Special Forces Commander's Weird Trick For Overcoming Anxiety, "This Is The Reason People Quit", "Imposter Syndrome Is A Good Thing!"

Learn how to attack life with the same intensity as a member of the world’s most elite fighting force. Jocko Willink is a retired U. S. Navy SEAL officer and New York Times bestselling author, he is also the host of the Jocko Podcast, and co-founder of the leadership training organisation, Echelon Front. In this conversation Jocko and Steven discuss topics such as, why excuses are pointless, the core component that every Navy SEAL has, how to overcome hesitation and take action, and why you should ‘embrace the suck’. You can listen to the ‘Jocko Podcast’ and purchase Jocko’s products here: https://bit.ly/3Uk75hj Follow Jocko: Twitter - https://bit.ly/3UmcjJx Instagram - https://bit.ly/3w2zZsQ YouTube - https://bit.ly/4cY32i1 Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/3kxINCANKsb My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is what I learned from 20 years of being in the Navy SEALs. Discipline, drive, how to make decisions under pressure. Leadership, strategy and tactics that you can apply to business and you can apply to your life as well. So, let's go. Jocko Willink is a former Navy SEALs officer.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  He uses his decades of military training to help people become masters of discipline and master their lives.

• 0:22Speaker 00

  Your excuses will destroy you. Your default mode should be to take ownership because if these problems are because of me, then I'm capable of fixing these problems.

• 0:31Steven Bartlett?

  So, what's step one?

• 0:33Speaker 00

  First of all, small steps can be painful, even something as simple as going to the gym. If you're completely out of shape, sometimes that can be enough to make you say, "I'm not doing it anymore." You need to envision a path of where this can lead you to. Number two, most human instinct is to hesitate. But you see that problem over there, you gotta go solve that problem. It's not gonna go away. So if you're in the woods and you don't know where to go, start walking. And worst case scenario, you figure out that you walked the wrong direction. Okay, now you can go walk in the other direction. But standing there, not doing anything, is just waiting to starve to death. And the next challenge, detach from your emotions. Good leaders have control of our emotions. If I have to yell at you to get my point across, I've made like 47 other mistakes. My goal is I don't have to say a word and you already know what to do.

• 1:10Steven Bartlett?

  Is there anything else that you'd add to that list?

• 1:12Speaker 00

  Absolutely. In fact, people don't really talk about this. And this could apply to just about anything. So if you're the type of person that doesn't [BLEEP], you're gonna struggle.

• 1:21Steven Bartlett?

  Jocko, was there a hardest day while you were in the Navy SEALs?

• 1:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  That was the lowest point of my life.

• 1:39Steven Bartlett?

  Jocko, surprisingly, I couldn't find an awful lot in your childhood that would indicate to me how you became the man that you are today. And I say that because there's a bit of a stereotype that someone like you who becomes a Navy SEAL must have some kind of traumatic early event that shaped them to become some ultra resilient human being.

• 2:03Steven Bartlett?

  When you look back on your childhood, what are the sort of dominos that fell in that early chapter of your life that made you the man you are today?

• 2:11Speaker 00

  I wish I could positively identify the thing, the moment. The closest I've come is that I... A little kid, I was a little kid. I wanted to be some kind of soldier. I wanted to be some kind of commando. And so I collected little soldiers, little plastic soldiers. And one of the, I had different military units, like historical military units from around the world. And one of the historical military units that I had was the British commandos. And so I had these tiny figurines, and they had machine guns, and they had kayaks, and they had little boats, little inflatable boats. And I thought to myself, that's what

• 2:56Speaker 00

  I want to do. I want to do that. I wish I could do that. And then when I was probably around 12 or 13, I realized you actually could do that. You could actually get the job of being a commando. And then it was just a matter of figuring out which one of the American branches had the closest thing to what I thought was a British commando. And the closest thing that I found was being in the Navy and being in the SEAL teams.

• 3:23Steven Bartlett?

  And at 19 years old, you applied to be a Navy SEAL?

• 3:28Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:29Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so I have to ask a very dumb question here, which is what is a Navy SEAL?

• 3:35Speaker 00

  So there's special operations, which I guess, you know, from England, this is the SAS and the SBS. So those are the two sort of units that we get compared to the most. And so a Navy SEAL is a part of the Navy, but you're the special operations component of the Navy. And the term SEAL is actually an acronym, which stands for sea, air, and land. Because even though we're in the Navy, we are trained to operate in the sea, in the air. So in the sea, meaning we dive. In the air, meaning we parachute and rappel. And then on the land, meaning we conduct land warfare operations. And you

• 4:17Speaker 00

  take all those things, combine them together, and that's what our job consists of.

• 4:21Steven Bartlett?

  I was under the assumption that to become a Navy SEAL or to be in the SAS, you had to have 10, 20 years of military service. You had to have like an established military service. And then you get some like pop up on your computer and it says, like, come to this, this building over here. And so to hear that you applied at 19 years old, I was like, oh, I didn't know teenagers could apply.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I, I was 18 years old when I joined the Navy and I joined on a contract that got me sent to SEAL training and it took a year to get through. So I was 19 when I finished that up. But there is, there's always debates about, well, don't you want someone that's more experienced? And I actually loved the fact that I was basically raised in the SEAL teams. It was just awesome. It was an awesome way to grow up. It was an awesome way to spend those, those years of your life, learning the trade that you wanted to learn. And so I, I thought it was awesome and I think it worked out pretty well. There is a, usually the, the percentage of people that make it through SEAL training is about 20%.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  People that are under the age of 20, it goes down to about 5%. So, yeah, I was one of those like small percentage of people that are very young, but still make it through.

• 5:32Steven Bartlett?

  And what is the characteristics that they're ultimately testing with the design of that training? What are they testing for?

• 5:39Speaker 00

  Will you keep going?

• 5:42Steven Bartlett?

  In the face of?

• 5:45Speaker 00

  Whatever.

• 5:47Steven Bartlett?

  Well, they, they call the, uh, one of the weeks hell week, don't they? So they try and simulate hell by the sounds of it.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, they try and simulate hell. It's, it's, they actually were trying to simulate combat initially. When they created that week, they wanted to take as much combat simulation from World War II at the time and put it into a very compressed schedule. So they could create these frogmen to go overseas and conduct operations. Cause World War II was going on and so they needed to compress the training cycle. So they compressed a bunch of that combat simulation into, it's about five and a half days. No sleep, lots of physical activity, lots of stress, lots of pain and lots of people quit.

• 6:32Steven Bartlett?

  How many people quit in that particular week?

• 6:35Speaker 00

  I would say most of the people that quit, probably of, of.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  It's probably 80% of the quitters quit in that week.

• 6:46Steven Bartlett?

  It's been long discussed. I think there's a book called Grit where they discuss what it takes in terms of character traits to get through these kinds of endurance tasks. And people often think it's those that have the biggest muscles or that do the most, I don't know, cardiovascular exercise. But from what you've observed, and this is maybe a broader point about adversity in life, is there any similarities in the people that are able to get themselves through adversity?

• 7:12Speaker 00

  It's, there's, there's some internal drive that you either have or you don't have. And if you have it, you won't quit. And if you don't have it, you're gonna quit. And it breaks people. The other thing is, you might be an exceptional swimmer,

• 7:30Speaker 00

  and you might be exceptional upper body strength, but you're not that fast a runner. They're gonna find that out. Or you might be a fast runner but a bad swimmer. They're gonna find out what your weakness is. You might not like the cold. They're gonna see it. You might not like the boat on your head. They're gonna see it. They might see that you have a bad temper. They're gonna find that and they're gonna pick at that thing to either make you come out the other side, or make you quit. It's a pretty, it's a pretty amazing thing. It's a, it's a pretty amazing thing. It's a pretty profound thing to look at from the outside and, and, and see it. Cause when I was going through it, it was just sort of, I was young. I didn't care. I was gonna do it. There was nothing that they were gonna

• 8:13Speaker 00

  tell me that was gonna make me quit. I never thought about quitting. If they told me to get back in the water again, let's go. They told me to put that log on, on my shoulder, let's go. Put the boat on my head, let's go. I, I, I didn't care.

• 8:26Steven Bartlett?

  Can you teach that, that, let's go. That, we're gonna jump back in the water, let's go?

• 8:31Speaker 00

  I think that, I think that's one of the few things that you learn in basic SEAL training, is to shrug your shoulders and go forward.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Like, one of the things they do is they'll line you up on the ocean. And this is in California, and sometimes people think that California is nice, warm water, but it's not. It's 55 degrees, and I don't know what that translates to in centigrade, but it's cold. And one of the things they do is they'll line you up and they say interlock arms, and you get arm in arm with the guy next to you, and they say forward march, and you march in the water, and they say take seats, and you sit down. And they leave you in there. And it's called surf torture. And you just sit there. And they'll, after a while, they'll pull you up out of the water, they'll line you up, and the doctor will come down and see if anyone has hypothermia. And if no one has hypothermia or signs of hypothermia yet, get back in the water.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  And they just keep doing that. And so, yeah, it's, what you learn to do is, okay, I'm gonna go forward. There's no, I can't get out of this. I'm gonna go forward, I'm not gonna quit, so I'm gonna go forward, bring it on. And I think if there's anything that you learn, it's to, to keep pushing through things that suck. And I would love to say like, oh, keep pushing through adversity, but this isn't adversity. This is just things that suck. It's one level below adversity. Adversity is when you're having a challenge. This is just something that's gonna suck, and you're gonna have to push through it.

• 9:59Steven Bartlett?

  Because I'm asking myself if this is something I could teach, you know, or I could be taught. Because I look at someone like you, who's, you know, done all the things that you've done through your life, and I go, did you have some kind of innate advantage, or can we all become Jocko?

• 10:15Speaker 00

  If I had to guess, I would say no. I would say you can't teach it. I would say that you can grow it. If you've got the seed of some sort of fire, you could probably grow and you can get better at it. But, same thing, you go back to like prison, if you ever met anyone that was a prisoner of war, or people that went through like the baton death march, there's some people that had a will that they were not gonna die.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  They I'm not gonna die, I'm gonna keep going. And and the people that died, they they did not have the will to live. And think about how bad things have to be before you say, you know what? I'm just gonna lay here and die.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  That and that can get to that point. I had a guy on my podcast that was he was shot down in Vietnam and he was shot down in South Vietnam, captured. And so he had to do a seven month trek through the jungle with his captors. And at one point, he's in a two foot tall bamboo cage in the jungle. And he's trying to fall asleep, but he can't sleep because the rats are gnawing at the wounds on his legs and he's shackled. And he was with guys that

• 11:45Speaker 00

  did not have the the intrinsic will to carry on. And if you didn't have that will to carry on, you die.

• 11:57Steven Bartlett?

  You talked about the role that having a why plays. And I was thinking about, you know, if I just if I just lost my girlfriend or someone I'd gone through some severe rejection or someone in my life had died and their part, my parting promise to them was I was gonna do this. The role that having some kind of reason to carry on plays in how we handle adversity or things that suck. Did you see, have you seen any patterns in that? Is it important? Because there's books behind me that literally say, start with your why and those kinds of things.

• 12:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, you know, that's a

• 12:30Speaker 00

  anything from, oh, my girlfriend dumped me and I'm gonna prove her wrong to something that much more significant, which is my girlfriend died and I told her I was gonna do this and I'm gonna do it for her. Both those things, depending on the human being, can be a strong enough, I a strong enough why to get through. And I've I I have friends that were

• 12:53Speaker 00

  I have one friend that was in Vietnam, he was in Vietnam, and when he showed up SEAL training, he didn't know what it was. He thought he was volunteering to be like a diver, a diver that would do construction under, under boats. He thought that, that what it was. And so he showed up and they're like, this is SEAL training. He's like, what's a SEAL? And they kind of explained it to him. And then he went and made it through. All that torture, all that mayhem. And why? Cause that was what they were telling him to do. And he was, okay, that's what we're doing. Let's go. So again, I would love to be able to, you know, give you this profound anchor that people need to have. But it's like, oh, do you want to do this or not? Which is what I think a lot of it

• 13:35Speaker 00

  boils down to. Do you actually want to do this or not? Do you actually want to do this or not? Cause if you actually want to do it, what's going to stop you? Nothing. And if you don't really want to do it, what's going to stop you? Just about anything that comes up. Just about any obstacle that gets in your way, becomes an excuse. It becomes a reason, it comes a rationale for not proceeding down that path. And, and, and this is interesting too. You, when you talk to people that went to SEAL training that didn't make it, most of the time, it's some reason. There's a medical reason, there's a family problem. There's very few people that look at you and say, oh, I quit because it sucked. Which is what, by the way, which is what happens to the vast majority

• 14:19Speaker 00

  of people. The vast majority of people that don't make it through SEAL training, and by this, I mean 80, 90% of the people that don't make it through SEAL training, they didn't make it through because they quit. Then there's a small percentage that had a medical problem. Then there's a small percentage that got performance dropped, meaning they couldn't perform the runs, the swims, the, the, the technical aspects of the job and they failed and they get dropped. But the vast majority of people, they quit, but they don't usually say that. And even in their mind, they probably don't believe it. They probably believe, well, you know, it was my leg and once my leg was hurting, I knew I was going to have a hard time on the runs. And since I wasn't going to be able to make the runs, I just, that's why I quit. But it wasn't really quitting. It was because my leg.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  So it's, it's, it's like I said, it's a very, it's a very strange and, and, and really kind of a mystical thing.

• 15:09Steven Bartlett?

  Excuses, you're talking there about people making excuses.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:13Steven Bartlett?

  What have you come to learn about the nature of excuses and if they are our friends, our enemies, if they're ever useful?

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Your excuses will destroy you and take everything that you ever wanted from you. If you let them.

• 15:27Steven Bartlett?

  Doesn't sound like a friend.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  No, it's definitely not a friend. It's definitely not a friend. It, it can seem like a friend, just like your friend that keeps feeding you drinks at the bar can seem like a friend, but are they really helping you in any way, shape or form? No, they're not. They're not. So when, when your excuses make you feel a little bit better about the fact that you didn't execute on what you needed to execute on, then they can make you feel better, but they're not helping you. They're not helping you at all.

• 15:56Steven Bartlett?

  Is that what you, when you think about extreme ownership, which is the title of this book here in front of me, is our excuses the opposite? Excuses and blame, is that the opposite of extreme ownership?

• 16:07Speaker 00

  That is the opposite of extreme ownership. Extreme, extreme ownership is this went wrong, this failed, didn't accomplish this, and it's not the fault of my boss, it's not the fault of my girlfriend, it's not the fault of my parents, it's not the fault of the weather, it's my fault. And I'm gonna take ownership of it and I'm gonna fix it. That's what extreme ownership is. And this is a very difficult thing to do because it hurts. Because when you look around at your life and you look around at your job and your financial situation and your relationship and your physical health, and when you look at all those things and all the problems that you may have with those things, and

• 16:48Speaker 00

  you say, the reason I have all those problems is because of me? That can hurt. That can sting.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  And a lot of times our ego rejects that and makes excuses and lies. And then we don't have to change anything. And then nothing changes.

• 17:09Steven Bartlett?

  If someone was on the extreme end of that disease of excuse and blame and all of those things, is there anything that you could do or you would advise them to do to kind of walk back from that, to get over the other side? Because I think we can all think of people in our lives, and maybe even ourselves at times, who have gotten into a chronic pattern of using excuses and blame as a form of self-defense because we don't want to turn that mirror back at us and have to confront reality. Like, I think sometimes, if I think about some of my closest friends, those that have the lowest self-esteem will use excuses and blame the most because it's, you know, personal responsibility might not, in the short term at least,

• 17:53Steven Bartlett?

  do anything for my already low self-esteem. So I'm going to blame the world as self-defense. What's step one to get out of that?

• 18:02Speaker 00

  Well, unfortunately, what happens a lot, and you may or may not have seen this, but I would assume you've seen this at some point in your life. People, and this is a term, there's a term, it's rock bottom. But this is a term that we hear for someone that's addicted, someone that's an alcoholic, someone that's physically let themselves go, someone that's put themselves into a situation with their finances or their work or whatever, where they reach rock bottom. And that, that rock bottom, what happens is you, I believe what rock bottom is, is as you look around, all the excuses that you've made, they're not there anymore. And so now, what rock bottom is, you realize that this problem,

• 18:46Speaker 00

  whether it's alcohol, whether it's your finances, the problem is you.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  And normally, or hopefully, in the best case scenario, rock bottom is the beginning of the upward climb, the upward path. Sometimes rock, rock bottom leads to disaster and complete abandonment of hope. But when it, when it, when the excuses all go away and people can actually confront the fact that this is all because of me, and this is, it hurts, but is also unbelievably empowering. Because if these problems are because of me, then I'm...

• 19:29Speaker 00

  Capable of fixing these problems. So even though extreme ownership hurts and is painful, it's also liberating because now you have control over your fate and over your destiny. And that is a glorious thing.

• 19:44Steven Bartlett?

  Is that to you how you start to build confidence? Confidence seems to be this really elusive thing. Confidence ultimately is a belief you have. And these beliefs are like instruction manuals for our life. You must have seen in your, you know, in your, all your years, some people really build their confidence. And I guess you've seen other people destroy their confidence. So what is the nature of how we build our own confidence?

• 20:07Speaker 00

  Yep, you're right. I have seen it and I've had to do it to people. I had to take people and build their confidence. And so how do you do that? You know, if you're a young officer in the SEAL teams and you feel like maybe you kind of got here, you got lucky, you barely made it through training. And all of a sudden I'm saying, hey, you're in charge of this squad right here. And you don't feel like you have the confidence to do it. And so it comes time to make a decision and you're sort of looking around and the guys are looking at you like, hey, you're gonna make a call or what? And finally someone just steps on you and says, hey, I got it. Hey, everyone move over to this building. And now your confidence goes down even lower, which is a problem. So how am I going to build your confidence? Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you and I'll put you into a situation that I know you can handle.

• 20:50Speaker 00

  I'm going to put, I'm going to give you a task that I know you can do. It's, look, it's not going to be a total softball. It's not going to be a joke of a task. When we give you something that I know you can handle and I'm going to let you do that. And I might let you do that two, three, four, five times. I might say, hey, on this next operation, Stephen, I want you to, uh, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna hold the left flank with your, with your squad. Oh, everyone else is assaulting buildings. They're setting up external screen. You're just, hey, just, you just hold this, you just set your team up on this berm over here. And, and watch to the north. And look, this is a pretty easy job. All right. And so you go out there, you take your team, you get on the berm, you look to the north. You do a good job.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  Confidence goes up a little bit. Now, look, there was no pressure. You didn't have to make any decisions, but you did what you were supposed to do. And I might have you do that two or three times. And then the next time I say, hey, you know what? Hey, good job out there. I'm going to build up your confidence a little bit. And then I'm going to say, hey, I need you to handle security to the north and to the west. All right, so you're going to have two squads now. So I'm just going to give you small tasks that I know you can handle to build up your confidence. And over time, you will become more and more confident. And you're going to hit some challenges and you'll overcome those challenges. And if you do, great, your confidence is great. If you fail in a challenge, I might have to reset you a little bit. But this, it sounds like a big, long process, but it's actually usually not that long.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  It's actually, people kind of nod their head, oh, yeah, I can do this. Contrarily, sometimes I get a guy who's overconfident. And, you know, I got Steven walking here like, ah, you're darn right, I should be in charge. And what do I do with you? Because now you got an ego, you're not listening to people. Now I'm like, hey, Steven, you know, since you're doing so awesome, why don't you run this whole assault team tonight? And you go, yeah, no problem. And then you get out there and you're not ready to lead a whole assault team. You're not ready for that chaos and that confusion and that mayhem. And so about halfway through the assault, when there's, you've completely lost control, I might walk in and say, hey, Steven, I'm sending chief down there to straighten you out. And you go, Roger, thank you.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  And you get humbled. So if someone's trying to build confidence from a work perspective, we do the same thing, whether it's a business, a company, give that person a task, a project that they can handle and help them build their confidence. Now, as far as you as an individual human being, it's a very similar process. Train, study, work, practice. Train, study, work, practice. Train, study, work, practice. And eventually you will increase your confidence.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  So I, in your book, you were talking about the fact that you didn't like speaking. You didn't like public speaking. So what did you do? Did you sign up to go talk in front of a thousand people, you know, tomorrow afternoon? No, you started small and you built a little bit of confidence. And then you went a little bit bigger for an audience and the confidence grows a little bit more. Little bit bigger audience, confidence grows and you get to a point where there's no audience that's gonna stumble you in any way. So that's the same process. It's basically exposure therapy, right? It's basically exposure therapy where you expose yourself to a little bit. And this is, you know, you're talking about Jordan Peterson. Exposure therapy. I give you a little bit. I don't overwhelm you with it because if I overwhelm you with it, you're gonna be scared of it.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  I mean, if you lack confidence and I put you in charge of something that you can't handle, your confidence is gonna go back even further. So I need to give you enough exposure that you do well, increase your confidence, and you're gonna do fine.

• 24:38Steven Bartlett?

  Whenever we're swimming, I don't know, a couple of centimeters just outside of our depth in any regard, we have that thing that some people have dubbed imposter syndrome. Where we start, the story we tell ourselves about this depth is that we're a fraud. We shouldn't be out this far. We're gonna get found out. And that can sometimes, I think if we tell ourselves that story about whatever, you know, depth we're swimming at, that lowers our performance. Sometimes it can make us, our confidence decrease. What is your take on this term, imposter syndrome? Do you think it's a real thing?

• 25:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's a real thing and I don't think it's bad. I don't think it's bad because if, once again, if you're coming to work for me and you're like, I'm glad you hired me. I'm ready to take over this department. Look out. I'd be a little bit questioning the fact that you are so overconfident that you're gonna go in and do things that you might not really understand. Now, if you had a little imposter syndrome and you said, "Hey, Jocko, I really appreciate you hiring me. Um, you know, I haven't really done this type of work before. Can I ask you a couple of questions?" I'd be thinking to myself, "Okay, he's humble. He's wanting to do a good job. He doesn't think he knows everything." I'd feel more comfortable with

• 25:52Speaker 00

  someone like that. So, I don't think imposter syndrome is a bad thing. I think if you feel it, it's actually a good indication that you're humble and you have an open mind and you're gonna listen to what people have to say. So, that's number one. And number two, if you feel like you have imposter syndrome, if you're going to a meeting and you're gonna get assigned a project or you're gonna be discussing a project that you're really, "Wait, should I even be here? Should I be put in charge of this project?" What you do is you go into the meeting and you say, "Hey, everyone, I really appreciate everyone coming to the kickoff of this meeting. Hey, just so everyone knows, this is my first time running a project like this. I'm definitely gonna have some questions for somebody that's done this before. So, if you see me going off track on something and you see a mistake that I'm making, please

• 26:35Speaker 00

  let me know because what I want is for the team to win."

• 26:40Speaker 00

  Okay, there it is. It's on the table. I don't know everything. I'm not that experienced in this particular thing, but I'm humble and willing to listen and I want the team to do well. No more imposter syndrome.

• 26:52Steven Bartlett?

  Is that the same in the Navy SEALs? Because one would assume that you, you know, as a leader, you've got to tell people what to do.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  That is wrong in the Navy SEALs and that is not a good assumption. In the SEAL Teams, you, the good leaders in the SEAL Teams, absolutely have an open mind, wanna hear other people's opinions on how to execute an operation, wanna hear what shortfalls there are when a plan is presented that, "Hey, what about this and what about that?" And a good leader is not going to impose plan. As in fact, my standard operating procedure was to have my subordinate leadership come up with plans instead of me trying to come up with the plans. In fact, that's the best way to operate.

• 27:36Steven Bartlett?

  That means you ask them for the plan?

• 27:37Speaker 00

  Hundred percent. Why?

• 27:41Speaker 00

  There's a multitude of reasons. Number one, I want you to have the ownership of the plan. Right? So if I'm imposing a plan on you, then that's not really your plan. I want you to, I want you to come up with a plan. And I want you to go to your team and I want you to collectively come up with a plan that you all embrace and understand and buy into. So it's going to be a better plan from your perspective if you come up with it. Also, if I come up with a plan, I'm in the plan. So when I'm in the plan, I can't see the plan as well. I want to be outside the plan, looking at it from the outside, from a different perspective, where then I can see the holes in the plan and I can ask you some questions about the plan that you came up with.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  And finally, if I'm coming up with a plan, if I'm staring down at the map coming up with a plan, well, who's looking up and out? Who's looking at the follow-on operations? Who's looking at where our, our other units are out in the battlefield? Who's checking on the intelligence that we're gathering about the enemy? If I'm looking down and in, I'm not looking up and out. If I'm coming up with a plan myself, I'm looking down and in. If I'm letting you come up with a plan, I can look up and out, you can look down and in, and we can have a lot more awareness of the battlefield.

• 28:56Steven Bartlett?

  Often leaders and managers, we get, I think, caught up in,

• 29:01Steven Bartlett?

  in the proverbial trenches. We get a little bit too close to the paintings, we can't see the picture. How important do you think it is to be the leader that's able to take a step back?

• 29:13Speaker 00

  That is the job of a leader. That is the job of a leader. To take a step back, detach from the situation and see the entire picture of what is unfolding or what is being planned or what is happening. If you are in the problem, you won't see the solution to the problem. It, it, you, we will very rarely. So you have to be able to detach and that's one of the, the main things that I tried to teach young leaders when I was in the SEAL Teams. It's the same thing that I try and teach leaders now, is to take a step back, detach from the chaos, detach from the mayhem, detach from your emotions, detach from your ego and be able to assess the best way to execute and

• 29:59Speaker 00

  give, you know, the book, the book is called Extreme Ownership that you referenced. That doesn't mean that I do everything myself.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  In fact, what I want to do is I want you to take ownership. And how do I get you to take ownership? I give it to you. Hey, Stephen, how do you want to run this project? And listen, what if you come up with a terrible plan? Oh, no, no, let's say, let's say you come up with a, let's say I come up with like, I, in my mind, I've got something that's going to be a 95% solution. And I say, well, you know, I'm going to delegate. So Stephen, how do you want to do this? And you come up with like an 80% solution. Now, what should I do? I'll tell you, I'll still let you, I'll still run with your plan. I'll be like, okay, Stephen, sounds good. If you come to me with a 70% plan, I might say, hey, Stephen, what about this? And you go, oh, yeah, I'm going to make adjustment there.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  And all of a sudden we got it to a 78% plan and we're still good. If you come to me with a 20% plan, now I can ask you three or four questions before you say, hey, Jocko, let me, I'll, I'll be back in a couple of hours. I'm going to go reformulate this thing. And by the way, all that's training you, right? All those questions are training you, you coming up with a plan is training for you. Because if, if I'm got people that work for me and they can't come up with a plan by themselves, I'm complete failure as a leader. So I'm going to train you so that you can come up with plans and I can look up and out.

• 31:24Steven Bartlett?

  Takes a lot of patience, doesn't it? Because you know, you know, in those, many of those situations that you're not going to get from A to B as fast as you possibly could have.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  It's a investment in a long-term efficiency. Because even though I might have to invest a little bit more time right now, and I spent 10 minutes explaining to you why this tactic would be better than that tactic, even though it's going to cost me 10 minutes right now, or maybe half an hour, we look up in six months and you're actually coming up with better plans than me.

• 31:53Steven Bartlett?

  You know, I read throughout your books, you went from being that young teenager who passed training to really like leading the Navy SEALs in many respects.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  Well, leading an element of SEALs.

• 32:05Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. That's, um, when you look back on that accomplishment, have you figured out what it is about you in particular that allowed you, enabled you to do that? Is there something, is there, is there a muscle you grew?

• 32:26Speaker 00

  I was, I'm a hard worker.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  I, you know, I was never great at anything like as a kid. I wasn't the fastest. I wasn't the strongest. I wasn't the smartest.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  But I did, I did know that I could work hard. I had to work hard. And I listened to people. I didn't think I knew everything. Even sometimes I'll joke about, yeah, you know, when you're young and arrogant. Even when I was young and arrogant, like we all are when we're 23 years old or 22 years old and you're young, you think you know everything. Even then, I always had that little like, you don't know everything. And I think that humility paid a, played a big role in me being able to be successful. Because I was never afraid to say, hey, I'm not a hundred percent sure what to do right now. What do you guys think? Or hey, I feel like I've reached the limitations of my thought process. I need some help.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  And so I think that's one of the main reasons that I was able to, to, to do a good job. To do, to do a good job.

• 33:37Steven Bartlett?

  When I meet someone like you, I, I wonder, I go, this guy must have seen so many things. So many things that the average human being will absolutely never see. You know, and I, because you were, you were sent all around the world on some absolutely incredible, unimaginable missions for, for 20, 20 years. For, for the average person who has no idea what your eyes have seen.

• 34:04Steven Bartlett?

  Can you paint me a picture of some of those extremes?

• 34:10Speaker 00

  Well, it's war.

• 34:13Speaker 00

  So it's, it's war.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  It's people being wounded, people being killed in Iraq with the insurgents that we were fighting. It's them torturing people, mutilating their bodies, raping,

• 34:35Speaker 00

  beheading people.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  Horror.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  But you know, it's interesting when I talk to other people, when I meet people, I always think to myself, what you're saying that you think when you see me, I always think that when I see other people. Because other people, we don't know what they've been through. You don't know what kind of childhood they'd had. You don't know what kind of horrors they've seen. You don't know what kind of abuse they've suffered. You don't want to kind of, you don't know what kind of trials and tribulations other people have faced. So I don't, I look at everyone.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  And, and also the trials and tribulation that someone face, someone faces, that, that's profoundly difficult for them, regardless of what it was. Regardless of if they were a person that, you know, got injured really bad there when they were in high school, they're 15 years old and they broke their leg and they, they, they couldn't play their sport anymore. And now they're 17, but that was a traumatic thing for them. And yeah, so when I, when I look at other people, when I talk to other people, I always think everyone, everyone, every human faces challenges. And you don't know what they've been through. And they, they might've been through things that are worse than what I've been through.

• 36:12Speaker 00

  And I usually, my assumption is people have been through a lot of challenges and they, they persevered through it and here they are. So I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

• 36:29Steven Bartlett?

  But humans aren't supposed to be exposed to those kinds of images. And I think if you spoke to a trauma psychologist, they would, they would class a lot of those things that you've seen as, what they call like tall T traumas, like really, really traumatic events. How, how does someone like you go about processing those things to ensure that that trauma doesn't show up in later life? You know, we talk about soldiers coming back from war suffering with PTSD and things like that. What have you done to sort of insulate yourself or at least help you understand that some of the, some of the things you saw?

• 37:02Speaker 00

  There's evil in the world and there's evil people in the world. And evil people are going to do heinous and atrocious things.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  And that's a reality, and that's always been the reality.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  And the best thing that I can do is, well, when I was in the military, do my best to, to stop that kind of atrocious behavior. And when I'm out of the military, try not to, or try and help people move away from those thoughts. I mean, when you're talking about like your, my, my family, like my family didn't.

• 37:50Speaker 00

  They, my wife wasn't tracking what was going on when I was overseas. She didn't know what was happening. Most of the time, you know, when my guys got wounded or my guys got killed, she knew and she went to their, she went to the hospital to visit them. She went to their funerals. But I wasn't dragging her down the, the, to the depths of human nature. I took that and same with my kids. I didn't share with them that these things happen. So, and then that's, so, so I think from my perspective,

• 38:33Speaker 00

  you know, it's like the reality of the world is, yeah, there's evil people in the world. I accept that reality. I understand that reality. There's also good people in the world and there's people that do amazing things. There's people that sacrificed their lives for their friends. And that's part of humanity.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  So I like to focus on that part of humanity rather than the dark side of humanity. But if you really want to appreciate the,

• 39:10Speaker 00

  the light and the good, then you have to recognize that there's darkness and there's evil.

• 39:15Steven Bartlett?

  Was there a hardest day while you were in the Navy SEALs? Is there a day you look back on and say that was the, the most sort of emotionally testing day?

• 39:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, losing guys in combat.

• 39:32Steven Bartlett?

  And that stays with you?

• 39:35Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  Always.

• 39:41Steven Bartlett?

  I just can't imagine.

• 39:44Steven Bartlett?

  You know, I just can't. I've never lost a friend. I've got two older brothers. I've never lost my brothers. I just can't imagine. I can't imagine how difficult it is to like go forward. When you've lost, you know, you refer to these people as your brothers.

• 40:09Speaker 00

  And I'm not unique.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  And the guys we were over in the Battle of Ramadi, when we were over there, the, the army and the Marine Corps, they were losing guys every day. This is not unique. I'm not unique. There's guys that were in charge of units that lost ten, twelve, fifteen guys.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  And

• 40:35Speaker 00

  it's not unique for human beings either. Because even though you haven't lost any friends, you haven't lost any of your brothers,

• 40:44Speaker 00

  you will.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  This is part of life.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  And so

• 40:53Speaker 00

  this is part of life.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  People have, you know, everyone's died. And in combat, people have died. And people carried on. And I know that my friends that died, they would not want me to sit around and mourn and, and and break down and drink and, and pop pills. They wouldn't want me to do that at all. They'd want me to live. That's what they would want. They would want me to live. They would want me to go out and make things happen. And, and drive on and enjoy and surf and play guitar and do jujitsu. That's what they'd want me to do. Hundred percent. Hundred percent. In fact, they would be disgusted

• 41:41Speaker 00

  if what I did with the gift that they gave me was piss it away. They'd be disgusted. And I won't do that. Not, not a chance.

• 41:53Speaker 00

  I'm gonna live like they would want me to.

• 42:00Steven Bartlett?

  In those moments,

• 42:03Steven Bartlett?

  that's certainly what logic tells you. But those moments, it's hard to be logical in those moments. Right?

• 42:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  I ended up with some pattern recognition on this whole scenario.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  Unfortunately, because when you lose friends over and over and over again, you start to see what happens from an emotional perspective, from a spiritual perspective, from a physical perspective. And what I, what I

• 42:43Speaker 00

  began to recognize as a pattern is in the way that I explain this to people that go through loss like this is you're gonna have, you're not gonna be in control of your emotions sometimes. So

• 43:00Speaker 00

  and since you're 31 years old, you've had control, pretty good control over your emotions since you were seven years old or eight years old. Occasionally you'd break down, occasionally you'd lose your temper, but you've gotten more and more in control the older you've gotten. So you're not used to not being in control of your emotions. We as adults are not used to losing control of our emotions. So what's gonna happen? You lose one of your friends, you lose one of your family members, you're gonna get hit with a wave, waves of emotion that you can't control. And this sometimes causes people to, to

• 43:40Speaker 00

  really overreact and think that they're in this terrible place because they think, oh my gosh, I've been able to control my emotions for the last 30 years and now I'm losing, now I'm, I can't control my emotions. There's something wrong with me, is what they think.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  And this is what I learned is that those waves of emotion, they're gonna, they're gonna roll back. And you're gonna, you're gonna get control again. You take a breath and then you're gonna get hit with another storm, but it's gonna go away. And you're gonna get hit with another storm, but it's not gonna be as strong. And then it's gonna go away and you're gonna get hit with another storm. It's gonna be a longer period of time and it's not gonna be as strong. And what this is, is this is your, this is you processing what happened.

• 44:35Speaker 00

  And eventually you do get, you regain control of your emotions and there's still gonna be times. There's still gonna be times where you're gonna be three years, five years, 10 years down the road. You're gonna hit with a wave of emotion and you're gonna be caught off guard. It's gonna catch you. I had a guy on my podcast that was in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. And so we talked about World War II where he was, you know, a young private soldier. And then he was a little bit more senior when he was in Korea. And then in Vietnam, he was a battalion commander. So he's in charge of 700 guys.

• 45:18Speaker 00

  And we were talking and I, I said something along the lines of, I asked him something about his, the casualties that he took in his battalion. And so now this is, you know, he was in Vietnam in, I don't know, 1967 or 1968. So it's been 60 years. And I asked him about casualties that he took and he got choked up. Got choked up, lost control of his emotions for a, for a second. And when I saw that.

• 45:52Speaker 00

  I felt so relieved.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  Felt so relieved because I thought, oh, it's always gonna be like this. And that's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's normal. Lost your friends. Lost your brothers.

• 46:08Speaker 00

  Is it? Is it wrong that you?

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Get choked up when you talk about it? Nothing wrong with that. Here's a guy that lost his, lost, lost some of his men 60 years ago and he's getting choked up right now. Why? Because he loved them.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  Because he, he wishes he could have brought him through that conflict and he didn't. And he feels it. And he lived a normal life. Retired from the army, got follow on jobs and had another career.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  But he lost his friends, his brothers, his men, and that hurts. And it's not gonna go away. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with you. Nothing wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with me.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  Do I get choked up sometimes? Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  I lost some of my best friends. Does that hurt? Yep.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  Do I wallow in that? No. Do I dwell in those emotions? Nope. I don't. And they wouldn't want me to. And they'd be disappointed if I did.

• 47:19Steven Bartlett?

  I think it's really important because as men, we, we don't, we get conflicting messages about emotion and how to express it and what that looks like. And if there's weakness to certain emotions or if, you know, but the, it's, the psychology seems to be pretty clear that the suppression of these emotions, the trying to hide them, the total compartmentalizing of them doesn't actually make them go, go away. They just appear somewhere else in a bottle or in some kind of recreational drug or somewhere else. So.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  And nor does suppressing them isn't gonna help. And nor is letting them run your life. So. Because you're sad, now you're gonna make a bunch of bad decisions because you're sad? No, no, it doesn't, doesn't work like that. Doesn't work like that. You're sad? Okay.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  You get emotional sometimes? Okay. Got it. Now, get control of your emotions and carry on with your life. And sometimes you're gonna get hit with those waves. And that's okay. I, I think that's a big misconception. It, it sort of relates to what you're saying.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm, I'm having an emotional moment right now? There's something wrong with me. No, there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. The other extreme is, oh, I'm letting my emotions run my life? And I'm making a bunch of bad decisions? And my excuse is, well, you know, I lost some friends? Or I had this traumatic experience happen to me? That's why I'm doing, that's just an excuse. And it's a very easy excuse. And in society, the last thing I want to say to you is, well, you can't act like that. Oh, you lost one of your friends? Hey, that doesn't mean you can make excuses. You can't use that as an excuse. No, I, I go, hey, man, okay. That's what I say, right? I'm a polite person. I'm an empathetic person. You're sad, you're making bad decisions.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  You're saying it's because you lost your friend? Or you went through this traumatic thing? And I go, okay.

• 49:13Speaker 00

  How can I help? Instead of saying, hey, man, yeah. Guess what? It's time to carry on.

• 49:21Speaker 00

  Don't, don't dwell on, I, I, I've told a thousand veterans this. Remember, don't dwell. Remember, remember your friends, don't dwell in the past, though. Remember, don't dwell. That's what we have to do.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  And the emotions, yes.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  Embrace those emotions? But don't let those emotions embrace you. Don't let those emotions run your life. There is, there is a, because people say, oh, suppressing your emotions is bad. Okay, so I'm just gonna let all these emotions out? And they're gonna run my life now? No, no. No, at a certain point, you say, okay. My emotions are now leading me down the wrong path. I'm in control. I'm not going to allow my emotions to make my decisions. They're in the calculus. I'm not saying take your emotions out of the calculus, but they have to be one component of your calculus, not the whole equation. The equation has to include emotions, yes.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  Logic, yes. Future, yes. Goals, yes. Family, yes. Work, yes. Finances, yes. All those things have to be in the calculus. Emotions has to be a part of that calculus. You can't pull them out of there or they'll bite you. But you can't make them the overwhelming denominator of everything that you do, or it's going to be problematic.

• 50:49Steven Bartlett?

  I heard you tell a story which I thought was really inspiring. Actually, I was just listening to it before you came about a friend of yours who was going through hardship in their life. And you, your advice for them was to start walking.

• 51:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, it was a guy who was, yeah, going through hardship with his job, with his marriage. And the marriage was coming to an end. The job was not, was going to come to an end as well. And he's out there and doesn't know what to do. And the analogy that I set up for him is if I'm in the woods, which is where you are right now, you're in the woods, and you don't know where to go. Because the wife's not there anymore. The job's not there anymore. You don't know where to go right now. So if you're in the woods and you don't know where to go, start walking. You've got to start walking because the perspective's not going to change. You have to start moving forward.

• 51:46Speaker 00

  You have to start taking steps in order to improve your vision, improve your perspective, change your perspective, make some kind of progress. And worst case scenario, you figure out that you walked the wrong direction. Okay, now you can go walk in the other direction. And that's, that's going to be fine. But standing there, lost and not doing anything is just waiting to die, waiting to starve to death. Don't let that happen.

• 52:13Steven Bartlett?

  It's overthinking. It's that anxiety. It's that ruminating that I think I've, I mean, I've done it multiple times in my life when the solution is I can't get to certainty on the problem. So I, I try and think my way out of the problem, which only seems to cause more harm than good.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's definitely a level of risk conditioning that you get inside the military because there's, you're not, you're just not going to be certain about anything. And you have to be able to say, yep, I'm going to make this decision right now. And here's what we're going to do. I'm going to make the smallest decision possible. Going to take the smallest step possible, but I'm going to take a step because I'm never going to know everything. And if I take the time to try and know everything, everything will have changed by the time I know it. So I'm going to absolutely take that step and take that action.

• 53:06Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, that's a metaphor for life as well because there's a lot of people trying to get to a hundred percent certainty, whether to leave the job or the marriage or the, start the business and they're struggling maybe at sixty, seventy, maybe eighty, ninety percent certainty. But for some reason, we seem to need, you know, certainty.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  That's why I use the, what I, what I call the iterative decision-making process. I'm only to take small steps. So am I trying to leave my, I don't like my job. I'm miserable there. Okay. Does that mean I walk in tomorrow morning and say, hey, boss, I hate it here. I quit. No, it doesn't mean that. It means I say, okay, I'm going to start putting my resume together. I'm going to start checking out LinkedIn. I'm going to start seeing what qualifications I might need that could improve my ability to get a new job. Once I've done that, I'm going to start sending out my resume. I'm going to start building some relationships with some people. And now I look up and I get another job offer.

• 54:02Speaker 00

  So I didn't make a crazy, short-term emotional decision. I made a slow, progressive, iterative decision-making process that led me from a situation that I didn't like to an opportunity that seems more promising. And this could apply to just about anything.

• 54:21Steven Bartlett?

  I see this a lot in businesses. I see that the real cost in business, I spent about 10 years working in marketing. So I was, my job was to work with the CMO and the CEO, helping them to try and make such marketing decisions. You know, invest in this platform, do this thing, whatever. And I came to learn over time that the biggest cost wasn't making a bad decision. It was the time you waste, the nine months waiting for Joanna to get back from annual leave. So we can have a meeting with Dave and procurement to get the invoice signed off. Versus the CEOs that I worked with that said, let's do it now, when the decision was quite clearly low cost, relatively low cost, all reversible.

• 55:01Steven Bartlett?

  It was always speed that seemed to pretty much speed that seemed to win out because most decisions are either reversible or actually more inconsequential than you think.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  Very few decisions are final. Very few decisions are final. Even something like buying a house. Should I buy this house? Oh my gosh, it seems, if you buy a house and you decided it wasn't the house that you wanted, you sell the house. It's like, now, look, could you get caught in a bad market and could, yeah, that can absolutely happen. So you need to be smart about your decisions that you make. But most things are not as final as they seem. Most things you're going to be able to, and we, look, you paid the realtor. So you lost 3% there. You paid the other realtor, you lost 3%. You had to pay the mortgage fees. So you're going to lose some money, but it's not like you buy a million dollar house and then you decide you don't like it. You don't lose a million dollars.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  You lose 80 grand or whatever, you know? And it's okay, two years, three years, you get it back. So people think of decisions as being permanent. Yeah, if you're in marketing and you approach me and you say, hey, listen, CEO, there's a new marketing.

• 56:10Speaker 00

  Opportunity that we'd like to get you into. And I go, how much it costs? And you say a million dollars. And I say, well, that's a lot of money. Is there, can I try it for a shorter period of time? Well, yeah, but you won't get as much for your, for, you won't get as much volume. And I say, okay, well, still, I don't want to invest that much because I'm not sure about it. Let's test it and see where it goes. And you say, oh, okay, we'll try that. And here's a hundred grand and let's see what feedback we get. And if it's good, it's good. If it's not, we go somewhere else.

• 56:38Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think you're conditioned in some ways to have this sort of bias towards taking action? Because if your background in the SEALs, there was often some kind of time urgency. There was some factor that's causing you to have to take a decision. Is that?

• 56:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:53Steven Bartlett?

  In business and life, there's not, there's not like, we're going to lose this or someone's going to die. There's going to be an attack.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  In the business world, the consequences are prolonged and usually not as extreme. So you can get away with less action, even though eventually it will catch up with you. And you've got an example that in your book and the, the father, son deal. And one of them takes nine months to execute and the other one executes immediately. And the one that executes immediately is successful. The one that doesn't takes nine months to execute fails. So eventually inaction will cost you. In, and you say interestingly that, oh, in the SEAL teams, you must be conditioned to do this. I had to condition people to take action, even in the SEAL teams.

• 57:38Speaker 00

  Even a young SEAL leader who you would think would be by nature aggressive and an action taker. You put them in a pressure situation where there's not a ton of information and they need to make a decision. They don't want to act either. So one of the things that I would teach was that their default mode was to be aggressive. Their default mode was to take action. I would teach that. Same thing we just discussed. I wouldn't say, hey, look, that means you have to take action. But your default setting should be, I'm going to do something. Cause I'd have a young SEAL officer and there'd be some training mission and there'd be a problem in a building. And there'd be a bunch of paintball flying around in there and he wouldn't want to go solve that problem. He'd back away from that problem and I would have to go like push him in the back and say, you see that problem over there?

• 58:22Speaker 00

  You gotta go solve that problem. It's not going to go away. You gotta be aggressive. That's gotta be your default mode is to take action and make things happen. Because most human instinct is to wait.

• 58:34Speaker 00

  Most human instinct is to hesitate. Most human instinct is to let things go longer and stick with the status quo. And that seems to be on the, on the front, the lowest risk in the situation is to not do anything. It usually appears to be the lowest risk. But just like the example that you gave in your book, it's, it definitely seems lower risk. Oh, well, he wants money, wants investment, new thing. I don't know. The lowest risk in that situation is not do anything. And that's what many people do, whether they're in the SEAL teams or whether they're in business. So to train people to, oh, I need to take risk, some level of risk, take action. Because in the long run, I say seven out of 10.

• 59:18Speaker 00

  Seven out of 10 times, action is better than inaction. 70% of the time, there's definitely times where you gotta hesitate. There's definitely times where you gotta hold back. There's definitely, and that's the other book you got there is called the dichotomy of leadership. Because there's times, yes, absolutely, action. Aggression. There's also times, the other end of the spectrum was like, now's not the time to make a move. So it's, it's definitely a dichotomy. But the, to me, 70% of the time, better take that action. That's gotta be your default mode.

• 59:53Steven Bartlett?

  I asked you what your hardest day in the SEALs were, and you said about losing friends. What was, what was your proudest day? Is there a proudest day where you go, do you know what? I, I really showed up in a, in a way that I, to a standard that I held myself to. And because I did, we accomplished something great together against the odds.

• 1:00:14Speaker 00

  There's a multitude of times where I was in Iraq. I was in a detached moment in time, you know, moving down a street, sitting in a vehicle, maneuvering, and I was, and I was watching my guys. I could see my guys, and I could see what they were doing. And I could see.

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  One of the most beautiful things in the world, which was guys that were exceptional at their job, working together as a team, maneuvering, protecting each other, accomplishing the mission.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  And I got to see that many times. And that's always, it had nothing to do with me. Had to do with them. Had to do with being able to see,

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  look, were we perfect? No. But were there moments when you see an element cover and move for each other

• 1:01:24Speaker 00

  on the battlefield? A simple plan with the right priorities? With decentralized command? Was there times when I got to see all those things?

• 1:01:37Speaker 00

  Yes. That without a doubt, those were the best days.

• 1:01:43Steven Bartlett?

  Says something about, you know, and I think I've kind of seen this throughout your work is you have a real focus on service, serving others as a path to, I guess, fulfilling yourself. And we often think, I think many people think in life that the path to self fulfillment is to serve yourself. But it seems that you've kind of figured out that the path is by serving others.

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that's, there's, there's an underlying core component and belief and, and innate DNA in the SEAL teams.

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  And that is you take care of your, you take care of your friends. And, and that's not, in fact, if you're the type of person that doesn't take care of your friends, you're not going to be a good SEAL. You're not going to be a good SEAL. If, if you put yourself before the team, look, you can be a great shot. You can be strong. You can be fast, all those things. But no one's going to really want you in a platoon if you put yourself above them. And people don't really talk about that. No one ever told me that, but you feel it. And if you're, if you're not self-aware.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  You could, you might slip into where you're looking out for yourself and it's a problem. And this happens in life too. You know, if you're, if you, it happens in business where I see a guy that he's taking care of himself. And, and you know, it's a smart guy and he usually thinks he's pretty smart and usually thinks he's a little bit smarter than everybody else. And usually thinks that no one else is going to notice that he's taking care of himself and everybody sees it.

• 1:03:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  And they dig themselves a grave. They, they dig themselves a graves and they, I'm not saying they don't get away with it a little bit. Usually they get a couple of promotions, you know, they get to a spot, but ultimately people don't want to work with that person. And so they burn their relationships and they don't do as well as they should.

• 1:03:44Speaker 00

  And which is the, the kind of nice thing is if you take care of other people, they'll take care of you. If you screw other, over other people, you're, you're going to get screwed over. So yeah, I think there's, there's, there's definitely that underlying theme in the SEAL teams. I've seen it now in business and it is, it is, it is going to, if you, if you look out for yourself all the time,

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  it's going to catch up with you.

• 1:04:14Steven Bartlett?

  I think everyone can relate in this, if anyone's ever worked in a business and they have colleagues. I think everyone will be able to think about the colleague who is always seeking credit, is, um, is always, you know, being selfish in the way that they're showing up. And then they can also think about the colleague who's the complete opposite of that. And it's often, it's funny, it was making me think as you were speaking that leadership is in fact, in many respects, it's given, it's not taken. I, the person that's showing up for other people, but also delivering on their own work is often kind of elected the leader of the group. This is, I was, you know, we talk a lot in business. I think it was Steve Jobs that said, the very, very best leaders in my organization were those that were so good at their job

• 1:04:56Steven Bartlett?

  and they were never thinking about like being a leader, but that's the reason they ultimately became it.

• 1:05:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. When people ask me and I got a, I got a book I wrote called Leadership Strategy and Tactics, like how to get promoted? How do you get promoted? Don't worry about getting promoted. Focus on the team, focus on the mission, focus on doing a good job, focus on supporting your teammates. If you do those things, you're gonna get promoted. And it takes, you'll have this, you know, the dark part of your personality will say, yeah, but they're not gonna notice. They need to see me now. And you'll raise your hand and say, I want credit for that. And the minute you do that, the minute you raise your hand and say, give me credit, your credit goes down. It's an unfortunate truth. The minute you ask for the accolades, your accolades are decreased because every, you're looking out for yourself and everyone can smell that, that they don't like it.

• 1:05:46Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, you're saying that the mission, I'm more important than the mission in some respects.

• 1:05:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, terrible, terrible.

• 1:05:52Steven Bartlett?

  Did you have people like that in the, in the services when you were, you were out there? People that were clearly selfish in the seals?

• 1:06:00Speaker 00

  Absolutely, yep.

• 1:06:01Steven Bartlett?

  How did you deal with that?

• 1:06:04Speaker 00

  Well, if they were my boss, then I would make them look good.

• 1:06:12Speaker 00

  Build a good, great relationship with them. If they were my peer, I'd make them look good, build a great relationship with them. If they worked for me, I'd make them look good, build a great relationship with them.

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  I think that as you, you know, some people that have that kind of, you know, they've got some kind of, is it a defect? I think it's probably a little bit of a defect, but they, they just, they just feel like they need that recognition. They feel like they need to take care of themselves. And again, going back to what I was saying earlier, like, what did they go through in their life that makes them think that they gotta look out for themselves? And it'd be kinda nice if I could be a person that they go, man, this guy's treating me really good.

• 1:06:59Speaker 00

  And maybe I could help them transform from someone that doesn't trust that they're going to get the recognition that they need to, hey, there's good people out there and I'd like to be a part of this team.

• 1:07:13Steven Bartlett?

  Were you ever successful in that transformation?

• 1:07:15Speaker 00

  I was successful. I was also unsuccessful. You know, some people are, some people, they have that defect and it's strong and they're going to look out for themselves. And there's very little you can do about it. And you, you know, you try, try, but it's, it's a very, the ego is a very, very powerful thing. I mean, you know, the ego is so powerful that there's countless cases of military history where a human being got himself and possibly his troops or his troops killed because of his ego. So if you can die because of your ego, you can absolutely make some pretty dramatic mistakes in the

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  business world because of your ego. And it happens all the time. It happens all the time.

• 1:08:05Steven Bartlett?

  Leaving, leaving the military, I have this quote where you said, so I'd say if there's anything that I struggle with now, it's just that, does anything else matter? And the answer is no. The answer is no. Nothing else matters. Nothing else is close. So I have to deal with that. You said that on the Tim Ferriss podcast, talking about your time in the services, but also more specifically the battle of Ramadi, Ramadi, as being the highlight of your life. How does one go through sort of 20 years of high intensity combat and all that adrenaline and all of the, you know, gosh, it's harder to think of many

• 1:08:47Steven Bartlett?

  greater senses of like purpose and fulfillment and mission and then real life?

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:59Speaker 00

  So number one, as I mentioned earlier, remember but don't dwell. And have you seen the movie Napoleon Dynamite? No, that's a bummer. There's a character in the movie Napoleon Dynamite. His name is Uncle Rico and Uncle Rico played football in high school. And now Uncle Rico lives in a van and sells cookingware. So he kind of peaked in high school and he lives in the past. He's always talking about state championships and if he would have had that extra point and if coach would have put him in, he's got, he's living in the past.

• 1:09:37Speaker 00

  And so while that quote right there, no doubt that you just read from me is accurate. I mean, there, there will not be, I don't think, anything in my life that will have as much intensity, as much mission focus, as much meaning, as much, as much opportunity, as much loss, like that is, combat is, is like life, but amplified and intensified. So every emotion that you have, like you have an emotion when you, when you formulate a new plan and when you sell a business or buy a business, you have emotions.

• 1:10:21Speaker 00

  That's like combat, but it's amplified, it's intensified and it's, it's a lot more. So the, that quote that you read is true. Nothing will compare to that. It, it won't. But I don't want to be like Uncle Rico, living in the past, talking about how this is what it used to be like, and if only, yeah, there was my big game. I don't want to do that. I want to, as I said earlier, I want to remember, but I don't want to dwell in the past. Has it ever crossed your mind to go back? In any capacity? Oh, yeah. Of course. Yeah. Every time like a, every time a war breaks out somewhere, you, you, you want to get your, get your knife out, sharpen it up and let's rock and roll. Of course. Because.

• 1:11:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, because of that quote right there, like, this is, this is it. Like, that's, that's it. I'm lucky that I got to do what I got to do. You know, like, that's a blessing. It's a, it's the, it's what I wanted to do since I was a little kid. And I got to do it. And so if you ask me if I got the chance to do it again, would I? Yeah, I would, 100%.

• 1:11:29Steven Bartlett?

  You could there, right? You could go be involved in some capacity in the SEALs.

• 1:11:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's ways, there's things that I could do to, you know, like, be a gunslinger again and all that. But there's also, it's also not the same. So, you know, if I, because I retired from the Navy and, and so I'm not in the military anymore. I still work with the military. I still train the military. But

• 1:11:56Speaker 00

  to go and be a gunslinger again, um, now you're, now you're doing something different. Now you are a mercenary. Now it's a different situation. And the, that component that you talked about of, like, mission, brotherhood, is not going to be the same for me. And, and quite frankly, I think that I, part of me wants to not sour that memory and, and all those memories. I don't wanna, I don't wanna, you know, I don't, I don't wanna, I don't wanna sour that memory.

• 1:12:34Speaker 00

  I have a beautiful, beautiful memory and I don't wanna tarnish it with me chasing around the past.

• 1:12:45Speaker 00

  You know, in fighters, they retire from fighting and then they, they just, they, they wanna go back, they do it again, and it's just not the same.

• 1:12:54Steven Bartlett?

  Anderson Silva was like that for me. He was Superman and then he went back a couple of times and I didn't wanna watch him getting beat up. It was like...

• 1:13:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, that's how, that's, that's a, I feel like that. I feel like that. I don't, don't think I could rematch my, my Anderson Silva, the Spider championship run. I don't think I could rematch that.

• 1:13:14Steven Bartlett?

  Discipline is freedom. The title of your, um, your book here. Discipline equals freedom. Now that seems like it's untrue because when people think of discipline, they think of rigidity and taking away their freedom, having to be disciplined. Why is, why does discipline equal freedom?

• 1:13:37Speaker 00

  Because the more discipline you have in your life, the more freedom you will end up with. So if you lack the discipline to exercise and eat healthy, you will end up being a slave to disease. If you lack the discipline to work hard, save your money, you will end up a slave to finances. If you lack the discipline to manage your time correctly, you will end up with no free time.

• 1:14:20Speaker 00

  If you have self-discipline, if you have the discipline to save your money and work hard and invest your money properly, if you have the discipline to manage your time correctly and not waste a bunch of time, if you have the discipline to exercise and eat healthy, you will end up with freedom. And it's, I know it's a counterintuitive, it's contrarian, but I've seen this over and over and over again. If you want freedom in your life, you have to have discipline.

• 1:14:59Steven Bartlett?

  There's going to be some kid listening to this now. I always think about the personas that are listening and they are, you know, eating Doritos off their belly.

• 1:15:06Speaker 00

  Spit them out.

• 1:15:14Speaker 00

  Spit them out. Start now. Because if you're a kid right now and you're eating Doritos off your belly, I know they taste good and there's some immediate gratification and I get that. But I'm gonna tell you, it starts right now. Throw that bag of Doritos away. Get rid of it. Go do some pushups. Go spend $12 at the hardware store and hang up a pull-up bar in your room. And start doing pull-ups. And if you can't do one pull-up, hang on that bar. And you're gonna start to get a little bit stronger. You're gonna start to get a little bit healthier. You're gonna start to get more focused. You're gonna start to become more resilient. And you're gonna start to be able to do a pull-up and you're gonna start to eat healthy all the time.

• 1:15:55Speaker 00

  And you're gonna start to understand the world better. And you're gonna start to progress in every aspect of your life. And you'll see that if you have that kind of discipline right now, you're gonna end up with freedom. And if you don't have that kind of discipline, and you keep eating those Doritos, and you don't work hard, and you don't exercise, and you don't apply yourself, you're gonna end up... You're gonna end up shackled. You're gonna be shackled by a boss

• 1:16:39Speaker 00

  that you don't like, doing a job that you don't like to do, with sicknesses and diseases that you don't want, relying on people that you can't even count on. Alone. And you don't have to. But if you have discipline, if you have discipline, you will attain freedom.

• 1:17:13Steven Bartlett?

  And it starts with just spitting the Doritos out.

• 1:17:15Speaker 00

  Starts with spitting the Doritos out. Yes, indeed.

• 1:17:20Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things you do, which is, I mean, you're super famous for it, is this idea of waking up early. Now, I'm not someone that wakes up early.

• 1:17:27Speaker 00

  I know, you, no alarm clock and you're usually up by 11.

• 1:17:30Steven Bartlett?

  Well, so no meetings before 11.

• 1:17:32Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:17:33Steven Bartlett?

  So I stay up quite late.

• 1:17:35Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:17:38Steven Bartlett?

  What's the best case you could give me for changing that? And do I need to change that? Because I, what I, what I do is, you know, I flew into LA, I'm jet lagged, I'm flying back in a couple of days. I'm going to be jet lagged when I land as well. So what I'm trying to do is just protect my sleep at all costs, because I've come to learn that it's really the foundation of my performance. So if I, if I'm unslept and I show up at work, the chance that I'm not going to show up correctly in a variety of ways, emotionally, creatively, whatever, is high, and that for me is the greatest risk. So I just, in the last sort of year or two of my life, I've just said, okay, prioritize sleep, because then everything else seems to follow. But when I heard that you wake up sometimes at 4:45 or 4:30, like, pretty much all the time.

• 1:18:19Steven Bartlett?

  And you, I've literally seen you on social media upload your, your alarm clock, day after day after day. Okay, shit, maybe I should rethink.

• 1:18:28Speaker 00

  No, I think if you're, if you've got a system that's working well for you, and then I wouldn't change anything, right? If you feel like you're performing well, you're physically healthy, you're getting all the work done that you need to do, you're a naturally more of a late night, late morning type person, I'd run with it. It's, if you were telling me, yeah, sometimes I get up, sometimes I don't, sometimes I work late, sometimes I don't, I'm not, don't work out every day, you know, sometimes I feel groggy, if you were telling me that kind of thing, I'd say, okay, pick a time and start waking up at that time every day. Doesn't have to be 4:40, it could be 8 o'clock, could be 7 o'clock, doesn't matter. Could be 11 o'clock. But try and go to bed around the same time, and try and wake up around the same time,

• 1:19:12Speaker 00

  and that's going to be a great foundation for everything that you're doing. And I would say when you wake up in the morning, do some kind of exercise. Because I think that is very helpful in getting your day started correctly.

• 1:19:27Steven Bartlett?

  What are your non-negotiables in your life in terms of habits, routines, disciplines?

• 1:19:32Speaker 00

  I wake up early. And I work out every day. That's, that's kind of my, that's, that's, those are the minimum requirements in my life. Train jiu jitsu. I, I don't get to train, train jiu jitsu every single day, but if I can train jiu jitsu, I'm going to train jiu jitsu. I'm going to work out every day. If I can surf, I'm going to surf, you know? Um, I, I obviously have to work every day. I, I work every day doing something, you know? I've got a bunch of different companies. I gotta write books, podcasts, so I, I work every day.

• 1:20:10Steven Bartlett?

  Are you ever undisciplined?

• 1:20:12Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, um, uh, chocolate chip cookies. Yep. They're a, they're a, a discipline lapse for me. Uh, yeah, so, yeah, I'm, I'm not a cyborg.

• 1:20:26Steven Bartlett?

  When people look at someone like you, that's, you know, done all the things you've done. You've been a SEAL and you've, you've written all these books and started these companies. And actually, the drink I'm drinking now is one of your, your products, which is the, what's that in front of you?

• 1:20:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a, it's an energy drink called the go.

• 1:20:39Steven Bartlett?

  Called go. Um, delicious, by the way.

• 1:20:41Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:20:41Steven Bartlett?

  I think my mouth has been connected to my brain during this interview, so I think it's working. Um, I understand there's misconceptions that people have of me because they assume, it's kind of like the halo effect. We assume because someone's done something well, they do all things well. Um, but there are so many things that I think would really liberate people and make them inspired if they could see how deficient I was in so many things in my life. You know, because they just assume that if you've done one thing, well, you have a good podcast, you have a, you must be like, you know, the perfect picture of. What are the big misconceptions generally, moving away from this idea of imperfection, but just generally about Jocko? Because you've, you realize you've become a bit of a character, right?

• 1:21:23Steven Bartlett?

  You know, like Navy SEAL, that comes with an identity package.

• 1:21:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the biggest misconception, I think, and it's, it's, it's not just me, but it's really the military in general, is the misconception of this kind of authoritarian, and even.

• 1:21:40Speaker 00

  Authoritarian dictatorship from a leadership perspective. And even when we were having this conversation, I said, I'm gonna let, I'm gonna let my subordinates plan. And you kind of had a stunned look on your face, like, what are you talking about? Why would you let your subordinates plan? And so there's an idea and a misconception that the leader is gonna stand up and bark all the orders. So that's one misconception. The, another one is, I look like a Neanderthal, and so people are, think I'm gonna scream and yell at everybody, and I never yell at anybody, you know? My business partner, Leif Babin, who's worked with me, who's in my task unit at SEAL Team Three, and deployed to Ramadi with me, and we, now, we've written a couple of books

• 1:22:25Speaker 00

  together, we have a business together, and he was like my direct subordinate in Ramadi, and during a workup, and, you know, like, I never yelled at him. And he likes to point out that he gave me plenty of reasons to yell at him, but never yelled at him, because what good is that? And by the way, if I have to yell at somebody, what does that say? That means, if I have to yell at you to get my point across as a leader, I've made like forty-seven other mistakes. My goal is that I don't even have to say anything. That's my goal as a leader. My goal is I don't have to say a word, and you already know what to do, and you make it happen, and I look at you and give you a thumbs up and say, good job. That's my goal.

• 1:23:03Speaker 00

  So I think the biggest misconception is the idea of someone in the military, or myself, being a authoritarian leader, being very closed-minded, like, you know, I, I got asked a question the other day about, you know, if you were, if you were, if, if China attacked Taiwan, and you were taking troops in there, what would you be focused on? And I said, I'd be focused on keeping an open mind. Because if you have a closed mind about what the mission is, about how it's gonna happen, about what your troops are gonna do, about what the enemy's gonna do, if you have a closed mind about those things...

• 1:23:40Speaker 00

  You're gonna get caught off guard. You have to have an open mind. You have to be accepting of the information that you're receiving. You have to be accepting of the other ideas that other people have. And if you have a closed mind, you're gonna fall apart.

• 1:23:54Steven Bartlett?

  Kind of counterintuitive in some ways because the reason people often think they've been made the leader because they have loads of the correct ideas. So I think as people often climb in life, they go, well, I've been right so much that they've put me here as CEO. So now I need to defend my righteousness at all costs, even when I'm not, you know, sure, because that's a weakness.

• 1:24:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. And you quoted Steve Jobs earlier, and I think actually it's from your book, which was, I don't hire people so I can tell them what to do. I hire good people so they can tell me what to do. So, yes, in your, in a leadership position, you should be listening more than you should be talking.

• 1:24:35Steven Bartlett?

  You were talking a second ago about shouting and aggression. It made me, as you're saying, I was thinking, you know, there is a stereotype that a man is aggressive and he shouts and all those things. You know, there's a bit of a stereotype there. I, what I was actually thinking is, it's never been so unclear what a man is than it, than in 2024, in the context of how a man's men are show up. Are they meant to be masculine or feminine or somewhere in between or whatever? And for many men, you are a man's man. You know, when we think of Navy SEALs, we go, men.

• 1:25:12Steven Bartlett?

  So I was wondering, because it's, it's never been as clear, I think, what a man should be. You know, when you're raising a kid that's a man, or you, when you're being a man yourself, what do you think a man should be? And I want to give a bit more context here. There's a lot of men struggling right now. There's a lot of men, if you know, I talk about it a lot, that if you look at the stats around suicidality in the UK, the thing that's most likely to kill someone between the age of like 18 and 40 is themselves, for a man. You know, there's, men are clearly struggling in some capacity with purpose or, or meaning or something. So I almost feel like, you know, a lot of these sort of toxic influences of what a man should be have now emerged to offer answers. But I doubt those toxic influences.

• 1:25:56Steven Bartlett?

  And I say, there's got to be another role model, another sort of blueprint for what it is to show up as a man.

• 1:26:02Speaker 00

  Well, I was gonna give you a real, I guess it would have been a real cheap answer of, I think it's Marcus Aurelius, "Stop discussing what it is to be a man and be one." I was gonna walk out of here with that one. I'd be like, "Ah, pretty good question avoidance there." But there's some merit to that, right? And I was almost thinking, like, do we really not know? Do we really not know what it is to be a good man? And I would go so far as to say to be a good human being, right? Because when, a few years ago, there was these discussions going around about toxic masculinity, right? And you take these traditional masculine traits,

• 1:26:44Speaker 00

  and people were saying, "This is toxic masculinity, and they're bad." And I wrote a couple articles about it. If you take any trait of a human being, and you take it to an extreme, masculine or feminine or otherwise, you take it to an extreme, it's going to be a problem. It doesn't matter what it is. So if you take even a really positive trait like generosity, if you're a super generous person, that's wonderful. Is it possible to be too generous? Well, yes, it is. Now you're getting taken advantage of, and now you end up in an abusive relationship. Like, there's all kinds of problems that can happen. So when we talk about masculine traits, and what's a man?

• 1:27:28Speaker 00

  Well, what are some of the traditional masculine traits? To be competitive. Now, is it bad to be hyper-competitive? Where you screw people over, and you hurt your health because you want to win in this particular category? Is that bad? Yes, it is. Does that mean we have people that are not competitive at all? They don't care if they win or lose? No, that's not good either. So, that's one trait. What's another good mask? Aggression. Aggression is a masculine trait. Is it good if I'm walking into a restaurant, pushing the hostess out of my way? Of course, that's terrible. That's terrible. Is it good if you and I are working together,

• 1:28:12Speaker 00

  and I say, "Hey, shut up and do what I said"? Is that good? Nope, it's not good. So, can you take aggression too far? Yes, you absolutely can. Can you get to a point where you're not even asserting yourself at all, and you're getting... Yes, you can. Is that good? No, that's not good either.

• 1:28:30Speaker 00

  So there's a bunch of traits that we could run through that are considered traditional masculine traits. And if you take any of those traits and you take them to an extreme, they're going to be bad. Stoicism, right? Being stoic, being unemotional. Is it, is it good to have no emotions whatsoever? No, that's called a sociopath, right? Is that good? No. Is it good, like I was talking about earlier, to let your emotions run your life and make your decisions based on your emotions? No, that's not good either. What do we want to be as a, as a human, as a man? Want to be balanced? Want to be, want to be balanced. You don't want to be extreme in any direction. Even when you ask me like, oh, Jocko, what are you undisciplined on? I told you chocolate chip cookies. I could

• 1:29:13Speaker 00

  have also said, uh, yeah, sometimes I like to eat mint chocolate chip milkshakes. Sometimes I get lazy to work out. I'm like, you know what? I freaking warmed up and this sucks and I'm, I'm leaving. Uh, sometimes I'm supposed to, I was gonna write something and now I didn't write anything. I'm supposed to write a thousand words today. I didn't write any. And guess what? I didn't write any tomorrow. I'm a slacker. So if I was so disciplined that, you know, my wife was like, hey, I'd like to go out for dinner. I was like, no, I still gotta write my thousand words. Is that good? No, it's not good. So any, any characteristic, if we take it to extreme, it's going to be a problem. And so we, as people, should be balanced. And I think what

• 1:29:56Speaker 00

  we need to be attuned to is it's, it's much easier to be extreme. It's, it's much easier to be extreme. It's, it's, it's much easier to say, oh, no emotions? Cool. And turn them off. That's easier than, or, or total emotion mayhem? That's easier. It's harder to find balance. It's harder to find balance in business. It's harder to find balance in life. It's hard to find balance. And what we have to do is we have to be attuned to the, the feedback that we're getting. We have to be attuned to the feedback that we're getting. So if we're talking to our wife and she says, "You're not gonna be home for dinner again tonight for the ninth night in a row that you're gonna stay late at work."

• 1:30:40Speaker 00

  Okay, you need to be paying attention enough to say, "Oh yeah, guess what? I'm a little too focused on work right now." And then the other end of that spectrum is, "My boss says, 'Hey Jocko, you're leaving early again? Well, you know it's wrestling season. My, my daughter's got a wrestling match, so I'm gonna leave.'" Okay, I need to be attuned enough to say, "Yeah. If I focus 100% on my job, I'm gonna lose my family. If I focus 100% on my family, I'm gonna lose my job." We as humans are supposed to be balanced. And by the way, there's gonna be some things that we don't control. Somebody asked me the other day, "What did I learn about myself from the highs and lows of my life? The highest point of my life and the lowest point of my life?

• 1:31:25Speaker 00

  What did I learn about myself?" And I said, "I learned that I don't let the highs and lows affect me too much." Because we're gonna have wins, we're gonna have losses. We're gonna have successes, we're gonna have failures. We're gonna have good nights, we're gonna have bad nights. We're gonna have good relationships, we're gonna have bad relationships. We're gonna have good ideas and bad ideas. We're gonna make money, we're gonna lose money. All these things are gonna happen. And if you oscillate emotionally up and down drastically, it's gonna be problematic. So finding a good, stable, centered way to be

• 1:32:10Speaker 00

  and look at the world and take everything that you see with a little bit of a grain of salt and don't get swayed too drastically in one direction or the other, you're gonna be okay.

• 1:32:30Speaker 00

  And if I was to try and sum up some of this idea about being a man or being a good human, it's like those books, I wrote a book called Extreme Ownership. Number one, take responsibility for what you're doing. Take, take ownership of your world. Take ownership of your life. There's number one. Number two, the second book, Dichotomy of Leadership, be balanced. Be balanced. Don't be extreme. Extreme, look, do you have to sometimes get out there in the, in the fringes a little bit? Occasionally, you probably had some business situations where you're like, all right, I gotta let go half of my staff right now. That's an extreme move, but that's how we're gonna start. Do you have to do that sometimes? Yes, you do. But don't let that be where you live.

• 1:33:13Speaker 00

  Live in the center, live in a stable area, and then finally, discipline equals freedom.

• 1:33:17Steven Bartlett?

  Couple of words you used throughout this conversation make me wanna add some things to that list of what it takes to be a, maybe not a good man, but at least a happy and fulfilled man. One of the words you used is brotherhood. And I was thinking about all the things you got from your time in the SEALs, and it's almost a bit of like a microcosm of what I think a lot of men are looking for, you know, that sense of purpose, that brotherhood. And they find it these days in like video games and stuff, right? Which are, video games, I've got no, you know, I cast no judgment on people that play video games. I've played video games my whole life. But there's a, it seems like there's a reason we're getting like increasingly addicted to these video games, because they're giving us something that we're searching for in real life and not getting. You used the words brotherhood, purpose.

• 1:34:00Steven Bartlett?

  These are things that the SEALs clearly have in huge, huge amounts. Is there anything else that you'd add to that list of what it takes to feel fulfilled?

• 1:34:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, jujitsu. It's, it almost has become a joke amongst me, my friends, people that listen to me, is you got some kind of a problem in the world? You got some kind of problem in your life? Go train jujitsu. There's a reason why I say that, because the things that you just mentioned, discipline. Guess what you need to go train jujitsu when you're tired and you don't feel like it? Discipline. Guess how you feel when you're done? You feel awesome, you get a bunch of dopamine. Guess who you're there with? A bunch of dudes that you can relate to? And guess what you're gonna do together? You're gonna struggle. You're gonna go through some, some hardship together. You're gonna sweat, you're gonna choke, you're gonna get your arm broken, like, these things are gonna happen.

• 1:34:53Speaker 00

  Not gonna get your arm broken, but you may. But you're gonna, you're gonna be with a... Little brotherhood. And by the way, women train jujitsu too. My daughters all train jujitsu. It's all good. It's all good. So, yeah, jujitsu is one way. Now, look, could you go to the rock climbing gym? Yes, you could. Could you go to the CrossFit gym? Yes, you could. Could you go to the, to the? Soccer. Yeah, the soccer field? Football field? Whatever. Yeah, you can do that stuff. So, yeah, go do that stuff. Go do that stuff. That's shared suffering together with a group on a regular basis, whether you want to or not. That's some, that's, those are all little components of being in the military, being in the SEAL teams. That's what it is.

• 1:35:38Speaker 00

  That's what you're doing. What does, what does a SEAL platoon do? They train to get ready for, go to war. How do they do that? They go to the desert. They carry their guns. They run through little choreographed moves. They get hot. They carry weight. It's suffering. It's just shared suffering and they're working together and they're learning skills. That's what you're doing in a jujitsu gym. That's what you're doing on the soccer field. So, go out and do those things with other human beings and it's gonna make, it's gonna make things better for sure. It made me think of business as well. Business should be that way. If you, if you're in an organization, you're doing the exact same thing, right? We've got a problem. We need to solve it. We've got to allocate resources. We've got to come in late tonight. We got to make this thing happen. We got an emergency. Like, that's what a business is too.

• 1:36:23Speaker 00

  That's the way it should be. It should be, we're working together to solve problems. And when we're successful, we get rewarded for that. So, yes, this is called human interaction. I'm sorry that it looks like war is the best way to do it. It's not. I would much rather people start a business and create a product and, and, and create jobs. I would much rather people do that. And you can find that same kind of camaraderie in business. In fact, it's interesting, you know, I, I have a consulting business and so we work with companies and companies that went through the 2008 economic downfall, those, they're so bonded because they went through this traumatic experience together.

• 1:37:06Speaker 00

  Companies that, that kind of did well out of the gate, they're, people are leaving and people are coming, but companies that went through some trauma together, they stick together. So, yeah, if you frame things right.

• 1:37:20Speaker 00

  In your life, if you frame things, if you frame a business challenge as an opportunity to build a stronger team, if you, if you frame a personal challenge as an opportunity to overcome and improve yourself, these things that seem so horrible are actually very positive components of your existence and they're going to make you better.

• 1:37:49Steven Bartlett?

  As you said that, I thought, damn, I should take all of my teams. We should go do like a survival week.

• 1:37:54Speaker 00

  We have, uh, we, we run a program like that at Arsenal Front where we teach, we teach people like some basic tactics and we have these high-speed laser tag guns and we send them out on missions and there's explosions and there's gunfire and there's role players that are screaming and yelling and it's, it's mayhem. And those teams that go through that, they bond. They also learn how to make decisions under pressure. They also learn how to detach. They also learn the fundamental principles of combat leadership that you can apply not just to the battlefield, but you can apply to business and you can apply to your life as well. So yes, is that helpful? It absolutely is.

• 1:38:29Steven Bartlett?

  Struggle sucks.

• 1:38:31Speaker 00

  Depends on how you frame it. Right? Depends on how you frame it.

• 1:38:40Steven Bartlett?

  Cause I'm thinking about you stood at the beach, the, you know, and they say walk out, Jocko, link arms and walk out. You described that as sucking.

• 1:38:49Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:38:50Steven Bartlett?

  But what you're also saying is there's huge value in things that suck. On the, the other side of something that sucks is something worth cherishing.

• 1:39:00Speaker 00

  I would say not just huge value, but the value. The value. You wanna know if you're a, you're talking about young men that might not have any direction right now? Go, go do something that's hard. Go try and accomplish something that's hard. You may win, you may lose, you may succeed, you may fail. I'll tell you what, you'll be better. If you avoid those things that are hard, if you don't accept that challenge, if you don't step up and step into that cold water and you sit on your couch and eat Doritos.

• 1:39:39Speaker 00

  I can tell you, this is not a good move. This is not a good move.

• 1:39:45Speaker 00

  Don't do that. Don't do that. Just get up. Move towards that challenge, whatever that challenge is. Move towards that challenge and go attack it. And you may be successful and you may not be successful, but you will be better. And the next challenge? You're gonna be more prepared for. And the next challenge after that, you're gonna be even more prepared for.

• 1:40:11Speaker 00

  And you're gonna fail. And you're gonna fail. And you're gonna fail. And you're gonna fail. And then you're gonna win.

• 1:40:24Speaker 00

  And that's life.

• 1:40:27Speaker 00

  Life without those challenges?

• 1:40:32Speaker 00

  It's just existence.

• 1:40:35Speaker 00

  Don't just exist.

• 1:40:38Speaker 00

  Go live.

• 1:40:43Steven Bartlett?

  You used the word balance a second ago and um from reading through your story, it appears that when you were in the seals, you didn't have a whole lot of work-life balance. In whatever way people will define work-life balance, I'm talking specifically here about your relationships, your family, your wife.

• 1:41:01Steven Bartlett?

  I'm right in saying that you were out of balance through that season of life in terms of, you know?

• 1:41:08Speaker 00

  Yes. I was out of balance. I was out of balance.

• 1:41:15Speaker 00

  I was out of balance.

• 1:41:19Speaker 00

  But the ship was still moving in the right direction. So what does that mean? That means that my wife picked up the slack.

• 1:41:31Speaker 00

  That's what she did. So I was out of balance. She recognized it. She recognized that I had a job.

• 1:41:41Speaker 00

  And that that job was important. She recognized that

• 1:41:47Speaker 00

  I was going to war. I was taking, I was taking guys to war.

• 1:41:52Speaker 00

  My decisions

• 1:41:56Speaker 00

  could mean the lives of these guys, the deaths of these guys. My wife understood that.

• 1:42:05Speaker 00

  My wife understood that what I needed to focus on at that time was making sure that my guys and me were prepared for war. That has to be the focus. That has to be the focus.

• 1:42:21Speaker 00

  To not focus on that means I might not be coming home. Means some of those guys might not be coming home. She understood that. She knew that.

• 1:42:31Speaker 00

  She stepped up. She, I was out of balance.

• 1:42:35Speaker 00

  She was in balance. She pulled the family unit into balance. And, and

• 1:42:44Speaker 00

  I was, I treated my wife like a princess. My, I mean, I never, I never, I mean, I gave my wife everything. Except for time. I could not always give her the time that she deserved. She never complained about it one time.

• 1:43:08Speaker 00

  That's legit.

• 1:43:18Speaker 00

  She knew.

• 1:43:29Speaker 00

  She knew that. She understood it. The team.

• 1:43:35Speaker 00

  First law of combat leadership is cover and move. We work together as a team.

• 1:43:41Speaker 00

  While I was doing my job, while I was serving the country. She covered for me.

• 1:43:51Speaker 00

  Where I couldn't deliver on the home front.

• 1:43:56Speaker 00

  With three kids and then four kids, she covered. The finances, the water heater that's broken, the car tire that needs changing. She did all that stuff.

• 1:44:09Steven Bartlett?

  I can see the emotion in your face when you say that.

• 1:44:13Steven Bartlett?

  Where does that come from? What is that emotion?

• 1:44:20Speaker 00

  That's appreciation.

• 1:44:27Speaker 00

  Appreciation, it's like,

• 1:44:30Speaker 00

  I'm gone. And she's there. She doesn't know what's gonna happen to me. She doesn't know if I'm coming home.

• 1:44:39Speaker 00

  She's got three freaking kids running around.

• 1:44:42Speaker 00

  Like, and this is my wife, guess what? There's hundreds of thousands of military wives that did the same thing. And spouses as well. Because there's, there's guys that are married to females that go on deployment as well. That hold the line and, and do the job on the home front.

• 1:45:05Speaker 00

  And, you know, they, they don't, they don't get the appreciation. The outward appreciation, the recognition that the people that are in the military get. But they deserve it.

• 1:45:20Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think you could ever express the gratitude you have for, for her? In words? Do you think, do you think it's possible for her to know how much you appreciate her for holding the line? And for covering you?

• 1:45:35Speaker 00

  Do I think I could express it?

• 1:45:38Speaker 00

  In words? Probably not. Does she know?

• 1:45:44Speaker 00

  Yes, she does.

• 1:45:47Steven Bartlett?

  Jock, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. They leave it in this book. Question that's been left for you.

• 1:45:58Steven Bartlett?

  If you could bring someone back who's no longer with us and have a conversation with them, who would it be and what would that conversation entail?

• 1:46:14Speaker 00

  Well,

• 1:46:16Speaker 00

  I'd bring back Mark Lee, Mikey Monsoor and Ryan Job.

• 1:46:27Speaker 00

  And I'd tell them thank you.

• 1:46:45Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you.

• 1:46:53Steven Bartlett?

  What would you be thanking them for?

• 1:46:58Speaker 00

  Everything.

• 1:47:08Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, thank you.

• 1:47:11Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you for, I mean, the list is quite extensive, but thank you for putting your life on the line to make the world a better place. That's, I think, a level of gratitude and appreciation that we can't really express in words to people like you that put your lives on the line and sometimes don't come back from war and put your families through things that the average person frankly wouldn't be willing to do for the sake of an important cause. Thank you for that. Thank you on behalf of all of the people that will never be able to say it to you. Thank you for what you're doing in this chapter of your life because you are, maybe whether you know it or not, you are saving, improving and changing lives with everything you do, with your incredible podcast, with all the books you've written.

• 1:47:55Steven Bartlett?

  You've written this, you know, you're writing children's books as well now to try and help shift the mindset of people at the very, while they're still seeds and they're formative. I think that's also going to change, improve lives. And thank you for all the inspiration you've given me over the years because you'll never get to see all of the people who hear a line that you say, the way that you say it, the stories that you tell. And for some of those people, it's just the subtle nudge that they need to take that first step, to spit the dirt out and to change their lives. You know, when I, when I think about my friendship circle and I told, told some of my friends that are speaking to you today, those are young men and women that can all pinpoint the moment where they encountered you and they can pinpoint how it moved their life forward in some way.

• 1:48:39Steven Bartlett?

  You'll never meet these millions and millions of people, but I just want you to know for sure that they're there and they're watching now and they've been watching and they'll continue to watch. So, Jocko, thank you.

• 1:48:48Speaker 00

  It's been an honour. It was an honour to serve and thanks for having me on here. Appreciate it.

• 1:49:14Speaker 00

  You.