522: How Discipline and Leadership Will Make You Survive 40 Months as a POW.

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockoundergound.com/subscribe Examining the wartime leadership of Air Commodore Leonard Burchill, a Canadian POW who protected and unified fellow prisoners under brutal conditions. His story illustrates extreme ownership, integrity, discipline, and selfless leadership, showing how character, competence, and comradeship sustain teams through the harshest adversity. 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 522 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. In April 1942, this officer was shot down and captured after sending out this warning from his patrolling seaplane that a large force of Japanese warships was approaching Salon. Throughout his three and a half years as a prisoner of war, Wing Commander Burchell, as senior allied officer in the prisoner of war camps in which he was located continually displayed the utmost concern for the welfare of his fellow prisoners. On many occasions, with complete disregard for his own safety, he prevented as far as possible Japanese officials of various camps from sadistically beating his men and denying prisoners the medical

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  attention which they so urgently needed. Typical of his splendid gallantry was when in the Nagato Camp, he called a sit-down strike in protest against ill-treatment of his men. On another occasion, when the Japanese wanted to send some sick prisoners to war, to work, Wing Commander Burchell found it necessary at great personal risk to forcibly prevent the Japanese non-commissioned officer in charge from making these prisoners work. As a result, Wing Commander Burchell spent several days in solitary confinement. Nevertheless, the sick prisoners of war did not have to work. Knowing that each time he forcibly intervened

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  on behalf of his men, he would receive brutal punishment, Wing Commander Burchell continually endeavored to improve the lot of his fellow prisoners. He also maintained detailed records of personnel in his camps, along with death certificates of deceased personnel. The consistent gallantry and glowing devotion to his fellow prisoners of war that this officer displayed throughout his lengthy period of imprisonment are in keeping with the finest traditions of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

• 2:00Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is the citation making air Commodore Leonard Burchill, an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1946. So this guy Leonard Burchill was born July 6th, 1915 in Ontario, Canada. He graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada in 1937. He eventually deployed to Salon, which is modern day Sri Lanka in 1942. And on April 4th, 1942, he was out patrolling in a seaplane. He cited a major Japanese fleet that you just heard about in the citation. He radioed back intelligence to headquarters. It kind of give that gave the British forces a heads up of this imminent attack.

• 2:44Jocko Willink?

  But his aircraft were shot down. Some of his crew members were killed. The him and the remaining survivors were captured. And he spent about 40 months in Japanese, various Japanese prison camps. And during those years of suffering, as the site, as stated in the citation, Burchill displayed incredible courage, incredible tenacity, incredible leadership. And he was not only appointed as an officer of the Order of the British Empire. He's also awarded the distinguished flying cross for initially reporting that Japanese attack. After the war continued his career, eventually became chief of air operations

• 3:26Jocko Willink?

  in the Royal Canadian Air Force, became commandant of the Royal Military College of Canada. And he played significant roles in Canada's participation in NATO and NORAD. Eventually he retired. He took a leadership role at York University. But in September of 1997, he gave a speech to the Canadian Forces School of Aerospace Studies up in Winnipeg. And I found a copy of this speech and I read through it and it's just, it's freaking classic. So much good information in there. The, the copy that I used for this from the Canadian Air Force Journal, volume two, issue one. It's the winter of 2009.

• 4:08Jocko Willink?

  So I'm going to be reading from that great, um, just they, they just took the speech and put it in there in writing and it's so many good lessons from this thing. So again, here's this, here's a, this speech from.

• 4:23Jocko Willink?

  Commodore, Air Commodore Leonard Burchill, and he starts off with a little bit of humor. "I apologize for my copious notes, but at my age, and this past July I became 82 years young, there are three serious losses which you encounter in your physical capabilities. First, your eyesight grows dim, and you will note rather strong lenses in my glasses. Second, your hearing is not too good, and I admit that I am in need of a hearing aid. Third, and I'll be damned if I can never remember what the third one is. Thus, I must stick closely to my text, or I will wander all over the place. Actually, there is a fourth serious loss in our physical capabilities, which we old chaps encounter, but we do our utmost not to even think about that one, let alone discuss

• 5:06Jocko Willink?

  it, as whenever we do, all we do is sit around and cry. You will note that is necessary for me to take frequent sips of water, and this is due to the fact that during my indoctrination into Japanese culture, which was administered with severity by clubs of various sizes, all too often I would zig when I should have zagged, and the damage to my throat has finally caught up with me, resulting in my having to have a series of drastic throat operations and intense radiation treatments, leaving me with a perpetual dry mouth and throat, so I ask you, please bear with me." So here you have this 82-year-old guy, clearly very sharp, always giving this speech. I'm gonna fast forward a little bit.

• 5:48Jocko Willink?

  "Napoleon once said, 'There are no bad men, only bad officers.'" The question then I, the question then is, have I been a good or bad officer? And here, there is no set criteria or standard. "Some believe that the best measure of success is the rank you attain, but I do not accept this. Some of the finest men I have met, served with, and held in the highest regard were not necessarily those who were the most senior." This is something that happens all the time, like, people think, "Oh, he was a general, or he was an admiral, he must be an awesome leader." Like, not so much.

• 6:31Jocko Willink?

  You cannot judge the the ability or the traits of a person based on the rank because there's some of the things that you have to do, some of the there's, there's like a whole, there's a whole path you can take to achieve high rank that has nothing to do with good leadership. It actually has to do with like screwing people over and looking out for yourself. That happens. Now, sometimes usually, usually they get caught at a certain point and they don't make it as far as they want to. But sometimes they do. Sometimes they do. And even if they don't make it as far as they want to, they still made it further than they should have. So you got to watch out for that. One thing I do recognize as a measure of success

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  is leadership, as everyone I have held in high esteem has had that quality. And this, I believe to be essential for success in any walk of life. This guy's talking about leadership. As a member of the armed forces and regardless of rank, the opportunities for development and use of leadership are immense, and the satisfaction you will derive is equally so. There's an old adage, however, that you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. Or the other version, you can lead a horse to drink, but you can't make him water. Which I don't really understand that 100%. Thus, while you will have these

• 7:54Jocko Willink?

  opportunities, the success you will achieve depends entirely on the amount of effort you put forth. Nothing is ever free in this life or handed to you on a plate. The price you must pay is hard work, total effort, and self sacrifice. That's what we're talking about. Hard work, total effort, and self sacrifice. Can you make any sense of that? The the other version, you can lead a horse to drink, but you can't make him water. Is there, I wonder if there's a term for maybe watering a horse means like it's getting watered, like drinking. That's like a more cowboy way. I'll have to check with Iris Gardner and see if watering a horse means they drink.

• 8:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, big question mark for me. Okay.

• 8:45Jocko Willink?

  Going on here. I would now like to give you my concept of leadership and the reasons for my beliefs. I noticed that point number four, and he had talked earlier that they've got, they were given all this thing to read that had eight points of leadership. So he kind of refers back to that a little bit. He says, I noticed that point number four of the teaching point is leadership versus management, which would obviously call for a definition of those terms. The most succinct one I have heard for leadership is being able to tell someone to go to hell and have them look forward to the trip.

• 9:19Jocko Willink?

  That's fired up, you know, when you got your boys, you got to tell them, hey, we're going to go to do this thing. It's going to suck. And guys are like, let's go. That's leadership as opposed to whereas the one for management is being able to keep three balls in the air with one hand, while protecting your own with the other.

• 9:36Jocko Willink?

  So the manager is looking out for himself, you know, got to move these balls around over here and with one hand, but I'm going to protect my own balls with my other hand.

• 9:46Jocko Willink?

  If you ever have to lead troops into combat, and I pray this will never happen, you will find that you appear before your men stripped of all insignia and outward signs of authority to command. So there you go. When you're in combat leadership, you're naked, you're stripped of all your authority, all your outward signs, all your insignia. This is, this is very close to, we were up at the council and I was talking about basically like the primordial order of leadership and how there's just like a pecking order in the world. And if you're not paying attention to that and you think you're higher on that pecking order than you actually are, it's going to be problematic.

• 10:29Jocko Willink?

  If you know where you are, if you know where you are and other people, you see yourself the same way other people see you, you'll be okay. Like if I'm like, hey, I'm not quite the best, but I'm, I'm in this position because I, whatever, I went to college or I've been here longer or whatever the case may be. And you're like, okay, I know I don't really deserve to be here, but here I am. You'll be okay. But then when you think like, you're damn right, Amir, that's we have a problem because you don't get that. That insignia is not real.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  Your leadership is judged not by your rank, but by whether your men are completely confident that you have the character, knowledge and training that they can trust you with their lives. Now, men are shrewd judges of their leaders, especially when their lives are at stake. And hence, your character and knowledge must be such that they are prepared to follow you, to trust your judgment and carry out your commands. Man, it's so, people, leaders all the time, very common that they underestimate how shrewd of judges their troops are. And they think they can get away with things, and they think that the team doesn't notice. Oh, it's no big deal, I just kind of look out for myself over here a little bit, no one will see. Oh, they'll see. They will absolutely see.

• 11:41Jocko Willink?

  Who was it telling us, oh yeah, Andrew Paul told a story at the muster. They were like getting, he was in BUDs, and they were getting, they were just waiting for chow.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:54Jocko Willink?

  And it was cold, they're wet and it's cold, and like one of the officers moved out of the shade into the sunlight and was like giving orders and directing people. And he's thinking, no one noticed, but, but the class is like, bro, check out that dude, he's just trying to look out for himself, that little tiny thing.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, didn't they call him Sunshine?

• 12:14Jocko Willink?

  They called him Lieutenant Sunshine.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh, continuing on, let us now examine these two major things which the men look for in their leaders. The first is character. And here I believe that the prime ingredient, the absolute cornerstone is integrity. Integrity is one of those words which many people keep in the desk drawer labeled too hard. It is not a topic for the dinner table or cocktail party. You can't buy it or sell it. When supported with education, a person's integrity can give them something to rely on when their perception seems to blur, when rules and principles seem to waver, and when they are faced with hard choices of right or wrong.

• 13:00Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's really important. The fact that, like, let's say you're in combat.

• 13:07Jocko Willink?

  There's gonna be things you you face in combat that are not from the book. There's no, there's no reference you can make. Like some shit happens that you couldn't predict. No one could predict and it happened and now you've got to deal with it. And you, so you can't rely on any instructions that you were given. You can't rely on the rules of engagement. You can't rely on the, on the law of armed conflict. You can't rely on the regulations that you're under. You can't rely on anything. Cause this is a weird thing that just happened. And by the way, this happens in business too. It happens in life. Somebody's gonna do some shit that you don't expect. And then it boils down to, okay, integrity. Are you gonna do the right thing right now? Are you gonna, are you gonna use good judgment?

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  It's something to keep them afloat when they are drowning. If only for practical reasons is an attribute that should be kept at the very top of a young person's consciousness. Without personal integrity, intellectual skills are worthless. And by the way, personal integrity is like going out into the sun when everyone else is freezing.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, actually that question, that story was a good one because it really like brought to light that concept. Because when you think about it, like, oh yeah, this, this guy. So everyone was cold, everyone was standing in line, but that line happened to be in the shade, right? And the guys are already cold. Meanwhile, so this guy like kind of pretends that he has some stuff to do, you know, some orders.

• 14:26Jocko Willink?

  Some word to put out.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. So, and how Andrew Paul explained it was kind of like, you could tell he was just like making stuff up to do. You know, like keeping himself busy because he could do it from a position that wasn't in the shade. It was in the sun so you could get warm or whatever. And kind of when you think about it, you're like.

• 14:43Jocko Willink?

  Also, Andrew Paul said it was like a, it was like a four meter square of sun.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:47Jocko Willink?

  You know, he like found it. Like it might not have been so obvious if like it was just a little bit in the shade and then it was a huge area that was sun up. But no, no, he was in that little four meter square of sun.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's kind of like, you know, on the surface, you're kind of like, yeah, like, who cares? Like, what does that have to do with anything? You know, like, I mean, I would be more, you would think anyway, if you weren't there and you didn't understand really the, what you, what you get from the actual experience. You think, oh, well. Like it has no bearing on me, you know? Like what should like, should I be in the like, it has no bearing, you know? But when you're there and you're in a cohesive group and you see someone just in principle like, hey, I'm gonna get this for me with a disregard for the rest of the group, you know? It kind of brought like a perfect little illustration.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and not to mention the metaphor like of that spotlight going right on.

• 15:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  And he doesn't even realize it, he literally has a spotlight on him, you know? And the rest of the group is in the shade, in the dark, whatever. That's great.

• 15:52Jocko Willink?

  Continue on as the ancient Roman philosopher Epictetus said in the field manual he produced for the Roman soldiers in approximately the year fifty A.D. It is better to die in hunger,

• 16:05Jocko Willink?

  exempt from guilt and fear than it is to live in affluence with perturbation. Meaning like the, the agit, the anxiety, the guilt of what you've done. So it's better to be cold and stand with the class than it is to be warm and freaking be guilty. But I will tell you that I think a lot of people, when they make those little decisions, they don't know. They, they think that people don't see. They, they're not like, oh, they, I don't care. I'm gonna go get warm. They don't think like that. They think like, oh, I can get away with this. And that's why they allow themselves to do it when it's so obvious.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and in a way, I mean, this kind of, the point here is kind of like with the judgment thing, a little bit of a change. But we talked about this too, where you can almost kind of understand, like when it comes to just the nature of a person, where you're right, he doesn't like, let's say Lieutenant Sunshine, right? He's like, oh, I'm still gonna do what I'm supposed to do, you know? I'm just gonna sort of, you know, kind of like.

• 17:06Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna be a little bit warmer.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, color outside the lines, just a little bit, you know? It's gonna have no bearing on anything or whatever. And they don't realize, they're not detached or, you know, where they can't see themselves and how they look to others, right? And this, brothers, there's big examples of this and small examples of this, like and ever in between, so. And we talked about this too, where it's like, yeah, when you, let's say someone videotaped the whole scenario, just mean one wide shot, right? And it's uh, and then showed it to Lieutenant Sunshine, right? Later, he'd be like, bro, I didn't realize I looked like that. Like, I know how I felt. I know I felt like I wasn't gonna like betray no one, or I'd just get a little warmer. That'll help me, you know, in my whole thing. You know, we gotta, if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying, you know, like, bro, I'm trying to do the best I can, kind of a thought, you know?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Whether that's a justification or not. But when you see it all in the frame, you know, like the way other people see it, you're like, oh, bro, that looks way worse, you know? And then it can kind of like add to that guilt, you know?

• 18:05Jocko Willink?

  So bad.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  But if you totally get away with it, it might have a little guilt. But when you, when you kind of detach or when it's, um, when it's brought into perspective, I think that's what you really feel it.

• 18:16Jocko Willink?

  When people start calling you Lieutenant Sunshine.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right.

• 18:21Jocko Willink?

  Check. Continue on, this means that you must demonstrate the utmost honesty in everything you do in your dealings with superiors and subordinates alike, both on and off duty. It is this that inspires your men to carry out a similar integrity. When they know your word is your bond, then confidence and trust will permeate the entire unit. The men will feel they can come to you, their leader, with the bad news as well as the good news. Never shoot the messenger, as this will just discourage others from giving you honest feedback needed for you to command. You must report the good, the bad, the, and the ugly up the chain of command to your superiors. There is no substitute for honesty in our profession.

• 19:06Jocko Willink?

  What we do is just too important. So

• 19:11Jocko Willink?

  that, that right there, like the way you're behaving as a leader is going to impact everything that everybody else does. And telling the truth about what's happening and being open to receiving the truth without being mad about it, this is what you have to do.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's a hard one, yes. The, um, that's like the old, like, oh, if I had a

• 19:33Speaker 01

  I had a booger in my nose, you know?

• 19:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  You gotta tell me.

• 19:35Jocko Willink?

  You gotta tell me.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  But it's kinda hard, you know?

• 19:37Jocko Willink?

  A lot of people say they want you to tell them, but they don't really want you to.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:41Jocko Willink?

  They want you to pretend it's all good. And it's, you know, that's, that's, that's a real disadvantage. You know, I kinda get some of that where people don't wanna tell me they're too tired. Like they, like this happened overseas, you know, guys didn't wanna tell me like, hey dude, I need a break or, you know, so I, I always had to fish for that, you know? I kinda had to fish and I had to err on the side of like, they're more tired than they're telling me they need whatever more than they're letting me know.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:11Jocko Willink?

  Because people are oftentimes on very good behavior when I'm around. Everyone's taking ownership, everyone's covered moving, but it's difficult for that to be how people behave all the time.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:23Jocko Willink?

  Cause let's face it, these principles are simple, but they're not easy.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that, and that, man, that's actually if you can kinda separate them into actually too, cause like not that, what you're talking about is, oh, that's real, that's hundred percent real. Cause you have like a, this standard of being, you know, where, and everyone's trying to live up to that standard, right? And if they admit they're tired or admit they're kinda cold or something like this where it kinda is like, oh man, you're not living up to the standard. That's kinda, it's not even really officially established. It's just sorta out there.

• 20:55Jocko Willink?

  It's just kinda follows you.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  That's what we're doing. Right, exactly right. So it can be hard in that way, yes. Um, you know, and then you, you're at risk of like compromising performance, whatever. But it's a little bit different than if I'm like, hey, that decision you made like wasn't that good, you know? That's way hard, that actually, I don't know what's harder. I guess it depends on who you are, but it's different. It is different. Like who's gonna step to Jocko and say he made a bad move? And he shouldn't make that move in the future. Like, bro, that's kinda hard, you know?

• 21:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, that's what, that's what I always had to watch out for. And that's why me establishing that, hey, if I'm doing something wrong, let me know. And whether it's a little tiny thing, and Leif explains this really well, and it's the same way with Stoner, but. You know, from the beginning, I wasn't like, hey, we're doing it my way. I was like, hey, well, what do you think? Why do you want to do it like that? Because that way they got used to, they knew I wasn't gonna like freak out. I wasn't gonna beat them down. Matter of fact, I'm reading another book right now and there's a military leader who is just shutting all of his commander, all of his uh subordinate commanders down, just shutting them down. And now they're all just like, oh, I guess we're just gonna do whatever he says. And that's gonna not gonna turn out well.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:04Jocko Willink?

  So you have to be very careful that when someone tells you something, you are so open minded to it. You're thankful. You have to be thankful for it. And then you have to, as often as you can, you have to take their ideas and implement them. That's like the goal. You've heard me say this a thousand times. My goal is when someone tells me an idea, whether, and by the way, it's not just my subordinates, my peers and my boss. My goal is to use their idea. And that, what that does is it formulates and let that lets them understand that, oh, I can, I can come to them with the good, bad and the ugly.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that's good. You do do a good job with that, um, letting people kind of do their idea.

• 22:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I wanted to do their idea.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  But yeah, but

• 22:47Speaker 01

  it's funny, cause you'd be surprised, you know, like I've, I, I've been in this outfit for a while, you know, even before all the, you know, books and all this other stuff. And I see through that time, keep in mind, I, I think you knew this, like, I didn't know you, all this about you before, when we just before, let's say before to 2014, we'll say, I didn't know any of this. I just knew that you're in the military, you're just some, you're in charge of some training. I don't know what training. Um, and your jujitsu, that's it. That's kinda it, more or less, or whatever.

• 23:18Jocko Willink?

  Knew about that guillotine.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Um, and you know, some personality stuff or whatever. But, so I didn't know all this, all this stuff. So I just knew you as more of like, not a boss scenario, more of just like a training partner with some wisdom, you know, here and here and there, kind of a thing. So in that very specific position and kinda in a way, unique position, I get to watch people just do backflips and switch personalities when you're around versus not around still, right? Oh, literally to this day, just watch it. I'm like, bro, but yeah, I know, like I'm used to it now, but it is interesting because you do do a great job of like,

• 23:58Speaker 01

  you know, like not getting mad and like, you know, like, um, if someone has bad news or see, you know, someone has some critique, you're just like, yeah, you just roll right, right with it. But I think I'm used to it since I've kind of been around it for years and, and then some people, they're just not quite, it's almost like they don't get it quite yet, you know?

• 24:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I had someone deliver like some bad quote unquote, bad news to me the other day. And they'd come from a different organization and they were like, um, were like, like nervous talking to me. And I was like, oh, it's all good. Hey, no, no, no, no factor. No one died. Well, you know, we'll get straightened out. And then she was like, oh, this is a lot different than what I'm used to. And I was like, in what way? And like, you're not yelling at anyone. Well, no. So it's very difficult, but it's something that you as a leader have to nurture is that you're, you listen, you don't judge, you don't react, you don't freak out, like all those things, which by the way is so common, dude. It's so common. It's so ridiculous.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was telling somebody this, actually I know, it doesn't matter though. Where this guy was saying, hey, if I act a certain way, tell me, you know? Cause sometimes like I don't realize I'm acting a certain way, like mean or whatever, or defensive or whatever, you know, he said, sometimes I don't realize I'm doing this until like way later or like days or weeks afterwards. And I realized, oh, wait, maybe I could have been nicer or something like that. So let me know, right? And I'm thinking, all right. So time went on and I actually did let this person know and they just got mad at me for it, right? So it's kind of like, I'm trying to think like, okay, I understand the dynamics of it. Cause when you're in the moment, you know, it affects you emotionally. But at the same time, how can you not ignore or put it this way?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  It helps to not ignore the fact that, hey, if you're acting a certain way that's destructive to your own world and you don't know about it in the moment, that's really important information. So wouldn't you want to know about it? Don't forget that part of it because I understand the feeling, you know, it's like someone coming to you and telling you you're doing the wrong thing. Like, who are you to tell me how to be?

• 26:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And so then what you gotta do is you gotta figure out a way that you can deliver that message in an indirect approach where the people hear it and they go, oh, like, he might be talking about me. It's nice if you have a podcast to actually deliver that message in the indirect approach.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yes, it does.

• 26:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's what you gotta do, though. You gotta, you gotta figure out how to frame things properly so people can hear them. Because if you just beat them down with it, like, I'm sure whenever this person did this thing, maybe if you would have said like, hey, dude, you remember when you asked me about that? Is this the kind of thing you were talking about? And that way, you're not confronting him with it, but you're making him aware that, like, hey, dude, you need to think about what you're doing right now.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Even you explaining this right now is really putting into, for me, right, I'm learning in real time, by the way. It's really putting into perspective how important it is as the leader guy to be approachable in that way. Because if you're not, like, you run this risk too, where you could be like, um, the person could come with the indirect approach, right? But if you're, let's say you're anti, let's say you're on the other side of the spectrum of this, right? Where you're kind of sensitive and, oh, no one could tell me nothing. You better, you know, you embrace the yes, man. You know, you're that kind. We'll say, even if someone comes with an indirect approach.

• 27:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it still pisses you off.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. You run the risk of getting just as pissed because you're kind of like, wait, wait, wait. So what are you saying? You know, you see what I'm saying? Like, there's...

• 27:26Jocko Willink?

  Bro, that ego is a foul thing. It really is a foul, foul thing.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:31Jocko Willink?

  You gotta watch out for that thing.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like they make you pay for anything, any little thing that makes me feel a certain way that I don't like. You'll pay the price for it.

• 27:40Jocko Willink?

  I wrote about leadership tragedy and tactics. It's such a good setup. I'm like, I say, uh, you know, how do you handle it when someone that you do not respect comes and critiques you? What do you do? And I'm like, oh, you listen to them. And you say, okay, that, how can I take their information that they're giving me? And how can I help, help, utilize this to help me become a better leader?

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:02Jocko Willink?

  It's really hard for people to do that.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  But, yeah.

• 28:05Jocko Willink?

  It's really hard for people to do that.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  In the spirit of figuring. This out and kind of maneuvering maneuvering your way through it. It you can break it down to this is a shift from a short term payoff to a long term payoff. Cause I've been in that situation and and this was a unique situation because it was with a person that like. I'm not saying I didn't respect this person, but in that context that that we're in, I really didn't. And you know, there's some arrogance there like, kind of like, there's this sense of competition, you know? So if this person telling me, hey, I was doing the, I made the wrong move here and his move was better. See what I'm saying? It was like really obvious that that was going on.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  So I'm like, shoot, for me to take the high road right now and really admit to myself that, but he's kind of right. You know? Would be such a massive loss for me right now in the moment. The probably the most massive, you know, person to person, little undercover loss. That I can imagine. Dang. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Short term. Yeah. Long term. Yeah. You know, but here and here was the here's what was the other painful part that I think. I'm saying this because it's kind of one of those things to look out for and. And as far as the feeling and the the the pitfall, you know?

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Me taking the L gave him a W, short term and long term. Gave him a W because it was a creative decision. You know, and my thing, so for me to be like, okay, you're right. Okay, I take that L, but I got a better product, right? That I that I put out, but at the same time, he knows that he's the one who corrected me on my. My product, you see what I'm saying? So he takes.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  It's actually not you, but um, no, no, no, if it was you, that's a good context. You know, like I would welcome yours. This one was someone who's like, you know, one of these freaking, what do you call them? Couch armchair quarterback type. So it was like one of those scenarios. So anyway. But the thing is, the, the, the whole point was if you can endure that, it actually doesn't matter because you will win.

• 30:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I'm looking to do.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Exactly right, but it's a long-term thing and you might take some short-term L's, which actually don't matter, by the way.

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they don't matter.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, like that's literally what discipline is.

• 30:22Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, when someone looks at you and you, you get a really like a legit, good recommendation on something and you decide not to take it because of ego, it's so bad. It's so bad. When you go, oh, that's a good point. I think that would improve the thing. And you go, okay, call them to take them, but you, you get elevated. Even though you feel like you took an L, you're actually taking a W. You're like, oh yeah, it makes sense. I'll do that. Right. So easy to do that. It's just so easy to be like, oh, that's good. Well, no, I'm, I'm saying, it's not easy to fall into that. It's, it's easy to go bad, but it's, it's actually not that hard to be like, hey dude, that's a good point. And there's nothing better than like any type of criticism you get. You go, oh yeah, yeah, I do screw that up. This is such an easy way to, to get a W instead of a loss,

• 31:04Jocko Willink?

  even though it feels like a loss, you, you, you, you win.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:09Jocko Willink?

  You're saying that's a good point, man. It's, I like your plan better. Let's go with that.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:13Jocko Willink?

  There's not one person that goes, yeah, you see? No, everyone goes, oh wow. Echo must be really secure in what he's doing to just be like, oh yeah, that's a good point.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Actually, I'll.

• 31:22Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't feel that way though.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  I'll do you one better. Sometimes, sometimes people, it depends on your relationship with them. Some people will be like, yeah, you see, but you're still right though. He'll be like, you see, but, and, and that person might feel good about themselves, like they got over, but you're right. I think they will elevate you. It won't be like, oh, that guy's ignorant. They'll be like, oh, well, yeah, you know, you kind of down. But isn't that weird though? As far as figuring out how all this stuff works,

• 31:48Speaker 01

  it's really a version of discipline because that's what discipline is, right? It's like where, where you're kind of.

• 31:52Jocko Willink?

  Controlling your emotions, not acting up.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  You're, you're, you're indexing on the big picture of the long-term. That's what discipline is, you know, you all the way down to like a diet, you know, like if you go diet, right? It was the, it's kind of like, yeah, you could take the W now and eat that yummy this or that, whatever.

• 32:07Jocko Willink?

  What's called a donut. Call it what it is.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, that's big short-term W, but you know, a long-term loser is one might say.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  But if you switch it around, there's your discipline right there. See what I'm saying? So same deal. It's the same exact thing.

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  Nope. It is. And just a note, it's like one of the, you ever heard that the crazy person doesn't know that they're crazy? Right? So if you're a leader and you think no one can see what you're doing, I'm telling you, people can see what you're doing. Now, if you're over there just thinking like, no one can see this little move that I'm making, if you're thinking that, I'm telling you, everyone can see it. Just like if you're a crazy person and right now you're like, I'm not crazy. You're, you're kind of crazy. So let's be careful.

• 32:49Jocko Willink?

  It continues with integrity here. Integrity also means having the courage to take full responsibility for your actions and those of your subordinates.

• 32:59Jocko Willink?

  This sounds pretty like an awesome concept. By the way, this is two, he made this speech in 1997. So I'm glad he's not here to sue me for extreme ownership, right? To take full responsibility for your actions and those of your subordinates. Don't quibble. Don't try to shift the blame. Don't look for scapegoats. If you or your command has fouled up, then fess up and press on. In doing so, you will set the right example for your men and earn the respect of your subordinates and superiors alike.

• 33:34Jocko Willink?

  Nothing destroys a unit's effectiveness and leadership quicker than the leaders not taking the sole responsibility for their actions. And the first sign of this is usually careerism. The CYA factor, which very often has the tendency to appear first in the higher headquarters. So I mean, I couldn't have written this paragraph any better than he said it, right? And by the way, you know, like this is all my deal. It's his deal, but this is universal. This shows the universality of taking ownership. Once started, it rapidly feeds on itself and spreads like wildfire down through the entire organization. At the first indication of this selfish, self-centered, self-serving attitude, you must take every possible step to root it out and replace it with integrity.

• 34:18Jocko Willink?

  So he kind of, he kind of wraps integrity around taking ownership and responsibility and the whole nine yards, which is awesome.

• 34:26Jocko Willink?

  Going on to the second major thing which men look for in their leaders is knowledge and training. It is essential that you ensure you have the necessary, you have the knowledge, information and training necessary for you to properly and assess and solve the problems which you will face, which will face you and your men. I started getting a little nervous when I was reading this. All this must be done to the very best of your ability regardless of the size or importance of the problem. Never accept the second best or mediocre solution because you think the problem is not worth your time and effort. So now I'm like thinking, oh, so you gotta, you gotta, you gotta know everything. I'm kind of thinking this might not be the best paragraph, but then he says,

• 35:07Jocko Willink?

  if you don't have the necessary knowledge and information, then go get it by asking for assistance, advice, guidance, doing research until you are satisfied, you have everything you need to reach the best solution. Now you can't do that if you're not humble. You cannot do that if you're not humble. Then carry out the solution with your full effort and determination. So there you go. If you, you should know what's happening. If you don't know, ask questions, figure it out. Another point that the men look for in you as their leader is your concern and effort on behalf of the welfare of those who serve under you. You must prove beyond any doubt that you are fair and just in your dealings with them and that you genuinely like and respect them.

• 35:48Jocko Willink?

  In all circumstances, you must place their well-being ahead of your own regardless of the cost to yourself. Boom. No sunshine for you. Get in the shade with everybody else. And finally, one other, and perhaps equally important factor is that once you're accepted as a leader, your men will not only follow you, but will also emulate you to the best of their ability, your character and behavior. That is why a leader must at all times and in all places set and maintain the highest of standards. That is the sad and real truth of the situation. If you're in a leadership position and you are acting like a jackass,

• 36:33Jocko Willink?

  your team is going to act like jackasses too. And I can, when I acted, when I was in leadership position, I acted like a jackass. Guess what? Other people are gonna follow you, whether it's your family, whether it's your people at work, whatever it is. You act like a jackass, people are gonna, people are gonna be on board with it. Remember a guy at the muster, there were several musters ago, he was saying, he's like, you know, I'm a guy, I like to joke around and you know, I like to have fun. And I don't like to take things seriously, you know, I like to have a good time. And I'm having a trouble with my subordinate, like they don't take me seriously. I'm like, bro, do we really need to answer this question? And that's the same, like what you do, your team is going to emulate. They're gonna try and do the same thing. So you have to be very, very careful of that stuff.

• 37:18Jocko Willink?

  Carrying on, let us now put these bits and pieces into service life. And this is what's incredible is you're gonna see that these things that he talks about is how he lived. And he talks about it here. Let us now put these bits and pieces into service life and see the results in actual practice. And doing so, I would like to use the life as a POW to demonstrate the reasons for my beliefs. The great social historian, the Durant's have said that culture is a thin veneer that superimposes itself on mankind. This is very true. And when men are stripped of this veneer and every other vestige of civilization are, are treated as and live as animals as we were forced to do as POWs,

• 38:01Jocko Willink?

  then the laws of the jungle soon take over. It is in this environment that the true basics of leadership emerged for me.

• 38:12Jocko Willink?

  Perfect. The laws of the jungle. And here's the thing, the laws of the jungle, you, you, you can't allow those things to, to thrive. You have to bring in leadership because the laws of the jungle ain't good. Laws in jungle don't work. They, they work at an animal level, but they don't work at a human level. And you gotta know that they're there. They're like there in the background operating system, the laws of the jungle. That's why I like, oh, there's a physical component when I'm talking to you. You and I could be talking about a video. There's a physical component that's in no doubt in, in, it's part of the element, right? So you gotta be aware

• 38:52Jocko Willink?

  of that. There's got like a hierarchy. There's a pecking of the things are always happening. When I first arrived in Japan, courtesy of the Japanese Navy, I was sent to a special questioning camp under the Japanese Navy at a place named Ofuna, a suburb of Yokohama. This was a special interrogation camp where we were placed in solitary confinement in small cells, no speaking allowed, and we were questioned and beaten every day. We were not considered as POWs, but rather we were still on the firing line and could be killed at any time. I was moved from this camp after six months when they brought in a US Catalina crew shot down out of Dutch Harbor, and I was sent to the starting up

• 39:36Jocko Willink?

  of the work camps in the Yokohama area. The first working camp I went to was located in a baseball stadium in the center of Yokohama, which had been built by the Standard Oil Company. We were housed in a large indoor area under one of the grandstands, and I arrived there the same day as the first batch of prisoners from Hong Kong. There were five officers of, with this group of approximately 300 POWs. In Hong Kong, the Japanese had raped and bayoneted nurses, women, and children, killed doctors and patients in the hospital wards, operating theaters and recovery rooms, bayoneted, mutilated, shot, and beheaded POWs just to amuse themselves, humiliated and degraded them in every possible way,

• 40:21Jocko Willink?

  no medical treatment or supplies for the sick and wounded, the lowest possible living conditions, and way below starvation diet.

• 40:30Jocko Willink?

  We were joined two months later by 75 POWs from the Philippines. And these were some of the survivors from the Baton Death March, where over 16,950 POWs were killed, over 2/3 of the total number of POWs involved. All these prisoners, both the Hong Kong and Philippine POWs, had then to endure the hell ships where thousands died en route from Hong Kong and Manila to Japan. In one ship alone, the Arzan Maru, out of 1,800 POWs, only eight survived. The Orico Maru started out with 1,619 POWs and only 200 survived that trip.

• 41:16Jocko Willink?

  The order sent down by the Japanese Tokyo Headquarters to Hong Kong and Philippine camps was to send their best and healthiest prisoners to work in Japan. Now, as you all well know, when a commanding officer gets an order to send his best men, this is when he unloads all his deadbeats, no-gooders, troublemakers, sick, wounded, incompetents, etc. Now I found myself to be the senior POW in this brand-new working camp and faced with over 375 very hostile, belligerent POWs. This gave me some concept of how Daniel felt when he walked into the Den of Lions.

• 41:59Jocko Willink?

  So he's got a ragtag crew.

• 42:03Jocko Willink?

  "I was the senior POW in all the working camps that I was in, but this was a title in name only. As with no means of physically exerting discipline, you had only vast inherent responsibilities for the health and well-being of all those in the camp, but no means to enforce your decisions. The nature of military discipline encompasses two basic forms: the imposed discipline and the discipline which the individual decides is necessary, which is self-discipline."

• 42:37Jocko Willink?

  Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavel in his book Soldiers and Soldiering describes as follows, "Discipline makes a man do something he would not do unless he has learned that is the right, the proper and expedient thing to do. At its best, it is instilled and maintained by pride in oneself, in one's unit, in one's profession, and only at its worst by fear and punishment." So this is a very interesting take on discipline. And it sort of ties into what you were saying, like, discipline is strategic thinking. What I, I don't want

• 43:20Jocko Willink?

  to do it right now, but in the long run, it's the right thing to do. Or I don't want to do it right now, but for the team, it's the right thing to do. Or I don't want to do it right now, but for the unit, it's the right thing to do. That, that is a critical thing. That's a critical component, especially in a military situation. And what he's saying here is like, listen, that my rank means nothing. We're in a freaking prisoner camp. What are you going to do to me? What are you going to do to me? I'm in a freaking prisoner of war camp. And we're going to get to a little bit, there's a little bit of animo, there's not even a little, there's animosity towards their leadership. Because think about it, you're a freaking private soldier, you're out there in the Philippines, next thing you know, you're getting rolled up. Like, what, what, who the hell is in charge of this freaking shit? You see what I'm saying? So you're like, wait a second, you told me

• 44:03Jocko Willink?

  to go over here, now I'm a prisoner of war. What the hell's wrong with you? So there's some of that, which I never thought too deeply about that. But that frustration from the frontline troops going, dude, what, what are you, why am I listening to you? You just got us all captured. Screw you. So he's got to overcome that challenge as well. And he goes on, so, so he's saying like, discipline, self discipline, you want the troops to like, step up and do things for themselves. You don't want them to be doing something just because they're afraid.

• 44:32Jocko Willink?

  And you don't want to do something because you otherwise you punish them. And he goes into that a little bit more. In our case, punishment was completely out of the question. The conditions and environment in which we existed reduced our health to the very razor edge of complete collapse. And we needed every bit of our health, strength, stamina, and reserve to barely keep living from day to day. Having to undergo punishment on top of all this would have been tantamount to issuing a death sentence. Thus, the authority we had was only that which the men wished to give us when and if they felt like it.

• 45:14Jocko Willink?

  So this is leadership. This is, this is the core of leadership. You have no means to back anything up and you're, and if you should always be thinking that, you should always be thinking, I, I'm only going to be able to lead in the way that they let me lead.

• 45:32Jocko Willink?

  When they feel like it, if they feel like it.

• 45:37Jocko Willink?

  As officers, we were singled out by the Japanese for special treatment. Every method possible is used to degrade us in front of the men in order to counter any control or discipline we might try to develop. Yeah, not only is it like a tough situation, you've got these other freaking Japanese imperial people that are trying to undermine what you're doing.

• 45:54Jocko Willink?

  From the men's point of view, all officers were under great suspicion. And here we go. They felt they had been let down and that the incompetence of their officers was responsible in large part for their being prisoners. Facts. Another sad factor was that after being captured, unfortunately, a lot of the officers' prime concern had been for themselves. They had taken the best quarters, furnishing, clothing, and supplies available. And only after they had taken what they wanted or considered their share as an officer, did the troops get what was left. Bruh.

• 46:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you think you think this shit's not going sideways? Like imagine the person now outranks you and now all of a sudden they're taking shit from you. There there there's ass beatings happening. You see what I'm saying? This was particularly true in the distribution of food since the POWs were on a starvation diet. Food was of the greatest importance as it meant life or death. And when the officers took more than their equal share of the daily ration per prisoner, it not only meant that it drastically reduced the food left for the men, but also the men's chances of survival. This isn't like, bro, I get some extra fries on my plate. This is like, I don't get this morsel of bread and I'm gonna die from it.

• 47:20Jocko Willink?

  The first night we were in Yokohama Camp, we, the five officers from Hong Kong and myself, decided that we had to share the privations, maltreatment and work at least equally with the men. And that this could be done by, this could only be done by demonstrating that we took on an obviously greater share than the men, not just the same. We need to take on more. We immediately set up a system whereby the food and everything else we received was dished out in full view of the men. If anyone thought that he had less than an officer, he was free to exchange his share for the officers, no questions asked. It's freaking legit.

• 48:04Jocko Willink?

  The officers were always the last to take up their share. The men tried us on by eating some of their food and then changing it for the officer's bowl or for an officer's bowl. But in no time flat, the troops themselves sorted this out, this out, and woe betide anyone who tried it. So they said, hell, you know, I'm gonna take a couple bites from my rice bowl and then say, hey, Echo, you got more rice than me, trade. And they're like, okay. So they just did it, no questions asked. But then the troops go, dude, what are you doing to that? Now you're screwing over this guy. Now you're screwing over the officer. So the troops, the gang started to police themselves.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Those, that's interesting, those little ways of keeping it fair. Like with like a portion. So I do, I started this with my kids. Where they were like, oh, let's say, I don't know, there's like a cookie or something like this. And I'll be like, hey, there's just one cookie.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  I'll make one of them cut it in half and the other one gets to choose.

• 49:04Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  And I said, you guys can figure out who wants to do what. Cause either way.

• 49:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  You know, you're, you kind of want to be the, the chooser.

• 49:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Really, but if you're not the chooser, now you're motivated to cut it perfectly. Cause you know, they're gonna, you know, you see what I'm saying? So it's like one of those self policing kind of scenarios.

• 49:19Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  But yeah, that's a good one right there. You can just trade.

• 49:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  Whenever you want.

• 49:23Jocko Willink?

  That's it. Well, that's basically what you're doing. Hey, I'm going to cut it in half, but you can pick which one. That's the same thing.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:29Jocko Willink?

  It's a little easier with a cookie, not a damn morsel of rice. But hey, that's Echo Charles. Like we're bringing the, bringing the examples from the real, the quote, real world. There we go.

• 49:40Jocko Willink?

  In fact, in a way this backfired as when the Japanese reduced an officer's ration because he was sick or as punishment, the men themselves made certain that the officer still received his fair and equal share, and in some cases more than his share. So again, this is not the rules of the jungle. These are the rules of a team trying to survive together.

• 50:02Jocko Willink?

  Cigarettes, I was surprised about this. Cigarettes became the currency of POWs and with the horrible conditions and starvation under which we lived, the addiction of, to tobacco increased beyond belief. I've never used tobacco. So I don't know what that addiction is. I've seen people freaking be addicted to tobacco, both cigarettes and chewing tobacco. But this is crazy. It seemed that when you were smoking, you could to a limited degree blot out the reality and ease the continual terrible pangs of hunger. Men who were starving, never without intense hunger 24 hours of the day and every day of the year, knowing that their very lives depended on small bits of food we got, would still trade away their food for cigarettes.

• 50:45Jocko Willink?

  We, the officers gave up smoking, which was no easy task in itself. But in this way, we removed ourselves from any criticism and were able to put our ration of cigarettes into the ration for the men and also create a small supply for our doctor to be used in keeping the heavily addicted from trading away their food.

• 51:05Jocko Willink?

  Anyone offering to buy or sell food for cigarettes was reported by the men themselves to the doctor who would then talk to those involved and take remedial action. In this way, our lives were made much more bearable and many lives were saved. Saved again, the laws of the jungle are, bro, if you're gonna give up food for cigarettes, you you're gonna die. But the laws of the team and leadership are, hey, we need to, we need to help the team. Another immediate action we took whenever was whenever a Japanese guard started to beat up a prisoner, the closest officer would jump in between them, the prisoner would get lost as quickly as possible, and the officer would take the beating.

• 51:47Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes the guard would become bewildered to find he was beating the wrong man and would stop, whereas sometimes he would become infuriated and take it out on the officer. We just had to take our chance and hope for the best. That's gonna prove, you know, that's, that's earning leadership capital, obviously, in a big way. A word about dress and deportment. Clothing was an absolute premium as we only had what we had with us when we were captured. The only clothing issue we were given was what the Japanese had captured and then did not want for themselves or could not use in any other way. Believe me, the pickings were very slim indeed. We lived in rags and tatters.

• 52:31Jocko Willink?

  The clothing issues we were given all went to the men. But again, in short order, the men made certain that every officer had one good shirt, tie, tunic, trousers, and hat to wear whenever we had to parade in front of the Japanese. We were given one square inch of soap per week with which to do all our laundry and to keep our bodies clean. There was no hot water and even cold water was in very limited supply. We were allowed one hot bath and sometimes only a warm bath once a month. The supply of razors, razor blades, hair clippers, scissors, needles, threads, and all other such normal items were only those which had been brought into the camp by the men after their surrender.

• 53:15Jocko Willink?

  It was therefore impossible to maintain the normal standards of cleanliness. In addition, we were out of the camp for about 12 hours of the day doing coolie labor on starvation diet. The result... Was that we were sick, starving, cold, filthy, infested with lice, fleas and bedbugs, but unable to find the time, energy, or means to do very much about it.

• 53:41Jocko Willink?

  Despite all this, through the height of ingenuity and improvisation, we still managed to keep ourselves as best we could. When we turned out on parade, it may have been in rags and tatters, but we were clean. As clean, upright, formidable, proud of our heritage, and still as undefeated as we could possibly be.

• 54:05Jocko Willink?

  You know, you just roll through this, uh, roll through this paragraph, like, whatever, you know, no big deal. Dude, sick. Bro, when I'm sick, it's like, it's, okay, that's just like one thing. Hungry. Like, not just hungry, you know, oh, I haven't eaten yet today. Yeah. Like, sometimes you come into the podcast at 10 o'clock in the morning and you're quote unquote, hungry. Or I come in and I'm, I'm quote unquote, hungry. Yeah. Cause I didn't freaking chow down, you know, a big giant breakfast and a milk. And, and we complain about that. Imagine being on a starvation diet for years.

• 54:45Jocko Willink?

  Cold, again, cold. We don't complain about being cold. Imagine just being perpetually cold, filthy, infested with lice, bro.

• 54:54Jocko Willink?

  Infested with fleas, infested with begbug, bedbugs, like every one of these things is awful. Every one of them. And that's what they're doing. And yet, when it came time to turn out for parade, they stood up with their, with their shoulders up, their chests out. Undefeated as we could possibly be. Here, may I quote from Field Marshal Slim in writing about his World War II campaign in the jungles of Burma, in which he said, quote, "At some stage, and in some circumstances, armies have let their discipline sag, but they have never won victory until they have made it tout again, nor will they."

• 55:39Jocko Willink?

  We have found it a great mistake to belittle the importance of smartness in turnout, alertness of carriage, cleanliness of person, saluting or precision of movement, and to dismiss them as naive unintelligence parade square stuff. I do not believe that troops can have unshakable battle discipline without showing these outward signs which mark the pride men take in themselves and their units, and the mutual confidence and respect that exists between them and their officers. It was our experience in a tough school that the best fighting units in the long run were not necessarily those with the advertised reputations,

• 56:22Jocko Willink?

  but those who, when they came out to battle, at once resumed a more formal, disciplined, and appearance.

• 56:33Jocko Willink?

  And he says, "How true, how true."

• 56:37Jocko Willink?

  "So that way that you carry yourself..." This is one of those things, man. It's like, the way that you carry yourself, the way that you present yourself, that stuff makes a difference. Anybody says it doesn't make a difference is wrong. They're just wrong. You have to present yourself in a disciplined manner.

• 56:55Jocko Willink?

  "How true, how true." He goes on to say here, "It was a long, hard process for us POWs, but slowly the confidence, faith, and self-respect was restored, not only in the men, but also in ourselves as officers." "The first winter in Japan, 1942 to 1943, was the worst as we tried to climatize ourselves to the living conditions, the cold winter in unheated barracks where we only had one blanket each, the daily coolie labor, the starvation diet, and the total absence of any medical treatment."

• 57:29Jocko Willink?

  Approximately 35% of all the POWs in the working camps in Japan died that winter. And yet, in our camp, with its average of 375 POWs during these first two years, we lost only three men, less than one-half of 1% per year, giving ample proof of the success of the efforts made by that entire camp. Again, this is the laws of the jungle, man, 35%, you're going down.

• 57:57Jocko Willink?

  Let us now look at the mutual concern for one another or comradeship, which developed and which is such a vital part of leadership. I believe the Good Book says, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." This, to me, defines the comradeship we developed, and I may give you one example. Medicines were practically nonexistent, as we were never given any medical supplies whatsoever by the Japanese. Isn't it like you think about when's the last time you put like, Bacitracin on some freaking cut that you had, you know? Could that was getting a little bit infected, you dropped some peroxide in there, or you had freaking ringworm?

• 58:41Jocko Willink?

  And you're like, cool, go to get the Lamisil or whatever, a little bleach on there, bleach it out, put the Lamisil on, the ringworm's gone, you know, in three days. We just don't even think about that.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:51Jocko Willink?

  Just no medical treatment. No medical treatment. The Red Cross medical supplies sent to Japan for use by POWs was taken by the Japanese military, repackaged and sent to their combat troops.

• 59:04Jocko Willink?

  After the war, the Allied forces found warehouses all over Japan filled with Red Cross medical clothing and food supplies, which had been sent for use by the POWs and which had been stored to be used by Japanese troops in the event of an invasion of their homeland. Our only hope was to pool whatever meager supplies we had in camp and use them for the maximum benefit of all. This had to be done in complete secrecy, as the Japanese confiscated any medical supplies they found and treatment of POWs by our own doctor was absolutely forbidden. This presented a very great problem as everyone hoarded whatever medicines they had. While you may not have the right medicine or drug for whatever illness you encountered, at least you had a chance to bargain or trade for the one you did need.

• 59:47Jocko Willink?

  Our starvation diet, on our starvation diet, we had no resistance whatsoever to any disease or infection. We suffered at all times from the ravages of malnutrition and its medical consequences. Berry berry, pellagra, blindness, gangrene, etc. Once our doctor got going on, once our doctor got going on secret sick parades, the men soon believed in us and started to turn in their bits and pieces of medical supplies to the doctor. A detailed account was kept of our medical, camp medical supplies as to where they came from, who gave them, and how much we had, how much we used, and on who.

• 1:00:29Jocko Willink?

  These accounts were available and could be seen at any time by anyone in the camp. A little transparency there. So you can imagine all these guys hoarding these little tiny little bits of medical supplies they had, and they eventually got everyone to turn it all in, so we can not take care of the individuals, but take care of the team. This is the law of the jungle being overtaken by teamwork. Cover and move. One POW from Hong Kong had smuggled in three morphine pills, which he turned in to the doctor, and as these were the only painkillers we had, it was agreed that a unanimous vote of the entire camp would be necessary before one could be used. The reason for this was that you never knew when it might be your turn to need such help

• 1:01:11Jocko Willink?

  to get over that last big painful hump, and hence you had better have a say as to how and when they were used. Once they were gone, there just wasn't going to be anymore. Time and time again, the doctor would decide to use a pill in such cases as drastic surgery due to gangrene, as all this had to be done without any anesthetic. That means we're talking about amputations with no anesthesia. He also recommended that they be used in the case of the three men we just lost before they died, when there was nothing more we could do for them. This is amazing. In every instance, the unanimous decision was obtained from the camp, only to have it vetoed by the man who was to receive the pill.

• 1:01:56Jocko Willink?

  So every time a person was dying or needed anesthesia or was gonna get their arm cut off.

• 1:02:03Jocko Willink?

  They, the whole camp would vote, yes, give them the morphine and they'd say, nope, save it.

• 1:02:09Jocko Willink?

  I was separated from that camp after two years, but I understand that those three pills were still unused at the end of the war.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that kind of makes, you know how like, uh, you had a party?

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Hang out, Super Bowl party, I don't know. I don't know, maybe you had these muffins or something like this where everyone loved the muffins. And it's like, oh, there's one more, you know, everyone had some muffins, right? But there's only one more left. Everyone wants it, but no one wants to be the guy to take the last muffin. See what I'm saying? It's kind of the same scenario.

• 1:02:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  So, but of course, the extreme version of it, but

• 1:02:46Jocko Willink?

  Just a little bit.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Whatever that, that's, that's, um,

• 1:02:49Jocko Willink?

  The Super Bowl party muffins versus the freaking amputation morphine.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  It's different.

• 1:02:54Jocko Willink?

  I'mma let you, I'mma let it be.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  No, no, but in principle, it's the same thing. And in fact, it kind of glare sheds, sheds light on the power of that principle. See what I'm saying? Even, okay, I understand you don't want to be the last guy to take the muffin or whatever it is, right? I understand that because like, yeah, it's not that big a deal. It's like, what? I go without a muffin? That's an easy sacrifice for the team. You see what I'm saying? And for my reputation as like, you know, a guy who's not greedy.

• 1:03:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, not a muffin muncher.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  No, not a muffin. But in the case of morphine, that's a huge, huge sacrifice. Yet that principle is still that powerful that you won't even take some, come on, right? Amputation and you're still not taking the morphine gang, great, bruh. That's a powerful principle is what I'm saying.

• 1:03:38Jocko Willink?

  It is indeed.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Bruh, that's real.

• 1:03:46Jocko Willink?

  Fine.

• 1:03:49Jocko Willink?

  A word about our stealing. Because this was one of the main ways

• 1:03:55Jocko Willink?

  to our survival. Our camp worked at many various jobs each day and it was possible on the lot, on a lot of jobs to steal things which were not only of great benefit to the camp, but also to the Japanese with whom we worked. A good example was an oil factory where they crushed peanuts, coconuts, soya beans, etc. to make various cooking oils and lubricant oils from castor beans. This was a gold mine for us as we stole peanuts and coconut for food. And as we set up making soap in the boiler plant of the factory by making trays out of old tin, stealing coconut oil and caustic, which we then cooked up on top of the boilers. The coolies we worked with knew what we were doing. So we marked trays with their name on it. When their tray of soap was done, we would cut the slab of soap in half and give them half.

• 1:04:39Jocko Willink?

  We would then smuggle the soap out of the job and back to camp. We were searched inside the factory by the factory guards before we left the job. And then again, outside the job by the army guards before we got in the trucks or marched back to camp. At the camp, we were searched once again inside the camp by the guards. If at any time during this entire process, we were caught, we never implicated the Japanese workers. And they knew this, so they trusted us even more than they did their own fellow workers. Other items of great value to the Japanese were, because of strict rationing, in addition to the soap, were sugar, salt, and cooking oil. These items we stole not only from the factories, but also when we were loading or unloading railway cars, ships, and barges.

• 1:05:21Jocko Willink?

  We were able to steal, we were able by stealing at one job and trading with the Japanese coolies with whom we worked on other jobs to get a meager supply of drugs, which were available on the Japanese market to supply, to supplement our own supplies. As for the men who did the stealings, stealing, we set up a system whereby anything of value to the camp, such as food, trade goods, etc. The man doing the stealing would notify the officers and an officer would go out to work on the job with him. If the man got caught, then the officer would step in and say that he had ordered the prisoner to steal. In this way, the officer took the giant share of the bashing, solitary confinement, and other punishment. If the stealing was successful, then half the goods was turned into the camp supplies

• 1:06:05Jocko Willink?

  and used for the sick to trade with, for the coolies for medicine. Here again, complete records were kept and anyone could see them at any time to ensure just how goods were being used.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  So who's the coolies?

• 1:06:20Jocko Willink?

  Coolies are just like slave workers.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay.

• 1:06:24Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if they're prisoners. I don't know if they were like Japanese, like literal, like like criminals or something in Japan, or what what type of uh what country they came from, whether they were Chinese that had been brought over as slaves, or Filipinos that are brought over by slaves, um, or whether they were just like Japanese, you know, lower class Japanese that were being enslaved, but that's what a coolie is. They're doing, they're kind of like slaves. They're like elevated slaves.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:06:52Jocko Willink?

  A few words on the pride and self-respect of the men, no matter what their original background or the results of the degradation and environment in which we existed. I was far from being the ideal prisoner. And when one of the Japanese guards consistently beat up the very sick prisoners, I went after him and beat him into the deck.

• 1:07:12Jocko Willink?

  I shall not go into the aftermath of that affair. Suffice it to say, I was extremely lucky to barely survive the punishment and not be killed. When the beatings of the sick turned, started up again, the men said I should try something else as we would never live through that punishment again. So we held a sit-down strike. And after I'd received a terrible beating, but also the insurance that the sick would not have to go to work, did I give my order for the men to go to work? My hour of glory was very short-lived in that I was removed from that camp within an hour and sent to a severe discipline camp at Omori, Tokyo, to show me the error of my ways.

• 1:07:51Jocko Willink?

  There I was set up as a very bad example, and it was the kiss of death for any prisoner to even look at me in front of the specifically selected sadistic guards. For the first two weeks, I worked all day sewing bits of fur together and then all night in the cookhouse. Here, the punishment was to stand on the hot brick ovens in bare feet and holding two large buckets of water. With our very painful berry berry feet, this was sheer hell. I slept in little short naps wherever I could, out of the sight of the guards. About this time, the POW camp of Canadians in Yokohama, which had no doctor and who senior POW is an RSM, ran into a bad session of sickness. A group of the sick were moved to another camp,

• 1:08:36Jocko Willink?

  but en route, they stopped off at the discipline camp for a few days. The day they arrived, they heard that I was in the camp and the Canadian sergeant in charge of them came to me in the shop where the officers were sewing the bits of fur together. He threw the first salute between POWs that I had that had been seen in that camp and explained that the Canadians had heard about my efforts on behalf of the POWs. And I was, and as I was the first Canadian officer they'd met since leaving Hong Kong, they would like to hold the parade for my inspection. I tried to explain what this would mean, but to no avail. Reluctantly, I agreed, and he said they would be formed up in a few minutes. They formed up in the open dirt area,

• 1:09:21Jocko Willink?

  which we use for roll calls, parades, and forming of work parties. They were dirty, sick, ragged, starved. Some had to be held up by their comrades, but they were all there. As I expected, no sooner had we got started than the storm broke in all its fury and the guards came charging into us like a bunch of raving maniacs, swinging fists, clubs, rifle butts, and kicking the daylights out of those who fell down. None of us minded, and when it was all over, we crawled back into our huts to lick our wounds and to have a damn good laugh at the Japanese. I guess one interpretation would be that it was an act of defiance, and that may be right.

• 1:10:05Jocko Willink?

  Bear in mind that these men were from the reserve units out of Montreal and Winnipeg, and in the majority of these cases, their military background was practically nil. All had been reduced to the lowest state of civilization by their maltreatment and horrible environment, and yet there was a pride in each of these men, such that I had never seen before or expect to see again.

• 1:10:31Jocko Willink?

  It made me proud to be admitted into their ranks. I might add that news of this parade spread like wildfire throughout the working camps in Japan and the rise in morale amongst POWs made life hell for the Japanese Guards.

• 1:10:47Jocko Willink?

  So epic, epic. And this is kind of portrayed, you know, a lot of this stuff, have you seen the movie Bridge on the River Kwai? Uh, it's a great classic movie. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid. There's commando activity happening. There's, uh, you know, British soldiers in this, in that movie, it's British soldiers for the most part, and they're doing this, they're, they're doing this type of behavior, you know, uh, falling out, showing the proper military respect, and there's catching beat downs from the Japanese Guards and whatnot. But this is a just heroic effort, and you can see how important it is to the troops

• 1:11:28Jocko Willink?

  that they just wanna, they wanna be inspected by the officer, you know, like, that's what we're doing. You can't break us.

• 1:11:39Jocko Willink?

  The Ormori Discipline Camp was on a small island out of the Tokyo Harbor, made from the silt and sand dredged up from the Tokyo Harbor, and it was about fifty feet, fifty feet from the mainland. There was an anti-aircraft battery, battery on one of the, on one end, and a searchlight battery on the other, with our camp sandwiched in between. We were housed in the standard prefabbed, single-story wood buildings used by the Japanese military, and we were right opposite the main fighter base at Hadina Airport, which protected the Tokyo Yokohama area. With no markings whatsoever to show we were POWs, we were extremely vulnerable. And so whenever a single B-29 came over, obviously on a photo recce, we would run

• 1:12:23Jocko Willink?

  out into the open parade area, and unbeknownst to the Japanese, we would form the letters POW in hopes that this would show up in the photos. Fire bombings and firestorms wiped out the entire area around our camp and the only thing that saved us was the 50 foot of water separating us from the mainland. The whole area around us was flat as a pancake exactly like our northland after a big forest fire with no food, water, electricity, or places to work. The Japs started to move some of us out into the outlying areas and I was the, and as one of the bad actors, I was one of the first to go. They took a bunch of us from various camps in the Tokyo area and put us into railway

• 1:13:07Jocko Willink?

  boxcars where we were jammed so that we had to take turns standing and sitting. It was cold, no food, water, or sanitation facilities, and we were there for over 48 hours, bro.

• 1:13:21Jocko Willink?

  Forty-eight hours in a boxcar where you're packed in like sardines and there's no bathroom. No food, no water, no bathroom. Many of us had amoebic dysentery or diarrhea and life soon became grim to say the least. We were taken up into the mountains northwest of Tokyo and here we ended up on a sighting where we were able to get out and lie down on the ground. This was the first opportunity I had to see what prisoners were there, their physical condition, and then the sad realization that once again I was the senior POW. There was a total of 280 POWs, a real mixed bag, and the physical condition was the worst I'd ever seen. Some were blind from a lack of vitamin A. Some had lost a hand or a foot

• 1:14:05Jocko Willink?

  from berry berry, followed by gangrene. All were skin and bones from prolonged malnutrition. As we were the first batch out of Tokyo camps, the commandants had unloaded all their sick, invalids, and misfits. We were now jammed onto flatbed trucks and taken off to our camp in the mountains at a place named Suwa.

• 1:14:29Jocko Willink?

  As it was high in the mountains, it was cold, especially at night when we might even have a thin coating of ice on any open water. The camp was only half-built. Some of the buildings had no roof, some had no sidewalls. There was no kitchen, cooking, or sanitation facilities. The wiring consisted of a single line running through the camp with one or two 40-watt bulbs in each building. It was pouring rain, everyone was soaked, cold, miserable, starving, and filthy beyond belief. The barracks were of little protection, and there was no straw on the bare boards for us to lie on. The floors were just mud.

• 1:15:08Jocko Willink?

  The next day, we tried to fix up the camp. We found that we were on the side of a mountain which was all terraced with rice and vegetable patties. Our water supply was a small creek that ran down through the patties and then through the camp. Since the fertilizer they used was human excreta, we had to set up a system that would at least boil our drinking water. We tried to make our barracks as airtight as possible with mud, straw, and grass, we had no heat whatsoever. And we set up the most basic washing and latrine facilities. The work detail started at once. The prisoners left the camp at 7:00 a.m. each morning, walked down to the side of the mountain and up the side of the next one to get to an open-faced mine where they dug out ore, which was some kind of white metal. The path between the camp and the mine was all broken rough stone, and with no shoes,

• 1:15:53Jocko Willink?

  only wooden clogs, the number of our seriously infected feet went completely out of control. Our food ration was the lowest I had encountered, and with no medicines or medical treatment, this was indeed a death camp.

• 1:16:07Jocko Willink?

  The first week, three men died, and our number of seriously ill doubled. It was our conservative but well-considered estimate that we would be extremely lucky if just one of us would survive the coming winter of 1945.

• 1:16:26Jocko Willink?

  As the war started to go against the Japanese and the Allies began their island hopping campaign toward Japan, the orders had gone out from Tokyo Headquarters to all military that they were never to retreat but rather fight to the last man even with suicidal attacks. The kamikaze aircraft was a good example of this philosophy. Also, the orders were that at the first sign of a landing and attack on their area, they were to kill all POWs, internees, sick, wounded, incompetent, etc. so that every able-bodied Japanese could fight to the death without hindrance. In the POW camps, we had to dig trenches and machine guns were placed at each end.

• 1:17:11Jocko Willink?

  We were then to be marched into the trenches doused with gasoline and set on fire. Anyone trying to escape would be killed by machine guns. Proof of this policy was more than evident in the Japanese occupied islands. We're overrun, which were overrun by the Americans where they found all the POWs, sick and wounded captives and Japanese all massacred by the Japanese as they retreated.

• 1:17:44Jocko Willink?

  With the Japanese surrender, we took over our camp to ensure our survival and concentrated on getting ourselves physically fit enough to get out of there and into the hands of the Allies. We took over all the food we could find and ran a kitchen on a 24-hour basis. We bought a pig, a horse, and a cow which we slaughtered and put into the stew pot. Believe me, everything went in with the possible exception of skin and hooves. We scoured the countryside for all medical supplies we could beg, borrow, or buy just to or just expropriate so that our doctor and his helpers could work day and night to bring seriously ill back to as good as health possible. We got yellow paint and painted big POW signs on the roofs of our buildings. We made flags out of old bed sheets and colored them with crayons.

• 1:18:29Jocko Willink?

  We put these up on flagpoles and we waited. The US Navy planes soon found us and we were showered with bundles from heaven containing clothing, food, medicines, and goodies such as cigarettes and chocolate bars.

• 1:18:47Jocko Willink?

  When the doctor felt we were as fit as he could get us, we made our move and came out overnight by train to Tokyo. When we couldn't find any allied forces near the Tokyo Railway Station, we moved over to the station for the electric train and went to Yokohama. Here, we went outside the station, sat down, and flew our flags on some bamboo poles we had liberated. It was not all that easy. You must remember that we had some prisoners who were blind, some minus a foot or a hand, some unable to walk on feet, painful from berry berry, and all of us at the end of our endurance. Thus, we had to commandeer trucks, wagons, bicycle trailers, anything that we could lay our hands on to carry our sick and invalids. The healthiest POWs carry the Japanese Guards rifles,

• 1:19:32Jocko Willink?

  just in case we met up with trouble. As once we left the relative safe confines of our camps, we were on our own, and God help us. We didn't have to wait long outside the Yokohama Station before a jeep came by with a US Army officer and a big radio on it. We identified ourselves, the chap got on his radio, and we were soon inundated with buses, trucks, and ambulances, which took us down to a reception center set up in Yokohama docks. We were then told to get out and go into the dock area. The next thing I knew, our senior POW NCO called the troops to attention, formed them up into marching order, turned the parade over to me, and we marched into the dock area with our homemade flags flying.

• 1:20:17Jocko Willink?

  We were dirty, tired, clothing in rags and tatters. Many of the men had to be supported or semi-carried, but they were all there, all those who could possibly walk, as defiant, proud, a force that could never be beaten.

• 1:20:43Jocko Willink?

  The first thing was to strip off of all our clothes and throw them into an incinerator. Next, they removed all our body hair and put us through a de-lousing station. From there, we got into a hot shower with lots of hot water and soap. While stark naked, we were confronted by a horde of doctors and nurses who segregated us into groups depending upon our medical condition, then into a room with all the clothes in the world where we could take as much of everything we wanted. Finally, we were given a thorough interrogation by a team of intelligence and war crime officers. All this time, this was going on, there were Red Cross girls going around dishing out cigarettes and chocolate bars. I was taken to the hospital ship USS Marigold, as I was on my feet and don't even remember

• 1:21:28Jocko Willink?

  going onboard. I do recall that I was taken into a cabin which I had all to myself. This is the first time since being captured that I was all on my own, except when I was in solitary confinement. I had pajamas, and clean ones too, the first time in three and a half years. I was clean, really clean, and clear of lice, fleas, and bedbugs for the first time in three and a half years, and finally I had absolutely no responsibilities for anyone other than myself for the first time in three and a half years. Our camp was unique in having 100% survival from the instant that the war ended until we were recovered by Americans.

• 1:22:13Jocko Willink?

  This was only due to the full cooperation and self-discipline of all the men in that camp. By way of explanation, the Americans were very cautious and stayed in the Yokohama Dock area until they were certain the Japanese military and civilians would accept the surrender and not kill POWs and internees as they had been ordered to. A large part of the Japanese military would not accept surrender and vowed to fight to the finish, while a tremendous number of civilians who had lost members of their families, especially in the firebombing, were very hostile. For those POWs who were inland such as ourselves, you either had to wait a long period of time to be recovered or try and beat your way out. I'm afraid that in the majority of camps, it was every man for himself.

• 1:22:56Jocko Willink?

  And in a lot of cases, this was fatal. The civilians retaliated as they did, as did the military. Some POWs ate poisonous food or drank wood alcohol and died. Others started out on journeys far beyond their physical capability and died en route to freedom. You must remember that it was most difficult, if not impossible, to control men who had been through four years of sheer and utter hell, especially when there was absolutely no way of enforcing any discipline. During the war, over 30% of all the POWs and internees taken by the Japanese were either killed or died in the prison camps and thus never did make it home.

• 1:23:37Jocko Willink?

  Here, I think the epitaph on the memorial in the Allied Wargrave Cemetery in Kohima, Burma, where over 1,500 Allied servicemen are buried, sums it up very well. When you go home, tell them of us and say, "For your tomorrow, we gave our today."

• 1:24:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, even, even the fact that, you know, he doesn't explain it in too much detail. But the fact that when they were done, when the war was over, they stayed there, they got food, they got healthy, they got checked by a doctor, and then they moved as a unit with, with their own people, with guards, to get out. But a lot of the other prisoner camps he's talking about, like, oh, the war's over, it's every man for themselves, and they're just gonna go for it, and they're not healthy enough, and a bunch of them died. So that discipline, again, that's like the law of the jungle

• 1:24:32Jocko Willink?

  versus the team law and the leadership law and trying to do things together, because we're stronger together.

• 1:24:41Jocko Willink?

  Now he kind of gets into the leadership portion of this. Catchphrases are wonderful things, and by way of trying to summarize this whole thing, if I had to use one to define my concept of leadership, it would be the three Cs: character, competence, and comradeship. First is character, is my firm belief that the true and solid foundation is integrity. Or as Shakespeare had Polonius say in Hamlet, "This, above all else, to thy own self be true, and it must follow as the knight, the day thou canst not then be false to any man."

• 1:25:19Jocko Willink?

  Say what you mean, which is telling the truth as against the telling of lies and mean what you say, which is integrity. Having the moral fiber to face the issues of right and wrong and then the courage to stand up firm and strong regardless of consequences to yourself. That's character. That's number one. The second competence, having the necessary knowledge, education, training and judgment to make and to make the full use of them. No matter how large or small the problem, to ensure that you have given it your fullest consideration. Once you have done this and made your decision, then to carry it out with the very best of your ability, know what you are doing and how to do it.

• 1:26:04Jocko Willink?

  Number three, comradeship. Taking a full interest in your subordinates. Having true respect and concern for them to the extent that at all times and in all circumstances, you put their welfare and their well-being ahead of your own regardless of the cost or inconvenience to yourself. Those are the three Cs. Once these are firmly in place, then those other important aspects such as discipline and self-discipline, pride in yourself and your unit, self-respect and respect for both your superiors and subordinates, proper dress and deportment at all times, all these will

• 1:26:49Jocko Willink?

  develop and strengthen as they feed on one another until what I call true leadership emerges. Live by these precepts and as a member of the Canadian forces devoted to the well-being of your fellow Canadians and the preservation of our Canadian way of life, you will not only attain true self-respect, but also the respect of everyone with whom you associate. You can never have a better goal in life. Canada needs you. You who will be the leaders, the protectors and defenders of our country and in the years

• 1:27:26Jocko Willink?

  2000 AD, it needs to, it needs your youth, courage and energy, but there's also a desperate need for your self-discipline, your discipline of the mind, your character, your integrity. In short, your leadership.

• 1:27:48Jocko Willink?

  As I look around this room, I have absolutely no qualms about the future of our service. Admiral Bull Halsey, the famous WWII Admiral of the fleet, of the US Fleet in the Pacific, once said, quote, "There are no great men, there are only great challenges ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet," end quote.

• 1:28:13Jocko Willink?

  As the history of our service shows, there has never, ever been, nor will there ever be, any shortage of ordinary men and women such as are gathered here, who are ready, willing, and most capable to take up the challenges they will be forced to face. Per ardua ad astra, through adversity to the stars. This is the heritage which has been entrusted into your hands. Guard it well, as I have every confidence you will. Ladies and gentlemen, it has been an honor and privilege to have shared these thoughts with you. Bon chance et merci bien.

• 1:28:58Jocko Willink?

  So, as I said, lots of, lots of very good lessons in there, lots of reiterations of principles you've heard before. True leadership, the three Cs, character competence and comradeship. I also find it interesting that he quotes Admiral Halsey. "There are no great men, there are only great challenges, ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet."

• 1:29:26Jocko Willink?

  And it kind of reminds me that if you're not, like in many cases, we will not reach our potential unless we're forced to do it.

• 1:29:41Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? Like that's unfortunate.

• 1:29:45Jocko Willink?

  Unfortunate. Like, what are the chances that you, Echo Charles, are gonna get put in some circumstances that are so dramatic and so severe that you are forced to rise to a level that that is imperceivable to you right now? Yeah. You know, I talk about, you know, we had Alex Honnold on the podcast and he climbed El Cap with no ropes, right? Free solo. And for a while, I was saying that that was the greatest feat that any, greatest physical feat that any human has ever accomplished. But but later, I, like, after I said that once, I was like, hold on a second. It's not. It's the greatest physical feat that a human being has ever voluntarily, like, engaged in. But

• 1:30:30Jocko Willink?

  when you look at, you know, any one of these prisoners of war, they, what they did was infinitely harder than him climbing El Cap. But they weren't, they weren't volunteered. They were forced by circumstances into these situations. And so we have to voluntarily put ourselves in situations that are gonna be so adverse and severe that they make us better, that they make us push ourselves. That's what we gotta do.

• 1:30:56Jocko Willink?

  That's what we gotta do. That's the, that he rolled, that rolls right into the, uh, through adversity to the stars. That's the official motto of the Royal Canadian Air Force, right? But you don't get to the stars without adversity.

• 1:31:08Jocko Willink?

  We have to step up. We have to lean into adversity. We have to look for those challenges.

• 1:31:15Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, when you're, when you've come up against these challenges, whether it's like having to avoid a muffin at the Super Bowl party. The last muffin. The last muffin, right? You can, you can then reach back into history and you can think about the incredible suffering that has been endured by human beings throughout history.

• 1:31:37Jocko Willink?

  And you can use that as a testament to why you to why you can step up and you can endure more and you can achieve more than you ever thought.

• 1:31:52Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, that it's kind of like a little bit of a metaphor. Not even a metaphor. It's actually just a principle that applies to so many things. So like, yeah, your day to day, how many times in your day to day do you have to dig deep?

• 1:32:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably that 20 rep squat day.

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's that. There's something to be said for that. The 20 rep squat day because the, I mean, obviously it depends on how much weight you're doing. But the real 20 rep squat day. That has probably more value than you might notice on the surface, you know? Because if you're not used to digging deep, you can be like, there's no way I'm going to endure that. And even if I do, I ain't going back, not even like, not even close. That's why I like, you know, when you're a kid and you do like sports or something, you gotta run like conditioning. You're like, bro, this sucks so bad right now. But it's like, I don't want to be the guy who doesn't do it or quits or just some lame stuff, you know? So you can, you kind of learn to kind of start to accept this, you know, this adversity. And then it's like, yeah, like you can kind of draw upon it when you have to get something done.

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  And you recognize kind of how it all works too, after a while. But if you're not used to it, bro, it's such an assault on you. And then you kind of, you know, you can't deal with it.

• 1:33:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's one of the things you gotta watch out for, you know, however, when it's really easy for us in this day and age to kind of avoid the discomfort. You know, when you can press a button on your phone and you can have freaking whatever food show up in 38 minutes. I'm whatever you dream of, it will be at your house in 38 minutes. And by the way, your, your house is temperature controlled. Your couch is comfortable. It's got a special pillow for your head. It's got a like a weighted blanket or some shit. You know what I'm saying? Like gets crazy. It's the pursuit of comfort is out of control. And so if that's, if you're living in that world and you're not testing your adversity, then you're going to, when that adversity hits you, which it will, you're going to have problems. And by the way, you're just not going to get anything done.

• 1:33:47Jocko Willink?

  You're just not going to get anything done.

• 1:33:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's one, that's something that'll. To me anyway, it's recognizable more often where, because you can kind of stay in that little gray comfort zone, you know, and kind of, kind of make it. You know, I mean, you'll have these little issues here and there that you're like, all right, I'll have to kind of deal with it, whatever. But yeah, you won't get anything done. If you see something like, kind of like drastic to get done. Right. You'll get it done way easier when you're used to this kind of stuff.

• 1:34:11Jocko Willink?

  Or you'll just get done like kind of the minimum standard.

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:14Jocko Willink?

  You just get the minimum, like you'll pay the rent.

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:17Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 1:34:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:18Jocko Willink?

  You'll, you'll, you'll just pay the rent.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:20Jocko Willink?

  But you're not going to like improve, not going to get better.

• 1:34:23Speaker 01

  You're not gonna like.

• 1:34:24Jocko Willink?

  Keep your head above water. Barely keep your head above water.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  You're not gonna like this little story I'm about to tell you, but, and I still do this from time to time. So we'll get, yeah, okay. You'll get, we'll get crab legs from time to time, right? You know, crab legs for dinner or whatever, for some special thing, whatever, Christmas dinner, we'll say. And so what I'd always do for whatever reason, I think I recognize this principle as far as crab legs go. So I, you know, you gotta peel the crab legs or whatever. You gotta crack them and take the crab leg meat out of the shell. So I would take it all out of the shell first. You know, the typical protocol is crack one, eat one, crack one, eat one, you know? But I would take them all out of the shell first and I'd have this pile of de-shelled crab legs. And you can just enjoy the crab legs. See what I'm saying?

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  That's like getting, getting a big thing done rather than just keeping your head above water. See what I'm saying? Meanwhile, everyone's cracking shells and doing, you know, doing all this stuff. Meanwhile, my shells days are gone. All I got is this pile of just, you know, fruitful crab legs. You see what I'm saying? Bro, I'm telling you, right? You can kind of like organize your life like that. You'd be good to go.

• 1:35:35Jocko Willink?

  Crack those shells, bro.

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  In principle, in principle. See what I'm saying? Basically you're front loading the work, right? And putting yourself through this adversity where now you can get the full benefit and payoff from that adversity. Rather than crack one, eat one, crack one, you know, like living minute to minute, day to day, you know, kind of a thing.

• 1:35:54Jocko Willink?

  Don't let that happen, man. Lean into the adversity. That's what we're doing. And by the way, when you do lean into the adversity, when you push yourself mentally, physically, you're gonna need right at fuel. You need the right fuel. Hey, check out Jocko Fuel dot com. Get whatever you need. I am currently drinking a go and a hydrate because I already did the def reset. I did a workout, then I did the def reset workout, which was wooden leg. It was three minutes of jump squats, three minutes of lunges, three minutes of jumping jacks, two minutes of jump squats, two minutes of lunges, two minutes of jumping jacks, one minute of

• 1:36:35Jocko Willink?

  jump squats, one minute. Yeah. You do three minutes of jump squats, like out of the gate, you're smoked. You're smoked. Cause that's, it's one of those things that's absorbing all the, all the energy that you have. Each jump, like three minutes of jumping as high as you can. My, by the end of those three minutes, my vertical jump was going to the extent of my toes. You know what I'm saying? It was exhausting. But yeah, so you're gonna need fuel. Right now I am deep with a hydrate and a Jocko Fuel Go Energy Drink. We got everything that you need. We got Time War, which I highly recommend. We got Joint Warfare, got Super Krill. We got everything that you need. We got, we got collagen and colostrum. We got all the products that you

• 1:37:18Jocko Willink?

  need to fuel your goals. We got creatine. I'm currently stacking 20 grams, 10 in the morning, 10 at night. Where are you at?

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  About 15.

• 1:37:28Jocko Willink?

  15. Oh, so you stepped it up before you were 10 to 15. Did you step up?

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  More than anything, I actually reevaluated it because you don't like how you scoop it. Huge scoop, bruh. That's, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I think I'm at 50.

• 1:37:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay, feeling good though.

• 1:37:42Speaker 01

  Always strong. Creatine in hydrate. Always running off that, especially in the morning.

• 1:37:47Jocko Willink?

  Check. There we go. So check out Jocko Fuel dot com. Also check out OriginUSA.com. You don't need to buy stuff that's made by communism. You can get stuff that's made by freedom.

• 1:37:58Jocko Willink?

  We make our jeans, our boots, our, we make everything here in America. OriginUSA.com. Get yourself a pair of Delta jeans. Delta sixty eights. That's what, that's what I recommend. Freaking comfortable cruising. Whatever you're doing.

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  Active cruising.

• 1:38:15Jocko Willink?

  Active cruise squatting. Yeah. Get squatting those things all day. So that's what we're doing. Check out OriginUSA.com. Not only made in America, but made from materials that are American materials. So this is what we're doing. Our forefathers fought and sacrificed and died for our way of life. And we need to reinvest in that way of life. We need to keep the ability to manufacture, which we lost for a little while, but we're bringing it back. OriginUSA.com. Check it out. Be American.

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  That's true. Also Jocko store.com. This one equals free. Look, we're representing on this path. Whether you're doing death reset or not, by the way, actually I didn't talk to you about this. Maybe, cause this is a grand prize winner, right? For death reset. Maybe I'll offer like a prize from the store. Actually, I know I'm good offer. I just don't know what yet. Gotta be worth it though. Can't be like, oh, here's a, you know, one patch or something. It's a little bit bigger. Anyway, Jocko store. This one equals freedom. Shirts, hats, hoodies. Good. We've got a few versions of these now. The shorts, the store got developed, by the way.

• 1:39:16Jocko Willink?

  Look at you.

• 1:39:17Speaker 01

  So anyway, Jocko store.com is where you can get this stuff. Some good stuff on there. Some new stuff coming too, by the way. So sign up for the email.

• 1:39:24Jocko Willink?

  I noticed you made an Instagram account for the Jocko store. What is it? Jocko dot store?

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  Jocko dot store. And then in, I would say in about twelve, next year, this time, I'm going to change it to just death core. See what I'm saying? That, that, by that time, everybody just gonna know. See what I'm saying?

• 1:39:41Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  Jocko store right now.

• 1:39:42Jocko Willink?

  Why are you waiting?

• 1:39:43Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I feel like it's kind of straightforward right now.

• 1:39:45Jocko Willink?

  But you're like, you're putting all this effort into getting the word out, but then you're going to change the word. That don't make no sense to me.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  I'm gonna slowly change the word through the content. But hey, look, I don't know. I just thought of that like just now. Because really that's what it is. But I just feel like if it's Jocko store, it's kind of like clearer. You know, they're like, okay, this is the jam. You see what I'm saying? Yes. So when you go in there, oh yeah, follow on Instagram. Hey, if you're on Instagram, you want to, so here's the thing.

• 1:40:11Jocko Willink?

  You're taking, you're, you're putting up pictures and stuff from like BTS, whatever they say.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  Sometimes.

• 1:40:16Jocko Willink?

  Behind the scenes.

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  Sometimes. Yeah, bro. So it's like, okay, so if you're gonna be on Instagram, and I found this out kind of naturally, which is a good deal.

• 1:40:25Jocko Willink?

  The gram.

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you can make the algorithm work for you. You just got to be disciplined with your consumption diet. See what I'm saying? So what I would do is like, I would like, watch these little, you know, little video editing tips, right? Just out of interest. And then after a while, that's all I'm seeing, which is good. See what I'm saying? So that's what I try to do with this, with this jocko dot store. That's the username there. So if you follow the, if you follow Jocko Store, your consumption diet is going to be on the path. See what I'm saying? Either way, some good stuff, whether you follow or not, get some good stuff on there. JockoStore.com Also the Shirt Locker, which is the membership scenario or subscription scenario. Get a new design every month. That's a good one. So check that one out.

• 1:41:08Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, we got some books. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. A lot of the principles that we talked about today are in these books. Also, Rob Jones wrote a book called Put Your Legs On. Also, Dave Burke wrote a book called Need to Lead. So we got plenty of books for it. Got kids books, Warrior Kid books. We got some Warrior Kid podcasts coming back at you. Come on, go live with some jocko, with some Warrior Kid podcasts. Ask Uncle Jake's going down. Also, don't forget about Ryan Mannion's book, Things My Brother Used to Say. Check that out. It's a great kids book. Also, we have Echelon Front. We teach these leadership principles that we talked about today. We teach them, teach them inside your organization. We can spend months with your organization. We can spend a day with your organization, anything in between.

• 1:41:50Jocko Willink?

  So check out EchelonFront.com if you need help inside your organization. Also, check out ExtremeOwnership.com. It is our leadership training online. So you have access to it. You can go on there and check out some of the courses. Check out some of the live interactions that we do every week. So there you go. Check out ExtremeOwnership.com for that. And if you want to help out service members, active and retired, you want to help out their families. You want to help out Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. It is America's Mighty Warriors. If you want to help or you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also, check out HeroesAndHorses.org.

• 1:42:31Jocko Willink?

  And then, of course, my brother Jimmy May's got an organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. If you want to check us out on social media, we're on there. I'm at Jocko Willink, Echo's at Echo Charles. You can check out all the stuff at jocko.com. Just be careful because there's an algorithm there. It'd be nice if you could program your own algorithm. But I guess you would have to do that like if you'd have to manually do it, but they wouldn't accept you to manually do it because you're not as interested. They won't know what you're really interested in.

• 1:42:59Speaker 01

  It's gotta be disciplined.

• 1:42:59Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you gotta be disciplined. I wish you could like, uh, like downvote something that you don't want to see anymore of.

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  You can.

• 1:43:07Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  But even that takes discipline. Like who has the heart to downvote it without?

• 1:43:12Jocko Willink?

  What do you say like a thumbs down?

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I think you can click on, in fact, you can click on something I forget I have to see it. Yeah, it'll say not interested in this.

• 1:43:21Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  And then they'll stop doing it.

• 1:43:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay. I'll need to get into that.

• 1:43:25Speaker 01

  Remember the time I corrupted, I think it was a good deal, Dave Burke's search page or I corrupted it.

• 1:43:31Jocko Willink?

  How?

• 1:43:32Speaker 01

  I think you search for like some wonky stuff and then if cops and then you click on it and watch it, click on it. I did it. So I jammed him. He was like, whatever. But you can.

• 1:43:40Jocko Willink?

  Were you showing it to like, or you just, did you do it by accident or did you do it on purpose?

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  On purpose. So yeah, I know it's bad. But it was, it was, it was a small part of a greater joke that we were doing. Cause I was like, you know how you be like, hey, let me see your search page. It kind of says a lot about your personality, we'll say. And then so I go on his search page. He's like, oh yeah, he doesn't know even the deal. He's hardly ever on.

• 1:44:06Jocko Willink?

  He's just got jet planes.

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  Yes, I did. I was like jet planes and like, I don't know, some like family dad stuff. I was like, bro, you're such a dork. So, and I changed it. And he was like, what the hell is all mad or whatever? Not really mad, but you know?

• 1:44:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:18Speaker 01

  And then, um, I think I'm pretty sure he's the one who told me that where you can just downvote. No, no, actually no, it's, she'll tell me you can downvote, but I'm sure that's how he fixed it.

• 1:44:26Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna check into that downvote.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  Downvote stuff, man. Curate your thing.

• 1:44:29Jocko Willink?

  Well, we're on there. Um, don't spend too much time on there. And we're also, um, thanks. We're thankful. We're thankful to all military personnel and tonight especially to our allies. And in this case, specifically our Canadian allies who have fought and bled and died alongside us for the cost of freedom. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders who fight and serve here at home to keep us safe. And for everyone else out there, let's remember these lessons from Air Commodore, Colonel Leonard Burchill.

• 1:45:08Jocko Willink?

  It's the way, the way that you purport yourself, your behavior, your appearance, your mannerisms, even more important, your integrity, your selflessness. These are the foundations of pride, but more important, the foundations of self-discipline. The standards that you set, the standards that you hold. That's where discipline is originated. And it applies to everything that you do. Every little thing that you do, every minute of the day. That is the standard. That is the discipline.

• 1:45:47Jocko Willink?

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