Jocko Underground: How to Get Your Wife on The Path | Wife Won't Let Me Be The Man of The House

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast number 201. Sitting here with Echo Charles, we have received questions from you, the troopers out in the field. And we will respond with answers, recommendations, or courses of action that may help you make good decisions and move forward.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Or all three.

• 0:22Jocko Willink?

  On the path.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  On the path. Yeah, hell yeah. Okay, first question. Hey Jocko Echo, I've been with my wife now for 11 years, since freshman year of high school. We've been married for two years and have a nine month old. I found the path in college and have rarely strayed since. My wife can get on the path for short bursts, but often sizzles out, I think you mean fizzles out, before seeing real motivational results. I've been trying to trust, respect, influence, and care for a few years now, but this has often led to miss my goals, workouts, and lose heads of steam versus bringing her up. If I bring up the slightest hint of this, this subject, it often, it's often met with, so you're saying I need to work out more attitude.

• 1:06Jocko Willink?

  Oof.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  I understand. I've tried leading by example without being too hard charging. I have also tried doing things with her, with her at her pace, like pickleball and walks, etc. If she doesn't have the same goals as me, I get it, but it has come to the point where I get judged for waking up early to get to the gym before, before family is, is up because my alarm disrupts her sleep, saying she wishes I could just spend time with her in the morning. Then I do that, workouts get missed, and I feel like I'm setting a bad example. What are the next steps of influence when a person disregards all potential they have to make a difference? Thanks for the constant advice and motivation.

• 1:54Jocko Willink?

  Um, well, I'm glad you mentioned, uh, trust, listen, respect, influence and care. Cause we definitely wanna have a good relationship with our spouse. That's the mother of our child. Um, you know, uh, I think, I think broadly speaking, I would be trying to get things done that I need to get done. And I would give her space, right? Dude, she's got a nine month old. She's tired. Like she's got a lot of things going on. Uh, what can you do? How can you give her some space? Can you get a vibrating alarm that you wear on your wrist? It doesn't wake her up when you get up in the morning?

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good.

• 2:24Jocko Willink?

  People have always asked me like, oh, you know, don't you wake up your wife? No, but I have the blessing that my wife is a heavy sleeper and she just, she gets up pretty early now, but back in the day, like she would just sleep through, you know? And I would, I would shut my alarm off quick or whatever. Um, yeah, maybe it's a vibrating watch or a vibrating pillow or some, some way. Like, how can we give her space? And then let's not talk about it all the time, right? You gotta give her some space. Get the workouts done when she doesn't really know it, you know what I'm saying? And then spend time with her in the morning. That's what, that's what we wanna do. It sounds like the, uh, trustless and respect, influence, care. They're kinda outbound right now. You know what I mean?

• 3:08Jocko Willink?

  You're on send mode instead of receive, like receive some of this stuff. How can you, and I, I get it. You did the pickleball thing, like, you know, you did the walks. Letting her influence what the workout's gonna be. But even those things, you know, if you, if you label it as a workout, it dude, it doesn't, it doesn't help. You know what I'm saying? If you put that label on it, in her mind, it's a, it's a workout.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:32Jocko Willink?

  It's not, it's not what she wants to be doing. So you might have to stretch that a little bit more. You might have to figure out what she really wants to do. Maybe she wants to, you know, go to a movie with you. Maybe she wants to play a board game with you. Maybe she wants to go bird watching with you. I don't know. But let's go beyond something that has to be a physical thing. And you know, anything that we can do to stretch her thing to make it into a workout, like pickleball. Alright, so that's just.

• 4:00Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of not really being influenced by her.

• 4:07Jocko Willink?

  I don't mean this how I mean it, how it's gonna sound, but like do the workout stuff kind of behind her back. You know what I'm saying? Not, not like a thing, not sneaking around, but like kind of behind her back where it's, you know, it's, she barely even notices that it's going down.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  On your own time.

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. There's a bunch of things that could be happening here, right? She,

• 4:31Jocko Willink?

  like most people, are a little bit intimidated slash guilty slash jealous about someone else getting after it. We all are. Do you ever, do you ever like your, whatever, for whatever reason, you're doing something early in the morning? Something not physical. And like, let's say you had to drive to work early in the morning one day. And it's four o'clock in the morning, you're going to catch a flight. And as you're leaving, someone's running.

• 4:59Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 5:01Jocko Willink?

  Someone's out on a run. And you go, dang dude, like you, if you didn't, if you didn't proactively say, respect. You reactively would say, what the hell is wrong with that guy? I'm saying.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Get a life.

• 5:14Jocko Willink?

  A little jealousy. A little jealousy, a little, little intimidation, a little guilt. So, and these are you and me, bro. We work out a lot, you know, and we still get that little bit of twang. So, so, so for someone that's, you know, just had a kid nine months ago and is trying to keep life together, maybe wasn't it that physical before? And now she sees the dude running in the morning, it's like, what's wrong with that guy? It's really a little bit of intimidation, it's a little bit of guilt. So we need to kind of massage her through those feelings, cause they're there and bring her slowly on board. Is a plan, right? What can you do stuff, what can you do stuff with the baby? You know, like even going for walks with the baby?

• 5:57Jocko Willink?

  Those, those kids fall asleep in the rock, in the thing, right? Um, we have to let her find the path on her own.

• 6:08Jocko Willink?

  We have to let people find the path on their own. We cannot force them on the path. We can't force feed them the discipline because they will throw it up all day long. When you force feed people discipline, they hate it. They hate it. Look, they already kind of hate it when they force feed it themselves. When they voluntarily drink discipline, they already don't like it, kind of, right? They might like their feeling afterward. They might like the results if they can think strategic for a little bit of time. But most of the time it's like, no, dude. I don't want this. This tastes bad to me right now, and therefore I don't want it. What do you got for a home gym? Again, this is kind of violating what I talked about of like doing things kind of behind her back. But have you talked about a home gym?

• 6:53Jocko Willink?

  Have you maybe thrown a little? You know, a, a, a, a stair stepper in the garage with a squat rack? You know what I mean? Where like, hey, just, just make it a little bit easier, make it a little bit. You know, even for you, you said you got to go to the gym in the morning. Waking up early to get to the gym, to get the gym in before. So I don't know how far you have to drive to the gym, but it's probably at least eight minutes, maybe even 17 minutes to get to the gym. By the way, you got to park, you got to walk in through the door. You got to show your pass. You got to go into the thing. You got to get your clothes on. There's a bunch of things that are going on and that that's going to take. I think minimum transition time from home to gym is probably minimum 40 minutes. What do you think?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, depends on where the gym is.

• 7:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, unless it's around the corner.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it can be 40 minutes for sure.

• 7:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so 40 minutes. By, by the way, 40 minutes, you're done with your workout if you have a home gym. It's done.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  Here's another big thing.

• 7:55Jocko Willink?

  Habits instead of goals.

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  Right habits instead of goals. Meaning, and this is the opposite of what a lot of people say. Like you need to set goals, right? You need to, I need to lose weight or I need to get toned or I need to whatever, because she, he mentioned that.

• 8:14Jocko Willink?

  Like she sizzles out before she sees the, the, the results, right? So instead of saying like, here's what you need to achieve, just say, no, it's just about today. It's just about doing, it's just about feeling good today. So let's, let's go for a walk. You know, oh, I got, do you wanna, do you wanna put, let's get the baby in the stroller. Let's go for a quick, you know, little round the block. By the way, let's do some, you know, like what can you do? Well, we're just doing a little something today. Make it about the daily habit instead of these long-term goals. Which, you know, is like, when you say it, she does it for short bursts. If the short burst, she's gonna feel good when she does the short burst. But then she looks at the mirror in three weeks and she goes, do I have been getting up early every day? I don't see any difference.

• 8:58Jocko Willink?

  So then why do it? So instead, let's focus on, oh yeah, didn't you feel good today? Didn't you feel better today? Hey, thanks for spending time with me. Hey, that was cool to go for a walk with the kid. Like you make it about the, about the, about the, the effort and the process instead of the outcome. So that's another thing. By the way, all this might take a long time. You've been married for two years. Wow, your, your, your marriage and your relationship is gonna go through all these different phases. And it's gonna take a while to figure out how to make all this work. It's no big deal. No big deal at all. But you gotta play the strategic long game. You think you're gonna change your wife overnight? You're not, you're not gonna change your wife overnight.

• 9:43Jocko Willink?

  You're not even gonna change her in a month. You're not gonna change her in six months. But you're gonna look up in eight years and she might be working out more than you. Right? I don't know. So you have the rest of your life to get this figured out. And I would take and focus on

• 10:03Jocko Willink?

  backing off, listening more, doing stuff not in her face.

• 10:10Jocko Willink?

  Make, let's focus on habits and daily things that we can do together that are kind of fun, that have nothing to, no inkling of. I mean, I literally, if you can get her to do knitting with you for 40 minutes a day right now, I would do that to start with. Or improv, let's do improv game, or let's play a board game, whatever the thing is, chess. Let's do chess.com.

• 10:34Jocko Willink?

  Do something that's just and let's just start getting, let's just start building uh things that we're gonna do together that are gonna be fun and eventually and by the way, those things are pri- primarily her things. And then eventually we get to add in something and then we can add in whatever we add in a little something.

• 10:54Jocko Willink?

  Make, let her find the path on her own. You can, you can, you can kinda like put a couple crumbs out on the trail. But you, you can't grab her by the arm and pull her down the trail. She's gonna resist. Put some crumbs out occasionally, not, not big like giant crumbs, not little cupcakes where she's like, oh, I see what this is. No, don't do that. Just let her find the path on her own. That's what we're doing.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're, you're right about that thing where essentially make the process enjoyable. I wouldn't even see it as a, I don't know, everybody's different, different relationships. I get it or whatever, but he said something like really quick where he was like, if she has, if she doesn't have the same goals, I get it. So it's kinda like, almost like it's this foregone conclusion that she has like goals with fitness. Not, not everybody's like that, bro. Like you, I think sometimes we, we have this vision of like, oh yeah, my wife or my whoever, my kids, whatever. They're gonna get on the path with me because I know the value of the path. And you know, once I get them to see that, oh man, there, sky's the limit for them, you know, kind of a thing and you know, it's, it, it seems like

• 12:08Speaker 01

  our hearts are in the right place when we think that or whatever, but right, some people, the idea of like a gym, like I go to, let's say I go to Target, which I did. And I see some, and you know how you, you know, when you're a kid, you walk down aisles and sections and stuff. You wanna go to the toy section or the candy section. Yeah, I'm walking down the aisle. I see this aisle of dumbbells.

• 12:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  I have dumbbells at my house, by the way, a full set. I see the dumbbells.

• 12:30Jocko Willink?

  Up to one twenties?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  One twenties.

• 12:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  I see, and these only went up to like forty.

• 12:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  And I'm still stopping. I'm looking, I'm browsing, but to me, that's like, that's my, you know, like interests or whatever. And I was with my son, he was into it too, but bro, some people, they're gonna be like, bro, why are we here? Like those dumbbells, in fact, I'd rather not look at dumbbells. Cause just like how you said, sometimes it can reflect a little bit of guilt or something like this. Or like I said, it's just not their thing. Don't assume she has these fitness goals that just, they're just different than yours. But yeah, so I, I'd, uh, I guess this is a bad example, but nonetheless, so I joined a 24 hour fitness, you know, when I moved to San Diego, you know, I go to join my gym or whatever. And the guy's like, oh, cool. Hey, what are your fitness goals? I'm like, bro, I don't have fitness goals. I just want to freaking lift, you know, like,

• 13:20Speaker 01

  bro, leave me alone. Yeah. Stop with the whole goals thing, you know, or like, um, like, let's say you over, you know, you've moved to a new town and you open a bank account. We'll just say, cause you need a banker, right? You need checking account. That's kind of what we're doing. And you're, let's say a 20 year old kid, whatever, moderately squared away, we'll say. And the guy goes, hey, so what are your financial goals? Like, bro, I don't have financial goals right now. Leave me alone with that stuff. All right. Look, I might find that in the, in the future, a hundred percent, you know, and, you know, when I change my mind, I'm glad or whatever, but probably get off my back about these financial goals. See what I'm saying? So I'm just saying we like, when you start treating your wife like that, like, no, no, no, you need to do this, you know, and then, you know, like, if you don't, you're kind of, you know, it's like a bad thing or whatever. But I think that's kind of the wrong direction.

• 14:02Jocko Willink?

  So I was with my daughter, Coach Rana.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:04Jocko Willink?

  She was at a jujitsu competition this weekend.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 14:07Jocko Willink?

  And she loves jujitsu. Have you ever watched her train jujitsu? Seen pictures of her? She's in the middle of a crazy match. She got a big smile on her face. She absolutely loves. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jacood underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control. And we're doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we

• 14:51Jocko Willink?

  don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you.

• 14:59Jocko Willink?

  More control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us.

• 15:05Jocko Willink?

  And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So, thank you. It's jockounderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us,

• 15:25Jocko Willink?

  we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.