55: Dealing w/ Hostile Drunk Idiots, How to Eliminate Complacency with Age, Vets w/ Bad Behavior

0:00:00 - Opening 0:01:00 - How Important is "Purpose", or your "Why"? 0:07:36 - If you had to choose: Jiu Jitsu Gym VS Regular Gym. 0:17:45 - Advice for An Encounter with a Hostile Drunk Idiot 0:35:19 - Leading the Command Staff to understand the Ground Troops 0:43:18 - More on How to Emotionally Detach from Heated Situations 0:49:28 - Dealing with Vets who use Vet Status to excuse bad behavior. 0:58:51 - Default Aggressive in Jiu Jitsu. Streets, Competition, and Training 1:12:31 - Does Complacency come with Age? 1:16:06 - Interesting and Helpful: Onnit http://www.onnit.com/jocko, Jocko Store http://www.jockostore.com, Amazon Support https://www.amazon.com//ref=as_sl_pc_tf_lc?&tag=jocko20-20&camp=216797&creative=498509&linkCode=ur1&adid=1VGEZFWBAF2GJ322ACY7&&ref-refURL=http%3A%2F%2Fjockopodcast2.com%2F, Jocko White Tea https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KP8PCOU?ie=UTF8&tag=jocko20-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=B01KP8PCOU, Muster 002 http://www.extremeownership.com 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 55 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  Well, our last podcast, which I guess is no surprise at this point, went a little long. Did not have room for Q and A. So because of that, we have, we will dedicate podcast number 55 today to Q and A questions from the interwebs. Thanks to everyone that has submitted questions through the interwebs so that we can attempt to answer some of them.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Echo Charles.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:48Jocko Willink?

  Questions from the interwebs.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Roger.

• 0:50Jocko Willink?

  What do you got?

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Well, first question is, how important

• 0:56Speaker 01

  is purpose, reason, or cause in being successful? Like the purp- your purpose?

• 1:03Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, clearly, purpose and reason and cause are extremely important. This is, this is the why of, of your actions. This is knowing why you're doing what you're doing. This is the commander's intent. And so you, you absolutely, absolutely, these are important. If you don't know why you're doing something, well, then let me ask you a question. Why are you doing something? It does, it's, it's very clear. It's very simple to understand. So, yeah, you gotta know, if, if you don't know why you're doing something, then what, what are you gonna do when you hit an obstacle? You're gonna stop. What do you, what, what adaptations are you gonna make when things go wrong to overcome them? You're not gonna make any because you don't know why you're doing it.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  So if you have no reason, if you have no reason for doing something, you're not gonna do it. So you gotta have a long-term goal. We gotta understand the underlying purpose of what you're doing. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that it mean that it has to be rigid. Cause it doesn't have to be rigid. You know, I'll tell you an interesting case as an example, I'll give you is my own case, right? So of course, you know, I'm all about planning and, and always having a long-term plan and all that stuff. But to be honest with you, the situation that I'm in right now as a human, I didn't have a long-term plan for this, you know, the, The I you know, Leif and I wrote the book. I had no intention of writing a book.

• 2:31Jocko Willink?

  That kind of happened, you know, because people were asking us and and as we worked with businesses, they said, you have this stuff written down. So we ended up writing the book. Once we wrote it, we thought maybe we'd be handing it out when we go and work with companies. Literary agent saw it today. Let me let me show this to some publishers. Publishers said, let us publish this. Okay, so you figure you're going to publish it. Well, even when you publish a book, you don't expect that a bunch of people are going to read it. You expect that you're going to have a book published and that's cool. But it ended up doing really well. So that kind of happened. With that, all of a sudden, I was on a couple of podcasts. Well, I didn't, you know, I didn't have any intention. When I went on Tim Ferriss's podcast, I didn't say to myself, this is going to propel me into my own podcast.

• 3:12Jocko Willink?

  Or Joe Rogan's podcast, I didn't say, now, you know, Joe Rogan's going to launch me into the podcast world. No. I didn't expect that, but it happened. And you know what? It happened. It made sense to me. Okay, these two guys are squared away. They're squared away in this particular genre and they're recommending. My mind is open. Okay, let's try and make a podcast. Did I know that the podcast was going to be super popular? No, I just thought we were making a podcast so that, you know, the few people would want to listen to it. Cool.

• 3:41Jocko Willink?

  For I mean, then look what happens. Next thing you know, we're we're making tea. You know, next thing I'm making tea. I had no, no idea that that tea would be part of my world. So that all this stuff happened, right? But but the goal, really, the underlying, the reason for me doing all this is still the same through the whole thing. And that is that I want to help people. I want to help people with something that the lessons that I've learned, I want to help them. So how can I do that? Well, you write them down. Okay, you wrote it down. So people can read it. Great. How else can you help them? Oh, you can make a podcast so people can access it easily and cheaply. Cool. Here you go.

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  So the underlying goal, oh, you know, I want people to be healthy. Well, what's a good way to be healthy? Stop drinking Monster Energy Drinks. Stop drinking Red Bull 12 a day and start drinking something that's healthier. Okay, cool. Jocka White Tea. Next thing you know, that's what we've got going on. So it's it's.

• 4:41Jocko Willink?

  That's been my, that's been my goal and I haven't really, even though I, even though I strayed from what maybe the original path I thought I was gonna take, I still stayed, my reason is the same. And I think that that's what I'm saying. When your reason is clear and your purpose is clear,

• 4:59Jocko Willink?

  that's gonna make your drive clear and that's gonna make you execute well because you know where you're going, you know you where you wanna be, you understand your purpose and why you're doing something and that's what's gonna help you be successful, in my opinion.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Do you think that like how, um, you know, people, they'll be like,

• 5:17Speaker 01

  this is my why and it'll be like their kids or something like that. Do you think that falls within this? Like, you know, like reason, purpose and all this stuff?

• 5:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think, I think that that's the same, the same general thing. I could have said purpose, reason, cause, why? I think that, that, yeah, the question could have said that. I think that if your purpose is your kids, really clear example, right? And a lot of people might say that. Well, that's cool, but that's, you're gonna have to clarify that a little bit more. Cause if your purpose is your kids, then quit your job and just spend all day with your kids. Well, then obviously you're not supporting your kids because now you can't afford to buy them food.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, it seems like there's a lot of different.

• 5:54Jocko Willink?

  So your, your goal should be taking good care of and providing for your children's now and in the future. Wow, okay. Now that makes sense. Now you're looking long-term, short-term. You gotta, you know that you have to work hard now. You don't have to make investments for them. So that, that's the kind of thing. That's beyond just a simple, I'm doing this for my kids. Cause what are you doing for your kids? What are you trying to achieve for them?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like, for using that example, like this is my why, it's my daughter. It's less, this is why I'm, you know, I don't know, writing a book. It's more, this is why I can endure the hard days. Or this is why I'm gonna continue to work hard, kind of thing, whatever it is I'm doing.

• 6:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you just have an underlying. Yes, an underlying reason. That's, that's the question and I think that's the answer. Yes.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:40Jocko Willink?

  It's a pretty, I actually, I should have just answered that in two words. I should have said, how important is purpose, reason, cause and being successful? Answer, very important. There you go.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  You can have a lot of different reasons too, you know, or like a few core, more than one.

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know what I'd say, if there's anything to be taken away from this question, it is if you don't feel, here's the, here's, I would say the takeaway. If you don't feel some kind of drive in your life, if you don't feel passionate about something, if you feel like you're wandering and meandering through the world, then it's time to assess. Then it's time to say, okay, what is my reason? What am I trying to do? What would I like to do in the world? Now we get something valuable here. We all know that you gotta have a purpose. You all do get a reason. So if you feel yourself meandering down the path with no reason, no purpose, dig in and find one.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Next question. I want to begin training in jujitsu, but financial constraints dictate that I can keep my gym membership to keep getting after it at 4am or begin training jujitsu, but not both.

• 7:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's, oh, it's a black and white question, is it?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  One or the other.

• 7:56Jocko Willink?

  Okay. First of all, check around your area and see if there's a gym that has both.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:00Jocko Willink?

  I know that's one of the reasons that we created my gym, Victory MMA. There's an and fitness on there too. Cause no matter what you want to do, if you're in the game, you can do it there. You can do striking, you can do jujitsu, you can do wrestling, you can do boxing. You can do weightlifting.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  All kinds of weightlifting.

• 8:18Jocko Willink?

  You can do Olympic lifting, you can do powerlifting, you can do calisthenics, you could, so you do everything there. That's why we created the gym. And you, and it's not more expensive than a, a straight Jitsu gym, or it's not more expensive than a straight CrossFit gym. It's actually cheaper than most of both those. So look around, see if you have a gym that has both. And if you, if there's no gym around there that has both, maybe you do what I did and you start a gym that has both. Right? I mean, you could do that. I did it. Did it with some of my buddies. Said, hey, you know what? We want to, we want to train all the time in all these different aspects. How can we do that? Can we go to one gym at, you know, four o'clock in the afternoon? We have to go to another gym at five o'clock? Then we have to go to another gym at seven o'clock? Do we want to do that? No.

• 9:02Jocko Willink?

  So what do we do? Make our own gym. Make it what we want. And guess what? When you do something like that in the business world, if you, if you, I think, I think Tim Ferriss said, "Scratch your own itch," right? You, you, you have an itch that you want to scratch? There's other people that are going to have the same itch. And that's what happened with our gym. So everyone goes, "Yeah, I want to train. Of course I want to train." So maybe you start your own gym. And oh, you're not a skilled Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner? Guess what? For the first time ever in America, there's actually a bunch of really good Jiu-Jitsu practitioners. And maybe you couldn't get a black belt to come to where you live? Maybe you could, because there's a good chance you could. But a brown belt, a purple belt, they can be a good, a great instructor.

• 9:44Jocko Willink?

  So you might open up a gym and start that. Now, that doesn't mean also that you have to make a huge investment to do that. You could start off with your garage and some mats.

• 9:58Jocko Willink?

  So that's an idea. Another thing you could do if you, okay, so that doesn't exist. How about you find? Jiu-Jitsu is, this is a tough one, right? We want to stay healthy. We want to stay fit. But Jiu-Jitsu is kind of the priority. It's kind of the priority. And I'll tell you why. It's learning, right? If you take, if you take me and you, and we go through this situation, and you decide that you're going to do Jiu-Jitsu, and I decide I'm going to weight lift, in 10 years, who's happy and who's sad?

• 10:29Jocko Willink?

  We know the answer. The answer is clearly, now I start, because now I have enough money. So six years into it, I start training Jiu-Jitsu, and you're a brown belt or a black belt. And, and I don't have this knowledge. And it's going to take me six years to get there. Meanwhile, you, while you were training, guess what else you were doing? You were doing calisthenics, you were sprinting, you were, you were lifting rocks. You were doing cheap stuff for free, and you're still getting massive benefit. So for me, my priority is going to go to the Jiu-Jitsu. Because you can go and spend $40 on a set of rings for your garage, or your basement, or your hallway. And next thing you know, you can do pull-ups, you can do dips, you can do muscle-ups, you can do squats and sprints all day long. You don't need anything for that.

• 11:14Jocko Willink?

  So you can get a massive benefit with a set of rings, or you can just get a pull-up bar, and you can just do pull-ups and, and you go to Home Depot and buy a pipe. And a couple nails and nail it into the wall. You gotta pull a bar. Now you can do pull ups, pushups and squats and you're good to go. You could become a beast with those exercises. So I would prioritize and do that. I would prioritize the jiu jitsu and I'd make some kind of a home gym. I'd go to a YMCA or some cheaper kind of gym. The other thing, you go to your jiu jitsu school and become the mop person. Start cleaning up. Start mopping mats. That's another thing you can do to make this happen. Maybe you can get a little deal cut at both places. Most gym

• 11:58Jocko Willink?

  places that, you know, if you go in there and say, hey, look, I, I, I need, I can't afford this right now. What can you do for me? Maybe they'll cut you some kind of a deal. The other thing that you can likely do. Now, you're saying you don't have the budget for this situation. What is in your budget right now that you can cut out?

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:17Jocko Willink?

  That's my question. And the funny thing is, what can you cut out? Coffee? A lot of people drink two or three dollars worth of coffee a day, probably even more than that. I don't know. You're a coffee drinker. You're a coffee drinker. How much, how much is a coffee addict to drink a day from Starbucks?

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a spectrum and, you know.

• 12:36Jocko Willink?

  But we're talking Starbucks.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, like three, four cups a day. Yeah. If you're going to Starbucks and buying, yeah, I think, I don't know. I don't buy it. I just, well, I get coffee from Onnit, to be honest with you. So you can make your own at home and stuff, but um.

• 12:50Jocko Willink?

  But if someone works near a Starbucks, they stop on the way to work in the morning.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  A gym membership.

• 12:55Jocko Willink?

  It's four, four bucks a day. So that's 120 bucks a month. So boom, you cut out coffee or you make your own.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Make your own coffee, yeah.

• 13:02Jocko Willink?

  And you're good to go. What about the nights that you go out to eat? You're like, oh, you know, I don't feel like cooking. I don't go out doing a little restaurant. That costs you 30, 40 bucks a shot. Get rid of that. What about your cable bill? Your cable bill? You're watching TV, nothing, zero productive coming out of that, zero. You're not doing anything beneficial for yourself. Get rid of your cable. Next thing you know, you get rid of your cable. And now you've got enough money for your gym membership. You know, how's another one, cellphone usage? Right? We rack up the big numbers on cellphone. What are you doing? What are you doing? Is it to surf the interwebs and get, you know, lose your mind? So what can you cut down on that? Cause I'm thinking now you could scrape away a little bit here and there. Just lower your plan and use your, use your phone less.

• 13:48Jocko Willink?

  Watching the UFC, getting the UFC's, I love the UFC. But instead of watching it at home for 50 bucks or 59 bucks, go to a bar and pay 10 bucks to get in and watch it there for 10 bucks. You just saved 40 bucks or however many bucks that was.

• 14:04Jocko Willink?

  Uh, see, you know, there's all kinds of movie night. What about the, oh, you want to go see the new movie in the theater? No, don't go see the new movie in the theater. That cost, that's expensive now, isn't it?

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:16Jocko Willink?

  Is it more than $10?

• 14:17Speaker 01

  I don't even remember.

• 14:20Jocko Willink?

  I think it's like 10 or 15.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  11, yeah. Well, I went one time, it was 11. That was just like over a year ago though.

• 14:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So cut that out. Bike to work, do something, start shaving a little bit of money because in the long run, what you're going to get from these two things, from fitness and from jiu jitsu are going to be, going to have so much value in your life. There's going to be, they're going to be worth way more what these little marginal things that you're cutting out are.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that way, like at the beginning, how you said, like, what is it that you can cut out? So basically you're, you're identifying what is it right now that you're considering more important than jiu jitsu or the gym or whatever?

• 15:01Jocko Willink?

  Which the term, the actual answer to that is nothing. There's nothing more important than your life, than your fitness and really your jiu jitsu is part of your fitness. And also it's knowledge and it's confidence and it's, yeah, okay, I'm, I know that people are going to freak out. Okay. I'm not saying it's the most important thing in your life.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:18Jocko Willink?

  In terms of, in terms of, of purchases that you can make.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:23Jocko Willink?

  These two things are of the highest level. Now you need a car to get back and forth to work. Understood. You need a house for sleeping. Understood. You need food on the table. Understood. You need to take care of your family. Understood. As soon as you get into.

• 15:37Jocko Willink?

  The optional things in life, these are the top two.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:40Jocko Willink?

  These are the top two.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  I, I think so too, and.

• 15:42Jocko Willink?

  Tell me I'm wrong.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  I don't, I'm not, I can't tell you.

• 15:44Jocko Willink?

  You're good.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  But when, so, but making, as far as making the decision goes, you're, you're essentially identifying what you currently are holding more important than it. Regardless of what you think is more important, you, you gotta identify.

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  Your actions are a statement.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes.

• 16:01Jocko Willink?

  Of what you believe.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that, um, big one too is like drinking. I gotta know, not everyone drinks, so who knows? I don't know, some, this person might not drink at all, but if you buy a six pack of beer, let's say you do that, you know, I don't know, twice a week or something like that. That's like more than a gym membership too.

• 16:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's your.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Like the coffee thing is big too. But yeah, there, yeah, there is a lot of little, little ways. The cable thing, I gotta be honest, only because you're probably not the only one that watches TV. I know, it, the, the argument is like, hey, TV isn't good, quote unquote, for anybody. So everyone should just be signed on in the household, kind of thing.

• 16:42Jocko Willink?

  So what's your point?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  It's not that easy all the time. I'm just saying, you know, like there is gonna be some ripples in the, you know, especially when you first make that transition. If you choose to take it upon yourself to cut out cable, cause you wanna go to jujitsu now.

• 16:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, and you make everyone in your house, you improve everyone in your house mentally and physically? And now they're mad at you?

• 16:59Speaker 01

  I know, but it's like surgery. You gotta make that initial incision and open up everything and make a mess before you can repair. You know, so that, that initial part is gonna be.

• 17:08Jocko Willink?

  Most of, you can get, you can get ways around that too. You get Netflix.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:13Jocko Willink?

  Hulu.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:14Jocko Willink?

  Or one of those things that you get streaming on demand.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Right. The, which is kinda where everything's going anyway, really, right now.

• 17:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  But yeah, there's some, there's some good stuff too.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  Good. So.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  As far as the.

• 17:26Jocko Willink?

  Find a way to do both. It can be done.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:29Jocko Willink?

  You can do it.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Get creative.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  The home gym is good. That's good because that's something you can just start slowly and start adding to.

• 17:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, forty bucks. Forty bucks, you got it rings.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  But after a while, yeah, you'll be good to go for sure. Okay, next question. Jocko. Had an incident I wanted your opinion on. Love your book and podcast. Always listen and apply your lessons to my life, job, and family. I was driving home one night with my wife and four-year-old son in the car when some drunk idiot was walking in the middle of the roadway. He stood in front of my car, refusing to move, running his mouth. My wife begged me not to get out of the car. The guy reached into his front, reached into his front waistband like he had a gun. And although myself being a police officer and having countless incidents and experience like this, I didn't feel he did.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  More like drunken bravado or grandstanding. In any case, I was armed and having trained in boxing and a little bit of jujitsu felt I could have handled the situation. This lasted about a minute of him standing there and eventually I just drove around him while he was running his mouth, calling me names and all that stuff. My first priority obviously is getting my family home safely and making sure nobody will ever do any harm to them. But another part of me felt like, what am I teaching my son? I mean, is that okay? You know, is that okay to let people disrespect you and act any way they want towards you? So I dropped off my, so I dropped off my family and went back looking for the guy. He was gone.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  I guess lucky for me as well as him.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  I'm questioning my decision, not out of ego, but only because of the example I want to be to my son. That you never go looking for trouble and confrontation, but you don't back down from it either.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Ever.

• 19:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, just first of all, you won. You, just so you know, you won. You got a wife and a kid.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:36Jocko Willink?

  You won, right? So, options, what are the options here? Well, for one, if you're a police officer, you could call the police. You could, you know, on, get on your radio and call them to say what's going on and have this guy arrested before he causes on the, of an actual accident being out in the strode like an idiot, being out on the road like an idiot. So, that's an option, but, but the other thing is like, what are you trying to teach your son? Are you trying to teach your son that he should fight every idiot that offends him? Or, he's, if you, if that's what you teach him, he is not going to have a very productive life or a

• 20:17Jocko Willink?

  very nice life. So, there, there's too many negatives, right, that can happen there. This actually happened, something similar to this happened to me a little while ago. I was down by the ocean, down by the pier in the neighborhood where I live, and there was a, like a tweaker, crazy, you know, drunk on drugs and all that. And it was, it wasn't as direct as this. He wasn't, he wasn't saying anything at me, but he's yelling swear words and, and he's in front of my kid. My kid, this is when my son was probably six or seven years old. And he's just alone, he's isolated, but he's swearing and just acting crazy, right? And what I did was I said to my son, okay, you see this guy right here? Have you heard of what drugs are? This is what drugs do you, right here? This, this guy, this is

• 21:02Jocko Willink?

  where it ends up. So, this guy's a miscreant, he's a criminal. And the other thing I told him? I said, what if this guy attacks us? What do you think would happen? And my son was kind of, you know, well, you would choke him, because my son trained jujitsu at that time. And he was, well, you would choke him. And I was like, that's right. I'm not afraid of this guy. We're not afraid of this guy. This is no factor. Because we know how to fight. We know how to defend ourselves. But, that being said, what we want to do is, we want to avoid this situation. You know, there's all kinds of. All kinds of bad things that can happen there. You know, this, I told my son, like this guy could have a knife. This guy could have a gun. This guy could have, this guy could just have a bloodborne disease, right?

• 21:44Jocko Willink?

  This guy could have a bloodborne disease. Now I go get in a fight with him and now I have a bloodborne disease.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:50Jocko Willink?

  What, what, what, what, that's horrible. That's a horrible situation. So like I said, I told him that this is, this is why we train. This is why we know how to use firearms. Because when people are maniacs and, and if they're insane and psychopathic. And they have weapons, you need to have a weapon yourself. You need to be able to defend yourself. So. Our, this is what I teach my son. My primary objective is to be safe, right? To, to not get, to avoid these situations. And guess what? If you still feel the need. To like be a man in the situation or prove that you're a man or prove to your son that which is valuable.

• 22:31Jocko Willink?

  I'm not trying to put that down. You want your son to see that, that, that you should be strong and that you should be able to stand up for yourself. And that you will, don't ever have to back down to anybody. But that's why your son comes with you to the gym. That's why he trains jujitsu. That's why you train jujitsu. That's why he watches you day in, day out, day out, working out, being strong, being tough, going to the gym. Training with firearms. That's why he sees all that stuff. So. He knows. I mean, I'll tell you right now, my kids, if you were to ask my kids. Like against a random person in the street. They would, they would basically think I could beat up anyone in the world. You know, that's what they think because they see me training all the time. Right? That's all they see me do. So. So that's that. Now.

• 23:16Jocko Willink?

  The disrespect part. He disrespected me, right? Disrespect, sometimes, you know, disrespect me is one thing, but now you disrespect my wife. Right? Well. Again. How can you be disrespected? And that's what I explained, I would explain to my son. You cannot be disrespected, be disrespected by someone that has no respect for themselves. And if you are a drunk idiot in the street, you have no respect for yourself. You don't, you cannot disrespect me. It is impossible for you to give me disrespect. You didn't even respect yourself as a human. So, so that's just, that's just, it just doesn't even count.

• 24:00Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell my son that all day long, or, or any of my kids that all day long. You can't be disrespected by someone that doesn't even respect themselves. You know what? I am respect. I'm even respectful to this drunk idiot, giving him the benefit of the doubt. I am respect. So, you know, then the other piece is not backing down from trouble, right? And I'm not going to back down from trouble, but I am going to avoid it. And I'm going to avoid it. And you know what? Trouble avoids me. It avoids me.

• 24:41Jocko Willink?

  And if you are working out and you're staying strong and you have the confidence because you know you can handle yourself. Trouble is going to avoid you 99% of the time. And the other thing is, you gotta tell your kids. I mean, my, my son is getting older now. If he gets in a fight with someone, he could kill him. I mean, that's just straight up what could happen.

• 25:02Jocko Willink?

  And so now I've got, and, and you know, he's a young kid, so he's got to, he's got to do the things that you're talking about in this question. Prove himself, prove that he's not going to back down. I was, I gotta explain to him, listen, let me tell you what comes with getting in a street fight. A cool rush, because it's fun, right? It's fun. So you get that. Maybe you get a little bit of props, you get a little bit of respect from the, from the, you get a cred, right? Some street cred from your people. Let me tell you what else comes with it, along with those two things, which are, which are cool, right? Possible jail time, possible injuries, possible lawsuits, the broken hand. I mean, even if it's just, okay, those are the big ones, right? Jail time, which there's been plenty of cases where there was a case here in San Diego.

• 25:46Jocko Willink?

  Guy punched another guy, fell on the curb, dead.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Died, yeah.

• 25:49Jocko Willink?

  Those things really happen.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:52Jocko Willink?

  Not to mention, you could get, you know, so you get jail time, you get injury. Not to mention, you could get killed, right? Cause you think you're a tough guy, guess what? The greatest MMA fighters in the world get caught with a crack in the face and they get knocked out. You fall down and hit a curb, you could die. So there's that aspect too. But then you get to the injuries, right? Cause you get in a street fight, you're gonna get some kind of an injury. You're gonna get some kind of an injury. It's just gonna happen. You know, whether it's just a little cut or a little abrasion, you're gonna have something. That's a pain, it could be a major injury, you could break your hand, that happens all the time. Lawsuits, cause now you're gonna get sued. Now they're coming after you. And if it's just a stupid thing like a ripped jacket or a scuffed knee, it just isn't worth it. It isn't worth it, especially because we're talking about an individual that you can crush in an instant.

• 26:37Jocko Willink?

  And that has no value as a human, this guy, what this person's doing, right? None, this person is an idiot. Don't go down to their level and play that game. Instead, avoid that and go to the gym and train more and be ready.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:54Jocko Willink?

  That's my opinion. Good job on walking away, going out to find the guy. Luckily, you already said luckily you didn't find him.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:00Jocko Willink?

  Cause right now, who knows? Maybe you'd be the guy that's on, going to jail. The cop that, oh, you're a cop and you were armed and you went and got in a fight with this guy. And you pulled your weapon because you were losing and you shot him. And then what do we see? We see somebody that had a cellphone and they recorded the whole thing and they see you pushing this guy around.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:16Jocko Willink?

  It's not a good situation. And you gotta be ultra responsible when you're carrying, ultra responsible when you're carrying. You know that, we all know that. When we carry, we gotta avoid, that's what we have to do when we're packing.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you can kind of tell when when someone's scared, you know, when like if this guy and a guy in the street and you're in the car, that's I don't know, that seems real obvious. You drive around and you go home. But you know, if someone's like getting like if you're walking on the sidewalk and he gets in your way, that's you know, it's kind of different or whatever, but avoiding the situation.

• 27:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  And you're not scared because you're prepared or whatever and you you simply walk around or go the other way or something like that. The people with you, they can tell. They can tell you're not scared. You can tell you're making the right decision. But if you are scared, whether you fight the guy or you run away scared, they can tell that too.

• 28:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so I had another situation. The other day I was walking down the street with my whole, well, yeah, with my whole family.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Thing.

• 28:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay, going to get some ice cream. It was a couple of months ago in the summertime, going to get some ice cream. Had a discipline disciplinary breakdown in my own mentality. We're going to get ice cream. So we're walking down the street and out of nowhere, this guy just gets in my like stood up and got in my face, looked really fast.

• 28:38Jocko Willink?

  And I I just kind of looked at him and sort of did the, you know, into the um semi not a full on fight stance, but I turned, you know, like a quarter turn and just looked at him because I thought, okay, we're going to rock and roll. We'll make this happen. And almost instantly, what happened, what you just described, happened. As soon as the guy got in my face, he like immediately within one within a half a second, immediately backed down and walked away. It was like he was just trying to prove something and then he realized really quick he was going to get crushed.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:11Jocko Willink?

  But anyways, that's the same thing, you know, the guy could tell, oh, you want to fight? You know, you ever tell you that story about Hoiler? Hoiler Gracie, Hoiler told me this story and I guess, you know, Hoiler's a really good surfer. And Hoiler was out surfing at a spot in San Diego and you know, San Diego, like all surfing areas is is pretty um territorial and there's some there's some there's some aggression in the surf. And anyways, some guy started getting aggressive with with Hoiler. And Hoiler said to him some classic line. It was something along the lines of,

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  hey, man, you surf for a living, I fight for a living. If you want to go to the beach, let me know. Otherwise, be quiet. I thought that was a great line. Nicely done, Hoiler.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Brother's time.

• 30:04Jocko Willink?

  But it's the same, you know, Hoiler's small. For those of you don't know who Hoiler Gracie is, Hoiler's a small, small guy. He's obviously a master of jujitsu, but he's only 150 pounds, 155 pounds, maybe. Really small guy and he's a nice guy. So he's not a guy that, he's not a guy that's going to be intimidated. He's not, he's not, his looks are not going to intimidate anybody. I don't even think he has cauliflower ears. I mean, it's just, he just looks like a nice guy and he is a nice guy and he's got a nice presence about him.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:32Jocko Willink?

  So what I'm saying is what, again, to reinforce what you just said, when someone is confident to that level, even though they're 145 or 150 pounds and look like a nice guy with a smile on their face, when you confidently say, look, you know what I do for a living? I fight. If you want to go to the beach and fight, let me know.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:50Jocko Willink?

  And the guy says, oh, you know what? I'm good. I'm good. I'll just leave you alone. That sounds like a plan.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the, the little detector goes off like danger, you know?

• 30:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, danger. I'm going to get my ass beat.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but and some, but some guys are, as far as decision making goes, some guys are crazy, you know, where like how you said, like if they're like on drugs or this guy in this case, if he's in the middle of the road acting like, you know, boys in the hood kind, we got a problem here. Kind, that's what he said he was doing. Like he's obviously off, you know, like he's not a decision maker kind of thing. So, you know, if you jump into a situ- situation with him, it's kind of unpredictable in that weird way, you know?

• 31:27Jocko Willink?

  Let me tell you something else. Let's say the guy has a gun or doesn't have a gun. You had the moment to get away from him. If you thought if you had a gun, you'd get away from him, right? Let's say you said, oh, you know what? I'm going to confront him right now. So you, you, let's say you get in a shootout, you kill him.

• 31:44Jocko Willink?

  Guess what you gotta do now? You gotta hire a lawyer. You gotta hang up. You gotta take a, a break from work because you're a cop. There's all these things. It's so not worth it. It's just a pain in the ass is what it is.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  It's almost like, I mean, maybe I'm wrong here, but it's almost like you can't really, like what, what's the thing? What's the goal we're going for?

• 32:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, back to the, back to the first question of the day.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:06Jocko Willink?

  What's your reason? What would be your reason for doing this?

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I'm gonna go out and um and I'm look for I'm gonna look for the guy. But then like what's the goal like what's the out like what are we going for there when we go look for him? To tell him not to do that again or to what to arrest him?

• 32:19Jocko Willink?

  He's going up to kick his ass, I believe.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  What's going on?

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then even that you don't a lot of times we don't I know. When you're in that moment, you don't think past that. You're just like, I gotta get my whatever my revenge really is what it is. He shouldn't have done that to me. I'm gonna go teach him a lesson kind of a thing. I mean, that's the feeling.

• 32:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  I don't know. Yeah, but guys are weird, man. You can't jump into that weirdness, bro. Just go home with your family and watch.

• 32:43Jocko Willink?

  When the confrontation happens, the best case scenario isn't good. The best case scenario.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, if you jump in there.

• 32:49Jocko Willink?

  No, just the best case scenario that's gonna happen.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:51Jocko Willink?

  It isn't good.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:53Jocko Willink?

  Because you got even if you walk up and knock the guy out with one clean punch. You gotta you got a broken finger. You know, you got a broken knuckle. Even if you walk up and choke the guy, you got his grimy puke all over. You know what I mean? It's just there. There's nothing that good is gonna come out of it.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and ooh.

• 33:10Jocko Willink?

  Other than it feels good to fight. But that can easily be remedied by going to the gym and fighting all of your buddies.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  And in this case, I don't know. You know, this guy, oh, you you knocked out a weird homeless guy in the in the middle of the road in front of your family. Like, I don't see how that's cool. You know that I mean, maybe I don't know if that would feel good. I don't think so.

• 33:32Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  But yeah, it's kind of weird. This one time we went on this cruise.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  And it was me, Terry, Tim, you know, he's like Terry's huge.

• 33:40Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Like, I'm kind of big or whatever. Tim and our girlfriends, this guy was behind us in the booth. We're at a restaurant or something. And um we're like whatever. I guess the booths were flimsy, so we were shaking the booth. He was behind us. He got up all crazy. He's like, hey, God, he's. What did he say? He said, yeah, you guys are big, but you guys keep knocking the booth. We're gonna like basically called us out to a fight. He had like tattoos everywhere on his neck and stuff. And at first I was like, man, is this guy joking? Like, what's going on? I was confused and to be honest, I was like stunned, like almost like I didn't. This scenario was so foreign to me. I was stunned. I didn't even know what to say. I don't even know what everyone else was doing. That's how stunned I was.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  But then Tim, he was kind of used to that kind of stuff. So he was like, is this guy serious right now? He just jumps in. He like stands up, goes to fight him. But the guy was a weirdo. That's the thing. It was like all of us big guys, you know? And Tim was like, he wasn't scared. Oh, he was ready to like fight. So he gets in his face, the face they're about to fight. We're on a cruise, by the way. We're fighting. You can't fight on a cruise.

• 34:44Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  So it's this big scene, you know? And the guy like, he was like, I don't know. I guess he was ready to die or something. Cause he was like, kind of down to fight and guys came in like, I think broke it up or whatever. We had to make this big report. It was like this big thing.

• 34:58Jocko Willink?

  So it was all just a pain in the ass is basically what we're saying.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Right. And I'm saying like, what if we fought that guy, you know? Taught him a lesson. Or what if Tim fought him or whatever?

• 35:08Jocko Willink?

  Getting arrested and they got a lawsuit against him.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  We were on a cruise.

• 35:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Now we gotta go someplace.

• 35:13Jocko Willink?

  Exactly. It's all stupid.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Don't do that kind of stuff. Next question. Jocko, love the podcast. Part of the question.

• 35:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, thank you.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Right on. Any suggestions for leading command staff to understanding the ground level troops in a mission?

• 35:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So for, for those of you that are not in the military, command staff, that's sort of for the business world. That would be like corporate headquarters. You know, the corporate headquarters, you've got the command staff. And it happens in both situations where you end up with, with the command staff or the corporate headquarters that kind of loses track of what, what they're actually there for. The ground level mission, the troops that are on the ground. And this is a tough question, but it's also kind of a simple one. So. I go back to trying to constantly remind people what the mission is. What are they trying to do? And I had a, the Admiral, when I was the Admiral's aide, I worked for the Admiral.

• 36:13Jocko Willink?

  Great guy. And one of the things, I've probably talked about this before, but one of the best things that he did was because he's, he's so detached from the SEAL platoons, like there's layer upon layer upon layer in between him and them. And actually, believe it or not, the job of the Admiral that's in charge of the SEAL teams, this is going to sound strange to everybody. The job of the Admiral that's in charge of the SEAL teams is to

• 36:43Jocko Willink?

  get equipment and gear and training for the SEAL teams now and for like the next 10 years. Because that's the way the budgetary process works in the, in the Pentagon and there's, so, so don't think of, when you think, I know you, you want to think of the SEAL Admiral as the warfighter that's going forward. The guy that's actually in charge, the senior SEAL, now there, you could be in a special operations group, there's other places you could be, but the guy that's in charge of the SEALs, of, of Naval Special Warfare Command, that's what it's called, Naval Special Warfare Command, the Admiral that's in charge of that, which puts him in charge of all the SEALs. That guy, his main, his, his job is to train and equip SEALs.

• 37:28Jocko Willink?

  Train and equip, not take them into battle, but train and equip. And so you end up with this whole organization where the purpose of the organization is to train and equip, but the organization is huge. And even that command organization gets very big. And so what they start doing is they start losing focus that 10 levels below them, out somewhere overseas, is, is an eight man squad in a Zodiac off the coast of some nation doing a reconnaissance. It's very, they don't even think about, they haven't thought about that for years. And so they lose track and it happens in the corporate world as well, where the, the head shed, that's, they're dealing with stuff too, right? They're dealing with legal problems, they're dealing with compliance problems, they're dealing with financial problems.

• 38:12Jocko Willink?

  They lose track of the fact that there's a guy on the front line that's trying to fix a car or replace an, an air conditioner. You know, that that's the way it is. So you lose the vision of that, you lose track of that. So what was great about this Admiral that I worked for? Is in these big meetings where they would be talking about, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of expenditures over the next 12 years and various training commands and all this stuff, huge. And he would always, you know, he would always say, how does this impact a SEAL platoon overseas?

• 38:44Jocko Willink?

  How does this, how does this help a SEAL assaulter go out and shoot a bad guy in the face? That's what he would ask. And that gets, snaps everybody, snaps everybody back into reality of what they're, it connects exactly what this question is. Suggestions for leading command staff to understanding the ground level troops. You've got to ask that question. In the business side, I've seen the same thing. You know, the guys totally lose track of it. So, so you, you end up, you've got to ask the question, hey, everything that you're talking about, this, this compliance thing and this regulatory thing and this new software that you're talking about, let me ask you a question. How is this going to help one of our frontline salespeople close a deal? That's the question.

• 39:28Jocko Willink?

  That's the whole reason that we're here. The whole reason that this big staff is here, the whole reason we have this building, the whole reason we have this base is so that a SEAL overseas can close with and destroy the enemy. Or so, or if we're a big corporation, it's so that this repairman can make it to a, a house and fix an electrical problem in a short period of time efficiently and effectively. That's what we're all here for. So, I think that's what you have to do. You have to keep reminding them of what's going on down on the front lines, what the mission is, what the men are doing, what issues are out there. Another thing you could take is, you want to take these people with you.

• 40:10Jocko Willink?

  Or you want to get anecdotal information. That's, I know it's cheap. It's cheap to do this. But you go out and you gather anecdotal information that you can bring back to headquarters. And say, hey, you know what? I know we're all doing a good job here. Let me tell you, the troops on the ground need this cold weather gear. Right now, they don't have it. Here's a, here's a message I just got from a guy overseas. They're up in northern Iraq. We thought it was going to be warm. Guess what? It's 32 degrees. There's snow on the ground. These guys aren't prepared for it. We need to get in this gear. Okay. So you're using anecdotal information to

• 40:41Jocko Willink?

  To paint the picture of what's going on in the front lines. Same thing with, you know, if you're a corporate guy and you want to make sure people stay engaged, go out on a call with that electrician that's visiting the house on a, on a, where there's been a breaker blown and the guys working through the, the payment system that you devised that you thought was so smart. It doesn't get connection while you're out in the field and now he can't run a credit card. You want to come back and tell them, tell the head shed that.

• 41:06Jocko Willink?

  So those are some of the things. Another thing that you can do is, is you ask those questions all the time and maybe you just come up with some kind of a mantra that you repeat all the time and that you sign your emails with. It says, you know, we're here to support. We're here to support the frontline guys. We're here for the frontline, you know, or ask yourself the question, does this help the frontline? Every decision that we make, we gotta ask ourselves, does this help our frontline? Does this help our frontline personnel?

• 41:32Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's what you gotta do. Now, one thing that you've got to be ready for on this. You gotta be ready for someone to say, they don't understand the big picture. This is what you gotta be ready for, because I've heard this. Wait, who's gonna say that? The corporate. You go to the corporate and say, look, you know, we got the guys on the front lines. We need to get them this gear and they go, look, they don't understand the big picture. We can't afford that right now. We didn't, look, okay. I hear what you're saying.

• 41:58Jocko Willink?

  But be ready for it. It's an excuse. It's an excuse and you gotta be ready for it. And the way that you get ready for it, and I've talked about this a million times. The way you get ready for is you have ammunition. You have ammunition. You gotta have your ducks in a row. If you're gonna raise your hand and say, hey, here's what's going on the front lines. Here's, here's a problem that they have. You can't, you can't just back down when they say, hey, they don't know what's going on. They don't get it. They don't get the, that's a big thing they say in the military. They don't get the big picture. I would hear that threat and say, you know what? Actually, we do get the big picture. We're living the big picture. You don't get the big picture. Here's the big picture. I got frontline troopers that need cold weather gear or they're gonna freeze and not be able to operate.

• 42:37Jocko Willink?

  The picture doesn't get any bigger than that. Now, you can't, of course, come across like that. And what you have to do is you have to look at it systematically and over a long term and say, this is a plan. And I've got a plan for the long term of how we're going to get these guys this cold weather gear in the future. But right now, we've got a little fix that's going to cover these guys that are in the field right now. You've got to come armed with ammunition. So that you can, you can refute this common call that gets made, which is they don't understand the big picture out in the field. So don't worry about them. No, the only reason we're here is for those guys in the field. So let's remember them.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  That's pretty good.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  You talk about stepping back or detaching to better assess situations. Can you expand on how you detach?

• 43:30Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so this is again, this is one I've been asked. I probably even, have I answered this before?

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:36Jocko Willink?

  Should we just skip it?

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Uh, no, I think it's worth it, you know?

• 43:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I'll, I'll go over, I'll go over it quickly since people ask me all the time. Okay, first of all, you want to detach, step back, literally step back. If you're online with a bunch of people in a combat situation, literally step back. If you're, if you're in a combat situation, high port your weapon, point your weapon at the seat, at the roof, at the sky, whatever. You're not going to engage any targets, you're going to step back. If you're in a, if you're in a business environment, step away from the computer. Step away from the terminal, put down your pen, back away. There's a, you're in a meeting, heated meeting? You need to detach, stand up, back away from the table. But literally stand back and step away. Once you do that,

• 44:21Jocko Willink?

  you, you relax. Now that, that physical part that I just talked about of literally stepping back, that's something that. It's a, it's a physical reminder of what to do. You can get to a point in your life where you don't need to do that. Yeah. Or where you usually don't have to do that, but things can still escalate quickly to where even the most highly trained detached person still has to step back. Yeah. And, and take a, take a wrap off and take a look around. So in most of these situations, especially when you're first starting to try and do it, physically step back, physically do something that indicates to you as a person, and it actually indicates to everyone around you that you're doing this.

• 45:03Jocko Willink?

  Like when somebody stands up from the table and steps back, it's an indicator. Okay. He's taking a wrap off, right? Dramatic. We get it. Yeah. Actually, we're trying not to be dramatic, but it's going to be dramatic anyways. Yes, it is. Now, take a breath, take a breath, look around and make a call. That's, that's it. That's how easy it is to detach. Now, the actual hard part of detachment is being self-aware enough that you know when to detach. That's the, that's the challenging part because they end up in the situation, by the time, by the time they go, man, I should have detached. Yeah, that's right. You should have detached. You lost your temper. You got involved. You couldn't make a decision. You got dragged into the weeds like everybody else did. It's, it's, if somebody, if I would have, and I've done this plenty of times when I was training SEAL platoons,

• 45:47Jocko Willink?

  I would just go up to the leader who was getting dragged in a situation. I'd be like, hey, step back with me. I'd take them two steps off the line and be like, look around, and then they'd be easily be able to make a decision. Yeah. That's the, that's the easy part. The easy part is stepping, stepping back. The hard part is knowing that you need to do it. Because it's like, I guess it's to use the stupid analogy of the boiling frog, right? Where you put a, you put a frog in water, you slowly start to boil it. Next thing you know, it's, next thing it knows it's dead. It didn't realize that though. If you threw it into hot water, it would just try and jump out immediately. Yeah. It's the same thing here. You don't, you don't get walk into a room and the chaos is going on. No, you walk into the room and everything seems okay. And then it starts to escalate, escalate, escalate. Next thing you know, you're in it.

• 46:28Jocko Willink?

  And next thing you know, something bad has happened and you didn't detach in time. So you lost the bubble and you lost control and everything went sideways. So you gotta know, you gotta understand when it is you need to detach. You gotta have your own personal red flags to tell you that it's time to relax. When you feel yourself getting frustrated, when you start getting like that, you need to detach. When you feel, if you're getting frustrated, you go back, okay, detach. If you start feeling angry, or you start feeling the white knuckles, or you start pecking hard at the keyboard, right? Right? When you type an email out and you're hitting the keyboard hard. Yeah, it's an indicator. Indicator, you better not hit send, because whatever you wrote isn't good. It's not going to solve any problems. Your raised voice, right? You start raising the voice, you start getting angry and aggro with people.

• 47:14Jocko Willink?

  Those are the little things, those are the little indicators that tell you you need to detach, step back, take a breath, look around, walk out of the room, put your weapon at high port. Just relax.

• 47:29Jocko Willink?

  Look around, make a call. One more thing, sometimes, sometimes what, what, the reason you need to detach is just so you can see something from a different angle. And you can ask a question. I personally love doing this. I'm in a, in a meeting, right? And I work with a bunch of businesses. And it actually gets pretty, you know, I'm getting involved in what they're doing. And they'll be all basically staring at a problem, right? Staring at a problem and they can't figure out what the solution, whether it's a leadership problem or a process problem, and they're all staring at this problem. And they can't come to a solution. Well, I come in, first of all, I'm totally detached, right?

• 48:12Jocko Willink?

  It's one of the benefits of my job is I'm totally detached. So when I come in, a lot of times, my, what I bring to the situation or what I can see is I can just ask a question that none of them could think to ask, because they're all looking in the same direction. As soon as you flank that idea, you see it from a different angle. You come up with a solution. So, so what I'm, my point in this is, don't only use detachment to prevent your emotions from driving your decisions. Also, use detachment as part of

• 48:49Jocko Willink?

  your creative process to detach from your current thought pattern and move to a new thought pattern where you can create new ideas and different plans from different angles that were not seen from your previous vantage point.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  It's good.

• 49:18Jocko Willink?

  So I guess we did get a little bit out of that detachment there.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:22Jocko Willink?

  Revisit, revisitation.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  How to deal with people who use military vet status to excuse bad behavior in civilian world?

• 49:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is unfortunate one to have to answer. And unfortunately, I have to start it off with the same way I made this point about jujitsu and jujitsu practitioners not necessarily being good people.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:53Jocko Willink?

  Unfortunately, it's the same thing with veterans, just like it's the same thing in every aspect of life. Just because someone is a veteran does not mean that they are a good person and being at war is certainly not an excuse for bad behavior. And a couple examples, a couple examples just to think about. Major, Major Kurt Chu Yen Lee, you remember this guy? Navy Cross. This is the guy that wore the pink vest at, at Incheon so his men could identify him. The enemy could identify him clearly too, but he was

• 50:32Jocko Willink?

  the leader. He saw hell, right? Wounded, men died, 27 of his men mated. I mean, just ridiculous. Guess what he did when he, when he got out of the Marine Corps? Went to work for an insurance company for 20 years. Right? So, Joe Owen?

• 50:53Jocko Willink?

  Joe Owen, who, you know, same, same chosen reservoir battle. Never regained the use of the, of his arm that was wounded, was medically retired from the Marine Corps. Guess what he did with all that angst and horror? Guess what he did? Yeah, he created and ran his own marketing business until he retired.

• 51:14Jocko Willink?

  Now, you remember John Chaffee from that book, The Coldest War? He was the captain that I kind of wanted, the reason I did that book was because he was profiled in there and he just was a great leader. Well, I, I don't even know if I, I don't remember if I talked about this. But he turned 20 years old at the Battle of Guadalcanal, right? World War II, he fought at Okinawa, World War II. Then he went to, went back, went to school, went, he went to either Yale or Harvard or both, but then Korea kicked off. So then he went to Korea. And got after it more. So all this war. What did he do with all that? Came home, you know, became the mayor of Providence there in Rhode Island, became the governor of Rhode Island, and then he became secretary of the Navy. But so.

• 51:59Jocko Willink?

  My point in saying these things is veterans are not broken humans. They're not deranged people. They're just people. And they've seen some stuff and most of them are carry on and do awesome. The greatest generation, think of the greatest generation, all those World War II vets. They saw horrors of war. Guess what they did? Came home and dominated. That's what they did. So men and women can overcome the impact of war. Or, or, or at least they can learn to work with it. Cause even if you, you know, it's even if you have those things that stress you out, okay, but guys learn how to deal with it. Of course, that, that being said, war, it does leave a mark.

• 52:45Jocko Willink?

  And obviously sometimes it can have a extremely negative effect. So if you know someone like that, well, let's get those veterans some help if they need it. And, and get them some support. Also make sure you're not enabling this bad behavior. This is what you don't want to do. You don't want, you don't want to enable this bad behavior. The vets that I meet, they're, they're, they're fired up. They're not, they're not complaining about anything. They're getting after it.

• 53:19Jocko Willink?

  Don't enable the bad behavior. It doesn't help anyone. And it's one of those things that

• 53:25Jocko Willink?

  it might make you feel better, might make me feel better to help someone out and say, you know, I understand. You know, here's, let me enable your behavior some more and it might make me feel better. Cause I feel like I've done a good deed, but you haven't done a good deed.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:37Jocko Willink?

  You've actually not helped them at all. That's one thing I think that's good. If you find other vets for them to talk to. Because other vets will say, man, I understand, bro. It's okay. But let's not dwell on that past stuff. Let's move forward. This guy's offering you a job or this guy has a a job for you to do, or this guy has a position you can fill. Do that. Do that. Don't dwell on the past. The past is gone. War is hell. I know. Now let's live in the heaven we got here in the United States of America. Let's, let's take advantage of that. And not dwell on the past. You know, and this is, this is another small thing, but I just hear so much about it.

• 54:20Jocko Willink?

  From people, if you got somebody. Have them listen to the podcast, to this podcast. I hear from a vet every single day. I hear from vets around America. That are like, hey, man, thanks. Thanks for having the podcast. Thanks for what you talk about. I get it. Appreciate it. A guy just, guy just, you know, sent me a message today. He's like, look, man, I didn't have a gun in my mouth. But he goes, I wasn't doing good. I'm on track. I'm training jiu-jitsu. Literally, I'm training jiu-jitsu. I'm in the gym. I'm busting my ass at my job. Appreciate it. That's all it is. That's all it is. Cause I think when people listen, when vets listen to the podcast, they go, okay, cool. There's other people. They know we're, we're in the game together.

• 55:06Jocko Willink?

  They feel that, they feel that connection and they know. That they're not alone. Cause that's the thing that's jacked up, man. Veterans that get, they go to war and they come back and they go somewhere that they're just not, there's no one there.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:18Jocko Willink?

  And all this is, is a big bullshit session. You know what I mean? Between, you know, a veteran that's in a book and I'm having a bullshit session with, with Joe Olin. You know, that's what it is. And so I think guys, veterans that hear that, they go, yeah, man, I'm, I appreciate it. So.

• 55:38Jocko Willink?

  Have them listen to the podcast and, and that might be helpful to get them feeling like they're not alone out there.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would think that that's the main thing. Like, people don't, like, you don't understand me. You know, you don't understand, like, I mean, not to sound too soft, but like, you don't understand how I feel about like this, even day to day stuff. Like, the way I'm seeing this right now, you don't understand.

• 56:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  So you do, yeah, you end up feeling, I'm assuming, is what it seems like.

• 56:07Jocko Willink?

  Guys end up feeling alone and they're out there and they're like, and the other thing is they feel like people don't understand me.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:14Jocko Willink?

  Like, I'm here saying, you're right, they don't.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:16Jocko Willink?

  They haven't been to war. And the experience of war is all over the place. I mean, I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even, I would shine, you know, I would shine Major Kurt Chu Yen Lee's boots every day for the rest of my life if I had the opportunity to. Like, that guy's experience, I mean, just, I, I'm not gonna, I'm not even in the same ballpark. You know what I mean? Not even the same close, not close, for what those guys went through at the Chaussette Raisoir. And it goes all the way down to some guy that, you know, was overseas, that was in the military, didn't even deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan. Not their fault, they might have wanted to, but sometimes it just doesn't happen.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:53Jocko Willink?

  So the, the military experience is all those things.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:56Jocko Willink?

  And you don't know what you're dealing with. But one thing we do know is that it is a common experience, you know, going to war, it does have some common threads to it. And I think that it is hard for people that haven't experienced it to understand. And it makes people feel a little bit like alone out there. So when they hear other vets talking about what goes on, they go, yeah, man, all right, cool. These are not abnormal feelings that I'm having.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:22Jocko Willink?

  And they can move on. And I don't know if I've really answered the question of, of how to deal with people who use their. Status is an excuse to bad behavior. I think just like any, anyone else, man, you gotta, you gotta do your best to put them in their place. And I think what makes non-veterans feel intimidated. And when I was a kid, I looked up to all the Vietnam veterans.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:43Jocko Willink?

  And I just thought, these guys, whatever they, they could do no wrong in my eyes. You know, when I was a kid, I was like, no, that guy's awesome. That guy was, that guy was a nom, you know? That guy could do no wrong. And I think that's a feeling that a lot of civilians have. Like, they don't want to approach the subject.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:59Jocko Willink?

  And if you feel that way, it's understandable. It's hard. But find some vets around that can help you, that can, that can help that person, that can talk to them about what they're doing. I mean, you know, every company that I work with, there's veterans at every company I work with. Some, you know, usually have multiple veterans. So find some other veterans. A lot of, the one thing, it's another cool thing that companies do, is within their company, they'll have like a veteran program, or a veteran club, basically, inside their company. That's another cool thing. Do that. Get that thing started. You know, even if you're not a vet, find the senior vet, or the vet that's fired up to do it. Bring him in, and then those guys can get together, talk and talk about doing better, and talk about bringing some of their military experience to bear in the company, and it just will turn out good.

• 58:41Jocko Willink?

  So those little veterans organizations, that's what they call them, veterans organizations inside of companies are pretty cool. I've spoken to a few of them. It's, it's a pretty cool deal.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  How does default aggressive apply to jujitsu?

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Or does it apply to jujitsu?

• 59:02Jocko Willink?

  Well, good question. Now, well, first of all, it, it doesn't apply during training. Okay? It, but it completely applies during competition, and obviously it applies in the streets. So, so, so what I mean by that is, in training, it's okay to get in bad positions. It's okay to let things happen. It's okay to let somebody grab that collar, or grab that sleeve, or get a cross. It's okay. I mean, those, it's okay to put yourself at risk in competitions. That's okay. Matter of fact, it's, it's encouraged in a lot of ways.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Training.

• 59:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in training. It's encouraged in training.

• 59:47Jocko Willink?

  But in competition, you can't do that. You can, you cannot do that. In the street, you definitely cannot do that. In fact, in the street, you've got to proactively and aggressively, first of all, avoid the bad situation. But if they come, then you've got to handle those situations with aggression and speed and violence of action. That's what you've got to do. So competition is kind of the same way. In competition,

• 1:00:19Jocko Willink?

  if you give a guy an inch, if you give a guy a grip, if you give a guy a position, they will not, they will not let go of it. It's not happening. They, they will, they will hang on to that thing like, like with the gi in competition, somebody gets a grip on some part of your gi, they, they, they white knuckle that thing, especially, especially in the lower belts. But it's the higher belts too, man. It's every belt. Because that gi, that grip can be the difference between winning and losing, period. Yep. So

• 1:00:53Jocko Willink?

  you, you gotta, you've got to aggressively avoid that. You've got to be aggressive with your positions. Now, in training, again, you let it happen. But here's something that can happen in training. Sometimes you get guys that get used to training and they go into competition, they get overrun. They get overwhelmed and overrun because they, they thought, man, I'll just, oh, the guy grabs my collar. Hey, Jocko grabs my collar all, every time we roll. Right. And they don't realize that when this guy grabs your collar, he's going to attack. Yeah.

• 1:01:19Jocko Willink?

  And so what you have to do, and the other thing is in, in a competition, there's a time limit. Because there is, there is kind of a, a,

• 1:01:29Jocko Willink?

  there's such a thing, sort of as a counterpuncher in jujitsu, right? Someone that,

• 1:01:35Jocko Willink?

  and I'm kind of like that, right? Like, I don't, I don't usually force a move to happen. Usually I'm going to let you make your own mistakes. I'm going to let my opponent make a bad move and then I'm going to capitalize on it. He does a lot less work for me. I mean, it's, it's, it's a lot less work when your opponent gives you, gives you the submission or gives you the transition or gives you the sweep than trying to make it happen. But again, in competition,

• 1:02:02Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't really work because they're not gonna give, they're not gonna take any risk. They're not gonna take any risk and there's probably not gonna be any openings now. Again, another piece is in a long match, maybe my, you know, maybe I'm just trying to tire somebody out.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Jocko Willink?

  Now in the gym, I have an unlimited time to do that. I can tire somebody out for 20 minutes, just trying to let them pass my guard. And they're trying to pass my guard the whole time. I'm getting them tired, getting them tired, getting them tired. Finally they expose themselves, boom, I put the choke on. Good, I win. That took 20 minutes. This happens on a daily basis. In a competition, I just lost. Because that was a 10 minute match and the other guy was on top for 10 minutes. Trying to pass and he got the advantage and he wins. So you can't, that can't be your strategy. If there's no time limit, it's the same thing in war, right? In war, you can have a strategy of, I'm just gonna wear the other person out. I mean, the Viet, Vietnamese did it to America, right? They just kind of wore us out.

• 1:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Look at what the Russian strategy of, that they used against Napoleon, they used against the Nazis. Oh, you want to come at us? Cool. We're just gonna back up a little bit at a time, back up a little bit at a time, back up a little bit at a time. Here comes the winter. And, and now you're gonna freeze to death and we're gonna surround you and you're gonna kill you. But that's the same type of strategy. It doesn't work if you, if you have a limited amount of time to win. You, you have to have.

• 1:03:23Jocko Willink?

  If you, if you have a limited amount of time, which in most cases you do, you have to have a default aggressive attitude and make things happen the way you want them to happen, not the way your opponent wants to happen. Have them happen, not the way your enemy wants them to happen.

• 1:03:39Jocko Willink?

  And it's the same thing, obviously, in business and in life. The good things.

• 1:03:47Jocko Willink?

  The good positions, the good details, the good promotions, the rewards.

• 1:03:53Jocko Willink?

  They're not gonna come and knock on your door. You gotta go out and you gotta take them.

• 1:03:59Jocko Willink?

  You gotta make them happen. On the mat. In business and in life.

• 1:04:08Jocko Willink?

  So get default aggressive. That's my recommendation.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's weird. And jujitsu is so ambiguous as far as like a like an art and there's like this big spectrum and there's all these exceptions. You know how you say the counterpuncher in jujitsu where like some guys even like they can you can be a counterpuncher in jujitsu and still be like aggressive but so your first move won't be like, okay, if you're going for a sweep, your first move won't be the sweep. You'll go, okay, I'm gonna do this other thing. I know his reaction is gonna open him up for the sweep.

• 1:04:44Jocko Willink?

  Well, for sure, for sure. That's that's that's cover and move, actually. It's cover and move. It's flanking. It's flanking because, yeah, because, you know, I start attacking your neck and you pull your hand up to defend it. Boom, that took your base away. I'm sweeping you.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:00Jocko Willink?

  Right. Boom. That's that's what it was. It was a cover move, covering my actual attack with my other move. Or you can call it a flank because you think I'm gonna come at the front, but then I'm flanking you from the side with the sweep.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you put all your troops in the front, you know, yeah, it's it's almost like that's almost like a philosophical question where you can answer it as it applies to something specific. So like, for example, like default aggressive in jujitsu, meaning my default aggressive way of approaching it will give me advantage in this way where I'm gonna impose my game, whether that's the counter punching game, whether it's the wear him out for a while game, whether it's, you know, overrun him with my conditioning, whatever that game is, I'm gonna aggressively put it on him before he puts it on me. Default, like right from the time the guy says go, or, you know, when it goes down the street, whenever, even in

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  training, whatever, you're training like that, if you want.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  So that'll keep him in the defensive where he can't get his game going on you, you know, he's defending your game the whole time.

• 1:06:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you definitely, definitely want to impose your will. I can say that all the time with UFC fighters. You want the UFC fighter that imposes his will on the other fighters is gonna win. They're gonna win. And it's the same thing with war. You impose your will on the enemy. That's what you do. You impose your will on the enemy and you'll break them.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. That's why you see guys like in UFC, they'll run to the middle of the ring, you know, because they're like controlling the ring. Or like a BJ Penn would all be, if he's coaching somebody, he'd be like, be first, be first, be first. You know, it's like you put him so the guy gotta defend the whole time.

• 1:06:39Jocko Willink?

  And it's, it's when you, when you're going against a striker that has that attitude and is being first, it's not fun. It's not fun. They're hitting you and you're not, you're just defending the whole time. And it's hard to turn it around.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, man. You can tell like when you roll against a guy, and we talked about this before, when you roll against a guy, and even if he's not, like his game isn't aggressive, but right when you lock up with him, you can tell he's just like just in the correct position. You're like, dang, I can't get like a good, like, and when you, you're like, okay, I'm gonna get in my position. And he just adjusts like immediately.

• 1:07:14Jocko Willink?

  You know, you're in trouble.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're like, oh dang, that's, that's in a way, even though that might be like, kind of like a passive game sometimes, it's like just his game being put on you, position wise in this case, is that default aggressive. As opposed to like, you know, like, you know, sometimes like in training, you're training with me, you'd be like, okay, I'm gonna, it's essentially letting someone get into a good position on you. So you're training your defense or whatever. That's different. That's like, that's not default aggressive.

• 1:07:40Jocko Willink?

  No, you're talking about, I'm really good from the half guard. So I let you get past my full guard to the half guard and now you're in my world. Like something like that.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that would be.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  I guess, would that be considered default aggressive?

• 1:07:54Jocko Willink?

  It's like stilts. Stilts has his weird game because he's tall and lanky.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:58Jocko Willink?

  And, and flexible.

• 1:08:01Jocko Willink?

  And so he does things, like he'll stick his foot in a place where any normal situation in jujitsu, you'd grab his foot all day long.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Jocko Willink?

  That's what he wants you to do.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:10Jocko Willink?

  And I was just telling him the other day, I said, all these little things that you want me to do, I'm not doing any of them.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Jocko Willink?

  And it's weird. And you just stop doing them. And so the way he imposes his will is by giving up these bait. He just throws bait out there all day long. And he wants you to get you into these positions that he's good at.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:26Jocko Willink?

  And so you can't take the bait. You can't take the bait. And sometimes the bait is ripe looking.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Jocko Willink?

  It's like ripe for the harvest.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's everywhere.

• 1:08:34Jocko Willink?

  And it's everywhere.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:35Jocko Willink?

  And so you gotta just say, no, I'm gonna stick to the game plan here.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna impose my will, which is I'm not gonna grab the bait.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's so crazy because like I said, kind of philosophically, that is a default aggressive thing. When all you're throwing out is bait. So instead of imposing my game, I'm like, kind of lured by this bait. Even if you know the bait is there, you're on your heels because you're watching out for the trap.

• 1:08:55Jocko Willink?

  Well, this is just to kind of, I think, down the same vein that you're talking about. I, I talk about, I talk about safety. Like I'll talk to companies about safety. You know, industrial companies or construction companies, manufacturing companies that have, you know, can have people get killed if they're not careful. And so I talk about being aggressive. And you, you know, it's okay. Well then, Jocko, how does default aggressive gonna keep us safe? Cause if I got guys that are out on a construction site being super aggressive all day, guess what? They're gonna take risks that they shouldn't. And I say absolutely wrong. Cause guess what you're gonna get aggressive with? You're gonna aggressively implement your safety procedures. You're gonna aggressively like, hey, you know what? I see a guy walking around the job site without a helmet. We're all over him.

• 1:09:40Jocko Willink?

  Hey, jackass, put your helmet on. Get over here. I'm writing you, whatever you're gonna do.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:44Jocko Willink?

  Right? Oh, I see a guy without a seatbelt. Hey, you're not allowed to be on that site without a, without a, a seatbelt on. Get over here. You gotta, you know, we're docking your pay. You're gonna get aggressive in the implementation of your safety procedures. And yes, that will make you safer.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's, yeah, I guess, um, when you hear the word aggressive, you automatically think physical.

• 1:10:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I'll give you another physical example. Another physical example is, okay, we're in a defensive perimeter.

• 1:10:15Jocko Willink?

  I don't have enough men to move or I've got wounded guys. I am going to aggressively set security. Right? I'm gonna put a big machine gun over here. I'm gonna get that high ground over there. So you can do things aggressively, even though by their nature, they might not seem aggressive at first.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:32Jocko Willink?

  I think that's what you're trying to say.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, fully. So it's it's it's almost like it's deeper. It's deeper than just like physically just jumping in. You know, it's it's more like the the idea of whatever's going on.

• 1:10:43Jocko Willink?

  Here's another one. I am going to aggressively.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Ignore you.

• 1:10:52Jocko Willink?

  No, I'm going to aggressively counsel you and mentor you. Now, the worst thing I could do is go echo, you better listen to me. That's the worst thing I could do. But to be aggressive in doing that, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna set really good goals. I'm gonna flank you. I'm gonna get into your mind. I'm do I'm being aggressive. But it's not an external aggression. It's an internal aggression that only I know is happening. You're gonna know what's happening in a year when you've all of a sudden improved and you've been successful. And you go dang, man, Jocko's really helped me out with some stuff. I didn't really realize that was going on, but he did. I was aggressively doing it, but you would have never called it aggressive from an external viewpoint.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's as opposed to let's say like some sort of a laid back approach. Right? Like if you're if you have a laid back approach to security, if you have a laid back approach to mentorship or whatever.

• 1:11:41Jocko Willink?

  Or a laid back approach to safety. Well, none of those things are good. That's why we have a default aggressive attitude about things.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  There you go. Clarified.

• 1:11:49Jocko Willink?

  Get after it.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  I don't know, though. One could say that, back to the question, one could say that having a laid back attitude in jujitsu. Then again, on the street, that'll be less likely.

• 1:12:01Jocko Willink?

  To have a laid back?

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, jujitsu in the street. There's exceptions everywhere, I would think, but. Let's say, you know, if it's going down, it's going down. Default aggressive.

• 1:12:11Jocko Willink?

  Get aggressive in the street, telling you right now.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:14Jocko Willink?

  Once it goes, once it happens, once the decision has been made.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:19Jocko Willink?

  Get after it.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  If it's go time. If it's not go time, it's not go.

• 1:12:21Jocko Willink?

  Avoid it as long as you can. Avoid it as long as you can. But when you gotta go, go hard.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Go.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  Legit. Dang, I think we are at our last question, my friend.

• 1:12:32Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  Jocko, does complacency come with age? I see a lot of guys that back off as they get older. Do you have the urge to back off?

• 1:12:48Jocko Willink?

  Does complacency come with age? And do I have the urge to back off? Negative, negative. Back off, not happening. You know, I hear that I'm over 40, I'm pushing 50, whatever. Bring it. Back off, negative, not happening. In fact, I'm stepping it up. I'm training harder, eating cleaner. I'm training more.

• 1:13:27Jocko Willink?

  I'm learning and reading and studying more now than I ever have in my whole life. Do I get dinged up? Of course I do. There take some, some injuries? Yeah. You know what? No factor. No factor. Deal with them. Because you know what? You know what I hear? I hear the clock ticking. That's what I hear. And the end is nigh and time waits for no man.

• 1:14:08Jocko Willink?

  And you young guns out there, 18 years old, 20 years old, 24 years old, listen. Life goes by and it goes by quick. Don't waste those years. Don't waste them. Live them.

• 1:14:31Jocko Willink?

  Now, I know.

• 1:14:35Jocko Willink?

  I, I know that you don't think you're gonna live to be 30, much less 40, but you are and you will.

• 1:14:45Jocko Willink?

  And the earlier you get in the game and get on track, the better life you're gonna have. Healthier, wealthier, stronger, smarter, better.

• 1:15:00Jocko Willink?

  Better.

• 1:15:04Jocko Willink?

  And if you're an old man, like me, and you haven't gotten on track yet, get on track. Get on it now.

• 1:15:17Jocko Willink?

  Everyone, everyone, listening to this, here's the deal. No complacency. No complacency, no backing off.

• 1:15:34Jocko Willink?

  No slack whatsoever. Fight.

• 1:15:40Jocko Willink?

  Fight that ticking clock with everything you've got. So, like the end of a hard day, you can put your head down with ease.

• 1:15:55Jocko Willink?

  Satisfied that you've given your best.

• 1:16:05Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's all I've got for tonight.

• 1:16:11Jocko Willink?

  Now, echo if anyone wants to get in the game as far as this podcast goes. What's the best way for them to do that?

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  Well, it's as far as this podcast goes and as far as they go.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'd call it help. I'd call it supplemental additions to your life. Supplements on it.com slash Jocko. You get 10% off. For real supplements. And I said this before. But I think we should say it again, that sometimes when you buy.

• 1:16:49Jocko Willink?

  Something tells me you're gonna say.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm gonna say it again, cuz I don't.

• 1:16:53Jocko Willink?

  Are you gonna talk about chalk?

• 1:16:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm gonna. Because sometimes, I don't know how it is now. I've been out of the supplement game for a while. As as far as taking protein powders.

• 1:17:04Jocko Willink?

  As far as the bad supplements?

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, or just we'll just say the general mix of supplements, you know? Power Gainer 5000 or whatever. Recovery, you know, X, Y, Z, whatever. Sometimes it can just be nonsense in there. But on it, you know, going in. I think we all know that it's like it's the legit one.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  The only legit one that I know of for sure. The one that I know guaranteed is legit. Put it that way that I do. Anyway. Um, I would recommend krill oil 100%.

• 1:17:42Jocko Willink?

  Krill oil is real.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's for your joints.

• 1:17:46Jocko Willink?

  I take.

• 1:17:49Jocko Willink?

  Three 500 milligram krill oil in the morning and three in the evening.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  Oh dang, six.

• 1:17:56Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  Dang.

• 1:17:57Jocko Willink?

  That's what I do.

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  I take three a day.

• 1:18:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:18:02Jocko Willink?

  That's fine.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  My daughter lifts them up to the sun and she thinks it's like a red jelly bean. It doesn't taste like a red jelly bean. Don't eat it. Don't chew it. Just swallow it. Yeah, it's a little thing. Anyway, that's the krill oil. Uh, the Warrior Bars, that's a big deal, I think. Um, is there like a?

• 1:18:22Jocko Willink?

  They're the opposite of a donut in every way, except for taste.

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're gluten free too, by the way. Yeah, they ta- well, they taste different than a donut, but just as good, if not better, in my opinion.

• 1:18:32Jocko Willink?

  Better.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  I ate three of them, all at once. I just called it a meal. It's my meal.

• 1:18:38Jocko Willink?

  Do you stack them together or individually?

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  No, brah, individually. But anyway, um, and also Shroom Tech. So a lot of people, you know how people, they'll say, hey, a lot of people been asking me, when you know, like, brah, a lot of people have been asking me. You're just making like a lot of people asking me. I'm not saying everyone that says that does that, but I'm just saying sometimes you think, but for real, a lot of people have been asking me, is Shroom Tech real? Is Shroom Tech real? I hear good things, all this stuff. Okay, Shroom Tech is real. Shroom Tech Sport. I haven't tried Shroom Tech Immune.

• 1:19:13Jocko Willink?

  I haven't tried it either.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:15Jocko Willink?

  Because I'm more in the sport mode.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  Right, right. You usually sport, not sick. Oh, but you can just have it because you just want your general immunity to be solid. That's like a good, solid thing. Nonetheless, Shroom Tech Sport is real. And I made this analogy again, I think it's worth saying again, or before, so.

• 1:19:34Jocko Willink?

  Again, I think you're gonna say it again regardless if we think it's worth it or not. So let's just do it.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  So like, okay, this is how it works, in layman's terms. You know how when you're driving a car? And it's, it's about to red, the needle's gonna go into red. You're like revving it with RPMs, woo.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  Boom, you're gonna be in the green, you're gonna get to the yellow even, the orange. And when you get, when you hit the red, you can't, you can't pull ahead. Can't pull ahead if you're in the red. So what the Shroom Tech does, you take the Shroom Tech, boom, you're going, you're in the green, you're gonna hit the yellow a little bit, a little bit later than normal, you're gonna hit the orange, maybe. And you, the Shroom Tech is just gonna keep you in the orange, gonna keep the needle in the orange, maybe even in the yellow. And you're gonna notice that. Okay, that's how it works. Anyway, get 10% off if you go on it.com slash Jocko. There you go. Boom. Support yourself, support your wallet, support the podcast, Jiboha. A good way also. If you shop at Amazon, which we all do,

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  Christmas has probably gone at this point, but we still need normal stuff.

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  Duct tape. What?

• 1:20:50Jocko Willink?

  Pens.

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  Pens. Cables. Right, from your TV or whatever. Anyway. When you, before you shop on Amazon, uh, you click through our website, which is jocko podcast.com. On the side there, there's a little Amazon banner. You click there, boom, do your shopping. You can support that way. I use the analogy of the little sodium piece that when you throw it in the water, it makes this big explosion situation. That's kind of the, the comparison as far as supporting this podcast. Cause when you click through the Amazon banner. It's like such a small thing. It's so easy. It doesn't cost you nothing, but then the support that it brings is like a lot, you know?

• 1:21:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  Bro, I'm telling you.

• 1:21:33Jocko Willink?

  Well, we appreciate that.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:21:35Jocko Willink?

  Small gesture of, of support to the podcast.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  The small gesture goes a long way.

• 1:21:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, especially when you team it up with a bunch of other people. The death of a thousand cuts will kill someone.

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:21:50Jocko Willink?

  But. The life of a thousand clicks is what we're doing. Just to, just the small clicks is. Echo is looking at me like I said something bad.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  No, no, good. You said it good. The life of a thousand clicks.

• 1:22:05Jocko Willink?

  The life of a thousand clicks.

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:07Jocko Willink?

  You click on that thing, just.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:22:10Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna get some duct tape. Might not seem like a big deal, but if a bunch of people have got duct tape and they all click through, maybe it turns into a big deal. Then we don't have to put advertisements on here.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:21Jocko Willink?

  Which we don't want to do.

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, or we could.

• 1:22:24Jocko Willink?

  Maybe we will.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  Jocko will be reading that.

• 1:22:26Jocko Willink?

  I don't think so.

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:28Jocko Willink?

  I don't think it's happening because we got support from.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Speaking of duct tape. Um, remember the Penn State duct tape?

• 1:22:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, from Sarah.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  Sarah, two blades.

• 1:22:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Sorry, I need some more duct tape.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Um, anyway, yeah, back to the Amazon. Yeah. So go to the website, click through the Amazon before you do the shopping. That's a good way to support. Good way. Thank you guys for that. Um, also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

• 1:22:55Jocko Willink?

  Or on Google Play or on Stitcher or on, what's the other ones? Those are the big ones.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Other stuff.

• 1:23:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What other things you might need?

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, whichever one it's on, man. Um, that seems obvious, but that's a cool way to support. And then the YouTube as well, you know, put some excerpts on there, more excerpts. That's the right word, right? Excerpts? Yeah. A little bite sized nuggets of Jocko wisdom. That if you are inclined to share, you can share and kind of be insured that they're, the likelihood of them listening to the whole thing is higher than if you just share the episode of the podcast.

• 1:23:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  Cause if you're like, hey, uh, you know, here's the, here's a good way to approach college. And you want to share this with your friend because they got a son that's going to college or you sharing it with Frank because they're going to college. They're going to listen to that way more likely than listening to two hours of that episode.

• 1:23:57Jocko Willink?

  It's a long time.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause maybe they're going to college like that day or something. You know what I mean?

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  Or they could just listen to it while they're in college, whichever. But anyway, they're just more consumable, we'd say.

• 1:24:10Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Jocko Willink?

  Bite size.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  Bite size.

• 1:24:13Jocko Willink?

  Like a McNugget.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Jocko McNuggets. Yep, exactly. So anyway, the point there is YouTube, that's a cool way to, to support and whatnot. Um, anyway, there, and there's a store. Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko Store. And there's T-shirts and whatnot on there. Um, they're, they're cool shirts. I think so. I don't. I'm not like one of those people where they're like, they're cool T-shirts because that's a subjective thing. So I would encourage, invite.

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  People to go to jockostore.com. Look at the t-shirt. That's it. That's all. That's all. Look at them. If you want to buy one, if you notice the layers, if the layers resonate. I thought you gave up on the layers. Now you're back in the game. We're still doing layers. Yeah, we're still doing it. If they resonate with you and you're compelled to get a shirt, support the podcast, represent the layers in your part of the world. If you're a cadet at West Point, if you're a guy with a truck with a bumper sticker on it, no matter who you are, if you choose to want to represent, do all that, get it. Get a shirt. Get a sticker. Get a patch. A hoodie.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  Get a hoodie. Get a rash guard. If you're, you know, if you don't have a rash guard and you're doing jujitsu or cycling or running, CrossFit, anything with like a lot of activity, get a rash guard if you haven't already, if you want. Anyway. There is also psychological warfare. We went through really the, what the beginnings or the pur- not the purpose. What do you call it? The

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  The formation. The formation, the story behind that. The story behind it. Last time, basically it's Jocko's version of those days where you kind of got to, this is my words. In my own words, Jocko's version of the, you know, those days where you gotta talk yourself into doing the workout or not eating, you know, a whole thing of Oreos or whatever. And you gotta talk yourself into.

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  Not even one Oreo. Yeah. Not the whole thing. One. Yeah. The moments of weakness. Yeah. When you gotta talk yourself into it or out of something, you know? Like, hey man, hey, you have to do this workout. Doesn't sound like that, but that's essentially, you know, what it is. You know, it's Jocko's version. You go on iTunes. You purchase either a track 99 cents or the album, like nine bucks, I think, something like that. I think it's actually nine ninety-nine. Yeah. And there's a wake up one. You can put on your, um, your alarm clock on your phone. To wake you up. Clear it with your wife or whoever you sleep with. Go over it, go over the whole plan like a drill, like kind of like a fire drill. Really? Because

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  I'm telling you, if, if you hear that, even if you forgot that you put it on your phone and you hear that, bro.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  I'm gonna have some explaining to do.

• 1:27:11Jocko Willink?

  The feedback has been really good.

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:15Jocko Willink?

  People that have had trouble waking up, they don't have trouble waking up anymore. People that have trouble when they, when it's snack time, people that have trouble with that, they can't, they can't say no to the donut. You, you get it, get this, get the psychological warfare. Attack going on against the donuts, the psychological warfare will win.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:27:35Jocko Willink?

  Every single time.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  Yep. And if you're having a hard time, if you're having a hard time figuring out which day is workout day and rest day, you know, when you, you're.

• 1:27:45Jocko Willink?

  I can help you figure that out real quick.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Exactly.

• 1:27:48Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that's a good, good point. Rest day, it isn't today.

• 1:27:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:53Jocko Willink?

  By the way.

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you're, or if you're switching your workout day to the rest day, like if you're doing those, which I used to do, this will help that for sure. I can all say that right now in public with 100% certainty that it, that's, it'll solve that problem.

• 1:28:09Jocko Willink?

  Sweet. Also, Jocko White Tea, it is available. It's in stock.

• 1:28:17Jocko Willink?

  It will 100% increase your deadlift by 500%.

• 1:28:29Jocko Willink?

  No, Jocko White Tea, pomegranate, it will make you deadlift a lot more weights. And that is 100% proven in, in all scientific manners. No, just kidding. It tastes good and it will make you better. You can drink it from a get after it mug, a mug that will tell you exactly what to do in the morning. And that is get after it. And if you like what we talk about on the podcast, while you're on Amazon, after you clicked through the Jocko podcast website, then you get there and you pick up a copy of a book called Extreme Ownership. You might like it if you like the podcast, talk about.

• 1:29:07Jocko Willink?

  Talk about leadership and talk about war. Two of my favorite things.

• 1:29:14Jocko Willink?

  Also, once again, Extreme Ownership muster 002. May 4th and 5th at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. Come to it, you will dig it. The first one we had, people had no idea what we were gonna do. They had no idea. We didn't even put up, barely put up an agenda. People came anyways. We delivered. We had an awesome time. The testimonials are cool. So you can know what you can look for this time. Or it's not such a mystery. You can know what you're gonna get out of it. Echo's making some videos. Question?

• 1:29:48Speaker 01

  Well, is that you're talking about the schedule? Like this one, you'll have like a schedule?

• 1:29:54Jocko Willink?

  We'll have a little bit more, but just people didn't, people just wondered what we were gonna be doing there.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:59Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, we, they kinda just took it in faith that we were gonna, that they knew one thing that we were gonna do there. And that was get after it. And we did. And so, you know, we're gonna do it again. And like I said, I think I said this last time. Echo's making videos. And once the videos come out and kinda show what's going on, it's gonna sell out. Because the footage from the first one is awesome. And it's gonna sell out quickly, so.

• 1:30:25Jocko Willink?

  Get in, get there now and get your tickets now so that you can come. You can hang out with a bunch of leaders, CEOs, mid-level managers, VPs, EVPs, owners, presidents. It's just everybody. And everybody that's in the game, of course, Leif and I are gonna be there. We'll be right in the mix with you. Ek will be there. JP is gonna be there. Getting after it with us. Discounted tickets, if you're law enforcement, firefighters, of course, military. If you have questions about that, or if you have like a corporate, you're gonna bring 10 people, 12 people, 20 people from your company? That's fine. We can get you a discount as well.

• 1:31:08Jocko Willink?

  Contact the email [email protected] or you can just go to the website, extremeownership.com. Look forward to seeing you there. And furthermore,

• 1:31:24Jocko Willink?

  if you like hanging around with us here on the podcast and you want to keep hanging around with us a little bit, you're in luck because we are hanging around on the interwebs, on Twitter and on Instagram. And if you're gonna be inside that Facebooky boha, we're gonna be there with you, my friend. So Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And finally, thank you for all the questions and the feedback and the downloads

• 1:32:04Jocko Willink?

  and the support to the military personnel. Stay on your game and be aggressive. To the vets, thank you for your service. To the police and firefighters, thank you guys and girls for keeping us safe on the home front. And to the rest of you, fighters, grinders, troopers, leaders, keep pushing, keep grinding. Let there be no complacency and let there be no slack.

• 1:32:44Jocko Willink?

  Let there only be getting after it. So until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.