Jocko Underground: You Can't Fake Bravery.

You can't fake bravery. Tips for improving attacks in Jiu Jitsu. Career: Passion vs Money. A Choice. Zero Gravity effects. Dealing with drunk people as a security guard. I think I want give up my career to join up. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast number 55 with Echo Charles EC.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:06Jocko Willink?

  And me sitting here. So I was on Sam Harris's podcast like a lot. It seems like a long time ago now. And we keep, we're supposed to do another one at some point, but we just haven't yet. Anyways, on that podcast, we had a discussion about bravery and one of the things that he said, which was a quote from somebody else, I'm pretty sure. You can't fake bravery.

• 0:31Jocko Willink?

  You can't fake bravery. So if there's, if there's a gunfight and there's a guy wounded in the street and there's gunfire everywhere and you run out to save that wounded guy and drag him to safety, you're brave. You can't fake that. Now, and it doesn't actually, it doesn't matter what you were thinking at that moment in time. It doesn't matter if you were petrified and horrified. It doesn't matter if you were just pushed out there by pure adrenaline. It doesn't matter if you had given up on living. You're like, I don't care. I'm gonna die anyways. I'm gonna go. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. You knew there was danger and you acted.

• 1:13Jocko Willink?

  And you can't fake that. Again, it doesn't matter what your thoughts were. You could have been like, I want to get a medal. So I'm gonna wrap this. You still did a brave thing. Might've been for the wrong reason, but you were still brave.

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  You could have been petrified and like, you could have thought, oh, everyone's gonna think I'm a wimp. If I don't do this, I don't want to do it. But I'm gonna do it anyways. You're still brave.

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  So you can't fake bravery and the same idea applies to a lot of other qualities. It doesn't matter what you think or how you're thinking. What matters is what you actually do. That's what matters.

• 1:52Jocko Willink?

  So discipline. Okay. I talk about discipline a lot. If you, the alarm clock goes off and you get up and get out of bed, doesn't matter what you were thinking. It doesn't matter that you wanted to sleep in. It doesn't matter that you're like, oh, this sucks. Doesn't, none of that matters. Did you do it? Did you get up and did you go? Working out.

• 2:11Jocko Willink?

  I did squats today. Did you squat yesterday, you said?

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Uh, no, it was two days ago, three, three days ago.

• 2:17Jocko Willink?

  I did not want to do them. Did not. Did hard jujitsu. Hard jujitsu Saturday.

• 2:27Jocko Willink?

  Not as hard, but hard jujitsu Sunday. You know how you get the full body soreness a little bit when you go hard?

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Full body doms, okay.

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  Full body doms. So, but I was like sore. Did not want to do squats. Not at all.

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  Guess what?

• 2:44Jocko Willink?

  Guess what?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Did squats?

• 2:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Doesn't matter that I didn't want to do them. Doesn't matter that I procrastinated.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:51Jocko Willink?

  Stretched, did some mobility work for 13 minutes. You don't need 13 minutes worth of mobility work before, no, but I did it. Got done with that, guess what? Okay, now we're doing squats. So it doesn't matter what I was thinking, that I didn't want to do it, that I was being a wimp inside my own head. Because I did what I was supposed to do.

• 3:13Jocko Willink?

  What if you're in a leadership position? And you know you're supposed to put the team first?

• 3:21Jocko Willink?

  And that's what you do.

• 3:23Jocko Willink?

  That's what you do. You put the team first. That's what you did. As long as you did it, you did it. Now, listen, there's a little caveat here. That is, that intent has a smell. And if you put the team first because you know it's going to look good, it's going to make you look good, and that's why you did it. Everyone's going to smell that. So there's a little caveat there, but for the most part, actions are more important than words are. Which is a weird thing to say, because everyone talks about

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  the importance of words and writing and what you say, right? It's very important, but let's face it, actions trumps those things.

• 4:04Jocko Willink?

  Then you get this weird, I don't know, you know how this ties in, but you think about this thing where you get someone that's short term. Will make it happen, the long term, they don't make it happen. Example, you ever, look, you've seen plenty of fighters come through the victory MMA, like pro fighters, amateur fighters. You notice how some of them, there's some of those fighters that would never give up in a fight ever. Like they will, they will literally never give up in a fight, but they won't show up to practice for four days. You know what I'm saying? Like they're so driven in the fight on the short term, like they're there, but they, but they missed three days of practice or they didn't, they didn't adjust their diet. Now they're overweight coming in, they gotta cut the extra.

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  See what I'm saying? It's like a short term versus long term. SEAL training, same thing happens. Basic SEAL training. You get, you get someone that's just like not gonna quit and they don't, but they can't pass the run because they didn't freaking train for the four months, six months, year prior to going to training. They didn't have the discipline to train for a long period of time, but in that moment, you could never make this dude quit.

• 5:17Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, sometimes you get someone that's in outstanding condition.

• 5:25Jocko Willink?

  And they came to every practice and then they get in the fight and they, they break. I mean, there's, we know fighters have broken, like professional fighters, both that we've known and that we've watched. They break in the ring. You watch them break in the cage. You can have exceptionally trained athletes going to basic SEAL training. They're incredible athletes. They're better at me in every category of athletics. Every category, running, swimming, strength, endurance. They just beat me in every category and they quit. That's kind of crazy, right?

• 6:07Jocko Willink?

  So, so that's this thing where both those, both those things don't win. You, you gotta have that long term and the short term.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  Discipline, you gotta have the short term and the long term coverage. You gotta have the discipline to do something long range, but then you also gotta protect your neck. What do I mean by that is if you don't protect your neck on the mats, you lose.

• 6:34Jocko Willink?

  You got, sometimes you gotta, oh, I gotta give up position. I gotta give up, you know, all these other things in this moment in time. I gotta panic. I gotta use a bunch of energy, but I gotta protect my neck. Cause if I don't protect my neck, it's over. So well-trained fighters, sometimes they quit. Well-prepared BUDs trainees, sometimes they quit. And all these things are going back to our actions.

• 6:59Jocko Willink?

  Our actions. And there's a saying about this, well, it's sort of, let's say, an adjacent saying. Which I, I guess you've heard before, saying, watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Have you ever heard this before? Some people take it a little bit further even. So some people say, watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become action. Watch your actions, they become your character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny. Big quotes, right? And this is, this, this quote has been attributed to different people over time. Emerson. Lao Tzu, the, the Chinese philosopher. I even saw one that gave the credit to Margaret Thatcher's father.

• 7:40Jocko Willink?

  Basically, it's a quote that seems to have evolved over time and is in different, many different forms out there.

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  But here's the thing, people talk about, watch your thoughts because they come words. Watch your words because they become your action. Watch your action because it becomes your character. Watch your character because it becomes your destiny. Here's what I'm gonna say.

• 8:06Jocko Willink?

  Watch your freaking, watch your freaking actions.

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  Watch your actions. And here's why I'm saying this, because you can see your actions. You can track your actions. You can adjust your actions. They're quantifiable.

• 8:25Jocko Willink?

  Your thoughts, no one can see them. You, you can, you can rationalize your thoughts. You can rationalize your words. You can say something, but do something else. All those things can take place, but your actions are real.

• 8:43Jocko Willink?

  So what I'm saying is, watch your actions, be conscious, be aware of what your actions are, your actions. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to JacoUnderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are

• 9:27Jocko Willink?

  doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors and we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's Jocko Underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.