Stumpf?

  Children sharpen their teeth on your bones.

• 2:29:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, um, I remember like, we've been doing this podcast for like 10 years. And so my kids 10 years ago were kids.

• 2:29:43Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, they would do what you said.

• 2:29:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:44Andy Stumpf?

  To a degree.

• 2:29:45Jocko Willink?

  The funny thing is, I didn't really talk about parenting.

• 2:29:49Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:50Jocko Willink?

  Because, and I remember telling Echo, like dude, the jury's out, bro. Like, who knows? Like, you don't know what your kids, and I had new people growing up who had kids. Man, that just completely went off the rails.

• 2:30:04Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:04Jocko Willink?

  And I mean, good people, good families, good people. The best like parents, if you if you drew out what a perfect parent would look like, these are the kind of parents. And they'd have three kids and two of them would be totally on track and having great lives. And one kid would go completely off the rails. And I mean, like heroin addiction, like any, the worst thing, jail, like the worst things you can think of. And so, man, it's a, it's a tough job. And to your point, like

• 2:30:32Jocko Willink?

  the amount, and some people get so freaking bent out of shape when I say this kind of thing, but like you, the amount of influence that you actually have is very hard to judge.

• 2:30:43Andy Stumpf?

  It decreases over time, that's for damn sure.

• 2:30:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, I think I've seen my kids kind of

• 2:30:51Jocko Willink?

  like, I would say, come back, you know, like.

• 2:30:55Andy Stumpf?

  I think that's the way because as soon as they go to school, they're actually with their peers more than they're with the parent more often. And that's where I say it starts to shift. But I have found with all three of my kids, it's two out of my three, because they're a little bit farther in the journey. They do come back. But goddamn, that ship drifts over the horizon for a little bit.

• 2:31:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and that's, you know, I always, I always say, you know, you gotta let your kids brush up against the guardrails of failure, right? Like they're gonna make mistakes, they're gonna do dumb things. And another thing is people think that their trajectory of their kid is so permanent, like, you know, I can't believe my kid, uh, whatever, doesn't like jujitsu. Like I've had that conversation with people, had that freaking conversation with Echo Charles. You know, he's like, dude, you know, I brought, I brought my boy in here yesterday and like, dude, he just was like, didn't want to train at all. And like, I don't know, like this, you know, like what? And I go, I go, I go, how old is he again? And he's like,

• 2:31:50Jocko Willink?

  six, and I'm like, bro, freaking chill the fuck out. Yeah, he was five, dude. But that's the way people feel like they feel like, oh, this is it, this is they're, they're off the, they're, they're, they're never gonna train, they're gonna be good, they're gonna be a bad human being. It's like, no, dude, actually, it's not that big of a deal. And kids are gonna hit the guardrails. Look, there are some times where your kids are gonna hit the guardrails with such force, you, they're gonna die or they're gonna like really ruin their lives.

• 2:32:14Andy Stumpf?

  And that's where parents step in. And if you're there, or and that's why you put, in my opinion, all that equity upfront, so hope, because a lot of the times where they're gonna hit those rails, you're not gonna be there. They're gonna be more with their social circle in those drug, sex, alcohol moments with poor decision herd mentality. That's where the equity comes in and it may not be enough, right? Like horrible shit happens to people and their kids, but it also may be enough to change the trajectory of their life. So you can't give up on that front end just because you don't see it right away. But I could not put that in there without the author's update.

• 2:32:49Andy Stumpf?

  Cause it how easy all this just virtuously do these things. Wake up every morning and wear your robe and go out and harvest your own oats and make it for your like, shut the fuck up, dude. You're like barely trying to get the sandwich in the kid's face on the way to school and like doing the absolute best you can. And as it gets older, their personalities develop more, their interests develop more. They can't, they want to be with their friends more than they want to be with you. Yeah, it's a, yeah, I don't know how my kids will respond to, you know, like, I feel like it's being ignored or taken advantage of, but the reality is that's what it feels like on the receiving. I'm just being honest about my journey through parenting.

• 2:33:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's weird. I had Rana, my middle daughter on this podcast and man, it was good because like you said, there's no, there was no me being able to say like, oh, and then I did this great move as a parent. And then I did this other great move as a parent. It's like, no, no, no. Here's, oh, let me tell you how bad I screwed this up. And I screwed up bad. Um, you know, like, you know, one small example, um, taking a six-year-old girl and bragging to your friends about how heavy she is.

• 2:33:58Jocko Willink?

  And be like, oh, wait, no, lift her up and feel how heavy she is and how dense she is. And like, you know, you had literally in my mind, just truly stoked that my daughter is like a mutant. And me thinking how cool that is and her as a six-year-old little girl thinking, oh, I'm, I'm dense, I'm heavy. Like dude, that's just fucking awful, man.

• 2:34:23Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:23Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, like, that's what I did. And then of course, you know, I forced jujitsu down their throats and, and then, you know, I always talk about the jujitsu thing, but that wasn't the only thing. It was like, you know, academics, like this is what you're going to do. This is the, this is what we expect, like all those things. So I definitely went overboard and I will say I kind of caught myself, uh, You know, right around, I guess the girls were maybe like 11 and nine or something like that, maybe, maybe 10 and eight, but like I, I was like, oh yeah. Oh, there's, this is, this is, this is not going the way it should be going, you know, this is not going the way it should be going. And the same thing with my son. I was like, mm, brutal. Yeah. With him as a kid where it's like.

• 2:35:07Jocko Willink?

  Which you think you can be with boys, but damn, you can mess them up too. Yeah. And so I just, yeah, it's, it is a really difficult thing. And I, this is what I've discovered though, is to the best of your ability, believe it or not, the way you interact with your team should as much as humanly possible mirror how you treat your kids. So for me, what that meant was like, when, if you worked for me, it was, hey, you know, you're responsible for this. Hey, how do you want to do it? You make it happen. Here's the end goal we're trying to make. Hey, here's the parameters you're allowed to work with and don't do this, Andy, don't do that. Okay, cool. You got it. Cool. I trust you. Go get after it. And you got to do that with your kids. And it's really scary because if I tell Andy, the team guy, hey, you're going on this trip. Hey, don't do anything stupid. And you do something stupid,

• 2:35:52Jocko Willink?

  cool. You know, we, you get in trouble. We write you up. Like there's a method, but when you, the same thing I just said earlier, like you feel like your kids, oh, that's the trajectory of their life. And if they mess up, then it's going to ruin everything. And so you're super paranoid and you over parent and you over protect. And so you got it. And then you micromanage them. And when you micromanage people, just like when you, if I micromanaged you in the teams, if you worked for me in the teams and I micromanaged you, what would you do? Fuck with your cage. Exactly. Like it's not gonna be good. So when you micromanage your kids, it's the same thing. Like you're going to get pushback. You're going to get, for lack of a better word, rebellion. And so it is a very difficult challenge. And just like leadership, you know, with decentralized command comes a level of risk. Because if I tell Andy, you work for

• 2:36:37Jocko Willink?

  me and I tell you to do something, there's a chance you do it. There's a chance you do it, maybe some similar to the way I would think it needs to be done. There's also a chance that you do something totally off the rocker and you do something that's stupid or illegal or immoral. And now I gotta deal with this shit. And it's a problem. But the counter to that is like, oh, I'm just gonna micromanage you and not make, let you make any decisions. And now you're not a responsible human, you're not a good leader yourself. It's a problem. So that's the delicate balance that we have to follow as parents, man. And it's so much harder because the emotions are so much more drastic with your kids.

• 2:37:09Andy Stumpf?

  I agree.

• 2:37:10Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:37:11Andy Stumpf?

  I would add to that, don't expect something from your kids. You can't model yourself.

• 2:37:14Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:37:15Andy Stumpf?

  I think the most important teaching tool for your kids. If you want to tell your kids, hey, you need to be disciplined and you need to have a clean room. And yours looks like Ramadi. You know, like, I mean, how, or like, you know, we gotta be careful. Like, let's, you know, how you fuel your body is important. And you have like Cheetos, orange stained fingers at the time. I, all, you could have all these virtuous lessons laid out and they see you doing that. The actions have to align with the words. Just model to the best of your ability so they can ignore at will your best attempt to be a parent.

• 2:37:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, it's rough and.

• 2:37:54Andy Stumpf?

  And though sometimes you'll see it, they'll be in a spot and you're like, they make the right call. And you're like, fuck, yes.

• 2:38:03Jocko Willink?

  It's good.

• 2:38:03Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, my middle son, one time just fucking, just, he is the one who like, who will stand up in front of like a bully or stop it or protect his brother and sister. I'm just like, that's, yes, yes.

• 2:38:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, um, it's such a, such a, such a journey, as you said, you know, with these kids.

• 2:38:25Andy Stumpf?

  They will sharpen their teeth on your bones.

• 2:38:31Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, going here to the book, in my first platoon, I met a man who I still believe had the single greatest impact on my military career. His name was Dave Hall. And he was everything that I'd ever thought a SEAL could be. He was finishing his fourth platoon and was physically preparing to complete the selection process that I would attempt myself years later at development group, group. He was a point man, a sniper, a comms guy, free fall qualified jumper, free fall jump master, static line jump master, and likely had many other qualifications that I can no longer remember. Dave was also a student of history, not only American history, but history of warfare. He understood not only tactics, but also where those tactics came from to include their strengths and weaknesses. Dave's standards were grueling. You either met them, or you suffered his wrath.

• 2:39:16Jocko Willink?

  One thing I always appreciated about Dave was not that he, not only did he hold himself to the same standards he expected from others, but he also expected himself to exceed them. In your first platoon, fresh out of BUDs, and the additional training required to earn your trident, you possess just enough knowledge to be a danger to yourself and everyone else around you. Not your enemy, but your friends and coworkers. The job is expansive. The book knowledge and practical skill base required to truly operate at a high level takes about five years to acquire. Up to that point, you need mentors, and that's what Dave was for me. Working with Dave was not easy. He had a tongue that could be sharp and a fuse that could be short, but he was fair. If you did the job well, you would know about it. If you

• 2:39:59Jocko Willink?

  did not meet the standard, well, you would also know about it. It would take me over 10,000 words to list chapter and verse the situations he helped me through, the mistakes he allowed me to make and then helped me correct, and the sheer amount of information about the SEAL teams and what the job entails that I learned from him. He was the true essence of a mentor. The way he treated me shaped the way I treated others when I was in a mentorship role later in my own career. His approach to problem solving in a tactical environment impacted my own approach. He was truly everything that I thought a SEAL could and would be. At that point in my life, I had not considered the concept of being drown proof, but if I had, he would have been the individual that I used as my example.

• 2:40:47Jocko Willink?

  He killed himself in October of 2020.

• 2:40:52Jocko Willink?

  I'm going to be blunt because Dave would not have it any other way. Dave had a problem with alcohol. A lot of us did. As I mentioned in the first chapter, it has never ceased to amaze me how much trouble you were guaranteed to get in for an alcohol-related incident, while at the same time, working in a community that absolutely pushed a drinking culture. You won't find that culture anywhere in doctrine, and I can only speak for the time period that I served, but it was there and it wasn't hiding anywhere other than in plain sight. I do not blame the SEAL teams or the community for anyone's alcoholism, but I do believe it is fair to say that the environment could and would be troubling for people who are predisposed to alcohol abuse.

• 2:41:31Jocko Willink?

  The words that Dave used to describe how he felt about himself would bring a tear to any man, especially those who knew him well. Although he was my standard and the standard for many others, he found himself in a place of feeling unworthy because he could no longer hold them himself. He was in pain, he was suffering, and it seems that toward the end, he had at least started to reach out to a few people. I'm not sure to what degree he opened up and asked for help, but I do have no doubt that all of them would have given him their last breath and drop of blood for him if he had asked for it. In the end, alone and isolated, he ended his life.

• 2:42:12Jocko Willink?

  At the funeral, the sentiment was the same from all his friends who assembled in Florida. I wish I had known. I wish that I could have done more.

• 2:42:28Andy Stumpf?

  Suffered in silence for years. Stuff that happened in his military career I didn't know about, had like lost jobs, it had impacted him professionally. And he had came up to Montana and he had visited and it wasn't like crazy abnormal behavior, but you know, maybe something, but not enough like five alarm, alarm bells that are going off.

• 2:42:53Andy Stumpf?

  But yeah, I mean, for years, he legitimately is what I would consider to be the standard for a team guy. He was that for me in my first platoon, like, fuck. We were, I was a comm guy in my first platoon. And this is funny because this ties back into when the skipper gave me my bird back. We were in Korea at Fall Eagle. And I was part of a reconnaissance element. We were swimming out of a Zodiac to overwatch a vessel. Very, very traditional SEAL skillset here. We decided not to wear wetsuits, so that was a really chilly evening.

• 2:43:34Andy Stumpf?

  You really huddle with your friends well in those environments. Did a comm check before we got on the Mark V. Everything's good to go. Like, you know the deal, like, you got your radio, you got your crypto, all this stuff. Comm check, good to go, right before you get on the boats. We get on, we swim in, we go up, I go to make comms. The coaxial cable is missing one of the ends, the twist on ends. And it's just got the little nipple sticking out of it. And you're a new guy comm guy? New guy comm guy. This is our ORE, which is operational readiness exercise, which I don't actually think means dick, but they make it seem like your career's over if you don't pass this. Because I think they'll just give you another one.

• 2:44:07Andy Stumpf?

  So my first move was I'll just stick that little nipple into the hole to see if it works. It doesn't, just to save anybody time if the coaxial cable strips. And Dave was the element leader, he's like, hey, did you make comms? I was like, well, yeah, about that.

• 2:44:24Andy Stumpf?

  He had been a comm guy. And again, not only like the understanding of tactics, like, he was a student of history. But he was like the comm guy who could tell you, well, this is the frequency you need. He's like, in this situation here, they'll tell you in the book, you should use a reverse dipole. But actually, what I've really found is an inverted V bounce off the stratosphere. And I'm just like, huh? Well, like, he's that kind of guy, right? Like, he knew his shit because he was the standard.

• 2:44:50Andy Stumpf?

  I was like, Dave, I can't make comms. He's like, what are you talking about? He's like, just go point the goddamn antenna at the satellite and make comms. I'm like, the coaxial cable isn't working. And of course, at that time, we had a backup HF radio as well. All three of these pieces of gear were in my backpack. HF satcom crypto, probably a kick 13 that I, you know, had crippling anxiety about losing it several times during that operation, which wasn't even real. And we had a lane grader who was there with us too, which is just like a cadre member that's watching us. And instead of jumping down my shit, for the next four hours, he showed me more about HF comms in an attempt to make, I mean, all sorts of stuff, layering things out, trying to get angles, working through frequencies, trying to take apart the coaxial cable.

• 2:45:33Andy Stumpf?

  It was insane. Never got pissed. And at the end of the day, we never solved it. The lane grader hopped on their walkie talk and was like, hey, go back there and just get them a coaxial cable. Cause there was supposed to be a follow on combat swimmer operation. And I mean, you could go so many different ways there, right? Like crush the new guy. You're an absolute piece of shit. And instead, I still remember like him talking about the math and the formulas and layings. I'm like, to this day, this is almost 30 years ago that this happened. We get the coaxial cable. Shockingly enough, you point the antenna at the correct satellite and comms really start working. So we go through all that. Later that night, I get my trident back, but that's, that's just the guy that Dave was like, he could have solved

• 2:46:14Andy Stumpf?

  any of those situations. He just needed the right tool, like his knowledge base, his standard physically fit, always, you know, at the range, top tier and everything that he did, understood like breaching, jumping comp, like all of that stuff. And then to come to find out that, and again, this is my words. He didn't ever verbalize this to me or anybody else, but it seems like he got, and based off of what he, the, some of the written words that he left behind, that he just, he couldn't live with the idea of not being able to live up to his own standard. And it took him to a place where he killed himself.

• 2:46:50Jocko Willink?

  Do you ever see the movie There Will Be Blood?

• 2:46:52Andy Stumpf?

  Yep.

• 2:46:53Jocko Willink?

  So, the first time I saw that movie, um, I was like so into it and in the end, you've seen the movie Echo?

• 2:46:59Andy Stumpf?

  No.

• 2:47:00Jocko Willink?

  So, there's like a

• 2:47:00Andy Stumpf?

  Daniel Day Lewis.

• 2:47:01Jocko Willink?

  Daniel Day Lewis and he plays this like totally control freak, manipulative, just a businessman that's doing the oil thing and, you know, making everything in his world work for him. And then in the end, it's like, it's like the whole movie is like that. And in the end, he's an alcoholic and he like kills another guy drunkenly and, and when I first saw that movie, I was like, this is just, this is stupid. This is ending ruined it because it did not compute to me that someone that that was that smart, that mean manipulative, that much of a control freak would

• 2:47:42Jocko Willink?

  ruin their lives with alcohol. And, uh, boy, was I wrong, right?

• 2:47:50Andy Stumpf?

  You never know what's going on in people's lives, man. That's the lesson that I took from that. And we, I mean,

• 2:47:57Andy Stumpf?

  saw people that I hadn't seen in years and almost all of us were just like, like, did you have any idea? Did he ever reach out? And because I mean, you, I would do anything for him. And I wish I had done more and I wish I had paid more attention to, I guess, what could be seen in hindsight as the warning signs, but would have been the, what I wrote is true. If there had been somebody who I based the title of the book off of, it would have been him because he just got shit done regardless of what was going on in his life. Until he didn't.

• 2:48:26Jocko Willink?

  You know, the guys that have killed themselves. I'm trying to think I, almost all of them, I was kind of, there's not one of them where I go, oh yeah, well, I see, see that thing coming.

• 2:48:36Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:36Jocko Willink?

  Like, it doesn't seem like, I can't think of off the top of my head, oh yeah, oh yeah, that guy was in a rough place. I could really see that coming. Like, no, it's like guys where you go, wait, what the, how did that happen? How, why, why? What are you talking about? That guy's in the right spot. Um, I mean, damn, we've had two SEAL Team commanders.

• 2:48:57Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:58Jocko Willink?

  Kill themselves, which is like so hard to understand. That's the like the best job. You know, you're the, you're the commander of a SEAL team, you know, like, ah, man, it's so hard to understand. But then again, I go back to that, um, to that, there will be blood and what you just said, like, what is going on in someone's head? It's really hard to understand. The other thing is what things look like inside people's own heads. Like, I used to talk about the fact that, you know, you get someone that's like, uh, you got some, you know, you get some young team guy and he's going out with some idiot stripper girl that's like causing all

• 2:49:39Jocko Willink?

  kinds of problem in his world. And you just like, hey, bro, just break up with this girl. Like this is not going to be good for you. No way dude, she's the one. Yep, she's the one. Or you get, you know, like, whatever that thing is, whatever they get wrapped up in, and you cannot get them out of it. Or like, they get dumped, you know, they get dumped by a girl. And same thing, they're in this totally distraught, distraught place in their world. And you go, hey, man, like, there's another girl, like, go find another girl. And they cannot like, get out of that. So the way that people get wrapped up inside their own heads is really, really scary. You know, another good example of that is like, um, anorexia, right? Where you have this visual, you know, you look at someone

• 2:50:23Jocko Willink?

  and you can see clearly like they are damaging themselves and going to die. And in their own head, in their own head, they think they're fat. Like, it's, it's impossible to even understand. And, and like, they're getting told by the doctors, like, you need to eat, they get on feeding tubes and transfusions, like, all those things, and they still look in the mirror and think that they're fat. And, and I think there's so many things in life that are comparable to that, where whether it's, you know, a financial situation, how am I ever going to get out of this? A relationship situation, how am I ever get out of this? A work situation, how am I ever getting out of this? There's these things that people get wrapped up in, and it's so difficult to explain to them, like, hey, man.

• 2:51:08Jocko Willink?

  This isn't, this isn't, there's a way out of this. You know, it's kind of like the fact that I couldn't explain to my own daughter who loves jujitsu more than anything. I couldn't explain to her when she was a little bit younger that jujitsu was cool. Like I could not get that into her head. And man, when people get that idea in their head, they get wrapped around something. It's so scary and it takes, so it can be so freaking challenging to get them out of there.

• 2:51:29Andy Stumpf?

  I would add to that too, which I think makes it even more dangerous. This is when they fall into a headspace where they think they're the only person dealing with it. You think you're unique in your struggles. Why say something to somebody because they're not going to understand? They've never gone through this. And you gotta remember, again, maybe the person you're gonna ask for help, dude, they might be in the trenches with you because they might look like they have their shit together, but they barely maybe holding their station in the water. Reaching out and asking people for help is an essential and critical skill that people have to learn. And because human beings can do a lot of cool things. I've yet to meet one that can legitimately read somebody's mind. There's a couple people out there that claim that they can, but they're liars.

• 2:52:14Jocko Willink?

  Uh, this is a huge point that you make in the book. You know, you're not alone. And then you say this, you know, checking in on people, most of the time you're gonna get brushed off. You're gonna get the blanket, I'm fine, especially if you ask a man. Don't stop asking. I have asked, when I've asked these questions, I opened a conversation with how much I care about the person and what they mean to me in their, in their life and how I am concerned. If they continue to blow you off, they will continue to blow you off, but they will have no doubt that you care and that you left the door open and the light on for a conversation in the future if they need someone to talk to. I didn't have those conversations with Dave and I know I should have. I don't know if it would have changed the outcome, but I know it would have, he would have understood how much I care for

• 2:52:58Jocko Willink?

  him, how much impact he made on my life. My opportunity is gone. Please learn from my mistake and don't lose yours. I can imagine no worse feeling than thinking you are alone in the ocean with the weight of the water pulling you under, gasping for air and not recognizing that right behind you is a lifeboat full of people watching, holding a life preserver and waiting to throw it to you. All they need is for you to see them and to ask them for help.

• 2:53:25Andy Stumpf?

  Regrets a bitch, man. I wish I'd had more conversations. It's tough with guys. And the difference between, hey, man, what the fuck is wrong with you? And like, hey, dude, like, let's go for a walk. Like, I haven't heard from you in a while. Like, what's going on, man? Like, our relationship is super important. You seem like you're dealing with some stuff. Like, what can I help you with? Two very different answers. I've tested a variety of approaches. And you get some different answers, depending. Though what the fuck is wrong with you is not the one you should go with, for clarity.

• 2:53:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, this is a

• 2:53:58Jocko Willink?

  problem that I have is

• 2:54:00Andy Stumpf?

  Human emotion?

• 2:54:06Jocko Willink?

  A problem that I have is, you know, going back to being in the SEAL teams. No one's going to tell me they're tired. No one's going to tell me they don't want to go on an op. No one's going to tell me they need more, you know, rest. No one, no one ever told me that stuff. I mean, I would have to pull it out and figure it out through, you know, sources.

• 2:54:26Jocko Willink?

  And so no one wants to tell me when something's wrong. No one wants to tell me they're in financial trouble. No one wants to tell me they've got health issues. They don't want to tell me any of that stuff. And so, you know, I am the master of receiving the answer. I'm, everything's great. I'm fine. I am the, the, the master, and by that, I mean the worst. Like, I've get, gotten told by people, like, that they were in a terrible situation. And the only reason they're telling me about it now is because they're out of it. So they're like, oh, yeah, I was in a really bad situation. Financially, relationship, the whole nine yards, health. And, you know, I've been told over and over, oh, everything's good. Yeah, everything's fine. You know, plodding along, doing the thing, blah, blah, blah. Living the dream, that whole thing.

• 2:55:07Jocko Willink?

  And so if you have any advice on like, how to ask that question, I'm all ears.

• 2:55:13Andy Stumpf?

  What you're talking about, though, like, the position you were in, again, this is the uniqueness of the military. Like, honestly, the reason they probably so likely hesitant to say anything is because of the respect level that they had for you. You nailed it when you said the counter intel, you need sources.

• 2:55:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:55:28Andy Stumpf?

  You need, you need, and this is going to be something that takes time, but I know that you had this with the people that you worked with. You needed the ability to probably behind closed doors and secretly receive information from some intermediary, probably going to be like the LPO or the chief about what was going on further down the ladder than anybody's ever going to expose to you. The hard part is in that though is how do you take action on it without disclosing how you got that information?

• 2:55:53Jocko Willink?

  Without burning your sources, yeah.

• 2:55:55Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah. So it doesn't surprise me that, that, and again, specifically in that setting, people can find that place though in parenting as well too. Cause no, I mean, no kids like, hey, I really want to let my parents down today. Sometimes I think like on Thursdays, my kids are like that. That's definitely the headspace they go with. But no, I mean, it's, it's tough. And I think it's more of a soft skill than a hard skill. And the world we came from is more hard skills than soft, man.

• 2:56:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. And I'm also, uh, like,

• 2:56:26Jocko Willink?

  if you don't call me, I don't think about it for a heartbeat. But if you, if you didn't call me for a year and you called me up like, hey, I need you to come and do this right now. I'd be like, cool. Look, I'll, I'll be there in, you know, 28 minutes, whatever. You know, like I, my, my running mate, who I went through BUDS with, went through STT with, did three platoons with, was in training cell with at SEAL Team One, who was my roommate that entire time. When I went to Virginia Beach to Team Two, I didn't talk to him.

• 2:56:55Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah. It's because we're dudes though.

• 2:56:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I just didn't talk to him and then came back two years later and was like, oh, hey, bro. He's like, hey, what's going on? Like,

• 2:57:02Andy Stumpf?

  Five minutes probably to catch up?

• 2:57:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Like literally like nothing ever happened and nothing ever, you know, like just that's the way it is. And so, you know, when you don't, you know, continually reach out, like, you know, all the times I call you on your birthday to say like, hey, Andy, just wanted to let you know I'm thinking about you today.

• 2:57:20Andy Stumpf?

  And Christmas Eve's, I got you a present. You go fuck yourself.

• 2:57:25Jocko Willink?

  And like, that's not, I know it's

• 2:57:28Andy Stumpf?

  That's tougher though, because that's, you know what I mean? That's a little bit more remote. I think it's easier to do if you're in the socials and you can kind of feel the ebb and the flow, right? Cause there's ebb and flow in life and you can tell when people are having a good day or bad. I think that's more reasonable. If you're different coasts and both like on a professional trajectory, I think that's more around the people that are actually physically located with them that can kind of keep a pulse on it.

• 2:57:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. And he was totally fine. My point in saying that was like, it's not, I don't expect you to ever call me and say, hey, bro, how's it going? I don't expect you to do that in any way, shape or form. And I actually expect the opposite. Like if you called me, I'd be like, oh, Andy must need something like something must be going on. And if you never called me, I would be like, oh yeah, everything's cool with Andy. Like he's doing great. Like that's what's happening. You, I only expect people to call me when something's going wrong, pretty much. You know what I mean? Like people call me when they have problems. And so to, to

• 2:58:24Andy Stumpf?

  Have you ever just tried reaching out, like testing your own theory?

• 2:58:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I need to do more of like, oh,

• 2:58:29Andy Stumpf?

  All dudes need to do more. Yeah. The call of like, Hey man, what are you up to? And the person can say,

• 2:58:37Andy Stumpf?

  What are you talking about? This is weird. And you're like, yeah, I know it's weird, but I totally miss you and I love you and I just want to know. They're just gonna be like, wrong number.

• 2:58:46Andy Stumpf?

  But at least they'll know.

• 2:58:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think it's something, and I know it's, I know it's a point of, uh, I always feel like, dude, I'm not gonna bother Andy or Echo.

• 2:58:55Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, that's a lie we tell ourselves.

• 2:58:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, maybe it is.

• 2:58:58Andy Stumpf?

  Cause you are an exceptionally busy person. Phone calls are like five minutes. I'm in the same boat, right? And my dad lives a mile from me and they're, a week will go by and I won't stop by and see him. Oh, I don't want to interrupt. He's not doing anything. He's sitting there talking to his dog, you know?

• 2:59:13Jocko Willink?

  Check. Well, uh, reach out to your bros.

• 2:59:15Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, more than once too.

• 2:59:17Jocko Willink?

  That's the, that's the lesson here. Uh, refining your stroke. I believe that we must take the world for what it is, not what we want it to be. I believe that when you encounter an obstacle in life, you must find a way through it, over it, around it, not ignore it. We live in a world of instant gratification. So you go into this, you talk about the social media, the, you know, the, trying to get things, trying to-

• 2:59:41Andy Stumpf?

  The 10-year overnight successes must be nice, ignoring every ounce of effort that gets you there.

• 2:59:48Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and you got your secret to success in here.

• 2:59:50Andy Stumpf?

  Um, do I?

• 2:59:51Jocko Willink?

  Come as no shocker here. There's no replacement for hard work.

• 2:59:54Andy Stumpf?

  Indeed.

• 2:59:55Jocko Willink?

  Just like everyone else. I wish it was a hack to hard work. Hard work requires delaying instant gratification, and that can be challenging both physically and mentally, especially when contrasted with more enjoyable activities that seduce our attention, time, and effort. For as deeply as I wish that success did not require countless hours of effort to make microscopic and often imperceivable improvements in our personal and professional lives, I've yet to find a way around it. It's unavoidable. You're gonna have to freaking get into it.

• 3:00:21Andy Stumpf?

  Why do people just avoid that reality? It's like they will put three times the effort in to find a hack to, instead of just doing the thing that needs to be, I'm optimizing my life, bro. But you just spent six hours doing something that would take you 30 minutes.

• 3:00:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. My favorite example of that is Dean Lister, who hated cutting weight. And what he would do is he would go out to the world. This is in the, in the 90s to 2000s. You know, so it wasn't quite full internet. So we'd just ask all these people and he'd find all these different methods for cutting weight. And then take whatever seemed good out of each method, whatever the easiest path of each method was like to cut weight. And we would end up having to cut, you know, 28 pounds in freaking three days or something ridiculous. Like, well, no, I heard that if you did this salt bath and you cut the potato chips on Thursdays and then, you know, like he had these things-

• 3:01:10Andy Stumpf?

  Or if your shit was tight for months leading up to it, maybe you would have to burn some water weight off the day before. But that's- Hard.

• 3:01:18Jocko Willink?

  But he spent so much time doing exactly what you're like looking around for what would be the easiest way to cut weight, bro. The easiest way to cut weight is freaking watch your diet and work out.

• 3:01:28Andy Stumpf?

  I have people I know like, yeah, I gotta, I gotta optimize my email. You know, I'm looking for a way to integrate AI. I'm like, hold on, like, how many emails you get? They're like several a day. I'm like, answer the fucking emails, dude. You don't need an AI tool. You just need to sit down in front of your computer and put your phone over here and answer the, do the work.

• 3:01:46Jocko Willink?

  Several a day.

• 3:01:47Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:49Jocko Willink?

  You have, fast forward a little bit, you have the tools that you need to succeed. The tools are not failing you, you are failing yourself. That's ten, that sentence stings and it's a difficult one to write out because it's true, as it's true for me, as any reader of this book. I almost always have the tools and so do you. And I often have the knowledge. When I don't, it's easy to find. Where I have been known to struggle, stumble and fail is execution. There are countless reasons why this happens to all of us, but upon objective reflection of my own life, I have identified what I consider to be the two main culprits, discipline and motivation.

• 3:02:20Andy Stumpf?

  You know anything about those? I'm still working on it.

• 3:02:22Jocko Willink?

  I define motivation as the fuel that drives you. Some people are motivated through praise and recognitions. Others are driven by negative reinforcement and proving naysayers wrong. I fall more into the latter category than the former. When I was young, people would tell me that my goal of becoming a SEAL was foolish. And when they did so, they had no idea that their words and criticism were stoking my internal fire. To this day, the most effective way to motivate me is to tell me I'm not capable of doing something.

• 3:02:47Andy Stumpf?

  Very true.

• 3:02:48Jocko Willink?

  Little rebellious streak, huh?

• 3:02:50Andy Stumpf?

  I mean, as you can choose whatever word you want to, hard headed is another good one. Goal oriented.

• 3:02:59Jocko Willink?

  Relying solely on motivation is problematic. It can and will fail you because it's more like the ocean tide than a bridge. Motivation ebbs and flows and will recede and return, but not always on the timeline we want or needed to. Thankfully, motivation could be outsourced. We live in a beautifully interconnected world and within internet connection and device of your choosing, you can find and connect with what inspires you, allowing you to throw logs on your own fire when your personal stock of fuel is running low. That kind of, I wasn't, I never really thought about that before. But then I think about how music, like when you listen to mu, well, for me, when I listen to like certain music. Like, oh, uh, my workout is definitely going to be better now.

• 3:03:41Andy Stumpf?

  Or if you see somebody legitimately doing something awesome, you're like, okay. I mean, the internet is the best, worst thing ever. You just have to make sure it's working for you and you're not working for it. One of the beautiful things is you can scour the globe for things that makes your workout harder or better. The negative side of that is 98% of the time is going to be you being sucked into the rabbit hole.

• 3:04:04Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I define discipline as doing things you need to do regardless of you want, whether you want to or not. Discipline is action regardless of outside influence, internal monologue or motivation. Discipline is taking the micro steps along your path sequentially, which one day will lead you to macro success. Discipline is easy to define and very hard to live. True statement there.

• 3:04:26Andy Stumpf?

  Can't be outsourced either.

• 3:04:29Andy Stumpf?

  That one's on the control side of the or influence, I should say, as opposed to concern.

• 3:04:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, you know, it's like you can, like, and when you're in bootcamp, you're gonna keep running because that freaking drill instructor, whatever's yelling at you, like that's imposed to discipline. It has its way.

• 3:04:46Andy Stumpf?

  For a short period of time.

• 3:04:47Jocko Willink?

  Short period of time.

• 3:04:48Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:48Jocko Willink?

  And it's not going to be there for you in your personal life. You know, it's just not going to be there. You have to have the intrinsic discipline.

• 3:04:58Jocko Willink?

  Uh, my advice, start small and focus on momentum. The opportunities to do so surround you in every aspect of your life. Each choice is a decision we make. We have at least two options, easy or hard. You talk about this, uh, taking the art, the hard choice or the easy choice. Talk about McCraven making your bed.

• 3:05:15Andy Stumpf?

  Wildly misunderstood speech, I believe.

• 3:05:17Jocko Willink?

  Why is that?

• 3:05:17Andy Stumpf?

  Cause it has nothing to do with the goddamn bed.

• 3:05:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, true.

• 3:05:20Andy Stumpf?

  Parents are just like, yes, finally. And the kids make their bed and they're still a shit sandwich. It's like, no, start your day with a disciplined act and build momentum on that. It doesn't have to be the bed, right? You could put your shoes away, you could do your laundry. All things my children ignore me on.

• 3:05:35Jocko Willink?

  And people used to ask me like, do you make your bed first thing in the morning? I'm like, no, my wife is in it. Like, I'm not making my bed while my wife is in it.

• 3:05:41Andy Stumpf?

  Some people are into that.

• 3:05:44Jocko Willink?

  Uh, discipline equals freedom. Sounds good.

• 3:05:46Andy Stumpf?

  I heard somebody say that.

• 3:05:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is probably the best quote in this whole book, you know?

• 3:05:50Andy Stumpf?

  I quoted you, but then I think I said in the next sentence, I disagree. I didn't say I disagree.

• 3:05:55Jocko Willink?

  I didn't want to do this, but we'll do it. Chaco Willink.

• 3:05:58Andy Stumpf?

  Yes.

• 3:05:58Jocko Willink?

  Says that discipline equals freedom, a statement that I agree with in concept.

• 3:06:02Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, I describe it differently.

• 3:06:03Jocko Willink?

  Though I frame it slightly differently through the lens of two choices. You have the choice of discipline or the choice of regret. Oh, I like it.

• 3:06:09Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:10Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 3:06:12Andy Stumpf?

  You can regret not having freedom, you know?

• 3:06:16Andy Stumpf?

  Through your poor discipline.

• 3:06:21Jocko Willink?

  It takes things longer, it takes longer to do things wrong than it does to complete them correctly the first time. That's a good nugget of advice for any human beings out there. You kind of mentioned this earlier, fast forward a little bit. You talked about the fact that, you know, Mikey Mansour and, and meeting his dad, George, and, you know, what, what, and, you know, he's on my podcast as well, and just such a great dude. And, and, you know, I've spent a lot of time with the family. And what a great family, but you know, to, to your point, you know, people don't, a lot of people don't know that he quit, Bud's first time through and like.

• 3:06:59Andy Stumpf?

  His unwillingness to give up, though, saved everybody's life on that roof that night. I mean, who knows, so many different things could have happened, but let's say everything played out it, but that person wasn't there. That's a completely different outcome. And yeah, that choice cost him his life, but it was because he was unwilling to give up. I mean, it, yeah, people just think, oh, if you try Bud's one time and you're done, like, no, some of the most amazing people from our community did not have success their first time, but they weren't defined by that.

• 3:07:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You say, although I never got the chance to meet him, his equipment and Medal of Honor citation were on the quarter deck of SEAL Team Three. I walk past his shadow box every day. I would often stop to look at it and ponder the life he lived and the decision he made that ultimately ended so young. I wonder what decision I would have made if I were put in his shoes. Do I truly have what it takes to sacrifice everything I have and everything that I could ever have for someone else? I would like to think that answer to the question is yes, but none of us know until we find ourselves in that moment. Mike knew and he answered the bell.

• 3:08:04Jocko Willink?

  Knowing that the outcome was certain.

• 3:08:07Andy Stumpf?

  I'd like to believe that I would take the same action, but damn man. It's the difference between talking about walking the path and walking the path.

• 3:08:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's such a. You know, that, that, that guiding legacy, you know, it's, it's very, when I read that, man, I was very moved. The fact that you were talking about this, you know, you're a, an experienced SEAL yourself, you know, with whatever time in the teams. And yet you as a wound guy had been wounded guy to been conduct into combat. And you walk by that quarter deck every day and you know, you see Mikey's gear there and like, that's doing exactly what it should do, which is setting the standard for the young frogman out there.

• 3:08:49Andy Stumpf?

  I hope it stops them in their tracks. I mean,

• 3:08:53Andy Stumpf?

  yeah, I mean, again, I'd, I'd like to think that I'd be capable of that. But dude, I mean, how can you really know until you're in that spot?

• 3:09:04Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's wild as a Mikey's sister. She was like, first of all, he lied to them the whole time he was on deployment. He's like, oh, we're just training the Iraqis.

• 3:09:13Andy Stumpf?

  Safest deployment ever.

• 3:09:15Jocko Willink?

  But, uh, you know, like Mikey's sister was just like, well, I wasn't surprised at all. Yeah, I was like, check. Me neither.

• 3:09:26Andy Stumpf?

  I would be surprised if like someone like Echo did that.

• 3:09:30Andy Stumpf?

  There are those that you know, and then those you're like, oh, he jumped off the other side of the building. That checks out. While screaming, save yourself.

• 3:09:41Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 3:09:42Andy Stumpf?

  You're welcome. That's how you bring it back from being so dark. You were supposed to do your job, so I did it for you.

• 3:09:52Jocko Willink?

  Another point that you make in here, nothing comes without a price tag. There is a cost to everything, even winning. And this is a rough chapter. This is like, you're back at the team. You've already been wounded. You're back at the team. You're getting ready to deploy. Your mom has cancer.

• 3:10:07Andy Stumpf?

  For the second time.

• 3:10:08Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And, uh, it's the bad kind of cancer.

• 3:10:14Andy Stumpf?

  For clarity, I'm not aware of a good kind, but I get what you're saying.

• 3:10:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know what I'm saying, you know?

• 3:10:19Andy Stumpf?

  Likely terminal diagnosis. Yeah.

• 3:10:23Jocko Willink?

  You're getting ready to go on deployment.

• 3:10:27Jocko Willink?

  Of course, because that's what we do. I did not know if I would see my mother again when I hugged her goodbye at the front door of my house in the early morning hours of the day I left. I didn't need to be at work early, but I was trying to get out of the house before my kids woke up. It's hard enough to kiss them goodbye in their sleep. It is nearly impossible to hold it together when they are waiting for you at the bottom of the stairs like my sons were. I do not know how to describe the feeling of wrapping around your arms, wrapping your arms around your children and hoping that they can feel the love you have for them, but would never be able to verbalize. The feeling of trying to pass every ounce of that love for them through your embrace

• 3:11:09Jocko Willink?

  while trying to hold back your tears and uncontrollable nightmarish thoughts of whether or not they would even remember you or your love should the next time they see you, it be in a flag draped coffin.

• 3:11:22Jocko Willink?

  I barely made it around the corner before needing to pull my truck over. I could not stop the tears and I couldn't see through them enough to drive.

• 3:11:36Andy Stumpf?

  Tough days.

• 3:11:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, leaving on deployment

• 3:11:41Jocko Willink?

  is a motherfucker.

• 3:11:43Andy Stumpf?

  We got delayed that day and actually left at like late in the evening, so people had the opportunity to go back home.

• 3:11:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:11:51Andy Stumpf?

  And for me, at least, the move is no, because I cannot physically tolerate going through that again.

• 3:11:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:11:57Andy Stumpf?

  It is gnarly.

• 3:11:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I remember my last deployment, leaving my kids, just like turning and walking out and just being like, you can hold it together for another thirty-eight seconds.

• 3:12:07Andy Stumpf?

  I drove like sixty feet, is about how far I got it, yeah. My pretty bitch in Toyota to come, it's not a big deal. We don't have to celebrate it, Echo.

• 3:12:16Andy Stumpf?

  Totally stock, probably V2.

• 3:12:22Jocko Willink?

  Now you're on deployment.

• 3:12:23Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:23Jocko Willink?

  It's a, you know, it's a good deployment, solid deployment. Things are going on, operations happening, kinetic deployment and well, for anyone that doesn't know, when there's something going on, an emergency at home, you get the American Red Cross, they, they send like a message, it's a way of getting information to troops that are overseas and you get this Red Cross message. Of course, there's not planned and There's like a choice, you know, you gotta go home. Your mom is, your mom is in a really bad way and they want to get you out of there, but at the same time, you've got another operation that's on the table.

• 3:13:02Jocko Willink?

  You say this, "The decision was not easy for me. I cared deeply about the people I was with, but the truth is that I loved the job and the fear of missing out was real. I recognized that there was risk involved with the operation. I could be killed or injured in combat and mechanical issues with helicopters caused them to fail and crash at times, let alone from enemy fire. I also realized that if I did choose to go on the operation, it would likely be the last of my career."

• 3:13:24Jocko Willink?

  "I'd been experiencing nagging issues with my ankle the entire deployment and I did not think it was likely I would be able to continue as an operational SEAL beyond that point. On the other hand, I could have accepted that the operation, that my operational career was over in that moment, put it all behind me and focused on getting home. I felt a sense of obligation in both directions. In the end, I chose to go on the mission and accept the risk associated with that decision. I made it back to the base with limited time, but was able to pack and turn over my sensitive items and then begin my journey from Afghanistan to San Diego and then to Monterey Bay." "When I got home, the world felt like it was on mute. Ninety-six hours after landing

• 3:14:06Jocko Willink?

  back in the United States, I made it to my mom. My mother chose to stop treatment and enter hospice. My sister was able to provide for her the palliative care that she needed. I was not going to be able to provide anything." "I obviously loved my mother, but I had nearly zero emotional range when I returned and I went right back to finding tasks to accomplish and then accomplishing them. My mother died in her bedroom in Santa Cruz, California. I was not with her in that moment. I chose to return to San Diego a few days before. If I had the ability to go back in time and change only one thing in my life, even given the amazing volume of my mistakes, the one thing I would change would be the final interaction I had with her.

• 3:14:51Jocko Willink?

  The last time I saw my mother, I hugged her in bed and told her that I loved her. She told me that she loved me back, then asked me to hand her the garbage can so she could throw up into it. That was it. That was the son I was capable of being in that moment."

• 3:15:06Jocko Willink?

  If you had transported me into a conflict zone, I could make any level of decision. I could reduce nearly any problem down to its core elements and make a decision almost instantly. I could take a life in the blink of an eye and not think about it twice. But I wasn't able to sit with my mother and simply talk with her to tell her how much she meant to me and how thankful I was for everything that she had done for me in my life.

• 3:15:29Jocko Willink?

  For as much as my mother was the shell of the woman who had raised me, I was equally the shell of a functioning human being. I may have looked normal on the outside.

• 3:15:41Jocko Willink?

  I was anything but on the inside.

• 3:15:46Andy Stumpf?

  There's a fun audiobook chapter to read.

• 3:15:48Jocko Willink?

  Jeez.

• 3:15:51Andy Stumpf?

  We took a few takes.

• 3:15:53Jocko Willink?

  And you know, the, the title of this section is like, winning has a cost, right? And I, and when I made my notes on this, I'm like, winning, and I put that in quotes, air quotes. You know, what are we winning? And what is the cost? And what's the ROI on it?

• 3:16:08Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:09Jocko Willink?

  That's a rough one.

• 3:16:10Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:11Jocko Willink?

  And the, the amount of, you know, the, the, there's the real clear things that people in the military and law enforcement sacrifice, right? There's really clear, like, oh yeah, you sacrificed this time, you sacrificed this, you know, obviously if you get wounded, you get killed. You know, I, it's in the book, but like you talk about the fact that you're having trouble with your ankles because you freaking had nerve damage from getting shot. Like, that's the kind of sacrifice that people think about. But the, this like level of personal sacrifice is something that can be difficult for people to understand.

• 3:16:47Andy Stumpf?

  I mean, it's difficult to go through. I didn't realize, I mean, the shell of a human part, outside of my ability to function through the technical proficiency of my job, was completely accurate. I didn't even recognize it at the time, though. Like, the muted emotional range. And I'm, I'm very clear in the book to say that it's, the military is not at fault for that. Like, I signed up for my job, I knew what I was getting into, and I worked myself very hard to get into that headspace because I was terrified I was going to do something overseas where somebody would get hurt, injured, killed, whatever it is that was my fault. So it, it takes time to work into that headspace. But life overseas from a...

• 3:17:24Andy Stumpf?

  Normal life issues is very easy. You have to worry about your bills, the washing machine went out, somebody else's, you know what I mean? Like, everything is gone, except for this is what we're doing today and we're gonna do to the best of our ability. And that's where I go back to that place of just like, would it need, okay, I'll just be task oriented because that's what I had been doing for almost 10 months. Completely devoid of any ability to be the human being that I wish I could have been for my mom. And yeah, I don't know how you quantify that. Is that a sacrifice? Is that the natural consequence of working yourself to that level of efficiency with decision making? Like the mission, I mean, I lied to myself in that moment. I was like, I'm letting the guys down if I don't go on this.

• 3:18:05Andy Stumpf?

  What's the reality is I wanted to go on it. Yeah, I wanted to go on it. I could have, and it's, and so even then, like later, like then that was my last combat operation. Even then, it's like you're having those struggles. Is that the job? Is that the cost of the job? Is that the person is, you know what I mean? Like it's, it's a very murky soup.

• 3:18:23Jocko Willink?

  Is there any way to like anchor, you think, to not get in that mode? Would it even be good to not get in that mode? Like, you know, one of the stories that I've told is, you know, my wife, I was in Ramadi. My wife sends me a email. It's like, oh, the kids want to see a picture of where you sleep. And so I had like the typical like little plywood bed in the building and I went to take a picture of it. And I was like, oh, hold on. I opened up a bag and pulled out a folder and pinned up pictures of my family around my bed. Took a picture of it and then unpinned all those pictures and put them back in the bag because I did not want to be like seeing my wife and kids.

• 3:19:07Jocko Willink?

  Every day, you know, and thinking about them all the time. Like I had plenty of shit to think about. And the shit that I needed to think about was an absolute priority. And so. You know, to think that to not be in that mode might not be the best thing.

• 3:19:25Andy Stumpf?

  Or it might be what you have to do to bring as many people home as you can. It goes back to the portions of your life are going to be unbalanced. In those phases of my life, that was probably the most unbalanced human being on face planet earth. I mean, you could you present me with a tactical problem, you're fucked. Like, I'm gonna be able to solve that pretty quickly. You ask me to describe how I feel about something, and I'm gonna sit there staring at you like the Mac is turning on, right? Just scroll wheels, just like, what do you mean? What are feelings? It took me probably six months before I started feeling like a normal person. And I don't think that's abnormal. I think that's what the job requires. I mean, that's, there's a difference between the price and the cost. That falls into the cost category for me.

• 3:20:04Jocko Willink?

  Was there anything that kind of allowed you to start to refill the shell?

• 3:20:10Andy Stumpf?

  Time.

• 3:20:12Jocko Willink?

  But no particular things?

• 3:20:16Andy Stumpf?

  No, I can't think of any one thing that would like kind of crack through that or fill it up more. I think it was just, I mean, it takes time to get into that headspace. I think you just have to expect time to get out of it as well.

• 3:20:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:20:31Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna close out the book. And again, the book is freaking great, especially the foreword to it.

• 3:20:37Andy Stumpf?

  And the discussion on discipline and freedom and things, you know, things.

• 3:20:41Jocko Willink?

  You pulled some great quotes into this book.

• 3:20:45Jocko Willink?

  But I want to close out the book with this.

• 3:20:49Jocko Willink?

  I'm not one who feels qualified to tell anyone how to live their lives, but I will say this. Please be careful with what you are willing to strip away to become, quote, successful. At this point, I would rather see someone fall slightly short of their goal and be fulfilled and enriched human being, rather than watch them achieve ultimate success and have nothing, including their humanity, left when it is time and they arrive at their finish line. This is not permission or suggestion to avoid hard work, or to use as an excuse when things become difficult. This is a reminder that success has nothing to do with what you have or what you may have achieved, and everything to do with who you are.

• 3:21:33Jocko Willink?

  None among us will ever be able to tame the tides, currents and oceans of life. But I truly believe that we are all capable of becoming drown proof. You may not become an Olympic swimmer with a gold medal around your neck, but you will survive. And that is the first step. Once you have mastered the ability to keep your head above water, you will be limited only by your own imagination and self-imposed boundaries. When your ability to survive is assured, I believe there is one additional step that can be taken. And I believe it is the most meaningful metric of success that there is. You can share it.

• 3:22:14Jocko Willink?

  You can look around, look around you and identify others who are struggling. And you can teach them how to swim.

• 3:22:27Andy Stumpf?

  The end.

• 3:22:28Jocko Willink?

  Helping other people out, man.

• 3:22:30Andy Stumpf?

  I care a lot more now, older, in my age and wisdom. How I accomplish things is an equal measure of what it is I want to accomplish. And I didn't think about that. It was just, you know, it was winning to the detriment of everything else. I care a lot more now about how I arrive at the destination.

• 3:22:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:22:52Andy Stumpf?

  And like I said, if I look at my own kids, they all have their own aspirations. Would I rather have them get 90% of that and be just super stoked on life with a great supportive social circle and network, work isolated and alone, but achieving a metric of success that everybody else thinks is important and they're miserable? I'm going with the former, not the latter.

• 3:23:15Jocko Willink?

  When I went to college, I was already, I was like 28 years old or something. When I went to college, I was in the teams and like, I took it as a personal challenge to like beat the teachers at their own game. And I, so I went freaking totally psycho, dude. I went totally psycho.

• 3:23:31Andy Stumpf?

  It's all checks out so far.

• 3:23:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So I would be mad if a teacher asked a question on a test that I didn't know the answer to. So, and what, but what I realized post afterwards was that like, to get a 90 on a test would take like an hour of study. To get a hundred would take four hours. And.

• 3:23:52Andy Stumpf?

  Ninety it is.

• 3:23:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and looking back, should have been like, oh, cool. I'm gonna pass this class. Like, it's all good and I could do, hang out with my family, do something freaking useful. And it's kind of what you're saying, like, the amount of effort that it takes to get to a hundred percent versus a solid ninety or an eighty-five. And by the way, no one gives a shit. You know how many people have asked to see my freaking college transcripts? Do you want to know? Freaking zero. No one gives a shit. No one gives a shit. And yet I put all this time and effort into, you know, getting a hundred. And so this advice of like, hey, man, like, what is it? What does success actually look like? What does winning actually look like, you know, in quotes?

• 3:24:34Jocko Willink?

  And, and making sure that you're getting, you're doing, you're actually doing something worthwhile. And I think to your point, like, and I've, this is something I definitely learned in the teams. Helping out some other dude is way more rewarding than anything that you do for yourself.

• 3:24:50Andy Stumpf?

  For sure.

• 3:24:51Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, when, when I got to see, like, the guys that worked for me at some point, like, grow and do awesome, like, that was so cool and so much cooler than, like, doing something cool yourself. And you definitely get to see that with your kids. Your kids do something cool? Like what you were just talking about, like, standing up for, you know, looking out, doing something. That is so, that is the best, you know?

• 3:25:11Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 3:25:12Jocko Willink?

  And so the idea of helping other people out as the best return on investment, I totally agree with. And I think that's what you're doing here, man, with this book.

• 3:25:22Andy Stumpf?

  I'm trying. We'll see how it goes.

• 3:25:24Jocko Willink?

  So that's where we're at.

• 3:25:25Andy Stumpf?

  Uh, still owe you that Bitcoin for the lies and the forward that made me look good, but you know, we'll get into it.

• 3:25:33Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, when's the book come out?

• 3:25:35Andy Stumpf?

  April fourteenth.

• 3:25:36Jocko Willink?

  So April fourteenth, here's the deal. Pre-order the book right now. We'll put the link.

• 3:25:44Andy Stumpf?

  Will you though?

• 3:25:44Jocko Willink?

  I'm making a promise that I may or may not be able to keep.

• 3:25:48Andy Stumpf?

  I'm gonna text you later. I got you. For people, it's easy. You ready for this one? You guys are gonna like this. It's cleared hot podcast.com slash book.

• 3:25:57Jocko Willink?

  There you go. So go there, order the book, and here's why. Because, uh.

• 3:26:02Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, you know about this. Like, at this point, I'm still completely baffled by this process.

• 3:26:07Jocko Willink?

  Uh, we want Andy to be a New York Times bestselling author because, you know.

• 3:26:11Andy Stumpf?

  Do you get a plaque with that?

• 3:26:12Jocko Willink?

  You can make your own.

• 3:26:14Andy Stumpf?

  A pinky ring and you can just like, it'll be my version of being a ring knocker. You and I can sit here and.

• 3:26:19Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you what's cool about it. What'll be cool about it is, uh, it's, that's like a, a high literary achievement. And for someone like us to have that is, is pretty dope.

• 3:26:32Andy Stumpf?

  You could just say me. Cause you're, I know you're trying to round the edges on that. Somebody like you, how do I say you without saying?

• 3:26:39Jocko Willink?

  It is funny. Like you'll go and like, there's, there's literary people and like that, that's a big deal.

• 3:26:44Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 3:26:44Jocko Willink?

  And like, it's like if I told you I got, um, you know, the, the badminton award in 1995, you would be like, oh, great. And that's kind of how you and I would have viewed like, oh, you're a New York Times bestselling author. Like, oh, yeah, cool. Good for you. Is that good? You know, it's one of those things, but, uh, it, the cool thing about it is good advertisement for you. And it'll, when it, if it gets on that list, then it, uh, other bunch of people see it that it wouldn't have seen it before.

• 3:27:11Andy Stumpf?

  Cool.

• 3:27:11Jocko Willink?

  And so I'm just telling everyone, please, if you would be so kind, go to cleared hot podcast.com slash book.

• 3:27:19Andy Stumpf?

  Correct.

• 3:27:20Jocko Willink?

  And order this book ASAP. So we can make, uh, Andy's day.

• 3:27:25Andy Stumpf?

  You know what I would like more than that though? Like, is again, like the monetary, I have no idea what to expect from this process. I just hope honestly that my mistakes and what I learned from them helps somebody else. I would take that over any list or dollar amount, any of that stuff.

• 3:27:38Jocko Willink?

  Of course. And yeah, and again, to, to my, uh, my assessment, man, is you, you did that. You got a great book that clearly goes through. Some really hard things that you went through, you know, the kind of thing, you know, like when

• 3:27:53Andy Stumpf?

  It's not all rainbows.

• 3:27:54Jocko Willink?

  Like when I wrote Extreme Ownership and it's like, okay, we'll just open this with me just having a blue on blue, uh, while I'm in charge of shit. Let's start, let's open with that. That's, that's going to be great. That's going to feel great. Um, and you know, there's parts where I was reading this book. I was like, damn. Okay. And I've told people this before, like, if you're going to do something good, whether it's a song or a book or a poem or whatever, shit's gotta hurt a little bit. You know, it's gotta be like exposing.

• 3:28:21Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 3:28:21Jocko Willink?

  And so, you know, you do that, like that freaking chapter where you're talking about what it felt like to be going through your divorce. I'm reading that. I'm like, okay, bro. I think we get it. Oh, there's another nine examples. Like shit's heavy, dude.

• 3:28:35Andy Stumpf?

  That was the wave tops.

• 3:28:39Andy Stumpf?

  That was the Reader's Digest summary, the divorce for idiots, if you will.

• 3:28:46Jocko Willink?

  So that's, everyone order the book. Um, does that get us up to speed? Anything else right now? Anything else?

• 3:28:54Andy Stumpf?

  Tackled all seven continents recently, years ago. So we're good. What'd you call it? A journey that we were on?

• 3:29:01Andy Stumpf?

  Degregating our expedition that we did. I don't know the differences between the two, but.

• 3:29:07Jocko Willink?

  You're flying your helicopter, just basically getting off after it across the board.

• 3:29:10Andy Stumpf?

  I tried to.

• 3:29:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You did the seven continent thing.

• 3:29:13Andy Stumpf?

  Yep. Triple seven.

• 3:29:14Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Uh, with Mike and a bunch of other dudes just went out there and

• 3:29:18Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, it was cool.

• 3:29:18Jocko Willink?

  Broke the world record.

• 3:29:20Andy Stumpf?

  I thought Antarctica was going to be the coolest. And I tell you what, dude, looking down over free fall in over the Great Pyramid of Giza, that's a tough one to beat.

• 3:29:28Jocko Willink?

  I saw that picture. Um.

• 3:29:31Andy Stumpf?

  What else am I got going? Yeah, that's about it.

• 3:29:34Jocko Willink?

  Where can people find you? You got andy stump.com.

• 3:29:36Andy Stumpf?

  Yep.

• 3:29:37Jocko Willink?

  You're on Twitter X, at Andy Stumpf seven, seven.

• 3:29:41Andy Stumpf?

  Is it? Okay.

• 3:29:42Jocko Willink?

  Yep. You're on Instagram, Andy Stumpf two, 12.

• 3:29:45Andy Stumpf?

  Yep.

• 3:29:46Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, Facebook, Andy Stumpf. And then of course you have the cleared hop podcast.

• 3:29:50Andy Stumpf?

  I do.

• 3:29:51Jocko Willink?

  Which is on YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 3:29:53Andy Stumpf?

  It is.

• 3:29:54Jocko Willink?

  At cleared hop podcast.

• 3:29:57Andy Stumpf?

  I think that's about it. That's about what I'm up to.

• 3:30:00Jocko Willink?

  That's where you're at.

• 3:30:01Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 3:30:01Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles, you got any questions?

• 3:30:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, Manny, but we'll stick with this one. So talking about the, um, you know, the, the, the flight suit.

• 3:30:08Andy Stumpf?

  The wing suit.

• 3:30:09Speaker 02

  Wing suit scenario.

• 3:30:10Andy Stumpf?

  Tell me more. Can already tell this can be a very technical question.

• 3:30:14Speaker 02

  First off, how did you? Why did you start doing that?

• 3:30:19Andy Stumpf?

  Because it seemed to be the natural progression and it looked awesome. Have you never seen the videos?

• 3:30:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have, but then, and how old were you roughly?

• 3:30:26Andy Stumpf?

  Oh.

• 3:30:26Speaker 02

  When you started that, like your first wingsuit scenario?

• 3:30:29Andy Stumpf?

  Uh, oh, that was later on for sure. I think I probably had three to four thousand jumps before I put a wingsuit on, so thirties?

• 3:30:38Speaker 02

  So, okay, then, so you had a bunch of jumps?

• 3:30:41Andy Stumpf?

  Yep.

• 3:30:41Speaker 02

  Lot of experience?

• 3:30:42Andy Stumpf?

  Yep.

• 3:30:43Speaker 02

  And then you're like, I'm gonna do the wingsuit thing. That first wingsuit scenario, where, where are you? Like over the water or something? Cause you're not jumping off, tricking into the rocks? Or are you?

• 3:30:54Andy Stumpf?

  I now have some questions for you.

• 3:30:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:30:56Andy Stumpf?

  How would water change this scenario?

• 3:30:58Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't know. It just seems like-

• 3:31:00Andy Stumpf?

  Are you under the impression that you land that wingsuit without deploying a parachute?

• 3:31:04Speaker 02

  You know, like on Point Break, the original one, they're like, hey, we're not gonna land on land, we're gonna land on water. So it's like softer. I don't know, that's what I was referencing, I guess, subconsciously.

• 3:31:12Andy Stumpf?

  This is, man, your, your brain is an interesting spaghetti noodle of ideas.

• 3:31:16Speaker 02

  Whatever, bro, I'm just thinking of this stuff right now. I've never been on a wingsuit.

• 3:31:19Andy Stumpf?

  Now, so you deploy your normal parachute. So the wingsuit, you zip it up in an airplane. If you're skydiving, you have a main and a reserve parachute. So you zip it all the way up. Otherwise, it's just, it's compartments, you know what I mean? So your arms are free. So after you deploy your parachute, you unzip your arms and legs and you're just flying your normal parachute.

• 3:31:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:31:36Andy Stumpf?

  And then you land. So the water wouldn't necessarily help you there.

• 3:31:39Speaker 02

  Okay. When I'll get the progression though, so-

• 3:31:42Jocko Willink?

  You look super confused right now.

• 3:31:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:31:44Andy Stumpf?

  The progression is this, one day you decide you're gonna jump a wingsuit and you put one on. And you exit an aircraft in flight and you work it out.

• 3:31:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, but then you're saying that you have a parachute going with the wingsuit on.

• 3:31:55Andy Stumpf?

  No, no, no, no, the wingsuit is just used while you're, before you pull your parachute.

• 3:31:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:32:00Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah. Unless you only wanna do it once.

• 3:32:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, but then you guys are like going through the, you know, the, like, I don't, I don't get how you go from like, oh yeah, I'm just gonna do regular skydiving?

• 3:32:10Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 3:32:10Speaker 02

  For lack of a better term?

• 3:32:11Andy Stumpf?

  Yep.

• 3:32:11Speaker 02

  And be like, oh, I'm gonna navigate. In a wingsuit through the mountains and over the trees.

• 3:32:16Andy Stumpf?

  So you skydive first. So you learn how to fly a wingsuit from altitude, which altitude is going to give you more time. I'm not going to say necessarily safer, but you do have a main and a reserve parachute. You get used to flying it. Um, most people start on a smaller, so you wingsuits come in all sizes.

• 3:32:32Speaker 02

  Okay. So you work it out in like open air kind of a scenario, not going through mountains or nothing like this.

• 3:32:37Andy Stumpf?

  I guess you could. That would be like one jump, huh? Dude, well, you wouldn't even survive the exit because the big difference is in base jumping, when you jump out of an airplane, it doesn't feel like you're falling because you're already, you have the forward throw of the aircraft. You're not going from, you don't get the roller coaster like stomach coming up in your throat because you have speed, then you're actually speeding up in free fall. But if you watch from the ground, people come out of an airplane, it's forward throw. They're being thrown forward because of the velocity. And so you don't get this sensation of like, uh, when you base jump, you do get that. So your suit doesn't really fly for the first few seconds because it has to inflate and then have enough air passing over it to act like a wing. So, so first, so you can skydive, then you need to learn how to base jump without a wingsuit. So you

• 3:33:22Andy Stumpf?

  can practice a zero airspeed exit. Then at some point in time, you combine the two.

• 3:33:30Speaker 02

  Okay. Then, okay, that's where, that's the, the little point in which I'm asking this question. When, so you were 30 something years old and you were like, okay, I got enough base jumping, enough skydiving, enough wingsuit.

• 3:33:43Andy Stumpf?

  Yep.

• 3:33:44Speaker 02

  I don't know, free air, whatever you want to call it.

• 3:33:46Andy Stumpf?

  Now, isn't that? Let's call it that free air.

• 3:33:48Speaker 02

  Isn't that the biggest transition right there?

• 3:33:51Andy Stumpf?

  Yes.

• 3:33:52Speaker 02

  Okay. So you're 30 something years old and you made that transition because it kind of, it feels like it gets exponentially more dangerous at that point.

• 3:34:00Andy Stumpf?

  It's to choose your own adventure. You don't have to fly close to terrain. You could just fly straight out off of cliffs and all sorts of stuff.

• 3:34:06Speaker 02

  Oh, and you like slowly make it to more challenging terrain. Yeah. It just doesn't seem like something like a 30 something year old person would do.

• 3:34:14Andy Stumpf?

  What age would be appropriate?

• 3:34:16Speaker 02

  I don't know, before like, like 19, 20, you know, when you're young.

• 3:34:19Andy Stumpf?

  Oh, when you have no prefrontal cortex development.

• 3:34:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

• 3:34:25Andy Stumpf?

  Why? What does age have to do with it? I would say you have a little bit more wisdom and probably better decision making ability at a later age.

• 3:34:31Speaker 02

  Right. And thirty is like a later age.

• 3:34:33Andy Stumpf?

  That's what I'm saying. So it's the perfect time to start.

• 3:34:36Speaker 02

  Well, I'm just saying with the risk and all that, it just seems like, okay, so which brings me to my second question. Do you feel like it was like a coping mechanism of some sort?

• 3:34:47Speaker 02

  Cause you mentioned something in buds. So you're about buds where you're like, oh yeah, if me, Jocko, Echo went to the chah hall and Echo quit, I'd forget them.

• 3:34:55Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah.

• 3:34:55Speaker 02

  Because you're so like focused, kind of incidentally, like you have to be focused on this next task, kind of a thing.

• 3:35:01Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, you're on your own journey.

• 3:35:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. You're like, but you're kind of saturated with stuff that you have to freaking do, right?

• 3:35:08Andy Stumpf?

  And like, I didn't read this part of the book, but I kind of mentioned it, but there's a thing that he talks about in the book, which is like a space, right? So. The silence. Yeah, the silence. Yeah. Coping mechanism.

• 3:35:20Speaker 02

  Wait, but buds, you don't have that space because you're constantly.

• 3:35:23Andy Stumpf?

  It does very two different, like buds is a crucible though, you know, they're trying to, you know, the curriculum is trying to weed you out. Uh, was it a coping mechanism? You might be able to describe it as something like that. I would say it was a headspace. That doesn't have, I mean, I've seen people who can get to the flow state is what I'll call it, right? That's a traditional like yoga, meditation, playing guitar. Like it doesn't need to be prescriptive on how you get there, but I think it's important that people do. For me, that was probably the most powerful way. And it was just associated with something that I was already doing. I would say it could probably be described as a coping mechanism because I could think better. After having a good like trip overseas for months afterwards, and I would struggle if I didn't find myself in that flow state for a little bit, just because the BS of life.

• 3:36:07Andy Stumpf?

  Will bombard me a little bit more. So I guess a tool or coping mechanisms depend on the angle that you were looking at it from, but an argument can be made for that, I think.

• 3:36:17Andy Stumpf?

  If you were to jump in a wingsuit, would you go first over water or land?

• 3:36:23Speaker 02

  Apparently that doesn't matter, but if you didn't intervene.

• 3:36:27Andy Stumpf?

  Do you know how to swim? It could matter. How's your swimming?

• 3:36:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, my swimming's strong.

• 3:36:31Andy Stumpf?

  Okay, good. In a wingsuit?

• 3:36:32Speaker 02

  No, I don't know.

• 3:36:35Speaker 02

  Well, before your intervention, I would have chose water, but thank you for that guidance.

• 3:36:38Andy Stumpf?

  You're welcome.

• 3:36:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's good to see you, I guess.

• 3:36:41Jocko Willink?

  Andy, any closing thoughts?

• 3:36:43Andy Stumpf?

  No, I generally never have any.

• 3:36:47Jocko Willink?

  Right, Matt. Well, again, thanks for joining us. Glad to have you back after nine years.

• 3:36:51Andy Stumpf?

  Let's do it again in 10.

• 3:36:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, let's do it again in 10. Thanks for writing the book.

• 3:36:54Andy Stumpf?

  Bring our walkers in here.

• 3:36:58Andy Stumpf?

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 3:36:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, thanks for your, thanks for your service.

• 3:37:01Andy Stumpf?

  Same to you, man.

• 3:37:02Jocko Willink?

  For the country, for the teams, and thanks for what you're continuing to do today. Trying to teach people how to swim.

• 3:37:08Andy Stumpf?

  I'm trying, man. I'm trying.

• 3:37:10Jocko Willink?

  Thanks, brother.

• 3:37:10Andy Stumpf?

  Cool.

• 3:37:12Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Andy Stumpf has left the building. So, good lessons learned. And you'll notice, in the low point of his whole life,

• 3:37:25Jocko Willink?

  there was one saving grace. Jiu Jitsu.

• 3:37:31Jocko Willink?

  So, we're training.

• 3:37:32Andy Stumpf?

  Yep.

• 3:37:32Jocko Willink?

  We're lifting, we're running, we're training the Jiu Jitsu. And you know what that means? You need fuel. We highly recommend Jocko Fuel. Protein is critical to life. Get yourself some protein. 30 grams of protein in a ready to drink. 22 grams in a one scoop. By the way, I often do two scoops of powder. 44 grams. So, that's what we're doing. Go to JacoFuel.com, get energy drinks, get whatever you need, get creatine, get on the creatine train. If you're not on there right now, what are you doing? What are you doing, honestly? JacoFuel.com, or go to whatever retailer you go to. We got it there. If we don't have it there, ask them for it.

• 3:38:16Jocko Willink?

  Jocko Fuel, the clean fuel. Also, since we're training Jiu Jitsu, you may want to have a Jiu Jitsu Gi. You may want to have Jiu Jitsu Rashguard. And you want those things to be made 100% in the United States of America, with materials that are 100% American. So, for that, you go to OriginUSA.com. And by the way, you can also get jeans, boots, hoodies.

• 3:38:44Jocko Willink?

  Rash Guards already said that you can get pretty much whatever you need. Hunt gear, training gear, shorts, pants, just everything that you need. A hundred percent American made. So go check out originusa.com and get yourself some gear.

• 3:39:01Speaker 02

  Yep, it's true. Also, jocko store.com. Discipline equals freedom. Got more gear. By the way, discipline equals freedom. Good. Stand by to get some and get after it. Other things as well. But we got some shirts on there, some hoodies. Pretty cool. Also, we have the Shirt Locker, which is a subscription scenario, new design every month. People seem to be in that one, into that one. Uh, the most recent design for your knowledge. You can check this out on the website, by the way. Just click on the top where it says, check out the Shirt Locker and see this stuff. But you're just, it's a uh, discipline, very simple, but it's a discipline in red script. It's one of those ones where when you're representing, it's like, it kind of goes hard. Anyway, you gotta look at, see it. Um, yes, that's it. It's all on jocko store.com.

• 3:39:46Jocko Willink?

  Also, we got some books. We got Drown Proof by Andy Stumpf. I just read some excerpts from it today. So much in there, so good. Go order it right now, please. Drown Proof by Andy Stumpf, Andy Stumpf. Also, Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones. And of course, The Need to Lead by Dave Burke. Check those out. Echelon Fund, we have a leadership consultancy, echelonfront.com. We work with businesses around the world and help them with all the problems that they have through leadership. If you need help inside your organization, go to echelonfront.com. We have events like The Muster. This is a two day, two and a half day leadership event. You can go and learn the skills of leadership live.

• 3:40:29Jocko Willink?

  If you can't make it to that, you go to extremeownership.com and you can learn the skills of leadership through online learning and online training and online interactive courses and online question and answer sessions with me. That is extremeownership.com. Check that out as well. Also, check this out on March 21st, a couple of weeks away. 2026 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Mark Lee's birthday celebration. Mark Lee would be 48. So this is the Mark 48 event, which is a Which is a very powerful thing because he carried that Mark 48 machine gun.

• 3:41:11Jocko Willink?

  If you know who Mark is, Mark Lee, the first seal killed in Iraq, just an outstanding human being. And they're having a celebration of his life, 48th birthday. Mark's platoon mates, two of Mark's platoon mates are going to speak. One of them is Lead Bob Holland. You've probably heard of him. He's been on this podcast a few time, a few times. Founder and owner of Hooli Golf. And also another guy that was in the platoon with Mark, a guy named Jake Kindbaum. Another awesome dude that was in tasking a bruiser and a friend of Mark's. So those two guys are gonna, gonna do some speaking about Mark. And this is all of course, part of Americas Mighty Warriors.org. So go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org.

• 3:41:55Jocko Willink?

  If you can be in Scottsdale, Arizona, March 21st, it's going to be an outstanding event. And it's in support of an awesome cause that is everything that Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, has put together. So check that out, please. If you're in Arizona, go. Americas Mighty Warriors.org. Also check out Heroes and Horses.org and finally BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. To connect with us on the interwebs. For Andy, he's AndyStumpf.com. He's on Twitter X at AndyStumpf77. He's on Instagram at AndyStumpf212. He's on Facebook at AndyStumpf. And then he's got the Cleared Hot Podcast and a YouTube channel, which is his podcast on YouTube,

• 3:42:41Jocko Willink?

  which is at Cleared Hot Podcast. And then for us, you can check out Jaco.com and then on social media, I'm on there and I'm at Jocko Willink and Echo's at Echo Charles. Just don't spend too much time on there. Thanks once again to my brother Andy Stumpf for joining us. Thanks for your service. Thanks for your sacrifice, bro. And everybody else, go pick up his book. There's a lot we can learn from it. And thanks to the entire military out there right now. Yes, right now, risking your lives and limbs, sacrificing your freedom in order to protect ours. And we are grateful. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers,

• 3:43:23Jocko Willink?

  Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thanks for protecting us here at home and everyone else out there. You know, in Andy's book. Drown proof. He talks about subpar behavior.

• 3:43:40Jocko Willink?

  And one of the ways to avoid subpar behavior is to look in the mirror. And ask yourself some questions. Questions like, what am I willing to allow from myself? What will I allow in both thought, process, and internal monologue? What will I allow in both behavior and actions? What will I allow my word to mean? What aspects of my life will I allow others to control? What type of man or woman do I want to be?

• 3:44:14Jocko Willink?

  What is my standard? And are my actions aligning with those beliefs?

• 3:44:22Jocko Willink?

  And I think if you ask yourself those questions, and you answer them honestly. You will move your life in the right direction, and you can become drown proof.

• 3:44:37Jocko Willink?

  And that's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.