78: How Adversity Reveals Human Nature. Are You Worthy of Your Suffering? "A Man's Search For Meaning", by Viktor Frankl

0:00:00 - Opening 0:18:47 - "A Man's Search For Meaning", by Viktor Frankl http://amzn.to/2sCgFwW 0:42:12 - The Sociology and Psychology of the Camp. 1:02:28 - An Attitude. Being Worthy of Your Sufferings. 1:34:59 - Adversity Reveals Human Nature. 1:42:32 - To Sum Up. Takeaways and Lessons Learned. 2:07:09 - Support, Cool Onnit http://www.onnit.com/jocko, JockoStore http://www.jockostore.com stuff, with Jocko White Tea http://www.jockotea.com and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes) https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/psychological-warfare/id1183222322. Extreme Ownership (book) http://amzn.to/2jonHTx, (Jocko's Kids' Book) Way of the Warrior Kid http://amzn.to/2n9k6I9, and The Muster 003 http://www.extremeownership.com. 2:33:39 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 78 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  Nightmare.

• 0:15Jocko Willink?

  Now that's a word that I use oftentimes to describe the most horrible things and the most wretched things and in my hierarchy of adjectives nightmare is right alongside of hell.

• 0:38Jocko Willink?

  And I'm not sure which one is worse in my mind, that's why I say they're right alongside each other because hell is beyond the worst thing your mind can imagine and that's basically what a nightmare is when you're asleep and your mind delves into the most horrific things beyond what you can consciously and willfully imagine in your own head.

• 1:08Jocko Willink?

  That's what a nightmare is. Now, what if there was a place that was worse than a nightmare?

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  And it was a real place?

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  Who could create such a place?

• 1:36Jocko Willink?

  And the answer to that is we can.

• 1:44Jocko Willink?

  "I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare."

• 1:57Jocko Willink?

  Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffer from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly, I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment, I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us and to which I was about to recall him.

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  And that's a quote from the book "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl, which we'll be peering into today. And it's a book about the Nazi concentration camps, which are really, as he pointed out there, worse than any nightmare we can imagine. Here's a Holocaust survivor, Eddie Weinstein, on the death and the atrocities in Treblinka. "By now the transports were coming every day. One was much like the next.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  The same incidents recurred again and again. Once, as I swept out the interior of a car, an SS man suddenly struck me with his whip and ordered me to help a woman who was unable to stand and climb out of the car. The idea was to show his victims how well the ill were being treated. Then he ordered one of the workers to take the woman to the field, the field hospital for care." The newcomers really believed that the ailing woman would be taken to an infirmary.

• 3:55Jocko Willink?

  None of them realized that the field hospital was in fact just a giant pit. About thirty yards in diameter, which was always ablaze. They would place those who were sick or disabled on the ground at the edge of the pit facing in. The SS man in charge circulated among them and shot them in the back of the neck. Then the workers cast them into the pit. Some of the victims were still breathing when they were tossed in with the other bodies.

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  The pit was separated from the spacious field by a barrier of fresh pine branches, which were replaced from time to time to conceal the infirmary from the newcomers until the last moment.

• 4:42Jocko Willink?

  Twenty minutes after I helped the woman climb out of the railroad car, I was told that some infants were sitting by the pit. And no one else was there because the SS soldier had taken his lunch break. I gathered some trash and went over there. I saw the woman who I had removed from the car, still breathing, sitting at the edge of the pit and staring in fright into the burning inferno and its contents. The half-cremated bodies of old people and children mixed with smoldering trash.

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  She tried to stand up, but her legs would not hold her.

• 5:21Jocko Willink?

  She looked at the workers who stirred the embers, remnants of human beings, so they would burn better.

• 5:31Jocko Willink?

  Nearby were about a dozen infants, too young to have learned how to walk. They were not crying. They certainly did not understand what was happening.

• 5:42Jocko Willink?

  They looked about almost certainly in hopes of finding their mother or father.

• 5:48Jocko Willink?

  Later I heard that right after he returned from his lunch break, the SS man shot them all and ordered the workers to throw the tiny bodies into the flames.

• 5:59Jocko Willink?

  Of all my memories of that accursed place, the vision of these babies is undoubtedly the worst. I see their faces whenever I remember Treblinka.

• 6:13Jocko Willink?

  As I write these lines more than fifty years after that day, I still cannot overcome the horror.

• 6:28Jocko Willink?

  In another report here, Martin Speck of Tarnow, Poland, describes the massacre of Tarnow Jews in an interview.

• 6:40Jocko Willink?

  "We heard the columns of Jews under the German escort at night. It was going constantly. They were passing our house because this was already on the outskirts of the city, the cemetery, and they were marching them to the woods behind the city. As we found out later, they were all shot over there.

• 7:01Jocko Willink?

  During the day, I looked out through the shingles. My father said I shouldn't look, but, anyway, I was a kid. I was curious. And the roof was overlooking the cemetery and wagons with bodies, dead bodies were coming in. Groups. They were bringing in groups of Jewish people that had to dig trenches.

• 7:22Jocko Willink?

  They had to dig ditches, and the bodies dumped in. And after those Jews that dug the ditches, they were shot also, and pushed in by another group that came in after them, into those ditches, and lime was poured over the bodies. And the next group covered up those ditches and dug other ditches."

• 7:48Jocko Willink?

  They brought in

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  pregnant women.

• 7:54Jocko Willink?

  And they didn't use any bullets.

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  They used bayonets.

• 8:04Jocko Willink?

  The screams of the mothers that their children...

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  They tore their children out of their arms.

• 8:16Jocko Willink?

  And the screams of the children I still hear.

• 8:27Jocko Willink?

  And Solomon Radaski, who is the only survivor

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  from the seventy-eight people in his family.

• 8:40Jocko Willink?

  Described, "The concentration camp. They throw the people in the crematoriums, the children."

• 8:49Jocko Willink?

  I will never forget, alive.

• 8:54Jocko Willink?

  They throw them in the crematoriums. They grabbed by an arm, by a leg, by the head, and throw them into the ovens.

• 9:04Jocko Willink?

  There it was so tragic. The cries, and people, when crying there, you know, it was so terrible.

• 9:15Jocko Willink?

  I can feel it now. I can even see the people.

• 9:21Jocko Willink?

  The other people were crying, the children were hollering, "Mama, Daddy, help me."

• 9:28Jocko Willink?

  "Mama, Daddy, help me."

• 9:35Jocko Willink?

  It was terrible.

• 9:45Jocko Willink?

  And one more report on Treblinka, from Henry Gold.

• 9:53Jocko Willink?

  And the worst thing that happens to a person in that instance, he loses self-respect, and that's exactly what happened to the majority of the people. Some of them even lost their minds, they couldn't take it. They couldn't take the hunger, they couldn't take the beatings, they couldn't take the cold, no clothing, and the uncertainty.

• 10:16Jocko Willink?

  And the uncertainty, I think that was the worst thing that can happen to a person. You didn't know from one moment to the next what was going to happen.

• 10:24Jocko Willink?

  Life was very cheap. A person was alive one minute, the next minute, he was shot, killed, beaten up, beaten to death, torn apart by dogs, and so on.

• 10:37Jocko Willink?

  Life was very, very cheap, and that's the way the Germans liked it.

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  That particular camp was governed by the Jewish police, and so on. The Germans did not stay in the camp, they were on the outside.

• 10:53Jocko Willink?

  But the life inside of the camp was just as bad without the Germans being right there than if they would be.

• 11:02Jocko Willink?

  The Jewish police was, "I don't know." You take a person in that situation and you give them a little power and he becomes the same as the oppressor himself.

• 11:17Jocko Willink?

  There were some policemen that were not bad, but there were a lot of them that were ruthless.

• 11:24Jocko Willink?

  There were others that would beat people and do all kinds of things that would degrade them and so on. Especially women. They cut their hair off and they look like men. They look like scarecrows. And they would get beaten up by the Jewish police just as bad as the man for no reason at all.

• 11:45Jocko Willink?

  If they wanted a little more soup,

• 11:48Jocko Willink?

  where they were distributing soup and there was some left and they were gonna give everybody a little bit. And the Jewish police with their sticks and rubber hoses would beat them half senseless.

• 12:03Jocko Willink?

  And that's what happens when the conditions are the way they were then. When a person becomes an animal and loses self-respect, that is willing to get a beating and get beaten half senseless just to get a little bit of soup.

• 12:20Jocko Willink?

  Either you died,

• 12:23Jocko Willink?

  or if you didn't die, the Germans would come and take you away.

• 12:28Jocko Willink?

  The filth was just terrible in the camp. In the barracks, you had cots. I mean, bunks where everybody slept on straw. There were no covers, was no pillows, nothing.

• 12:40Jocko Willink?

  You slept in your clothes in the winters, in the winter because you're afraid to get cold. The only heating was a pot-bellied stove in the middle of the barrack. When somebody stole some wood in the factory or something, then we had a fire, otherwise it was freezing.

• 12:56Jocko Willink?

  And the only warmth they had if you huddled together and they kept warm that way. But nobody would get undressed. The lice were eating you up alive. Once a month, you were allowed to take a shower. And we had to walk to Camp A to go to the showers, and that means a ten mile walk.

• 13:19Jocko Willink?

  Ten miles there and ten miles back. A lot of people were too weak to walk, and those people hardly ever took a shower.

• 13:30Jocko Willink?

  There was no hot water in the washroom, it was only cold. And in the winter, you were afraid to wash up because there was nothing to wipe yourself with. Therefore, you would walk out in the cold winter and freeze to death.

• 13:50Jocko Willink?

  And Henry Gold, brothers and both of his parents were all killed in the gas chambers.

• 14:02Jocko Willink?

  And from the Buchenwald Report, which was translated and edited with an introduction by David A. Hackett. "I will now describe the crematoriums and the transports. At the station, two thousand people got off the trains. They had to throw away all their luggage. Afterward, the men and women were divided into two groups, at which the larger boys were assigned to the group with the men.

• 14:32Jocko Willink?

  Then that great devourer of Jews, Mengele, drove by in a car seeking out the strongest from each transport.

• 14:40Jocko Willink?

  They numbered around thirty out of two thousand. The remainder were led away by SS Technical Sergeant Mole, the officer of the crematorium.

• 14:52Jocko Willink?

  The elderly were loaded onto dump trucks and then dumped into burning trenches while still alive.

• 14:59Jocko Willink?

  The remainder were led to the gas chambers.

• 15:03Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, new transports were arriving.

• 15:07Jocko Willink?

  In front of the gas chamber was a dressing room.

• 15:11Jocko Willink?

  On its walls was written in all languages, 'Put shoes into the cubby holes and tie them together so you will not lose them.

• 15:19Jocko Willink?

  After the showers, you will receive hot coffee.'"

• 15:24Jocko Willink?

  Here, poor victims undressed themselves and went into the chamber.

• 15:30Jocko Willink?

  There were three columns for the ventilators through which the gas poured in.

• 15:36Jocko Willink?

  A special work detail with trungans drove the people into the chamber.

• 15:41Jocko Willink?

  When the room was full, small children were thrown in through a window.

• 15:46Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Mole grabbed infants by their legs and smashed their skulls against the wall.

• 15:54Jocko Willink?

  Then the gas was let into the chamber.

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  The lungs of the victims slowly burst, and after three minutes a loud clamoring could be heard.

• 16:05Jocko Willink?

  Then the chamber was open, and those who still showed signs of life were beaten to death.

• 16:17Jocko Willink?

  The prisoners of the special work details then pulled corpses out, took their rings off, and cut their hair which was gathered up, put in sacks and shipped to factories.

• 16:29Jocko Willink?

  Then they arranged the corpses in piles of ten each. After Sergeant Mole had counted them, they were taken to the ovens, or if the crematiriums were insufficient, thrown into fire trenches.

• 16:45Jocko Willink?

  Once it happened that a victim crawled out of a burning trench, he was beaten to death with trungans.

• 16:53Jocko Willink?

  Once Sergeant Mole put a naked woman in the trench and shot her in the genitals.

• 17:01Jocko Willink?

  Another time Mole found a ring on a member of the special work detail. He ordered naptha poured over him and had it lighted.

• 17:12Jocko Willink?

  He hanged a man by his hands and shot him until his arms were torn through. Then he hanged him up by the feet and repeated the process.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  Once Sergeant Mole took a family of six. First he shot the youngest in the presence of the rest, then he shot the older ones, and finally,

• 17:36Jocko Willink?

  their father and mother.

• 17:45Jocko Willink?

  And that's the testimony of John De Weiss,

• 17:50Jocko Willink?

  who was 15 years old

• 17:53Jocko Willink?

  at Burg now.

• 18:03Jocko Willink?

  So I think it's safe to say that

• 18:08Jocko Willink?

  this is a situation that is definitely worse than a nightmare.

• 18:20Jocko Willink?

  And what possibly can we take away from that?

• 18:28Jocko Willink?

  And I think the best thing we can do

• 18:33Jocko Willink?

  is try and learn. And I think one of the best places to learn

• 18:39Jocko Willink?

  and take lessons away from the Holocaust is from the book that I started off with today, called "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl.

• 18:53Jocko Willink?

  Let's go to the book.

• 19:02Jocko Willink?

  "Let us take the case of a transport, which was officially announced to transfer a certain number of prisoners to another camp. But it was fairly safe to guess that its final destination would be the gas chambers.

• 19:15Jocko Willink?

  A selection of sick or feeble prisoners incapable of work would be sent to one of the big central camps which were fitted with gas chambers and crematoriums.

• 19:25Jocko Willink?

  The selection process was the signal for a free fight among all the prisoners, or of group against group. All that mattered was that one's own name and that of one's friends were crossed off the list of victims, though everyone knew that for each man saved, another victim had to be found."

• 19:51Jocko Willink?

  A definite number of prisoners had to go with each transport.

• 19:56Jocko Willink?

  It did not really matter which, since each of them was nothing but a number. On their admission to the camp,

• 20:05Jocko Willink?

  all their documents had been taken from them, together with other possessions. Each prisoner therefore had an opportunity to claim a fictitious name or profession, and for various reasons, many did this.

• 20:18Jocko Willink?

  The authorities were interested only in the captive's numbers.

• 20:23Jocko Willink?

  These numbers were often tattooed on their skin, and also had to be sewn to a certain spot on their trousers, jacket, or coat.

• 20:31Jocko Willink?

  Any guard who wanted to make a charge against a prisoner just glanced at his number.

• 20:37Jocko Willink?

  And how we dreaded those glances. He never asked for his name.

• 20:43Jocko Willink?

  To return to the convoy about to depart, there was neither time nor desire to consider moral or ethical issues. Every man was controlled by one thought only, to keep himself alive for the family waiting for him at home, and to save his friends.

• 20:59Jocko Willink?

  With no hesitation therefore, he would arrange for another prisoner, another number, to take his place in the transport.

• 21:10Jocko Willink?

  As I have already mentioned, the process of selecting Kappos was a negative one. Only the most brutal of the prisoners were chosen for this job.

• 21:22Jocko Willink?

  So, Kappos

• 21:25Jocko Willink?

  were prisoners, Jewish prisoners, that got selected to help run the prison camp. And, and Kappo, I, I tried to find the etymology of where that came from, and the best or the closest or the thing that made the most sense to me from what I read was, was they had two words combined together. Comrade Police. And the, in German, those got shortened to Kappo.

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  So, some of these, and you already heard one of those earlier testimonies talking about the Jewish police inside the prisons. And how they were just as bad in many cases as the Germans themselves.

• 22:13Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, but apart from the selection of Kappos which was undertaken by the SS, there was a sort of self-selecting process going on the whole time among all the prisoners.

• 22:25Jocko Willink?

  On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence. They were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of friends in order to save themselves.

• 22:49Jocko Willink?

  We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles, whatever one may choose to call them, we know

• 23:02Jocko Willink?

  the best of us did not return.

• 23:10Jocko Willink?

  So there's a dynamic that you don't think of immediately when you think of the concentration camps. Number one, you don't think about the Kappos, the Jewish police, that are forced into this situation. And then the other thing you don't think about is this, the fact that the people that were going to survive were basically, I'm making a very broad say, but you know, from what Viktor Frankl's saying here, it was the people that were willing just to do anything to survive, including betraying their friends. And he's saying straight up, "We know the best of us did not return." And that is something that you don't think about.

• 23:51Jocko Willink?

  And we probably don't think about it because we don't want to think about it. Because when you start thinking about, "What would you do to survive? What would you do to survive? What would I do to survive?" And that's a question I don't think a lot of people want to know the answer to. And it's very easy to go through life and never have to answer that question.

• 24:20Jocko Willink?

  He's talking a little bit now about what life was like in the camp. Back to the book. "Somewhere it is said that man cannot exist without sleep for more than a stated number of hours. Quite wrong. I had been convinced that there were certain things I just could not do. I could not sleep without this, or I could not live without that, or the other. The first night in Auschwitz, we slept in beds which were constructed in tiers. On each tier, measuring about six and one-half to eight feet, slept nine men, directly on the boards. Two blankets would be shared by each nine men.

• 25:03Jocko Willink?

  We could, of course, lie only on our sides, crowded and huddled against each other, which had some advantages because of the bitter cold. Though it was forbidden to take shoes up to the bunks, some people did use them secretly as pillows in spite of the fact that they were caked with mud. Otherwise, one's head had to rest on the crook of an almost-dislocated arm.

• 25:29Jocko Willink?

  And yet, sleep came and brought oblivion and relief from the pain for a few hours.

• 25:39Jocko Willink?

  The thought of suicide was entertained by nearly everyone, if only for a brief time. It was born of hopelessness of the situation, the constant danger of death looming over us daily and hourly, and the closeness of deaths suffered by many of the others.

• 25:58Jocko Willink?

  From personal convictions, which we mentioned later, I made a firm promise on my first evening in the camp that I would not run to the wire."

• 26:07Jocko Willink?

  This was a phrase used in camp to describe the most popular method of suicide, touching the electrically-charged barbed-wire fence. It was not entirely difficult for me to make this decision. There was little point in committing suicide since, for the average inmate, life expectation, calculating objectively and counting all likely chances, was very poor.

• 26:32Jocko Willink?

  He could not with any assurance expect to be among the small percentage of men who survived all the selections.

• 26:40Jocko Willink?

  The prisoner of Auschwitz, in the first phase of shock, did not fear death. Even the gas chambers lost their horrors for him after the first few days. After all,

• 26:52Jocko Willink?

  they spared him the act of committing suicide.

• 27:01Jocko Willink?

  And Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist going into this situation. So, that's the view, that's the perspective that he takes throughout this. And

• 27:17Jocko Willink?

  he's now been in for a couple of days in Auschwitz, and another guy comes in to talk to him, who's another colleague of his. And we're going back to the book. A colleague of mine, who had arrived in Auschwitz several weeks previously, smuggled himself into our hut. He wanted to calm and comfort us and tell us a few things. He had become so thin that at first, we did not recognize him. With a show of good humor and a devil-may-care attitude, he gave us a few hurried tips. "Don't be afraid, don't fear the selections." Dr. M., the SS medical chief, has a soft spot for doctors.

• 27:58Jocko Willink?

  "But one thing I beg of you," he continued, "shave daily if at all possible, even if you have to use a piece of glass to do it, even if you have to give your last piece of bread for it. You will look younger and the scraping will make your cheeks look rootier. If you want to stay alive, there is only one way: look fit for work. If you even limp, because let us say you have a small blister on your heel and an SS man spots this, he will wave you aside and the next day you are sure to be gassed."

• 28:44Jocko Willink?

  Now his mind and his thoughts, he describes what he would think about. Back to the book, "My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind, I didn't even know if she was still alive. I knew only one thing, which I have learned well by now. Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, in his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all ceases somehow to be of importance.

• 29:28Jocko Willink?

  I did not know whether my wife was alive and had no means of finding out.

• 29:34Jocko Willink?

  During all my prison life, there was no outgoing or incoming mail.

• 29:40Jocko Willink?

  But at that moment, it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know, nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved.

• 29:53Jocko Willink?

  Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I still would have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image. And that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying."

• 30:12Jocko Willink?

  Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.

• 30:28Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, Dr. Frankl talks about images from inside the camp. "Standing outside, we saw sinister clouds glowing in the west and the whole sky alive with clouds of ever-changing shapes and colors, from steel-blue to blood-red.

• 30:47Jocko Willink?

  The desolate gray mud huts provided a sharp contrast, while the puddles on the muddy ground reflected the glowing sky.

• 30:57Jocko Willink?

  Then, after a few minutes of moving silence, one prisoner said to another how beautiful the world could be."

• 31:08Jocko Willink?

  And beyond looking for beauty around them,

• 31:16Jocko Willink?

  they were able to find humor. And I have people ask me about this from time to time, about humor in combat situations, and isn't it important, and yes, it absolutely is. And you'd think in a concentration camp, even humor would go away.

• 31:34Jocko Willink?

  But not true. Back to the book. "To discover that there was any semblance of art in a concentration camp must be surprised enough for an outsider, but he may be even more astonished to hear that one could find a sense of humor."

• 31:48Jocko Willink?

  Could find a sense of humor there as well. Of course, only the faint trace of one. And then only for a few seconds or minutes, humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation.

• 32:03Jocko Willink?

  It is well-known that humor, more than anything else in the human makeup, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation if only for a few seconds.

• 32:16Jocko Willink?

  "The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of trick I learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is impossible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp although suffering is omnipresent. To draw an analogy, a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus, suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little.

• 32:59Jocko Willink?

  Therefore, the size of human suffering is absolutely relative." And I think the point that I took away from that was, that chamber that can be filled up with suffering, fill it up with some humor as well. Otherwise, that suffering will just fill the whole chamber, it will fill your whole brain. Back to the book, "We were grateful for the smallest of mercies. We were glad when there was time to de-louse before going to bed. Although in itself this was no pleasure, as it meant standing naked in an unheated hut where icicles hung from the ceiling.

• 33:44Jocko Willink?

  But we were thankful if there was no air raid alarm during this operation and the lights were not switched off. If we could not do the job properly, we were kept awake half the night." So you're at a point in life where you're grateful for being able to stand naked and pick the lice off of your friends before you go to bed so that the lice won't keep you awake at night by chewing at your body.

• 34:23Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I talked about

• 34:26Jocko Willink?

  how, or he talks about how, you know, it was the person that was gonna survive had to be ruthless, basically. And here he says, "But it's not for me to pass judgment on those prisoners who put their own people above everyone else. Who can throw a stone at a man who favors his friends under circumstances when sooner or later, it is a question of life or death?

• 34:50Jocko Willink?

  No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty, whether in a similar situation, he might not have done the same."

• 35:06Jocko Willink?

  And here he says, "I mentioned earlier how everything that was not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one closest friend's lives, lost its value.

• 35:18Jocko Willink?

  Everything was sacrificed to this end.

• 35:22Jocko Willink?

  A man's character became involved to the point that he was caught in mental turmoil, which threatened all values he held and threw them into doubt. Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had robbed the man of his will and made him an object to be exterminated, having planned however to make full use of him first to the last ounce of his physical resources, under this influence, the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values.

• 35:56Jocko Willink?

  If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind with inner freedom

• 36:13Jocko Willink?

  and personal value. He thought of himself then as only part of an enormous mass of people. His existence descended to the level of animal life.

• 36:27Jocko Willink?

  The men were herded, sometimes to one place then to another, sometimes driven together then apart, like a flock of sheep without a thought or a will of their own."

• 36:39Jocko Willink?

  A small but dangerous pack watched them from all sides, well-versed in methods of torture and sadism.

• 36:47Jocko Willink?

  They drove the herd incessantly, backwards and forwards with shouts, kicks, and blows. And we, the sheep, thought of two things only:

• 37:00Jocko Willink?

  How to evade the bad dogs, and how to get a little food.

• 37:15Jocko Willink?

  He's gonna delve into this deeper, this idea of this inner freedom.

• 37:21Jocko Willink?

  And how hard you had to fight to maintain that. And how easy it was just to roll in and become one of the pack, one of the herd.

• 37:36Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "It is very difficult for an outsider to grasp how very little value was placed on human life in camp." The camp inmate was hardened, but possibly became more conscious of this complete disregard of human existence when a convoy of sick men was arranged. The emaciated bodies of the sick were thrown on two-wheeled carts, which were drawn by prisoners for many miles, often through snowstorms to the next camp.

• 38:09Jocko Willink?

  If one of the sick men had died before the cart left, he was thrown on anyways. The list had to be correct. The list was the only thing that mattered.

• 38:21Jocko Willink?

  A man counted only because he had a prison number. One literally became a number, dead or alive, that was unimportant.

• 38:32Jocko Willink?

  The life of a number was completely irrelevant. What stood behind that number and that life mattered even less. The fate, the history,

• 38:45Jocko Willink?

  the name of the man.

• 38:57Jocko Willink?

  The camp inmate was frightened of making decisions and of taking any sort of initiative whatsoever.

• 39:06Jocko Willink?

  This was the result of a strong feeling that fate was one's master and that one must not try to influence it in any way, but instead let it take its own course.

• 39:19Jocko Willink?

  In addition, there was a great apathy which contributed in no small part to the feelings of the prisoner.

• 39:28Jocko Willink?

  At times, lightning, lightning decisions had to be made. Decisions would spell life or death.

• 39:37Jocko Willink?

  The prisoner would have preferred to let fate make the choice for him.

• 39:43Jocko Willink?

  And so some of the examples that he brings up in the book on that are, they'd get told, "We need people to go to a different camp for rest." And they had no idea. Sometimes it actually was some kind of rest, sometimes it was some kind of actual medical facility. Sometimes it was just, "You're going to the gas chambers at another camp," and they had no idea which one it was. And so they got into this mode of, they were just gonna externally, just whatever was gonna happen, that was gonna happen. And they wouldn't, they go beyond where they're trying in the beginning to like, "Get me off that list," or "I wanna be on that list." And they realized that they just were messing with fate. And so they got into a mode of, "I'm just gonna let things happen, and whatever happens, happens."

• 40:31Jocko Willink?

  And they got this, this feeling of apathy. You, you can just imagine how that, that having no control externally of what's happening, how that leads, number one, leads to this apathy of just, "I don't care what happens." But number two, how that can then sneak in and start to get control of your inner thoughts and your inner feelings where you just feel like you don't have control over anything in life, and that's it.

• 40:59Jocko Willink?

  And here he talks about apathy some more. The prisoner's apathy was also the result of other factors. Hunger and lack of sleep contributed to it, as they do in normal life also.

• 41:12Jocko Willink?

  And to the general irritability which was another characteristic of the prisoner's mental state. The lack of sleep was partly due to the pestering of vermin which infested the terribly overcrowded huts because of the general lack of hygiene and sanitation. The fact that we had neither nicotine nor caffeine also contributed to the state of apathy and irritability. Besides these physical causes, there were mental ones, in the form of certain complexes. The majority of prisoners suffered from a kind of inferiority complex. We all had once been or had fancied ourselves to be somebody.

• 41:53Jocko Willink?

  Now we are treated like complete non-entities. The consciousness of one's inner value is anchored in higher, more spiritual things. It cannot be shaken by camp life, but how many free men, let alone prisoners, possess it? Without consciously thinking about it, the average prisoner felt himself utterly degraded. This became obvious when one observed the contrasts offered by the singular sociological structure of the camp. The more prominent prisoners, the capos, the cooks, the storekeepers, and the camp policemen, did not, as a rule, feel degraded at all.

• 42:38Jocko Willink?

  Like the majority of prisoners, but on the contrary, they felt promoted. Some even developed miniature delusions of grandeur. Clearly, we can all take a lesson out of that one. And that is, you know, you get put into a promotion position or you've got authority over people, don't let that go to your head.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess that's a natural thing, where they did this experiment test in the university, whatever, and they're all just random students. One played the prisoner, one group played the guards, and that happened.

• 43:16Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  In a, like, it's just an experiment, it's not real life, you know? And it still happened.

• 43:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it happened in real life, which I think is even more insane. It's even more insane.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, in a way, huh.

• 43:31Jocko Willink?

  But then again, how can we sit here and judge? When if you're in that situation and you need to survive and you need to do the best to get your you to survive and your family survive and you have an opportunity, oh, are we gonna say nope? Nope, I'm gonna, instead of doing this where I maybe can do something good in the long run? Nope, I'm not gonna go across my values, I'm gonna die in three days and that's it.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:58Jocko Willink?

  That's a hard decision to make.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it seems easy when you're sitting in the comfort of your home, be like, ah, I wouldn't do that. Or, you know, and this is what I would have done, or I wouldn't have done, but yeah.

• 44:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you know, I, I, I talk to people about, again, it's, I'm not gonna compare anything to what we're talking about here. But in the military, for instance, a lot of times I had to make decisions to, to, you know, I gotta do something that maybe I didn't fully agree with, but I knew in the long run, it was gonna get me something that was gonna be beneficial to my team or to my platoon or whatever. So you make those little adjustments and you gotta suck it up and you do something that you might not wanna do. But in the long run, it's gonna be beneficial.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:45Jocko Willink?

  Now, I mean, this, I, I don't even know if this is even a remotely, uh, close comparison. But what I am saying is this, you take a human being and you say, look, you can either step up and act a different way and be abusive to these people, or you're gonna be dead in three days. That's it, those are your choices.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:03Jocko Willink?

  And it's not that hard to figure out that a lot of people are gonna step up and say, cool, I'll abuse those people because I need to

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Live.

• 45:10Jocko Willink?

  Need to live.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:11Jocko Willink?

  My choice is either death.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:13Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, maybe the, maybe the, the best person in that group is gonna say, you know what? I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna step up and when I abuse these people, I'm gonna do a little bit less than someone else might.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:26Jocko Willink?

  And therefore I'm doing the best I can.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:29Jocko Willink?

  I mean, these are decisions, how do you even think about these decisions?

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, man.

• 45:35Jocko Willink?

  And you have to think about it. You have to understand. You have to understand what human nature is, that there is a survival point for humans. You have a instinct to survive that very few people can overcome.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:48Jocko Willink?

  And I don't even, you know, again, how do you judge whether it's right to overcome it or not? When is it right? I mean, obviously, when is it right? We're sitting here. It's easy to say, hey, don't, you know, these guys, why would you kill yourself? Well, if you don't do these things, you're basically killing yourself. If you don't step up, if you don't say, okay, I'll work as a capo. If you don't do that, you're killing yourself.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:11Jocko Willink?

  Does that make it okay? Man.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:14Jocko Willink?

  It's brutal.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  It's like you gotta figure out whether or not you're better off dead in the, even in the grand scheme of things. Like these, these people that they're gonna kind of succumb to these positions or do all these low things to survive. So they can survive and, you know, live on and all this stuff. So it's either that or am I better off dead overall? You know, like that's the decision you gotta make. Dang. Who knows what you think, especially with all these conditions.

• 46:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, the opposite of that is, is Dick Winters was talking about how he had, and I don't know if I talked about it on the podcast, but in it, in the book Conversations with Dick Winters. He goes through a big section where he talks about some of the guys in his company. And he called them the killers and he actually went on and said, hey, you know, I don't want to call them killers because that's going to give the wrong impression. But these guys were my most aggressive guys. They were my best guys. And he's, and he said, they didn't make it past, you know, he said, most of them didn't make it. I forget which, which battle. But he said, most of them didn't make it past this certain time because they were so aggressive. They were such good guys. They were so brave that they didn't make it.

• 47:27Jocko Willink?

  And, and this is sort of the opposite where you have the people that are brave, or I guess, no, it's the same in that people that are brave and gonna hold to their values, they're gonna die.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:36Jocko Willink?

  And, and if you think about somebody that's cowardly in combat, that says, oh, you know what? You know, Echo, you go first. I'm gonna sit over here behind this, you know, uh, covered position.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:48Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna live longer. And it's a micro example of what we're talking about here.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it's and this this given the book and what we're talking about this might come off as borderline insulting. If not full fledged insulting, but you ever watched the show Survivor?

• 48:06Jocko Willink?

  I I I watched the first one when it was kind of a thing.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:09Jocko Willink?

  And there was a interesting psychology happening. Yeah.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  And that's.

• 48:13Jocko Willink?

  And plus Rudy Bosch was on it, you know, this uh SEAL retired SEAL Master Chief who who, you know, everyone kind of knew in the SEAL teams.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, so and especially.

• 48:23Jocko Willink?

  What you're gonna say is that the the people that are not good human beings are the ones that win.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  A lot of well, they get far, put it that way, because they have this weird mechanism at the end. Where the last, you know, few people who get voted off, they become this sort of a jury. So it's like if you went through the whole game screwing people over, the jury is going to get you kind of thing. So it's a yeah, and this is just how the show just sorted itself out over time.

• 48:47Jocko Willink?

  But the first ones didn't have any jury, right?

• 48:49Speaker 01

  I don't I don't know. I don't really watch it that much.

• 48:51Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna go ahead and say I I'm almost positive they didn't because Rudy had his hand on some log. And they had to keep it there for like X for a long time and one person. You know, he actually like thought of something else and took his hand off and then he was out. That was it done.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:07Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, there's absolute comparison there. There's an absolute comparison to, you know, if you're willing to be a snake.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:17Jocko Willink?

  You can and you can you can win the game and I've talked about that too in promotion, people getting promoted. And if you're willing to be a snake, you can get promoted. But the thing that I will say in a work environment is that that snake might get one promotion. They might get two promotions. They're not going to go the distance and if you hold the line on doing what's correct. Then you might miss that first promotion. You might even miss that second promotion. But eventually, if you're on the right path, you will get the recognition and you will win in the long run. You gotta be patient though.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, obviously. In your job, it's not life or death. You know, death isn't so close that, you know, one slip up, you're death. You're dead. You know, so that's, you know, obviously the dynamics are different in work in that way, but otherwise I think so. And Survivor, there's also that other thing that kind of what they talk about where or what you were just talking about is if you, it's kind of in a matter of speaking, playing it safe where you're just hiding under the wings. You might attach yourself to someone or you'll avoid any kind of, you know, risky situation, you know, and so in Survivor, you can make it far like that as well. I mean, nowadays, everyone knows about those things like, oh, you backstabbed everyone or you just hid behind this guy because

• 50:37Speaker 01

  he's strong. But at the same time, just like how you're saying, if you're brave or you're going to stick to your morals and be honest with everyone, like you'll get voted off real quick, even if you're really good at, you know, the challenges or something.

• 50:48Jocko Willink?

  But don't even like really good leaders get voted, like if someone just is a dynamic leader, they get voted off almost immediately, right? They're like, oh yeah, see you later.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Too much of a threat, too much of a threat to everybody else. And actually, what you're talking about going through SEAL training, I would hear, and also I didn't hear it when I went through, but I heard it later, this idea of the gray man, and I think we might have actually answered a question on the podcast about that, was going through training and just being a gray man, meaning just don't stand out, not on one way or the other, and you'll be good to go. And that's, that's, that's, that's a strategy, right? Why in the SEAL teams is that a strategy?

• 51:21Jocko Willink?

  No, it's a strategy going through BUDs, through SEAL training, the initial SEAL training course, because the minute you stand out, people start knowing who you are, and now you've got instructors looking at you, and the more they watch you, the more they can see that maybe you're making some mistakes, or maybe you're not doing everything right, or maybe you're not, and so it's better just to be that guy in the middle. I was the guy in the middle, not because I wanted to be, but because I was not, you know, the fastest runner, I wasn't the, the best swimmer, which you don't want to be is the guy on the tail end, right?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:48Jocko Willink?

  And it's weird because I put so many guys, not through the basic SEAL training, but through the advanced SEAL training, and the guys that I remember, there's two types of guys that I remember, the guys that were awesome and the guys that were horrible. And the guys in the middle, all the gray guys, I know them when I see them, but a lot of times I don't 100%, I might not know their name, whereas some of the pipe hitters, the young pipe hitter, some E5 pipe hitter that was just getting after it, I'd always remember those guys' names because they would take control of everything and they'd stand out. And then the other guys you remember are the guys that are totally jacked up. So. That idea of being a gray man, it seems like a good policy to have in the concentration camp. Look, I just don't want to stand out. I don't want to have a limp. I don't want to, you know, come across as I just want to fit in and be the gray man. Unless

• 52:33Jocko Willink?

  you're gonna go the distance, right? Which is, and that's a horrible way of saying, I'm gonna stand out by saying, hey, I can whip these prisoners into shape. Right? That's going and raising your hand and saying, I'll be a capo. I'm gonna step up. And what you're risking there is we don't know where this war is gonna end and where you're gonna be at the end of this thing.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:53Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, I read some stories about that. The war did end. And they did liberate these camps. And it didn't work out good for the capos.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:03Jocko Willink?

  So there's, there's the same thing. You might have done alright getting your promotion the first couple of times, but eventually it comes around.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Yep. Exactly right. Yeah.

• 53:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, Harley Flanagan was talking about karma and I don't know how much reality there is to that, but there's, there's the reality of you reap what you sow.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:24Jocko Willink?

  And if you treat people, if you, if you take advantage of your position, if you maneuver and screw people over to get ahead of them, they'll remember that.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:33Jocko Willink?

  They'll remember that.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that makes sense. I mean karma, whether you-

• 53:36Jocko Willink?

  And it's never worth it, by the way. It's almost never worth it. I mean, could you possibly come up with some scenario where, where, you know, I did this to get a promotion so that I could take care of you and everyone else? You could come up with this, but it's very, very rare. And, and my gut feeling was always like, it's not worth it. It's not worth it to do those little maneuvers and, and try and better your position on other people's backs.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or screwing someone over and, cause you gotta live with that too. I mean, unless you're like a sociopath or something like that, you have to live with that and- Man, yeah, and even at the time, it seems like, oh, I could live with that cuz, ooh.

• 54:17Jocko Willink?

  You know what, you're actually, you're actually taking a higher road than me. Cuz you're saying you personally have to live with it, and that's definitely, I'm saying beyond that, even if you're a person that can live with it, you're still gonna pay in the long run. Even if you look yourself in the mirror, be like, I don't care, I got promoted, it's good. That's, that's, okay, so you can live with that, that's cool, but guess what? There's something else you're gonna, that's gonna come back around. And that is, one of those other people that you stepped on their back is gonna invent something new at work, and he's gonna take over the division, and you're gonna pay.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Not to mention the ten people who watched it happen, and you know, yeah.

• 54:50Jocko Willink?

  You're just making enemies.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:51Jocko Willink?

  Enemies.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  And that's really what karma is for, I mean karma could be this mystical thing that personally watches you and has this judgment system.

• 55:00Jocko Willink?

  But it could just be real.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Just real life, just like if I walk up to, you know, even, me and you're even, we don't know each other. I don't have any bad or good feelings towards you, and I come and I slap you. I created a deficit now, now you're intention.

• 55:14Jocko Willink?

  Big deficit.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so your intention, whether you do it or not, you're, what you, you're compelled to slap me back, if not more, usually more.

• 55:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Because, you know, so that's kinda really what it is, I mean, really in a small, teeny tiny nutshell. You know, I go out and start acting mad to everyone, what, they're not gonna be like, oh, I love you. I mean, they might because they might be, you know, intellectual, or, or, you know, they might be able to think about it, but their natural compulsion will be to be mad at you back.

• 55:42Jocko Willink?

  And, and this, you know, the podcast, Human Nature, talking about human nature, and I always say that war reveals human nature more clearly than anything else, because it's so much pressure on the people. Obviously, a concentration camp, it's revealing human nature, and that's exactly what we're talking about. And it reveals itself in crystal clarity on a massive scale in terms of being able to see it in a concentration camp, and you see it reveal itself on a TV show called Survivor, and you see it reveal itself in, in the work environment. And what I'm saying is, from all that, what you wanna do is you wanna make sure that when you get put into a position of authority, you don't abuse it, that's what I'm saying.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:27Jocko Willink?

  You don't wanna abuse it, you want to treat people with respect no matter what. And you don't wanna step on people's backs to get ahead, because ultimately, it's not gonna pay off. It really isn't.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:41Jocko Willink?

  You're only gonna fool, like that leader that you fooled into thinking that you are a great guy, that's only gonna last for so long.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:49Jocko Willink?

  And eventually, you're gonna get found out.

• 56:56Jocko Willink?

  Now, alright, let's get back into the book here. "The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action."

• 57:07Jocko Willink?

  And this is, we've talked about the capitalists, and he's gonna talk about some of the more heroic people, and some of those actions very briefly. And he says, because the reason there's very briefly is because there wasn't a lot of them.

• 57:19Jocko Willink?

  "The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

• 57:47Jocko Willink?

  We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through huts, comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing. The last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." And there it is. I mean, that is it. That is it.

• 58:27Jocko Willink?

  This idea, and you know, Captain Plum talked about it as well, and Captain Plum had a quote from Stockdale. And we gotta explore this and I've got a bunch of Stockdale books and I, we will get to some Stockdale books. Who was the senior guy in the Hanoi Hilton? And he's, you know, a fighter pilot philosopher guy. Brilliant guy and a hero, won, was awarded the Medal of Honor. And one of the things that, that Captain Plum was talking to us about is, is Captain Plum said that they got word from Stockdale. And I'm gonna misquote it, but I'm gonna do my best. It was, just because we're in a prison camp doesn't mean we have to be on defense. We're gonna be on offense. In a prison camp.

• 59:13Jocko Willink?

  That's just a completely different attitude. It's choosing the attitude. We're not gonna sit here and be abused and, and be put down. We're gonna step up. We're gonna, we're gonna go on offense. And, and they did, they did hunger strikes, they passed word around, they wouldn't stand up when people entered, they, they did these things. They went on offense. And that's what he's talking about right here, this last human freedom to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. We always have that choice, no matter what the circumstances are that surround you, you always have that choice.

• 59:54Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, and there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour offered the opportunity to make a decision. A decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threaten to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom.

• 1:00:15Jocko Willink?

  Which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance. Renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.

• 1:00:33Jocko Willink?

  Again, there it is. You're in a concentration camp doomed, doomed. And yet you can hang on to that last bastion of freedom in your soul. To not let them win and not let them own that.

• 1:00:57Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "Seeing from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions.

• 1:01:09Jocko Willink?

  Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food, and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis, it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of inner decision and not the result of camp influences alone."

• 1:01:36Jocko Willink?

  Think about that.

• 1:01:40Jocko Willink?

  The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision. Not the result of the circumstances you're in. That doesn't matter what kind of person you become. What matters is the decisions that you make.

• 1:01:58Jocko Willink?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:02:01Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him mentally and spiritually." Okay, physically, you can have that one. Can't control that all the time. But mentally and spiritually, I get to decide what I'm gonna be.

• 1:02:25Jocko Willink?

  He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevsky said, "Once, there is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost.

• 1:03:01Jocko Willink?

  It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings. The way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom which cannot be taken away that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

• 1:03:27Jocko Willink?

  The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross gives him ample opportunity, even under the most difficult circumstances, to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified, and unselfish, or, in the bitter fight for self-preservation, he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forego the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him.

• 1:04:12Jocko Willink?

  And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not. So, think about that. When you get faced with this ultimate challenge, brutal challenge, when life is just about to crush you, that's when you have the biggest opportunity to prove who you are.

• 1:04:37Jocko Willink?

  You know, speaking of

• 1:04:40Jocko Willink?

  of of unworthy topics, but this is something I when I was when I first got to see what I was at SEAL Team One. I ran a communications class and when I ran the class, we I was like super hard and I know it comes as a big shocker, but we would great test, test, test on all these different subjects, you know, what radio, what frequency or bandwidth, what you know, all these different subjects. And I would say the guys, hey, you know, tomorrow we got another test, another opportunity for you to prove yourself. And that's the way I looked at it. They didn't always look at it the same way, but that's exactly exactly what he's saying here. When you have these brutal circumstances that you face.

• 1:05:26Jocko Willink?

  That's your opportunity. And if you think about all heroic tales, right? There's no heroic tales where the hero doesn't face any challenges. And as a matter of fact, the worst challenges he faces, the more of a hero he becomes.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:39Jocko Willink?

  If he rises to the occasion, if he doesn't rise to the occasion, guess what? We don't hear about it.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Right. Not a hero.

• 1:05:44Jocko Willink?

  Not a hero.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, in fact.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Let's say you're considered a hero and then this big chance to prove yourself comes about and you fail or you don't step up. You're kind of like this big failure in a way, even though you've been a hero the whole time.

• 1:06:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I would say that's true. Although if you do something heroic enough, people are like good with it.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:13Jocko Willink?

  I think.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  If they're significant enough, so it's kind of the same thing.

• 1:06:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, the bottom line is you face these challenges and you get challenged to to have this attitude of, you know, basically good opportunity, opportunity to solve the problems.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Right? Oh, big challenge. Cool. Opportunity. Good.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like those guys who, you know, they start a business, the business is like grows and then it just massively fails because of some mistake or I don't know something and some or the kind of, I don't know, whatever. And then they well, they reach rock bottom and they build themselves back up and then, you know, it's this massive success, you know, it was like, oh, that's such an impressive story. Yeah, you know?

• 1:06:52Jocko Willink?

  That's much better than, hey, I went to this school, I graduated, I worked this job, I made a bunch of money.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Jocko Willink?

  Everyone goes, oh, cool.

• 1:07:02Jocko Willink?

  Right? Cool. Yeah. Cool, good for you. Yeah. They want to hear the struggle. They want to see that you were challenged. Yep.

• 1:07:11Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving, of achieving something through his own suffering. God, think about that. The, the, the suffering that you're going through is in a chance to achieve something through your suffering. That's an incredible thought. Yeah. That's an incredible thought.

• 1:07:36Jocko Willink?

  Now, this next part is something that I get asked about on a fairly regular basis. Back to the book. Take the fate of the sick. Especially those who are incurable. I once read a letter written by a young invalid in which he told a friend that he had just found out he would not live for long. That even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he remembered a film he had seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death in a courageous and dignified way.

• 1:08:11Jocko Willink?

  The boy had a thought, it, the boy had thought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now, he wrote, fate was offering him a similar chance.

• 1:08:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, there's, there's,

• 1:08:33Jocko Willink?

  you know, diseases, terminal diseases. And that's it. And then what do you do?

• 1:08:40Jocko Willink?

  Well, I think you have to choose the best possible attitude you can.

• 1:08:45Jocko Willink?

  And again, I've never been in that situation, obviously. But

• 1:08:51Jocko Willink?

  that statement seems to be the best possible attitude to take.

• 1:08:59Jocko Willink?

  Again, that's, that's when we see people doing something heroic, that's what we see. And you know, it's funny, some of those, when we were doing a lot of the Native Americans on the podcast, they all had that attitude. When you go to face death, hold your head high. Be afraid of it.

• 1:09:19Jocko Willink?

  And that's really, like you said, easier sitting here in the, you know, in the recording studio, of course. Yeah. Easy for me to sit here and say that. Yeah.

• 1:09:29Jocko Willink?

  But that's a hard one. And you know, um, the other day on the Joe Rogan podcast, Everlast was on there.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Jocko Willink?

  And Joe Rogan, he, you know, Everlast was saying, hey, you know, I'm not in good shape right now. I wish I could get in better shape, but I have, you know, ba- I think he's got a back injury. And he's got this and he's got a daughter that's got some kind of illness. Bad illness. And Joe put on the good video that you made. And, you know, Everlast, when he got done, Everlast was like, hey, that's cool. That's inspirational, but how does that help me with my sick daughter?

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:05Jocko Willink?

  What's good about that? You know? And I wished I could have jumped through and, and, and talked to him. Because this much I will say, when you got a bad situation like that, I'm telling you right now, it could be worse. Absolutely a hundred percent. And the fact that he's talking about his daughter and how she's sick and how he has to spend so much time with her to take care of her, well, well, that's what I'm saying.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:30Jocko Willink?

  Be thankful that you're in a position in life where you can spend time with her. Be thankful that she's in a condition where she can spend time with you.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:38Jocko Willink?

  And you know, there's, she's still here. If nothing else, that's good. If nothing else. And so what are you gonna do? I mean, your, your, your other option is to say, my daughter's sick. This is horrible. I got cursed. It's, it's not fair. And what does that do for you? Where does that get you? It doesn't get you anywhere. It matter of fact, it takes you backwards.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:01Jocko Willink?

  So you really truly do have to look at these horrible situations. I remember

• 1:11:07Jocko Willink?

  I got a call back from, from, uh, overseas that a guy was, a SEAL was really badly wounded. And, and a couple of my friends were kind of distraught. And I talked to one of the guys overseas. And

• 1:11:27Jocko Willink?

  I, you know, and, and man, I at this point, you know, lost Mark, lost Mikey. I don't think Ryan had died yet, but like I was familiar with guys dying.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Jocko Willink?

  And I talked to one of the guys that was overseas. And they said, hey, you know, this guy is really, really messed up. And I'm like, is he gonna live? And they're like, yeah, he's stable. And I go, then don't worry about a thing. Be happy. He's alive and it doesn't matter if he's missing a leg or two legs or whatever.

• 1:12:01Jocko Willink?

  He's gonna be coming home and he's gonna carry on with his life. And it's gonna be hard and it's gonna be hell and it's gonna be a challenge, but guess what? He's gonna be here.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Jocko Willink?

  And that, you know, again, it's like, man, what's the alternative? The alternative is he's dead. The alternative is we never talk to him again. That's the alternative.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:25Jocko Willink?

  Versus he's gonna come back, right? And this guy, the guy that got wounded, he wasn't like a great friend of mine. But I knew I was talking to people that were very close to him. And so, you know, I, I, I had to make sure I wasn't coming across like, hey, it's no big deal. I, you know, look, he's gonna be fine. No, it wasn't like that. But look, look what the alternative is, you know? Let's be thankful that he's alive.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:47Jocko Willink?

  And he's gonna come home and, you know, he's gonna carry on with his life.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:52Jocko Willink?

  And that's what, that's what's important. So it's really, when you do look at these situations, when things are going bad.

• 1:12:59Jocko Willink?

  And then you say, okay, well, what good can come of that? And then the one step further is then what happens when someone does die? Then what good comes of that? And, and my thought is always the same thing. I'm thankful that I got to know that person. I'm thankful that I got to understand their personality. I'm thankful that I got to spend a day with them, laughing and having that memory.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Jocko Willink?

  That's what's good. What's good is I got to experience them in my life and they got to experience other peoples in their lives. And that's what's good about it.

• 1:13:31Jocko Willink?

  But just to say, hey.

• 1:13:34Jocko Willink?

  You know, my friend, my family member is dead. This is horrible and I can't escape from this. Wrong attitude. And of course, you're gonna go through that. It's the, there's the, whatever those things are that you go through. It's shock and then denial and then anger and then acceptance and all that. That's, I get it. And, and it's not gonna be easy. But I'll tell you what will make it easier is to look at the situation and say, what here is good? You know? And you, one of the worst things is parents that have young children that are terminally ill. It's awful. It's awful. And the best you can think of is say, hold them while you can.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:18Jocko Willink?

  Right? And, and get what you can and grow the memories that you can right now. Because just to focus on the fact that life isn't fair, isn't gonna help you. And guess what? You're right, life isn't fair.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:30Jocko Willink?

  Life isn't fair. It's, it's, it's a random horrible thing. And if you wanna focus on the randomness and the horribleness of it, that's where you're gonna end up.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:43Jocko Willink?

  But if you can focus on the good that comes out of those situations, try to. And again, I haven't been through that. I haven't been through that, thank God.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, not that level for sure.

• 1:14:53Jocko Willink?

  But the best I can do, the best I can assess is say, man, at least try and look at what positive is coming out of this. And, and, and focus on that instead of focusing on what is negative. Shoot, it's going back to what Frankl said. You choose what your attitude is gonna be.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Jocko Willink?

  Don't become a victim of the randomness.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's so, and that goes on like all levels. You know how even if like something isn't horrible, it's just kinda junk, you know? All the way down to just something that's, that's pretty horrible. There's still a lot of good going on in the situation, but and just like you're saying, like your attitude or another way to put it is what you're looking for to to internalize, you know, a lot of times and it's natural and I've been there where it's like everything just seems bad, even the smell like if something real bad happens that you think is real bad and then the same day or the next year, whatever, something small bad happens, it'll just add big time to the badness like nothing's going right kinda kinda attitude. Meanwhile, all the good things are going on all around you, but you're not looking for that.

• 1:15:58Jocko Willink?

  We forget about all those things.

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. So and a lot of times with like real bad situations, especially especially with kids, because that's like the the most weak you can ever feel really when like your kid, like when my daughter had, she had a big staph infection, Mersa, in her lymph node. So her neck was big, she was in the hospital for a week and we're there. That's like the most weak in that that you'll feel in, of course, there's way worse situations, you know, than that. That's nothing compared to situations. I know that. But there are good things that A are still going on in your situation, your life. That's A. B, there's good situations that can come of it. And a lot of them, a lot of them is just are strength related. You know, like if you let something beat you down and you don't get

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  the strength, like that's a loss. You'll lose, like you'll.

• 1:16:44Jocko Willink?

  So you're saying you're getting some kind of conditioning from it?

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  In a way, in a matter of speaking, yes. So like if you have a quote unquote good attitude, when you emerge from the situation, you will have strength now. If you don't, you won't, you'll have weakness. You'll be, you know, gun shy. Everything happens bad. My life sucks and you know, you'll continue down kind of that road. So the good part, like if you said, like I said, if you keep that good attitude and when you make it out, you will have this among the other good things that can come from it, you will have the strength.

• 1:17:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're you're right. And I mean, just look at Captain Plum and look at Colonel Reader. And for those guys to go through what they went through. And and maintain a positive attitude and then they come out and you talk to those guys and it's like I don't you can't think of more positive people.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:35Jocko Willink?

  In the world.

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:36Jocko Willink?

  You know, I mean, not in the whole world, but you they're just have so much positivity. Because they've been through something and they had to maintain that attitude. So you're right. When they come out, it's like. How are you gonna make? And I think that's what happens a lot of times with guys that have been to war. Is they come back and they're like happy to see the sunrise. I know I am.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:56Jocko Willink?

  I'm happy to see the sunrise. I'm I'm happier than a lot of people to see the sunrise. I appreciate that thing.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:01Jocko Willink?

  And I think when people go through some kind of devastating disease in their family or themselves, same thing. Once they get through it.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:18:08Jocko Willink?

  They at least come out the other side and they can appreciate it.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:11Jocko Willink?

  And yet, if they let it beat them down, it's gonna it's gonna, everything is gonna look down. If you're looking down, you're gonna look down. If you're looking up, you're gonna look up.

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:19Jocko Willink?

  That's gotta be a.

• 1:18:22Jocko Willink?

  It's hard. I mean, it's so hard for people. It's so hard.

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And again, I'm over here talking, you know.

• 1:18:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure. Both of us are. You know, when I was on Joe Rogan, we started off talking about. Chris Cornell, it just killed himself. We kind of cursory, kind of talked about depression and neither one of, I mean, I definitely am not claiming claiming to be any kind of. Expert at all about it. And I even said on there, I was like, look, I've never felt this way. And I had a couple of people hit me up on social media like, you know, you should. You should read this or you should do this or and and, you know, or you're not right. I'm like, no, I wasn't even trying to say anything that I'm right. I'm just telling, I was saying, I don't actually even know.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:00Jocko Willink?

  And and so, yeah, I'm not, you know, certainly an expert on how to overcome, you know, horrible situations. But I've been in some pretty horrible situations and this is what my thoughts tried to be.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:13Jocko Willink?

  And it's not always easy.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:15Jocko Willink?

  At all.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Jordan Peterson has some good, good. You know, good content on that where he's basically in a nutshell, he says, get yourself together where in his example, one of the many was, you know, a family member dies or whatever. Get yourself together. So you know, what are you going to do? Are you going to wallow with the rest of the people? So no one can get a hold of anything and the funeral is a mess or whatever, or are you going to get yourself together? Grieve for sure, but get yourself together so you can kind of lead and get the funeral together and take care of the business or whatever.

• 1:19:47Jocko Willink?

  And it's such a cold blooded thing to say, right? It's the complete, and that's what I think is hard about it is, you know, think about this. Oh, if someone in your family died and I was like, Echo, get yourself together.

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:00Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? Like I, who says that, right? But that's probably the best thing I could possibly say to you. Now I might need to say it in a more tactful way. I might just say, hey, Echo, man, I feel for you. Hey, man, what we need to do is grieve, but we also need to focus on moving forward. You know what I mean? It's that kind of thing. But the reality is, what am I really saying? I'm really saying, hey, get yourself together. You gotta move on. We gotta move on. We gotta move forward. You gotta move forward in your life and that's like such a hard thing to say to somebody.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:29Jocko Willink?

  But that's probably the right attitude to take is, okay. Like this is horrible and I need to keep it together.

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, man. Especially when there's no majorly prevalent things that are at risk at that moment as well. Like, you know, like your situation, like in a combat situation, I think, uh, BTF Tony was talking about this one. If like you're in a firefight or something like that and someone gets hit.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  You don't just quit.

• 1:21:00Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  Exit the firefight and be like, oh my gosh, my guy's hit. It's like, okay, he's hit. Boom. Let's continue the firefight. But let's say there was no firefight. Then the guy gets hit. It's, it seems like

• 1:21:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  A harder thing to, to just move on and

• 1:21:14Jocko Willink?

  So what you kind of need is you need to like, you need to have a firefight going on. So that you, so that you can say, okay. I'm gonna deal with this, but I need to also think about the rest of life.

• 1:21:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Jocko Willink?

  So hard and you know, again, it's, it's, I, you know what I'm feeling like right now? I, I got, I get some social media sometimes where someone will say, hey, I'm not a vet. But like a friend of mine is going through problems and I don't know how to talk to him because I'm not a vet. And that's kind of like what I feel like right now. Like I haven't been through those kinds of suffering. So I'm throwing darts, but I'm throwing them based on what I know. So it's the best I can, you know?

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:51Jocko Willink?

  Best I could do right now.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  You, like you're at risk of someone saying, hey, you, you simply don't understand. And the fact is they are right.

• 1:22:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And my, by, my statement to that would be, yes, I don't understand. You know, it's like in the, in, when I was talking to veterans saying, look, people, you feel like people don't understand? They don't and that's okay. And so definitely not sitting here saying, oh, you know, I know this is what you do in a situation like that. No, I don't know.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:19Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what you do when your family member suffers something egregious like that, like a terminal disease or death. I don't know. Haven't been through it. What I have been through is losing guys in combat that I have been through. This is, this is darkness. It's a different kind of darkness. But this is what I did.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:43Jocko Willink?

  In those situations. And that's what I would think would help you in these other situations.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:50Jocko Willink?

  Hard.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  It's just a question, right? What do you, what do you do?

• 1:22:53Jocko Willink?

  Hard. And we are, we are sitting here reading a book by a guy that was in a concentration camp. And he's saying this thing to do, you know, so that's,

• 1:23:08Jocko Willink?

  that's another sort of reinforcement of this thought pattern.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Jocko Willink?

  All right. He talks a little bit about the passage of time here. In camp, a small unit of time, a day, for example, filled with hourly tortures and fatigue appeared endless. A larger time unit, perhaps a week, seemed to pass very quickly. My comrades agreed when I said that in a camp, a day lasted longer than a week.

• 1:23:42Jocko Willink?

  How paradoxical was our time experience? And that's something, this actually reminded me, I was talking to Sarah Armstrong. And she, and when I was, it's actually around the conversation when Leif was talking about, he'd come out here and seen all my kids, my kids are all grown up now, basically, except for my littlest one. But you know, my oldest daughter's graduating high school in a couple of weeks and she's going to go to college. And you know, when Leif met her, she was, what was that, 12 years ago? So she was,

• 1:24:13Jocko Willink?

  you know, no. Five, six. Six, something like that. So, you know, and when he came out here, you know, he had just come, left his apartment in New York City where he's got his wife and kids and they're, and you know, it's chaos and the little kids and they're crying and screaming and spilling stuff and throwing up milk and pissing everywhere. And it's just, you know, it's, that's what life is when you're a parent. And, you know, he came out here and saw how my kids were now grown up and those, that time is gone, by the way, gone. Can't get it back. And, and he, you know, he talked about it on the podcast, just, hey man, make sure you appreciate those. And Sarah Armstrong, you know, said something along the lines of, uh, the days are long, but the years are short. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:57Jocko Willink?

  That's a very true statement. And you can, you can see that here, it's the same thing, you know, all of a sudden this time is just going by so quickly.

• 1:25:12Jocko Willink?

  This is starting to talk again, back to the attitude, we could say that most men in a concentration camp believed that the the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenges and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners. Same, same thing, same topic. I know it's interesting. And I told you this before we started, this book, you know, is a great book. But I, I kind of wanted to talk about how bad concentration camps were, and I went and found some other sources for that.

• 1:25:58Jocko Willink?

  Because Viktor Frankl doesn't highlight it that much. I mean, his, I mean, he was in Auschwitz for crying out loud. It doesn't get any worse. And You know, to really give the impact of how bad it was, I went and found some other sources that were a little bit, a little bit more directly written and a little bit more horrifying to be, lack of a better word. Because in his accounts, he doesn't go into those, some of those graphic details, which I feel like you should know and you should understand what, before you talk about, hey, he's keeping a good attitude, but no, no, it's not he's keeping a good attitude because he was in a concentration camp, but it wasn't that bad. No, it was freaking hell. Yeah. And that's what he's dealing with.

• 1:26:40Jocko Willink?

  And in his mind, you could make a triumph or a victory out of those experiences. Which is incredible attitude to have. Yeah. Going back to the book, "The prisoner who had lost faith in the future, his future, was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold. He let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly in the form of a crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced camp inmate.

• 1:27:21Jocko Willink?

  We all feared this moment, not for ourselves, which would have been pointless, but for our friends. Usually it began with the prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and wash or to go out on the parade grounds. No entreaties, no blows, no threats had any effect. He just lay there hardly moving. If this crisis was brought about by an illness, he refused to be taken to the sick bay or to do anything to help himself. He simply gave up. There he remained, lying in his own excreta, and nothing bothered him anymore."

• 1:28:02Jocko Willink?

  And that's similar to what Colonel Reader said, how if you didn't actively stay alive, you would die. You couldn't just passively exist. You weren't gonna make it. If you wanted to die, all you had to do was stop trying, then you were gonna die.

• 1:28:20Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, as we said before, any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had to first succeed in showing him some future goal. In Nietzsche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how."

• 1:28:42Jocko Willink?

  That could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners.

• 1:28:51Jocko Willink?

  Whenever there was an opportunity for it, one had to give them a why, an aim for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence. "Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point to carrying on. He was soon lost."

• 1:29:15Jocko Willink?

  Gotta know why you're doing what you're doing. And that's all there is to it. "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how." And obviously, that translates right into leadership perspective, making sure people understand why they're doing what they're doing, you just don't bark orders at them. But from an individual perspective, why are you doing this? Find that. And I actually, I actually made a, a post on social media the other day, and it was something along the lines of finding your inner why, or something like that.

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:29:52Jocko Willink?

  And I was, I was, you know, mocking that attitude.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:58Jocko Willink?

  And I was saying, you know, sometimes my inner voice is trying to find out why I'm doing what I'm doing, and I'm like, when I'm doing something hard, my inner voice doesn't allow to talk, be quiet, I'm over here working, you know?

• 1:30:12Jocko Willink?

  But there is, obviously, just like a leadership perspective, and from a personal perspective, why are you doing what you're doing? And that should be the driving force.

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:22Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't have that, it's hard to overcome these challenges. You can't just overcome challenges just because, you know, they're there. You need some greater reason.

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:31Jocko Willink?

  And when that gets lost, you get lost.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  I don't know why I thought that was funny. I think the

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  when, why you were mocking that, this is my why and my inner voice.

• 1:30:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't, now that I think about it, it wasn't really the why thing.

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:30:50Jocko Willink?

  It was more about the inner, the inner voice.

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  Oh, the inner voice?

• 1:30:53Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, no, I definitely said why in there too.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  Cause peop- I think people do use, like, it's like a lot of good expressions or sayings or whatever, where people just, oh, I like that, and they'll just start throwing it out.

• 1:31:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  And abusing it, and it dumbs it down, and then now everyone's saying it, now it just sort of sounds cheesy because no one's actually doing it. No one's actually understanding like the real, what, what it really means, you know, like the person who's like, hey, I'm gonna lose weight, and, you know, they've basically spent their life neglecting their health or whatever, then they're like, okay, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna get in shape. And then, they go on this, you know, program, they quit, you know, but when they're doing good on the program, let's say the first or second day, they'll be like, this is my why, and they'll show their, I don't know, their, their dog or something like that, my why, or my kids or whatever, you know? But, then the next day they quit the program, like, it's such a weak thing, you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't just do that, you know, like, that, that whole thing?

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  My why, or whatever, that's way too powerful for people to just be like, hey, my why, and then just not do it.

• 1:31:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it shouldn't be just like a little thing. You can't just throw together a thirty-eight second inter- Instagram post that's about your why.

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:02Jocko Willink?

  That you need to dig.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta do that stuff. So that's why it's funny, because like, just people just throw that out now, now it means like nothing, and it's, it's almost like they see, it seems like, it seems like, it's totally my interpretation of it, but it seems like they're saying it and thinking that they sound so profound and deep and new and inspirational, you know? But everyone's saying it.

• 1:32:26Jocko Willink?

  And to, to counter your point, I've had plenty of people that have talked to me about, you know, I was in bad shape, I wasn't taking care of myself, I wasn't healthy, and I had my first kid. And I said to myself, I need to, I need to be there for my kid. Or, or I was doing bad at work and I didn't really care and I wasn't focused on my career and I wasn't focused on being squared away and I was wasting all my money on dumb stuff. And I had my first kid.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:51Jocko Willink?

  And then I said, I gotta, you know, this, this is me taking care of my kid and I need to do a damn good job.

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  And that's exactly the point right there is that it's a real thing. And if that's for real, you're, you're why conceptually now, I'm just saying the expression.

• 1:33:04Jocko Willink?

  For sure, for sure. But there's a big difference between, well, there's a big difference between the contemplation that goes into, I'm doing this for my kids. Cool.

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:12Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna go on Weight Watchers, right? It's like, um, no, like, think about this. Think about your relationship with your children and where you're gonna end up and how you wanna see them live and what guidance you can give them as human beings and the example that you're setting for them. And you line all those things up, then maybe you can put down the donuts, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. In other words, you gotta do it, actually, you know, so, yeah, that's why it just sounds cheesy, cuz everyone does it or says it.

• 1:33:40Jocko Willink?

  This is a great section going back to the book. We had to learn ourselves and furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.

• 1:33:59Jocko Willink?

  We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life daily and hourly. One answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct.

• 1:34:19Jocko Willink?

  Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. Again, you're turning, you're flipping this idea around. It's not about what I want from life. It's what, what does life want from me? And it's putting these challenges and these hurdles in front of me and I gotta go and jump over them. And then I gotta smash them. And then I gotta set fire to them. And then I gotta use that fire to fuel the domination of everything that's in my path.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  Is that kinda like, hey, these weights aren't gonna lift themselves?

• 1:34:57Jocko Willink?

  It's the exact same thing. It's the exact same thing.

• 1:35:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:05Jocko Willink?

  And again, going back to this idea that war reveals human nature. And this is Dr. Frankl's way of putting this, the exact same thing that I say. Back to the book, "Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths." It is, is it surprising that in those depths, we again found only human qualities, which in their very nature, were a mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings,

• 1:35:47Jocko Willink?

  reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss, which is laid open by the concentration camp.

• 1:35:59Jocko Willink?

  So we've got this idea, once again, that there's a dichotomy in people. In people, this dichotomy that you're capable of doing extreme good and you're capable of doing extreme evil. And we've seen it a bunch, we've seen it a bunch on this podcast. You look at the My Lai massacre. Those guys were normal guys that committed extreme evil, straight up evil.

• 1:36:34Jocko Willink?

  Normal guys that were, you know, four days earlier, probably would have done something heroic to save someone. And here they are, the other end of the spectrum.

• 1:36:49Jocko Willink?

  And I think that you have to, we have to face that not only individually do you have that, but then obviously as a group you have that. As a group of human beings, we have that capability. We've seen it over and over again. And if you want to know what that good part is, you've got to know what that darkness is too.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, the group. Thing is interesting, like you know, you know how you always hear, not always, but you hear sometimes about these riots on college campuses, whether it be after a game or something like that. But at a glance, you'd think dang, is this college filled of, full of just hooligans? Like if this bit like huge riots, you know, but it's that it's like as an individual or, you know, under quote unquote, normal circumstances, they just, they're just normal people, you know? Guys, girls, whatever, they're just normal people. But then you put them in this particular situation in some way extreme or whatever, you know, it's a spectrum, but, and they just act different and the whole group dynamic too, they'll just act different.

• 1:37:49Jocko Willink?

  The group dynamic is a, uh, is, can be a very, very scary thing. There's no doubt it can be a very, very scary thing. And that's, that's why, you know, even when he's talking about, and I, I mentioned this on when I was on Joe Rogan's last podcast. I'm like this, the idea of individual freedom and acting as an individual is so important.

• 1:38:11Jocko Willink?

  As to, to structure your life around, to say, look, I'm not part of this group. This group is not me.

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:18Jocko Willink?

  This group is not me, they don't represent me. I represent me.

• 1:38:22Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:38:22Jocko Willink?

  And I'm, I have my own individual choices and that's what he's saying in here. The minute you give away to the herd.

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:30Jocko Willink?

  That's when you start going, you, you don't know, you, you no longer control it.

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:34Jocko Willink?

  And when you give up that control, that's a scary, scary thing. And that's when these evil things take place.

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that, and that, but once again, that's it's, it's like, it's easy to say now, because grouping yourself is actually a survival mechanism.

• 1:38:49Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  So you, you know, it's not going to be just that, you're not going to naturally just be an individual and act like an individual and conduct yourself in all these extreme situations as an individual, you're not just going to naturally do that.

• 1:39:01Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  So. I guess it just helps to know these things.

• 1:39:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's you're you're a hundred percent right on both facets. Number one, yes, grouping and fitting in is a survival instinct that people have. And that's why trends happen and that's why nations happen. And that's why that's why groups occur and people. And

• 1:39:24Speaker 01

  Politics.

• 1:39:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and politics and in everything, right? To get into these groups. And I mean, it's weird now because with the internet, you can have groups. You can be part of these groups anonymously.

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  And whatever group you want.

• 1:39:35Jocko Willink?

  And you can connect with all these different people. But it's also important to make sure that you you do remember that you are an individual. That you can that you don't want to give up that last shred of human will.

• 1:39:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:50Jocko Willink?

  To decide what your attitude is going to be.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, dang, and and today, you know, in our luxurious society, if you can consciously navigate your way clear of that of falling into the group trap is what it is. It's a trap because you don't have to. If you can do that successfully, but probably you won't fall for the tricks, man. Like, that's the thing you get every we all get tricked all the way down to just something is is seemingly benign as marketing. Just, man, you'll just fall for way less tricks.

• 1:40:23Jocko Willink?

  You don't like those tricks out there in the world, do you?

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  No, I don't. Probably fell for too many of them, I think.

• 1:40:32Jocko Willink?

  This is a I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap this book. This book is not long. It's a very fast read and and actually he goes into um sort of goes into the more of the psychological, the psychiatrist, the actual academic of it than I covered. But this is a fast read. I mean, it's only one hundred and fifty pages or so. And you definitely get a raw look at at human nature. But this closing, I think, is very, very powerful. Going back to the book, a human being is not one thing among others. Things determine each other, but man is ultimately self determining.

• 1:41:17Jocko Willink?

  What he becomes within the limits of endowment and environment he has made out of himself.

• 1:41:27Jocko Willink?

  In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine, while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself. Which one is actualized depends on decisions, but not on conditions. Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is.

• 1:42:08Jocko Willink?

  After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz. However, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright with the Lord's Prayer, or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

• 1:42:41Jocko Willink?

  And I think that thought, that man has both potentialities within himself, and we've seen them over and over again, these grand, expanded potentialities in extreme display. And we've talked about these situations in the podcast over and over again, in the Burma Railway that was built by the prisoners of war. The prisoners of war were tortured and killed by the Japanese, and the genocide in Rwanda, and the rape of Nanking.

• 1:43:21Jocko Willink?

  And we've also seen the other potentiality. And we've seen that over and over again, that, that potentiality of goodness and of sacrifice. Those men that we've seen over and over again, that laid down their lives for their brothers, and in doing so, protect our freedom.

• 1:43:58Jocko Willink?

  But it's important to note that again, that whether the good or the evil is actualized

• 1:44:08Jocko Willink?

  in the minds of men, that is not based on conditions, but on decisions.

• 1:44:17Jocko Willink?

  And this doesn't only apply to good and evil, of course, that's the that's the most expansive thought that we can apply this to, but it also applies to everything we choose to do, or choose not to do, and everything we choose to become or not to become.

• 1:44:40Jocko Willink?

  It's us. It's our choice, and we are responsible.

• 1:44:50Jocko Willink?

  We are responsible to be good, instead of evil, to be strong, instead of weak, to become what we want to become, not what we let ourselves become.

• 1:45:06Jocko Willink?

  We own the course.

• 1:45:13Jocko Willink?

  And with every decision that we make, we actualize ourselves, we become what we choose.

• 1:45:24Jocko Willink?

  Swine?

• 1:45:28Jocko Willink?

  Or saints?

• 1:45:35Jocko Willink?

  So, when you make decisions, every decision, think.

• 1:45:43Jocko Willink?

  Think about where that decision leads, and what that decision will make you become.

• 1:45:56Jocko Willink?

  And then self-determine.

• 1:46:01Jocko Willink?

  Self-determine, choose

• 1:46:05Jocko Willink?

  what will make you a better person.

• 1:46:12Jocko Willink?

  And even in situations where you feel you have no choice at all, you still have one last freedom and that is to choose your own attitude in any given set of circumstances.

• 1:46:31Jocko Willink?

  Keep that choice. Keep that freedom, that hard choice.

• 1:46:42Jocko Willink?

  The disciplined choice.

• 1:46:48Jocko Willink?

  And with the discipline to make the right choice, maintain

• 1:46:58Jocko Willink?

  your freedom.

• 1:47:07Jocko Willink?

  Man, I think that's

• 1:47:10Jocko Willink?

  all I've got for tonight.

• 1:47:15Jocko Willink?

  Powerful book.

• 1:47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Isn't it crazy how, and I can't help but think of this, like where, how they talk about the SS officers, what are the Nazis? The guys there who are just savages, obviously, but are they really savages as people though? Or is it a circumstantial thing? I mean, I know they're trained to kind of regard this, you know, the Jews or these groups of people as, you know, beneath them and all this stuff, but.

• 1:47:47Speaker 01

  Like, are they savages just as individ- because it takes a savage to do some of this stuff, you know, especially grabbing a baby and smashing his, as the book said, skull against the wall. That's like subhuman behavior, you know? But when he goes home, you know, he has kids. You know, is he like, eh, I don't care if the, these kids, ultimately if their heads get, you know, I'm sure he's not like that. I'm sure he's just a normal person who'd just be just as weak as all of us if your kid stubs its toe and starts crying, you know?

• 1:48:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, we're going to explore. I got some books in the queue to explore the other side of this, and they're very revealing about some of that. But again, it's, it's, you're right, that some of these guys, you know, were, were normal, right? Some of these Nazis were normal, and they were doing their job, and that's one of the worst, you know, there's a whole, there's a whole, uh, argument on whether that even is allowable. Like, if, if you're doing your job and, and I'll tell you what, in the US military, that doesn't, that doesn't work. That's an excuse that we don't have. You can't say, hey, I got ordered to do this thing that was against the law,

• 1:49:02Jocko Willink?

  or against ethical values, doesn't matter. I still can't do it. That's not an excuse. And that came directly from this attitude that Nazis said, hey, I was just following orders. You know, hey, it wasn't my fault, I was just following orders. No, actually, you can't, you can't say that. You're not allowed to say that.

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:16Jocko Willink?

  So as far as the normalcy, sure, they might have been normal, normal when they went home, but that doesn't remove their guilt at all.

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully.

• 1:49:25Jocko Willink?

  You can't take a baby and smash its head against the wall. You don't get a pass on that one, whether you ordered to do it or not.

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:49:32Jocko Willink?

  There's certain moral standards that exist, and you can't violate them, and if you do, you're guilty. Doesn't matter what else you did.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  Back then, who, who was kind of the, the, you know, the authority on that? Like, where the moral, was it like a global thing, you know? Or is it, because obviously Hitler was be, would be like, eh, whatever.

• 1:49:53Jocko Willink?

  Well, there's different societies that had different viewpoints, obviously the Nazis.

• 1:49:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, hence the war. The Nazis and the Japanese both felt, okay, we can do what we need to do to dominate.

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:06Jocko Willink?

  And whether that's the rape in Nanking, or whether that's the concentration camps and the Final Solution, both those things were in their societies. Now, there was, of course, there was people inside those societies, and I don't know, I haven't, I haven't, I don't know of any Japanese, I'm sure there were some Japanese that that were against, I mean, even when we read the rape in Nanking, there was a Nazi in Nanking, remember that sheltered people?

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:28Jocko Willink?

  So there's an example. Here's a guy, now, he didn't know what was going on with the Final Solution back in Germany. At least it doesn't appear that way. But, yeah, this is what makes morality and ethical decision-making so challenging.

• 1:50:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:46Jocko Willink?

  But there is, in my opinion, you know, a certain standard moral code that human beings live by.

• 1:50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:53Jocko Willink?

  And that is a universal, relatively, you know, now, I should actually say it's universal.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:51:01Jocko Willink?

  There's the way that I believe that there's morals and standards that human beings should live by.

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:07Jocko Willink?

  And when you start stepping outside those bounds, you're going on the wrong side.

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like anything, man, it's like, obviously, a spectrum, and then what you're talking about, that universal line that you cross, it's like, actually, when you really look at the line, it's like, it's a universal gray area of, and then, when you really look closer, but I think that the circumstances don't really fall within the confines of that gray area very often. So it's easy to be like, that's obviously right, that's obviously wrong. But then, every once in a while, these gray areas emerge, and then it's like this big debate, and it depends on who you are.

• 1:51:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I, I don't spend a lot of time in the gray areas, to be honest with you. Like, in my thought pattern, I don't spend a lot of time in the gray areas.

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:51:47Jocko Willink?

  I, I spend time, because to me, it is pretty obvious.

• 1:51:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:50Jocko Willink?

  Like, when you're ISIS, and you're systematically raping

• 1:51:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:54Jocko Willink?

  12-year-old girls and boys, you don't get to live. That, that doesn't work.

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:59Jocko Willink?

  That's not, it's not, not part of my deal over here. You you you die. And when you take people and you put them in cages and you burn them to death.

• 1:52:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:52:07Jocko Willink?

  You don't get to do that. Just like these Nazis that are putting people in, you don't get to do that. No.

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:13Jocko Willink?

  We go to war, we fight and we win. That's the way it works.

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:17Jocko Willink?

  Now, these gray areas that you're talking about, I don't mess around in those gray areas.

• 1:52:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:21Jocko Willink?

  I I I think there's too much, there's too, there's turbulence in there, right? And and a lot of times you look at it from the outside and you don't, it's hard to tell what it is, what it actually is happening in there. Right? I'll, and maybe that's not the best policy, but I won't escalate something personally until I see it go outside the lines of what I deem to be okay.

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:42Jocko Willink?

  You know, once you get outside those lines, you're done.

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  Well, thankfully, you're you're, you know, a little bit smart in a way where, you know, whether you name these things or not, there's always a particular standard that you go by, you know? So just like the like the difference between killing someone and when someone says murder, you know, murder is is clearly defined, you know? So if you murder someone, like killing someone is this broad thing. You kill them, accidentally kill them, you kill them after planning it.

• 1:53:13Jocko Willink?

  There's a million little things.

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  Revenge and all, you know, that's killing someone, but murder is defined, you know, so.

• 1:53:20Jocko Willink?

  Well, somebody asked me when I I did Tim Ferriss's second time and someone asked me something along the lines of, well, who defines these rules? Which is basically what you just asked me. And I think it actually, there is an answer to who defines these rules in warfare. It's the law of armed conflict. It's like the Geneva Convention. We follow those laws. They're they're very clearly defined what you can and can't do. Boom. That's it. Next question.

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And and I mean, unless you straight up disagree with the Geneva Convention, you know, and because of your personal moral code. But as long as you have, again, a standard that you're going by, that'll reduce the gray areas by a lot.

• 1:53:54Jocko Willink?

  Yes, it will.

• 1:53:55Speaker 01

  They're gonna be there, but it's easier to operate in black and white when you have standards and it won't always be easy, but.

• 1:54:00Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's like. Well, let me, this, this, when we start getting in the gray area and you're sitting here saying that I'm all black and white and that's, and I'm actually saying that, like, hey, once you cross this line, but guess what? Those lines can get blurry too. Yeah. Because I heard about a guy that was on a documentary, who is, he was, he was a Western journalist of some kind, and I gotta watch this documentary, I'm sure someone will tell us what it is, but somebody else told me about it. The Western journalist, he's embedded with insurgents in Iraq. And he's filming, and they're going out and attacking coalition forces. Yeah. Right?

• 1:54:39Jocko Willink?

  And I guess he was, while he's doing it, you know, he's trying to get his story and do his job, but then all of a sudden they're attacking coalition forces, right? Now, there's a gray area. Now, let's say, if you want to take that example to the extreme, if we're in a firefight, and I see a guy with a camera who's wearing a press badge. Following an insurgent. Right. I mean, it ain't gonna work out good for him, because it's not like I'm gonna say, okay, well, you know, he's clearly is with insurgents. But what I'm saying is, that's, that's one example of many that, that you could get into, where also another thing that happened in Iraq a lot was, people changed sides, and they went from supporting the terrorists to supporting the coalition, and then back again, and then back again.

• 1:55:21Jocko Willink?

  So, how do you, how do you balance those? Yeah. And I'll tell you how I balance them, was how can we achieve our mission? Yeah. And that sounds like, like one of those, hey, mission focus, but it's true. I look at, okay, this guy, you know, a year ago, was being targeted by coalition forces, for being a bad guy. Now, he has changed course. So what am I supposed to do? Still prosecute him, or is he gonna help us achieve our mission of overall victory? Guess what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna cut him some moral slack. Yeah. Because we're gonna win. So those are hard things to-

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  But that's exactly what I mean though. See the standard? The standard in your case became the overall mission.

• 1:56:05Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:56:06Speaker 01

  So you know, you have that saying, it's not like just some guy floating down the road through life being like, "Hey, I don't feel good about that right there, so I feel this way, so I'm gonna do it." It's not that. It's like there's a standard, very concrete attached to it. Still, gray area is gonna emerge, but like I said, it just reduces that gray area. You have a standard to attach it to.

• 1:56:22Jocko Willink?

  The bottom line is, this is why leadership is hard.

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:56:26Jocko Willink?

  The whole idea of leadership, whether it's in combat, or whether it's in the business world, or whether it's part of a team, or whether it's part of a family, or whether it's in a concentration camp, or whether it's in a prisoner of war camp, leadership is hard. There's gray areas, like when Captain Plum was saying, "Hey, he got told an order, you know, make communications with this guy at all costs." At all costs. That means I'm gonna get beaten and tortured and died by the guards to get this guy this piece of communication. Is he gonna follow that? Guess what? No. He had to make a judgment. And so you know what? No, that doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense. So this gray area that went outside the bounds of the gray area, and he said, "No, I'll do my best. I understand that it's critical,

• 1:57:11Jocko Willink?

  but I'm gonna stay within me staying alive." Right?

• 1:57:17Jocko Willink?

  So that is what makes leadership hard, is you have to constantly make these decisions where there's their gray area, and you're doing your best, you're assessing. And that's, that's, again, to me, it was always, I love that. I love that about leadership. I loved weighing those decisions out, and I loved discussing them with my guys up and down the chain of command and saying, "Hey, here's where we're at. Let me tell you exactly where we're at."

• 1:57:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:39Jocko Willink?

  You know, I'll use Leif, you know, "Leif, here's what's going on. This is the situation. What do you think?"

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:45Jocko Willink?

  "Well, I think this. Okay, that's a good point, but did you think about that?" "Ooh, that's a good one." You know what I mean? We're gonna have those conversations, and I had never had any problem opening my mind up to these various opinions that people had. And I think as a leader, that's a huge piece of building trust up and down the chain of command, is when you have an open mind to discuss things with people, and that also, double gravitational pull, Echo Charles, helps you build the relationship.

• 1:58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:13Jocko Willink?

  Helps you build the relationship and helps you say, "Oh, you know what?" Like, the minute I'm in there and I'm talking, I'm like, "Hey, Echo, we got a gray area here."

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:19Jocko Willink?

  You know, "We got a customer that is threatening to put us on Yelp, but we didn't do anything wrong. How do you think we should handle it?" Okay, well, you think we should just tell them, go ahead, put it on Yelp. We don't care and we'll go to Yelp and we'll talk to them. That might be the good answer, but also it might be good to say, bro, wait, why are you so mad? Right. Customer, let's talk, hey, we want to refund you, we want to take care of you because our customers are important to us. Maybe you'll give us a positive thing on you, you know what I'm saying? There's all this gray area. Yeah. And if you have an open mind to discuss things with your team, team up and down the chain of command, you know what you'll do is you'll, you'll get in that gray area, you'll start to get clarity.

• 1:59:00Jocko Willink?

  You'll start to get clarity and you'll start to see better and you can move through the gray area without being, without being so decisive that in a gray area, you don't know if it's black or white, right? Right. So if you decide as the leader, I'm going black. Going black, then when the gray area clears up, it was white that you should have gone with. Yeah. You don't need to do that. In many cases, you can say, okay, I'm gonna lean a little bit towards the black because that's what I'm feeling. And then all of a sudden you start moving there and you start seeing that, no, this is going to be a white decision. Yeah. Okay, I can recover from that. I can move backwards and, and repair what decision was made. And the best way to do that is say, hey, guys, here's the situation.

• 1:59:42Jocko Willink?

  I thought that black was going to be the right decision. I started leaning in that direction. I was wrong. Yeah. Now I see that white is the right answer and we're going with white. Does anyone have any questions about that? Does everyone understand why I did that? Oh, you don't understand why? Let me explain it to you. Here's what I thought. Here's what I saw. Did you, next time, do you want me to contact you so you could? That's what I'm talking about. And by the way, when I'm doing that, I'm building relationships with my team, which is what I want to do. I just was talking to a leader the other day and I told him and reiterated something I've said over and over again. The people that did things for me and the teams that were in the Army, the Marine Corps, in the SEAL Teams, in my platoon, up and down the chain of command, doesn't matter.

• 2:00:22Jocko Willink?

  Ninety nine point nine percent of it wasn't because I had some kind of rank or privilege over them. It was always because I had a good relationship with people. And when you build that good relationship with people, that's what it's all about. Then they do things for you. And you know what? You do things for them too. It's not a one way street that I'm talking about because you won't build any relationships if you're building a one way street, right? No one's gonna be your friend after you just take advantage of them over and over again. Like those people that call you only when they need something from you. Right? Now, I actually don't have a problem with that because I don't communicate with a lot of people. Right? I communicate on social media with a with a bunch of different people.

• 2:01:00Speaker 01

  They'll get you there too.

• 2:01:01Jocko Willink?

  But as far as if like when one of my buddies calls me up and says, hey, I need this favor. I'm like, cool, on it. I haven't talked to him for nine months. He's only calling me because he needs something from me. Doesn't matter. People do that with me all the time and it's cool. Now, this isn't a big group of people. There's like six people in the world. And those same six people, they don't call to wish me happy birthday, don't call to tell me, you know, uh, uh, Merry Christmas. They call me up and say, hey, I need this from you. Can you do it? And I'm like, got it. No factor.

• 2:01:33Speaker 01

  Do you even have a birthday?

• 2:01:35Jocko Willink?

  Negative, I have a manufacturing date.

• 2:01:39Speaker 01

  So funny like.

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  I'm just trying to imagine someone calling you to wish you happy birthday. I mean, maybe like your wife.

• 2:01:46Jocko Willink?

  It was awkward when I got in the civilian sector and people would be like, when's your birthday? And I'd be like, why?

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:51Jocko Willink?

  What are you talking about? Why are you trying to get my personal information? I'm gonna attack you.

• 2:01:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  Hey, what sign are you?

• 2:01:59Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that's the thing.

• 2:02:01Jocko Willink?

  The, uh, what was the other funny thing about the birthday deal? Oh, that's like getting presents. I'm, I'm not good with presents.

• 2:02:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 2:02:08Jocko Willink?

  Like, don't get me any presents.

• 2:02:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:02:10Jocko Willink?

  Because I don't want what you got me.

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:12Jocko Willink?

  If I want something, I already have it.

• 2:02:14Speaker 01

  Get it or yeah.

• 2:02:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so what you got me isn't gonna be appreciated. There's a one gift that my wife got me one time. And I haven't, I've been thinking about why I haven't talked about this particular whole situation. And that's, there's a band called The White Stripes.

• 2:02:29Speaker 01

  Sure, White Stripes.

• 2:02:29Jocko Willink?

  And The White Stripes, Jocko White, Meg White, The White Stripes are awesome. They're an awesome band. And there's so many layers with The White Stripes. First of all, there's, I'll tell you two layers that I love about The White Stripes. Number one. All their clothing, guitars, drums, keyboards, everything that they have onstage and everything that they have on their record albums, everything that they have is either red, black, or white. On all their records since day one. That's number one. Number two, they only have three sounds in any of their songs at any one time. So those three sounds could be drums, vocals,

• 2:03:14Jocko Willink?

  guitar. They could be drums, keyboards, vocals. They could be keyboards, guitar, vocals, but they only have three sounds at any one time.

• 2:03:23Speaker 01

  Vocals is one of the sounds.

• 2:03:24Jocko Willink?

  Vocals is one of the sounds.

• 2:03:25Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks, only two instruments.

• 2:03:26Jocko Willink?

  And there's only two people in the band. Anyways, The White Stripes is an awesome band, and my wife bought me tickets to go see The White Stripes. Now, I didn't even think about it. I never pay attention to when bands are playing or whatever. So I was, I don't use this term very often, but I was overjoyed that she got me tickets to The White Stripes. I was so stoked. And then Meg White had some issues, and they canceled the whole tour and they never played again. They were like a couple of weeks away from being in San Diego where I was gonna go see The White Stripes.

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  So the question is, ultimately, ultimately, grand scheme of things, was that a good gift to give Jocko?

• 2:04:06Jocko Willink?

  It was an awesome gift to give me.

• 2:04:08Speaker 01

  So was it the thought that counts in this case?

• 2:04:11Jocko Willink?

  Yes. It was a beautiful gift that she got me. And I was, and I couldn't believe she thought of it. Because normally it's like, oh, you got me a sweater from some store that I hate.

• 2:04:22Jocko Willink?

  No, I'm really hard to shop for. I'm really, if I want something, I have it. And I don't want that much. So it's like, oh, I want something, I have it. Once every 18 months, I want something. And then I get it.

• 2:04:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'll get you like a new t-shirt or something. You wear that one all the time.

• 2:04:37Jocko Willink?

  No, this t-shirt's fine. Don't give me a new one. This one works good. So.

• 2:04:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's um, yeah, it seems like a good gift.

• 2:04:47Jocko Willink?

  We just went off on a tangent.

• 2:04:49Speaker 01

  I feel, I feel like you went off on a tangent, you know?

• 2:04:52Jocko Willink?

  You know why? Cause I was listening to the White Stripes the other day and I was thinking, I never give the White Stripes the props that they deserve.

• 2:04:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 2:04:57Jocko Willink?

  And Jocko White, the props that he deserves.

• 2:04:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:05:00Jocko Willink?

  As a singer songwriter.

• 2:05:02Speaker 01

  Aren't they brother and sister?

• 2:05:03Jocko Willink?

  They're not.

• 2:05:04Speaker 01

  Allegedly.

• 2:05:05Jocko Willink?

  Alleged, they were actually husband, wife, they got divorced, but they always claimed to be brother, sister.

• 2:05:09Speaker 01

  Dang.

• 2:05:09Jocko Willink?

  It's my little sister Meg White.

• 2:05:10Speaker 01

  More layers.

• 2:05:11Jocko Willink?

  Oh no, this is my big sister. That's right. That's what he always said.

• 2:05:14Speaker 01

  Dang. That's good, man. Cool. Well, the original point was these crazy savage type people. Maybe normal people other than their crazy job.

• 2:05:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and what's?

• 2:05:28Speaker 01

  And I'm, but I'm not saying so it's cool. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying it's weird.

• 2:05:32Jocko Willink?

  You're, you're accountable for your actions.

• 2:05:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:34Jocko Willink?

  Regardless of how cool you are.

• 2:05:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree.

• 2:05:36Jocko Willink?

  And that's something from any leadership position you need to be aware of. And when I say any leadership position, I mean you as a frontline trooper. Cause if you as a frontline trooper is getting told to do something that you know is morally, ethically, or legally wrong and you still do it, it's on you. Sure, you can point the finger and blame the higher ups and the higher ups should be burned too if they told you to do something that was wrong.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:56Jocko Willink?

  But you need to be accountable for what you did. And that's all there is to it.

• 2:06:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:06:01Jocko Willink?

  It's a rough tour.

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:02Jocko Willink?

  No one wants to play that game. The Nazis wanted to play that game. Oh, it's not mine. Hey, I was ordered to do this. Can't do that. Can't say that. Don't get that excuse.

• 2:06:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:11Jocko Willink?

  You don't get the, I was a good person and I took care of my kids even though I was shoving people into, into a gas chamber. You don't get to play that game.

• 2:06:18Speaker 01

  No. Yeah, man, that's too much. But there was a small little documentary on blind. I don't know, I didn't watch the whole thing. But it was about the executioner in the Middle East, somewhere, you know, one of these countries where, you know, he has his sword.

• 2:06:31Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:06:31Speaker 01

  And it's his job, you know?

• 2:06:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:33Speaker 01

  And.

• 2:06:34Jocko Willink?

  He's a straight up executioner. Yeah.

• 2:06:35Speaker 01

  That's it. That's just his job. He does it. And he's like, yeah, yeah, it was, it wasn't old school. It was new.

• 2:06:41Jocko Willink?

  On YouTube.

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:42Jocko Willink?

  Like last week.

• 2:06:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it, but it's like, it's funny cause the whole feel of the documentary was just real like, oh yeah, this guy has a cool job. And he's like slicing people's heads off with great precision and he's so good at his job. You know, here's his family and they're loving, you know, and they're, you know, he's playing with his kids. It's like all this stuff is just weird, man.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 2:07:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's, there's

• 2:07:07Jocko Willink?

  another culture.

• 2:07:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's weird. A lot of gray areas in that one, too. My man.

• 2:07:13Jocko Willink?

  Indeed.

• 2:07:14Speaker 01

  Kind of. Anyway.

• 2:07:16Jocko Willink?

  Or not.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  I feel like we should go into the support.

• 2:07:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we should go into the support.

• 2:07:24Speaker 01

  Support is one of those good things, very dynamic. Supporting others, supporting yourself, supporting others and yourself, which is a separate category of support, in my opinion. So there's yourself, others, and yourself and others. That's another category.

• 2:07:41Speaker 01

  When I talk about Onnit, we're talking about all three categories: support yourself, by way of supplementation, and we talk about supplementation all the time, but...

• 2:07:51Jocko Willink?

  No, you talk about supplementation.

• 2:07:53Speaker 01

  Well, you're the one who turned me on to it. So actually, some of it. I took Schumtech before you talked about...

• 2:08:01Jocko Willink?

  Before, pre-podcast?

• 2:08:03Speaker 01

  Pre-podcast, I was on Schumtech. I was on AlphaBrain, Schumtech.

• 2:08:10Jocko Willink?

  I got my shipment of AlphaBrain pills back in. I had run out. Now I only had the instant. And so now, like I said, what's nice about the pills is you got something coming to do the podcast? Guess what? AlphaBrain pills. And I might double up on the AlphaBrain if I think I gotta really get engaged. But it's good to have the capsules.

• 2:08:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:34Jocko Willink?

  As well.

• 2:08:35Speaker 01

  I dig it.

• 2:08:35Jocko Willink?

  But what's cool about the drink is it tastes good. And if you get the sweet tooth itch going, and you want something sweet, and you get the peach, the natural peach, not the spicy. The spicy has a different situation going on. The peach is just straight up tasty, like...

• 2:08:50Speaker 01

  Peach.

• 2:08:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, peach.

• 2:08:52Speaker 01

  Juice.

• 2:08:52Jocko Willink?

  Peach juice kind of situation.

• 2:08:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, kind of like that. Agreed. I dig it, the pills, I dig it. And that's actually what we had, was the pills.

• 2:09:03Speaker 01

  I say "we" because me and my brother, we were... Oh, yeah, AlphaBrain. But when they came out with the instant, that was better. And it starts to become like this little kind of ritual. You know, you mix up your AlphaBrain, you know, kind of thing. And it's instant. I don't know, just seems like... Either way, it doesn't matter. If I haven't mentioned it already, I think I did. These are supplements from Onnit.

• 2:09:23Speaker 01

  On it.com. Um, we, we talk about the supplements, but there's like workout. So I just bought a jump rope.

• 2:09:29Jocko Willink?

  Did you?

• 2:09:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. See, so when I was young, I was good at.

• 2:09:33Jocko Willink?

  I was pretty good at jump rope too.

• 2:09:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then as I, you know, as I think, kind of when, when, I don't know, maybe early twenties kind of stopped. So that's a long time ago.

• 2:09:44Jocko Willink?

  Jump rope is awesome.

• 2:09:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I, and you know, you know how like, like riding a bike, you, you kind of stay good at something a little bit. You're rusty.

• 2:09:51Jocko Willink?

  You're rusty. You're definitely gonna be rusty.

• 2:09:53Speaker 01

  You can't shred and you can't go as long, you know, like that kind of stuff. It's weird because it, you know how jump rope.

• 2:09:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know what's weirdest? Back in the day of boxing. Yeah. Boxing, jumping rope for three minutes was like no factor.

• 2:10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Go jump, 10 minute warm up.

• 2:10:06Jocko Willink?

  Go get your jump rope right now and just get out, get out, get out three minutes on the rounds. You feel it.

• 2:10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. So yeah, I bought one of those and it's so, the interesting thing about that is jump rope technology has changed a little bit.

• 2:10:20Jocko Willink?

  So what is it made of steel?

• 2:10:22Speaker 01

  No, well, there's, I'm sure there's steel in there. So, but it's like each handle has a swivel, the little, I mean, it's simple, but there's like way more to it than before. Last time it was like two wooden handles and a rope.

• 2:10:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:10:33Speaker 01

  Actual rope. This one is like a cord that survives all this stuff. I don't know. Anyway, got a jump rope. The jump rope's on there if you want. We'll have a jump off.

• 2:10:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I was pretty good too.

• 2:10:47Speaker 01

  Hey, remember when like, when you jump rope and then when the, you know how like, and this was like elementary school. And if you'd get tired or you couldn't keep a rhythm, they'd say, hey, just, just wave it from back and forth. You know what I mean?

• 2:10:59Jocko Willink?

  Well, there's a name for that move.

• 2:11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:01Jocko Willink?

  Uh, what's it called when you, tutaro, tutaro, when you boom, like a, like a

• 2:11:10Jocko Willink?

  matador. Isn't it called matador?

• 2:11:11Speaker 01

  Wait, when you just go back and forth because you can't get it or whatever. Yeah.

• 2:11:14Jocko Willink?

  You just get that rhythm going.

• 2:11:16Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. I don't know the name. I never had to do that because I was expert level, even in elementary school, but that's, that's gonna be you if in fact. You want to step up.

• 2:11:24Jocko Willink?

  So you can get that on it, not just.

• 2:11:26Speaker 01

  If you want, if you want kettlebells on there too, the good kind. Well, kettlebells are good, straight up. They're all good. And but on it has those artistic ones. Cause even those add another layer, but they have the regular one. I think they're called the competition ones. I don't know. Don't quote me on that one. Yeah. Oh yeah. So yeah, you get the legend bells, which is like, what the cyclops, the werewolf. Better look at them. They're they're dope. And then you have primal bells, which is like all the, you know, primates and stuff. Yeah, I think I got the chimp, two chimps and two werewolves.

• 2:12:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. See, I have, I have zombie bells. Mine are just evil zombies.

• 2:12:06Speaker 01

  How big is the one you have?

• 2:12:08Jocko Willink?

  I forget. I gotta look.

• 2:12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's like, it's like designer. You can, you probably keep it inside too, huh?

• 2:12:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:15Speaker 01

  You really do?

• 2:12:15Jocko Willink?

  No, the one that I keep inside is not, the, the ones in my garage are for the, the long, heavy work. This one is for, oh, I'm tired of writing right now. I'm gonna bang out some snatches.

• 2:12:26Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:12:27Jocko Willink?

  Boom, boom, good. Feel a lot better now. I'm gonna write more. I'm gonna write harder.

• 2:12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go. But yeah, there's anyway, the, the point there is there's very cool things on the website, on it.com. Uh, the, and the supplements, it's not to mention this, the fact is the supplements are straight up the best ones, straight up. Cause from the beginning, and how's this? And I don't know if we already mentioned this, but I hear it a lot. Joe Rogan talks about it all the time. How?

• 2:12:57Jocko Willink?

  Name drop.

• 2:12:58Speaker 01

  Yep. I listen to Joe Rogan all the time and he says these things and I believe him. Um, if you get like, I don't know, shroom tech and you're like, hey, I didn't feel it. I got tapped out. So, you know, I expect more out of shroom tech. I expect this to make me tap out everybody. I don't like it.

• 2:13:15Jocko Willink?

  Send it back?

• 2:13:16Speaker 01

  No, you don't even send it back. You send them an email saying, hey, I don't like this stuff. They'll just send your money back. You don't have to send it back.

• 2:13:22Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty awesome then.

• 2:13:24Speaker 01

  Yep. But don't be trying to be like, here, I'm gonna give me my money back in the next month after you're done with it. Order some more and then do it again.

• 2:13:31Jocko Willink?

  I'm sure they track you.

• 2:13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're gonna get ostracized. Nonetheless, um, krill oil, that's the one you don't want to not have krill oil. Even if you're like a young guy, in my opinion, we should, I should have always been on krill oil.

• 2:13:44Jocko Willink?

  You should have.

• 2:13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if you're not on krill oil, I think you are like a step behind joint wise. It's a, you know.

• 2:13:50Jocko Willink?

  Which puts you behind in a lot of different ways.

• 2:13:52Speaker 01

  A lot of different ways. Yeah.

• 2:13:53Jocko Willink?

  Cause now you're not working out as hard.

• 2:13:54Speaker 01

  Now that I was working out as hard, struggling through various activities in everyday life. I told this story, whatever, but I do it all the time. You know, when you fill up water in the big five gallon jugs.

• 2:14:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:05Speaker 01

  You know, and Brad, do that at night when it's kinda cold. It's like, Brad, you gotta carry those things from the thing to your car. You don't want to be worried about my knees or whatever. Your back.

• 2:14:16Jocko Willink?

  The trials and tribulations.

• 2:14:17Speaker 01

  And you gotta put it in there. Bruh.

• 2:14:20Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you should write your own book, dude.

• 2:14:22Speaker 01

  What?

• 2:14:22Jocko Willink?

  About like the, the kinda crazy trials you've been through carrying water on a cool night in Southern California.

• 2:14:29Speaker 01

  I know, man. Very fresh and pure water, by the way.

• 2:14:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it doesn't make it any lighter though, that you still have to struggle.

• 2:14:37Speaker 01

  Bruh, here's the thing though. There are micro, they're called, they're called micro struggles is really what they are. You know, standing in line. Actually, the standing in line thing, that's not a struggle. That's manufactured struggle. So it's like an exercise in discipline and embracing struggle. That's what it is. It's not an actual struggle bestowed upon your, heaped on your shoulders, you know, that you have to bear in everyday life. That's not what's the standing in line.

• 2:15:01Jocko Willink?

  That's why you need your own book about Echo's struggles.

• 2:15:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:15:04Jocko Willink?

  You can, you can document these various.

• 2:15:07Speaker 01

  Me looking for a specific wine in the vast wine section as a request.

• 2:15:11Jocko Willink?

  Was there a tomato one too? Like some kinda tomato sauce?

• 2:15:14Speaker 01

  No, I went. Yes.

• 2:15:16Jocko Willink?

  The tomato sauce struggle, the wine struggle, the holding the groceries. Now we got the fill in the water bottles. There's four chapters, bro.

• 2:15:22Speaker 01

  Micro struggles and filling up the water is not a struggle because I'm on the krill oil.

• 2:15:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:15:27Speaker 01

  Omega threes right into my joints, straight into my joints. Uptake, high percentage uptake.

• 2:15:34Speaker 01

  Anyway, get on the krill oil. I'm on the strong bone now too, by the way.

• 2:15:40Speaker 01

  For, that's for tendons, the tendon attaching to the bone.

• 2:15:45Speaker 01

  Strontium? Feeling good about it? Doesn't, I feel really good about it, actually. More preventative, because I live. Nonetheless, um, strontium, that's in strong bone. That get, doesn't, that doesn't hit the, like, the limelight isn't on that all the time. It's all on calcium, most of the time. Calcium makes your bones strong, strontium, just as much.

• 2:16:06Speaker 01

  So get on the strong bone.

• 2:16:09Speaker 01

  Uh, bone strength. Also, Alpha Brain, obviously, Shroom Tech, for high, high performing. Go on the website, whatever you need, they got it. They even got, like, try blend peanut butter, nut butter. It's not peanut butter, it's like almond, cashew, and walnut? Don't know. Anyway, it's delish. Get on that one. Anyway, find it dot com slash Jaco, if you want 10% off. Pay full price, uh, that's all, that's up to you, really. You know what I'm saying? I wouldn't recommend it. I, I don't even know of anyone who would recommend that.

• 2:16:46Speaker 01

  Also, good way to support. If you're interested in the book, Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl.

• 2:17:00Speaker 01

  What I have done is, I put on the website, a page with all the books, all of them, that Jaco has covered.

• 2:17:12Speaker 01

  Every once in a while, Jaco will cover an article, the links, maybe I'll do that. But nonetheless, the books are all on there, all in order, too, by the way. So the most recent is gonna be at the top. This one will be on there, it is on there. If you wanna support, click on there, if you're gonna get the book, click through there.

• 2:17:28Speaker 01

  Directs you straight to Amazon. What if you're doing other shopping? Hey, man, go ahead, do the same thing. Click on it, we have a banner on the front page, too. And then you can click on there? Yeah. And then you can do your shopping? Yeah, if you want. That sounds like a good plan. Even if you're buying duct tape. Also.

• 2:17:45Jocko Willink?

  Do you have a link to your favorite duct tape on there?

• 2:17:48Speaker 01

  No, dang. I don't know.

• 2:17:50Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes I say things that are just so inherently brilliant. It makes me wonder. So we will have a duct tape.

• 2:17:57Speaker 01

  Link?

• 2:17:58Jocko Willink?

  Link for sure.

• 2:17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, just in case.

• 2:18:01Jocko Willink?

  Everyone needs duct tape. And they especially need it when they get done listening to podcasts or they're thinking about the things that they're gonna be duct taping together.

• 2:18:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:08Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. You know why I mentioned duct tape in the beginning? And I didn't, I didn't really realize this because I didn't think about it until a handful of people asked me. You know why?

• 2:18:18Jocko Willink?

  Why?

• 2:18:19Speaker 01

  Because I used to watch MacGyver all the time. Actually, I still watch MacGyver.

• 2:18:23Jocko Willink?

  On Netflix or something?

• 2:18:24Speaker 01

  No, no, it's on a channel called Clue. C L O O, random, random channel.

• 2:18:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:31Speaker 01

  It's like a retro channel, kind of.

• 2:18:33Jocko Willink?

  Apparently.

• 2:18:34Speaker 01

  MacGyver, man.

• 2:18:35Jocko Willink?

  Lord, you right there.

• 2:18:36Speaker 01

  Well, there's a new MacGyver, by the way. A new one.

• 2:18:38Jocko Willink?

  Is it lame?

• 2:18:39Speaker 01

  I don't think it's as good as the old one, but it could be just my bu- you know how you get attached to your old shows? It could be that. But MacGyver was dope back in the day, so, you know, whichever. And that was his thing, duct tape. People, people like to say, oh, paperclip, right? MacGyver with the paper, he, I, he never really had a paperclip.

• 2:18:55Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 2:18:56Speaker 01

  He had duct tape. That was his thing.

• 2:18:57Jocko Willink?

  I don't know because I wasn't watching TV.

• 2:18:59Speaker 01

  Alright, wait, that's on you and I, I dig it, but.

• 2:19:02Jocko Willink?

  I was busy getting after it.

• 2:19:04Speaker 01

  He had the Swiss Army knife and the duct tape. That was his thing. Everything else he just found in his environment, his environment, which, which changed from episode to episode. Nonetheless, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, all these platforms that provide podcasts. We're on all of them. Boom, subscribe, whichever one you use.

• 2:19:24Speaker 01

  Even if you use two, I guess, right? I mean, do, do people use two platforms?

• 2:19:28Jocko Willink?

  You know why? Why did I do that the other day? There's some reason I, I had to go to a different platform. So I have a backup platform.

• 2:19:36Speaker 01

  Boom, subscribe to both.

• 2:19:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:38Speaker 01

  Right. Is that kind of like YouTube and Vimeo? You know, some guys will have a Vimeo account as well.

• 2:19:43Jocko Willink?

  I don't know why that got escalated.

• 2:19:47Jocko Willink?

  YouTube.

• 2:19:47Speaker 01

  Bad Vimeo. Bro, I'll tell you what, I don't know why, but this could be the reason why, because YouTube, okay, so Vimeo is kind of for like

• 2:19:54Jocko Willink?

  Professionals.

• 2:19:55Speaker 01

  People who fancy themselves as like filmmakers. Like, here's my piece that I've made.

• 2:20:00Jocko Willink?

  Artists.

• 2:20:01Speaker 01

  It tends to be that.

• 2:20:02Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:20:03Speaker 01

  YouTube is just like, guys, YouTube is kind of that too, but overall, yeah, exactly right. Just throw my video to YouTube, like, you know, the Tube TV, it's you. Whatever you are. Vimeo is, I don't know the name, I guess I could think about it, but nonetheless, that's what it shook itself out to be, you know? So it's funny when people are like, I'm not on YouTube, I'm on Vimeo. I'm on Vimeo. Yeah.

• 2:20:25Jocko Willink?

  But do you, do you have to do anything to be on Vimeo, or you're just still submitted?

• 2:20:29Speaker 01

  No, same thing, same exact thing. It's exactly like YouTube, except for the fact, which now that I'm thinking about it, makes sense, where if you upload a video and you're like, oh, man, in one of these titles midway through the video, I spelt it wrong, which happens to me sometimes. You can go back into your account and replace the video, even if it's been up for a week.

• 2:20:48Jocko Willink?

  You can do that on Vimeo or YouTube?

• 2:20:49Speaker 01

  Vimeo, YouTube, you cannot.

• 2:20:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a new video.

• 2:20:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like you gotta upload again, and here's the thing, you can't upload the same file.

• 2:20:57Jocko Willink?

  Gotta rename it?

• 2:20:58Speaker 01

  Because YouTube, no, you gotta re, it'll, it has all these little, this little information in the file. They'll be like, hey, that's a duplicate file, you can't do that, you know?

• 2:21:07Speaker 01

  Probably has something to do with advertising, I don't know. Nonetheless, subscribe to Jocko Podcast on YouTube. If you like that channel, we're trying to provide, what do you call, providing value, you know, that's

• 2:21:19Jocko Willink?

  Don't say that.

• 2:21:20Speaker 01

  Bro.

• 2:21:20Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't even sound cool.

• 2:21:21Speaker 01

  That's another, it sounded cool when I first heard it, but it's, that's another

• 2:21:26Jocko Willink?

  That was when you were like 18.

• 2:21:28Speaker 01

  And that, that's another one of those things where it sounded cool, and then everyone thought like me, or I think like everyone else, whatever, and so everyone started using it. Now it's like people are abusing it. I'm over here just trying to provide value. And it just, you know, it starts to sound

• 2:21:43Jocko Willink?

  That was a good voice you just gave, I think, you really don't do voices, other than escalation.

• 2:21:49Speaker 01

  Thanks, Jocko. Anyway, subscribe to YouTube. We're trying to provide some value there with the excerpts and various other

• 2:21:58Speaker 01

  clips, aside from the video version of this podcast. Your Memorial Day one was really good, man. I liked it.

• 2:22:05Jocko Willink?

  That was a powerful, powerful letter.

• 2:22:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:11Speaker 01

  Bunch of other stuff, um, like

• 2:22:17Speaker 01

  Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko Store. If you didn't already know, jockostore.com. What do we have on Jocko Store? We have t-shirts.

• 2:22:26Jocko Willink?

  I just realized that Jocko also has a podcast.

• 2:22:28Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:22:29Jocko Willink?

  Called Jocko Podcast. Jocko has white tea. It's called Jocko White Tea.

• 2:22:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:33Jocko Willink?

  I think I see a trend here.

• 2:22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, the trend is real, for sure.

• 2:22:38Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, the shirts-

• 2:22:39Jocko Willink?

  Lack of originality in name.

• 2:22:41Speaker 01

  Well, no.

• 2:22:42Jocko Willink?

  Naming things.

• 2:22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in a way, because here, there are layers in that too, and there is sophistication to that, even though it seems simple.

• 2:22:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:22:49Speaker 01

  Because-

• 2:22:50Jocko Willink?

  There I was, being sophisticated.

• 2:22:52Speaker 01

  You are being sophisticated.

• 2:22:53Jocko Willink?

  Without even knowing it.

• 2:22:54Speaker 01

  Because there's more to Jocko than just, oh yeah, that just happens to be my name. There's two, there's more to that, goes beyond this podcast, beyond the tea, beyond whatever, right? Okay, so just, let's just start with that fact, which is complex in and of itself. Then you're like, okay, look, this is what? Roughly considered a company, technically.

• 2:23:13Jocko Willink?

  Maybe, I guess if you had to.

• 2:23:16Speaker 01

  If you had to.

• 2:23:16Jocko Willink?

  A guy asked me today, what do I do? Like, for a living? And I was like, I was like, oh, well, just like, stuff.

• 2:23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:24Jocko Willink?

  And he goes, well, what would you, how would you, what did he say? He said, well, how would you describe

• 2:23:31Jocko Willink?

  what you do? And I said, stay busy. That's what I do.

• 2:23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:23:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay, fair enough.

• 2:23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go. But technically, as far as-

• 2:23:44Speaker 01

  Dang, I haven't heard that one in a while. Coop.

• 2:23:48Speaker 01

  JacoPodcast.com, that's an entity, we'll call it an entity, I don't know. Company, business?

• 2:23:53Jocko Willink?

  It's a place where we have the web, the stuff?

• 2:23:56Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, oh, you know what? I'm gonna go ahead and out on a limb and call it a brand.

• 2:24:01Jocko Willink?

  Nah.

• 2:24:01Speaker 01

  It's brandish.

• 2:24:03Jocko Willink?

  Whatever.

• 2:24:03Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, if you call, okay, well, Jocko Store, that's the name of the store.

• 2:24:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, that's true. And to be honest with you, the reason that I called the podcast Jocko Podcast, when I was on Tim Ferriss's podcast,

• 2:24:15Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:24:16Jocko Willink?

  I said Jocko Hungry. And I don't even know, I don't know if I just said, I don't know if it's on the podcast or not, but I think he says something like, oh, you know, we gotta go get some food. And I was like, Jocko Hungry. And then I was like, well, we're gonna do a podcast, we're gonna Jocko Podcast.

• 2:24:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:24:28Jocko Willink?

  That was the initial thought. There's the layer.

• 2:24:31Speaker 01

  Makes sense. Yeah, and that's it. But even with naming.

• 2:24:36Jocko Willink?

  The other thing is, I wanted to be able to do whatever I wanted to do and not

• 2:24:41Jocko Willink?

  care.

• 2:24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that makes sense.

• 2:24:43Jocko Willink?

  I knew we were gonna talk about jujitsu and fighting and music and hardcore and war and death. And I just wanted to not have any limitations. And the only way I could do that, because if you give the podcast a name like, you know,

• 2:24:58Jocko Willink?

  the Ultimate Business Podcast, you know, it's like, okay, well, then next thing you know, we're talking about war and or if you call it the War Podcast, but you're talking about business, or if you talk about the Leadership Podcast, but you're talking about jujitsu. So how do you get all those things into one thing called the Jocko Podcast, and I can do whatever I want?

• 2:25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go. And if people are looking for you, they see you talk about XYZ. They're like, oh, you know, sure, I can look up XYZ. Easy connection, yeah. And it's simple, which is like, you know.

• 2:25:26Jocko Willink?

  Simplicity goes a long way.

• 2:25:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and that's kind of like a thing.

• 2:25:29Jocko Willink?

  So why are we talking about this?

• 2:25:30Speaker 01

  I'm just saying that's why it's called Jocko Store.

• 2:25:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, that's right.

• 2:25:33Speaker 01

  So, because it is a store.

• 2:25:34Jocko Willink?

  You know, people want to do other things in their life besides listen to our advertisements.

• 2:25:38Speaker 01

  Well, you're the one chiming in. I'm over here talking about Jocko Store.

• 2:25:41Jocko Willink?

  I noticed that the other day when we had Roger Hayden on, and I gave you the silent treatment. And when you looked at me for affirmation while you were giving the advertisements, I didn't even nod. I just looked at you and you got, you actually got uncomfortable.

• 2:25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:56Jocko Willink?

  You actually got uncomfortable. You were like, you, you, the look on your face, like, you'd look at me like I was gonna give you a smile. And I just look at you like, hurry up. And then you got uncomfortable. And I said, oh, he's, he's starting to feel it. I gave you no mercy.

• 2:26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's like subtle pressure. Nah, man, it's all good, you know, so do that again right now, you know? So I can talk about the store, Jocko Store, jockostore.com. If you like t-shirts. Now, I'm not saying if you like t-shirts in general. I'm just saying, if you want to represent, discipline equals freedom, what? Get after it.

• 2:26:31Jocko Willink?

  Know the darkness.

• 2:26:32Speaker 01

  Know the darkness. That's a good one. Anyway, go on the store, jockostore.com. You can see shirts if you like them. Go ahead, get one. Support that way. That's a good one. Got some rash guards on there. One new rash guard out already. Says get after it on it. Discipline on one sleeve, freedom on the other sleeve. Jocko approved. Really good. I think it's good. I feel that the people who have witnessed it.

• 2:27:01Speaker 01

  Is that pompous to say witnessed it like it was some spectacle a little bit on?

• 2:27:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, maybe even a lot. Anyone that's witnessed my rash guard that I made Echo Charles.

• 2:27:11Speaker 01

  That I bestowed upon them by way of visual spectacle.

• 2:27:14Jocko Willink?

  How about people that saw it, thought it was a little pretty cool?

• 2:27:16Speaker 01

  They thought it was cool. They thought it was cool. They thought it was cool. And so there it is. You go on the store, you look at it. If you think it's cool, you want to get one.

• 2:27:24Jocko Willink?

  If you personally want to witness the glory of Echo Charles' rash guards, you may go to jockostore.com. And revel in the glory.

• 2:27:35Speaker 01

  Exactly right. And whatever else you want. There's some good stuff on there. We added this little thing too if we're out. And I'm trying to like, I'm trying to restock, you know, restock. Boom. But I added this little thing where if like, let's say the size medium or whatever is out, it just says, oh, a little button, notify me. Boom. Put your email. Boom. Notifies you when it's back in stock. And again, I'm trying to put them back in stock ASAP. Boom, boom, boom, right now. But you know, give me a day or two or whatever. We'll notify you. Boom. Also, psychological warfare. If you don't know what that is, it's an album with tracks. Not music tracks.

• 2:28:18Speaker 01

  Word tracks, sent like spoken word, you know. So basically what it's for is, you know, it's not like poetry. Well, arguably not poetry, but it's Jocko on there talking, talking to us, to me. Jocko's talking to me.

• 2:28:33Jocko Willink?

  I actually quite literally was talking to you when that was made.

• 2:28:36Speaker 01

  Exactly right. So you know, you can have him talk to you. So basically what it's for is he's not just talking like everyday stuff. So when you have a hard time waking up in the morning, or you have a hard time because you're tired and you want to skip the workout. Or you have a hard time because you know, it's lunchtime and I'm all hungry and all they have is donuts here or whatever. What else?

• 2:28:57Jocko Willink?

  What if you're procrastinating?

• 2:28:58Speaker 01

  Also, if you're procrastinating or what do you call it?

• 2:29:01Jocko Willink?

  What if you're procrastinating, ending the podcast?

• 2:29:05Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you could listen to that one right now. We could carry on.

• 2:29:08Speaker 01

  I'm trying to explain this thoroughly so that so we can all have a really good understanding of what it is and its value. That's, that's.

• 2:29:16Jocko Willink?

  It's downloadable, me talking about moments of weakness so you can get through them.

• 2:29:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:22Jocko Willink?

  Next, next comment.

• 2:29:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess. Let me add this one more thing.

• 2:29:30Speaker 01

  Actually, you can even take it at moments of triumph and strength. And it'll still work. You'll just want to do it more, you know?

• 2:29:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:39Speaker 01

  It's like drinking coffee when you're not tired.

• 2:29:42Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Yeah.

• 2:29:42Jocko Willink?

  Double down.

• 2:29:44Speaker 01

  Let that sink in. Anyway, psychological warfare on iTunes, Amazon Music, all these music.

• 2:29:49Jocko Willink?

  Google, Google Play, Google Play?

• 2:29:51Speaker 01

  I think, I think it's on everything.

• 2:29:52Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 2:29:53Speaker 01

  But yeah, man, do it.

• 2:29:54Jocko Willink?

  Right on. All right. Also, you can get Jocko White Tea on Amazon. And when you order Jocko White Tea, make sure you also order more weights for your barbells. Because your deadlift is going to go up to approximately 8,000 pounds. So you need to get that much weights when you order it. Way the Warrior Kid book. It's been out for a couple of weeks now and thank you for getting it. Also, little.

• 2:30:25Jocko Willink?

  Warning that someone put on Amazon in their review. I thought it was worth hearing and thinking about. Parents be ready. I bought this book after listening to Jocko on the Joe Rogan podcast where Jocko was the guest. Great podcast. Bought the book after learning Jocko has a book for kids. My son, who isn't very motivated yet, was excited about the book. When he started reading the book, a fire lit underneath him. He said to me, Dad, I'm gonna get up tomorrow at 5 a.m. Will you get up with me? In that moment, I realized that I was, what I was going, what was going on, and I couldn't let him down. I enjoy my sleep like everyone else, but I was amazed that my son got excited. So I replied, yes, let's do it. Got up at 5 a.m. And his alarm clock must not have gone off, but I turned

• 2:31:10Jocko Willink?

  on his light in his bedroom and he got right up. He got his clothes and shoes on and we went for a jog. We've never done this before. I had him do some sit-ups and push-ups after, and he gladly did. Couldn't quite do push-ups, but that's okay. We'll get there. Long story short, this book only being a few chapters in, he only a few chapters in. I was kind of surprised when I saw that. Only a few chapters in, made the book worth getting. In this day and age of electronics and iPads and tablets, kids don't seem to be as motivated to do activities as when I was a kid. I'm 39. So I edified him after for making the decision to get up at 5 a.m. on a non-school day. And I told him that he can apply that mentality to anything in life. Boom. Way the warrior kid. Get it for your

• 2:31:54Jocko Willink?

  kid. Be prepared to get yourself back in the game. Also, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, the instructional manual for getting after it. Feel free to preorder that one. Also, Extreme Ownership Combat Leadership. Combat Leadership and also Combat Leadership. That's what the book is about. How to apply the fundamental principles of combat leadership to your business and to your life. Also, for a more hands-on experience, you can call Echelon Front, our leadership and management consulting company, myself, Leif Babin, JP Denell, Dave Burke. You can contact us at

• 2:32:36Jocko Willink?

  [email protected]. Also, The Muster, Austin, Texas, July 13th and 14th at the Omni Barton Creek Resort. No fluff.

• 2:32:50Jocko Willink?

  There's no fluff, just pragmatic information you can act on immediately. You can literally, in a break, email your team and give instructions that's gonna move them in the right direction. In the Austin muster, there's only 300 seats. Smaller venue, it's gonna sell out. So, get online, get registered. If you can't make it to that one, come to San Diego in September. September 14th and 15th for muster 004, we'll be there live. And while you're waiting for the muster, if you need to communicate with us, you can find us on the interwebs.

• 2:33:35Jocko Willink?

  On Twitter, or on Instagram, or on Da Facey Boja. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And to the military personnel out there, holding the line in places no one wants to be, doing things that no one else wants to do. Thanks for keeping us free. To police, law enforcement, firefighters, EMTs, and other first responders. Thanks for keeping us safe. And for everyone else out there. Remember, remember what human beings are capable of suffering through,

• 2:34:20Jocko Willink?

  and remember that even in those situations, where everything seems to be taken away, when you seem to have no choice at all in the world. Remember. Remember that you can still choose how you react to the things around you. You can still choose your attitude. And you can still choose to actualize the best person that you can be. In every aspect of your life, you can choose

• 2:35:04Jocko Willink?

  to get after it. So, until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.