Jocko Podcast 6: Napoleon, Aggression, Mind Control

Navy SEAL, Jocko Willink and Director, Echo Charles discuss winning tactics. Internet questions: Agression, Jiu Jitsu Academies, Character Judgement, and Mind Control. @jockowillink @echocharles Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number six with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  Time to get back to the books. Last time I read some letters. And today we're going back to the books and actually.

• 0:22Jocko Willink?

  This one is kind of hard pressed or it's a stretch to call this a book. Today we're, you know, I've given some pretty, um.

• 0:31Jocko Willink?

  You know, the last hundred yards is a very rare piece of, piece of literature, if you could even call it that.

• 0:39Jocko Willink?

  Same with battle leadership. That's, that's pretty rare. Now that one can be found on the internet. About Face was a pretty popular book.

• 0:48Jocko Willink?

  But this one tonight, we're going with something that many people have heard of, or at a minimum, you've heard of Napoleon, right? Military leader. But what's interesting about this and what's almost makes it cheating from my perspective for me is that these are maxims. These are already parsed down and put into a format that's very easy to understand, you know? He, the work has already been done. And, and I'll tell you, it is hard for me to find books or pieces of information to do this with. And part of the reason is it takes a,

• 1:33Jocko Willink?

  it takes, I'm looking for something very specific, right? And it's not, you know, there's so, there's a lot of, there's tons of great books about war and they are about war. They're about what happened and how the war happened and how, what, what tactics were used and what unit moved where and how many people they killed and how many maneuvers they did. And so that's very interesting and there's definitely lessons to be learned from that. And there, there is knowledge and that there's knowledge inside of tactics.

• 2:08Jocko Willink?

  And you know, the most common one is like if you talk about the flank, which is the most common tactic is, you know, if, if, if you're assaulting a target, you go straight on and that's, that's a frontal assault, but then what you wanna do is you wanna swing around the outside and hit them from where they're not protecting themselves. So that's a tactic that can be applied to, you know, anything. It can be applied to a debate. It can be applied to jujitsu. It can be applied to business situations where, you know, you wanna hit your competition where they aren't expecting it. So that's a flank. So, so there is knowledge to be gained from tactics for sure. But what I am always more interested

• 2:46Jocko Willink?

  in is the leadership and the, the human psychology, you know, and that's why I love battle, battle leadership because that first chapter is, is battlefield psychology. And this is pre, you know, this is world war one, you know, there was no kind of foo foo, new age, hey, feelings and what are people? No, all that stuff didn't exist. And here's this guy talking about battlefield psychology. And, but, but that's what I'm always interested in. That's what I wanna explore. That's what I wanna learn about. That's what I wanna compare my experiences to. Because, and, and I've said this before, leadership is the most

• 3:31Jocko Willink?

  challenging of all endeavors. And, and leading these human beings with all these variables is the most challenging and therefore the most rewarding. So while the tactics are important and you, and you can gain from them, it's, it's how the people react, what they do, where they go, those are the things that, that stand the test of time. And that's always what I'm looking for. So, these kind of things.

• 4:07Jocko Willink?

  Are the things that allow you as a leader of other people to look at those examples and learn from them and gain from them. And there will be little changes and little adjustments and you can see that there's changes over time. But the basic principles, no matter when, you can always learn from them. You know, and it's the same thing with the tactics, like for instance. There was, you know, when we were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I did not fight in Afghanistan. But one of my good buddies that fought with me i- in Iraq. And, you know, we brought back a lot of tactics and learned a lot of lessons and he said, after he went to Afghanistan, he said, that's the same thing.

• 4:51Jocko Willink?

  And people would say, you know, it's not, it's totally, it's a totally different war. And he, so he fought in both and he says, yeah, um, in Iraq, where we were in Ramadi, he goes in Ramadi. And in Iraq, it's streets. Um, and buildings and you know, you get the elevated positions on the buildings and then you've got control over the streets and. He goes in Afghanistan, it's valleys and hills and you know, you get the elevated position on the hills. And, and it's pretty much this, you know, the same thing. Are there differences? Absolutely. You know, but I'm saying the basic principles that he learned, he was able to apply. And again, not that I don't always keep an open mind that things can change and unexpected things will happen.

• 5:35Jocko Willink?

  But that's sort of where, you know, what I'm always looking for. So that's why there's a lot of war books. That I love to read and read, but I don't take away the same types of lessons. That I want to talk to people about or that I think people want to talk to about. It'd be a different program. It would be a different program and maybe we should do a program that's, that's aimed at, you know, military. People that are, that are concerned about tactics, because that is definitely something that I. That I kind of worship tactics, you know, I love tactics. I love talking about tactics.

• 6:16Jocko Willink?

  But, but for the, for normal people and, and for military leaders, learning about how people react. Is to me, kind of what's important and what I like to explore.

• 6:31Echo Charles?

  Right, man.

• 6:33Jocko Willink?

  So, interesting, I had a couple of things about Napoleon. Everyone, everyone knows, you know, something about Napoleon.

• 6:42Jocko Willink?

  A couple of cool facts about him, and this is going into this book here, which, which the book is actually called Roots of Strategy. It's got a bunch of different, bunch of different sections to it, and it's different leaders, different historical leaders throughout time. And this section on Napoleon. Napoleon, going into the book here, Napoleon fought more battles than Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar combined. He is, beyond any doubt, the greatest of European soldiers. So, pretty good lead in. We were talking about a guy with some knowledge. He astounded his opponents by the crushing rapidity of his battles. He marched against the enemy, and his plan of battle was a part of his plan of march.

• 7:28Jocko Willink?

  So he's a guy that used mobility and used the quickness and the pace to dictate how the battles were going to go. His tactical system, or scheme of battle, was based on a holding attack against the enemy's front to keep them occupied. A wide envelopment, or turning movement, on the enemy's rear with a small force to spread dismay and confusion in the defender's ranks. And then, the decisive blow. So that's what we just talked about. He was sort of a master of the flank. Hey, I'm gonna do a good assault, you're gonna be paying attention to that, and then from the side, or the rear, or somewhere that you're not expecting, you're getting submitted. And that's what he did.

• 8:10Jocko Willink?

  Napoleon was the first great strategist of the Western world. His battles were the result of his strategical movements, and were carefully calculated. Very...

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  I would say that anyone that associates, anyone that thinks of Napoleon thinks of him as a strategist. And a great strategist. Now, this collection of his maxims was published in Paris in 1827. And almost immediately was translated into German, English, Spanish, and Italian. Stonewall Jackson carried these maxims in his haversack throughout his campaign. This little volume states Colonel Henderson, who is Jackson's biography, contains a fairly complete exposition in Napoleon's own, in Napoleon's own words, of the grand principles of war.

• 9:09Jocko Willink?

  And then the person that actually compiled the maxims. And this is, actually, this is a statement that is very similar to what I started off talking about, you know, what I like to learn about. "The art of war is susceptible of being considered under two titles. The one which rests entirely on the knowledge and genius of the commander. The other on matters of detail." Now, they're gonna break that down a little bit further. "The first is the same for all time, for all peoples, whatever arms with which they fight.

• 9:51Jocko Willink?

  From this it follows that the same principles have directed the great captains of all centuries." So, that's what I like to read about. Those, those same principles that have directed the great captains of all centuries. Those basic principles, and a lot of those have to do with human nature. And then, and then it goes on to say that the matters of detail, and what he's talking about matters of details, he's talking about tactics. "On the contrary, are subject to the influence of time, to the spirit of the people, and the character of armor." And so, you know, that's when you change from having bow and arrows to rifles, to machine guns, to bombs, to whatever. And so, there, there are drastic changes in those tactics. And that's why.

• 10:36Jocko Willink?

  While they interest me and I always like to find a common thread in tactics and say, oh, that's the same thing that we do. You know, that they did in World War One, we do that now or whatever, you know, you I'm always looking to find that thread. But it sometimes it could be hard to find and sometimes it doesn't exist to any great degree. Whereas the way people act and the way human beings respond to combat situations. It it doesn't change as much.

• 11:07Echo Charles?

  Yeah, you would think if you go deep enough or fundamental enough that it's not surprising that it won't change. Because you're dealing with people and their needs and like almost on a biological level, like psychologically. A lot of times biologically, you know, preservation of life play plays a big part.

• 11:28Echo Charles?

  So yeah, technology can advance, even social stuff can advance, but that fund those fundamental needs typically stay the same.

• 11:35Jocko Willink?

  And you're right, but if you think about this, and we talked about this last time, like with the World War One. You know, these basic needs for survival, these men would just just threw them out the window. I mean, it it's just absolutely crazy. They disregarded that drive and just went over the top into hell and into machine gun fires.

• 11:59Echo Charles?

  Does that kind of go along the lines with something that is still here in a big way where they kind of put their own personal needs? Whether they, you know, their their their need to survive personally, they put the need for their mission or their honor to survive. They put that in front of their need to survive personally and and that's kind, doesn't that kind of translate even now? That's how like.

• 12:24Jocko Willink?

  Yes, yes, I I mean, I guess if we say that that's a that that's a normal human trait, which I don't know if it is or not. That I think it's something that gets learned. I don't think it's a inherent, normal, normal trait unless you say, look, people have an inherent trait to make their tribe. Their family survive, then maybe that's it.

• 12:45Echo Charles?

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. That's exactly what I was gonna say. So military culture, especially when you when you deal with the elite. Where doing a good job.

• 12:57Echo Charles?

  To put it lightly, doing a good job is very important.

• 13:02Echo Charles?

  You would think that that culture cultivates that need to put the mission in front of my own personal stuff. So and so deep into that that individual that it does most of the time trump their need.

• 13:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know what, you're right, and that thread, actually, we can go through all of history and find a thread of of groups of people that sacrificed and put their the mission or the the group ahead of themselves. Yes, yes, I mean, like a Thermopylae with the the three hundred Spartans, I mean, that's a classic example.

• 13:33Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Jocko Willink?

  They stood and fought and died for their country.

• 13:38Echo Charles?

  Yeah, and even people who aren't in the military, we understand that that's how elite soldiers are. You know, we understand that, oh, yeah, they they that's an elite soldier, one who will put his life on the line for the mission, for the country. We all understand that.

• 13:56Jocko Willink?

  And you use the term elite, but I will not use the term elite because I've seen every soldier who wouldn't be considered elite. I've seen them all do that, Marines do that, and US Army soldiers and and, you know, the the untrained reservist that doesn't really hasn't been through the kind of training that we have at all, but they will have that. So it has nothing to do really with, which actually proves your point even more, is that it doesn't even have to do with your level of training or your so-called being elite. It has to do with your dedication to the mission and the people that are with you, so.

• 14:35Echo Charles?

  Yeah, but yeah, I guess a better than better than a better word than elite would be, I guess, just like a dedicated soldier, just a soldier in general.

• 14:45Jocko Willink?

  Yes. So, back to the book here. A plan, okay, now this is, now we're getting into the maxims. And I'm not, I obviously didn't do all of them, but I picked out the ones that I kind of thought have the most talk about human nature, but at the same time, also talk about from a leadership perspective, planning, execution, if they are important and they are universal, then I, I, I put them in here. And this is kind of one of them that I just talked about with planning. "A plan of campaign should anticipate everything which the enemy can do and contain within itself the means of thwarting him." "Plans of campaign may be infinitely modified according to the circumstances." This is exactly what we heard on Battle Leadership

• 15:30Jocko Willink?

  from Von Schell, is that, so he just said, you know, "The plan should anticipate everything." But then he goes on to say, "Plans of campaign may be infinitely modified according to the circumstances." "The genius of the commander, the quality of the troops, and the topography of the theater of war." So this is, again, a common thread that we hear all the time, and that is, you gotta have adaptability. You've gotta be, and one of the biggest hindrances to adaptability is ego. Is when you say, "Oh, you know what, my plan is awesome. My plan is, my plan is the best, and I'm just gonna ride my plan into the ground and take everyone down with me because I don't have the humility to admit that my plan went wrong,

• 16:12Jocko Willink?

  to admit that the enemy did something I didn't expect, to, to admit that I have shortfalls with my troops, or whatever the case may be, and say, you know what, I need to adapt. I'm gonna do it now."

• 16:27Jocko Willink?

  Next one.

• 16:30Jocko Willink?

  "All wars should be systematic, for every war should have an aim and be conducted in conformity with the principles and rules of the art. War should be undertaken with forces corresponding to the magnitude of the obstacles that are to be anticipated." Now, what caught me about that one was recently I got asked a bunch of questions about the situation in Iraq and Syria. And one of the things people wanna throw out there because it's a...

• 17:05Jocko Willink?

  It's a catchy buzzword or group of buzzwords and that's, you know, boots on the ground. And, you know, I kept getting asked, well, how many boots on the ground do we need? How many troops do we need to put on the ground? And my answer was the same every time, which is we put as many troops on the ground as it takes to win. And to win decisively and without question. That's how you go to war.

• 17:38Jocko Willink?

  Now, this is another little maxim, which I really like. At the commencement of a campaign, the question whether to advance or not requires careful deliberation. So before you go into war, you, you carefully deliberate. And this is something that I've been talking about lately. When people think that because I'm a soldier, because I'm a warrior, that I want to go to war and I want all my friends to go to the war, which is just a ridiculous statement. If there's anybody that understands the impact of war, it's guys that have been to war.

• 18:21Jocko Willink?

  So this careful deliberation before you commence a campaign is exactly what should be done. And then it goes on to say, but when you have, once undertaken the offensive, it should be maintained to the last extremity.

• 18:41Jocko Willink?

  Right? That's commitment. That is commitment. Now, I will say this, even on that, and that's a beautiful thing. You should maintain to the last extremity. That's an extreme statement and I would tell you that you gotta balance that. And you want to maintain that, but what I just said is that, you know, if your plan isn't working, you gotta put your ego in check and figure out a new plan. So, yeah, you want to maintain it to the last extremity, but just short of the last extremity is okay. Do an ego check and make sure you've got a good plan going. A retreat, however skillful the maneuvers may be, will always produce an injurious moral effect on the army.

• 19:24Jocko Willink?

  Since by losing chances of success yourself, you throw them into the hands of the enemy. Besides, retreats cost far more, both in men and materiel, than the most bloody engagements. With this difference, that in battle, the enemy loses nearly much as you, while in a retreat, the loss is all on your side.

• 19:48Jocko Willink?

  Again, a common thread that we talk about with Von Schell, with Hackworth, and that is, being on the offensive is good. Being on the offensive is always better than being on the defensive.

• 20:08Jocko Willink?

  This is a, another, I, I hope I don't end up saying this for every one of these maxims.

• 20:16Jocko Willink?

  But these are, you, you know, and it's not surprising that you do say this before each one of these maxims. You go, wow, this is an impactful, and this is important. I've heard this before. This is another way of reinstating or restating the same topic that we say all the time. A general should say to himself many times a day, if the hostile army were to make his, make its appearance in front, on my right or on my left, what should I do?

• 20:44Jocko Willink?

  And if he is embarrassed, his arrangements are bad, there is something wrong, he must rectify his mistake. So this is the humility of constantly asking yourself, okay, if I got hit from the flank right now, what would I do? How would I handle it? Am I ready for that? If I'm not ready for it, how do I make that change? So constantly assessing yourself, seeing where you're at, seeing how you're doing. That's a common thread, not just for war, but for being a man and being a human, being a woman, being a, being a person that's trying to be successful. Are you looking at, looking around and, you know, things are, I'm, I'm always most nervous when things are going well.

• 21:28Jocko Willink?

  When things are going well, I'm always thinking, okay, when is the bad thing gonna come and hit me? You know, how do I prepare for that? How do I watch out for it? How do I flank that thing before it happens to me?

• 21:39Echo Charles?

  Yeah, a lot of times people will get in, they'll in a way revel in the success, right? And they'll get used to it. It'll get good to them, they'll get used to it. And then, yeah, when something does go bad or just different, even a lot of the time.

• 21:51Jocko Willink?

  Blind sided.

• 21:52Echo Charles?

  Yeah, they're just so into that success and immersing themselves in that success then. Yeah, they don't know what to do.

• 21:59Jocko Willink?

  I was, uh, we, my first deployment to Iraq, we were doing assaults and capturing bad guys. And we got a guy and then we went and got another guy right, right on, right on top of them. We interrogated that guy. We went and got, we broke down some cell and my commanding officer at the time, he came to me, he said, hey, Jocko, th- those, you know, I think it was four missions in a row within 24 hour period. And he said, hey, those operations, that was awesome, awesome work, you know, tell your platoon, they did a great job getting the information, going back out there, a quick planning cycle. It was just fantastic. You know, those are very admirable. And I just looked at him, I said,

• 22:45Jocko Willink?

  give us 24 hours and we'll screw it up. And I just, you don't want to set expectations. That's how, that's how, that's to avoid what you were talking about. To avoid being like, that's right. You know, I said, no, you know what, sir? Give us 24 hours and we'll screw it up.

• 22:59Echo Charles?

  Right. Do you ever fear like in, or in that particular case that,

• 23:04Echo Charles?

  he could look at, at it as dang, are you being negative? Or, cause obviously you're not, given what you're saying, you're not being negative. You're checking yourself the whole time. But do you fear that, that either he, either your commanding officer or anyone would take that as dang, this guy's a pessimist or something like that?

• 23:20Jocko Willink?

  No, I had a good, great relationship with my, with all my commanding officers, you know? I always say that's my responsibility is to have a great relationship with these guys. And so he knew that I was just being humble and making sure that we're not getting cocky, even though he was trying to fire me up. And you know, he's probably trying to do that because everyone was kind of burned out. I mean, from doing, staying awake for a long period of time and doing a bunch of ops. And he was just trying to, you know, give some compliments and I just said, hey, sir, you know, let's not, let's not get crazy here. We've got a long deployment ahead of us still. So you gotta be careful of that.

• 24:00Jocko Willink?

  To operate upon lines remote from each other and without communications between them is a fault which ordinarily occasions a second.

• 24:13Jocko Willink?

  The detached column has orders only for the first day. Its operations for the second day may depend on what has happened to the main body. Thus, according to circumstances, the column wastes its time in waiting for orders or acts randomly.

• 24:30Jocko Willink?

  So, what that means is you've got multiple elements out there and you've got the main element. And whoever breaks off from that main element, they might know what to do the first day, but what do they do the second day? And this is just going into classic decentralized command. Because in reality, today, in today's world, this rarely happens where we lose total communications. And in the business world, I mean, I'm a text away. You can literally talk to me at instantaneously. But there's, there's, there's times in combat and in the business world and in life, where instantaneously isn't fast enough. You know, it is not fast enough. And we've talked about this with decentralized command.

• 25:11Jocko Willink?

  If, if, you know, you get ambushed and you don't know what you're supposed to do as a commander. When you get ambushed, you don't have a plan, you don't have an overall strategy, then what are you gonna do? Call back to higher headquarters and saying, "Hey, Jocko, we're getting ambushed right now. What do you want me to do?" No, I've, I've, you, you gotta be out there in the field with the, with the commander's intent that you know what's, what you're supposed to do. And you know that if you get ambushed, here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna break contact or you're gonna, you know, flank the enemy or whatever the case may be. But you're gonna know what to do. In a, in a business environment, it's the same thing. There's times where... Instant communication isn't fast enough. You know, I actually see this when we work with like salespeople.

• 25:56Jocko Willink?

  And you know, there'll be some hierarchy of of adjusting product pricing. And you know, a client will come in or a customer will come in. And if that person, if that frontline salesperson doesn't have the ability to make a a pricing decision on the spot. And say, you know what, sir? I I see you, you know, you've you've shopped us around. And this is the deal you've got over there. I can do it here. I can take care of you. We can beat that price. If he can't do that, he's gonna lose. You know, if he goes, let me check with my manager. Sure, he could hang on to him, but there's a chance he's gonna lose him. So sometimes instantaneous isn't fast enough. You know, it's gotta be. It's gotta be quicker. It's gotta be able to happen with no communications.

• 26:40Jocko Willink?

  And that's that's what this is referring to.

• 26:44Jocko Willink?

  It ought it ought then to be adopted as a principle that the columns of an army should always be kept united. So that when the enemy cannot thrust themselves between them.

• 26:57Jocko Willink?

  This is something that I always preached to my SEAL leadership. And that is that separating your forces, and sometimes you do have to do it. And it's and it's a completely acceptable tactic. But it's always better to be unified. It's always better to be unified. It's always better to be close enough that you could. In fact, you can be separate, but you don't you always need to be close enough to each other to support each other. So if, you know, you shouldn't be getting your you and your element shouldn't be getting any further away from me and my element. Then we could be able to support you. So what's the range of my guns? What's the accurate range of my guns? You know, if I can shoot three or 400, 500 meters, you know.

• 27:40Jocko Willink?

  If you have eight guys and I have eight guys and now we're getting further than that apart, that means I really can't support you. So now we're alone. And that's not how you want to be. So again, there's times where people have to take calculated risks. But we always would say, you know, keep that um.

• 27:58Jocko Willink?

  Keep together, stay together as much as you can. And, and again, this is a, I'm, I'm talking tactics now. This is like for people that are in the military that are listening to this podcast. There's something to keep in the back of your mind. Stay where you can cover and move. Stay where you can mutually support one another.

• 28:21Jocko Willink?

  They should move to, oh, uh, when for any reason this maxim is departed from, the detached corps should be independent in their operations. They should move towards a fixed point at which they are to unite. They should march without hesitation and without new orders and should be exposed as little as possible to the danger of being attacked separately. This to me goes into contingencies where if we do get separated, you've got to know, okay, if I get separated and it's been an hour, I'm going to this fixed point and we're going to make it happen.

• 28:51Echo Charles?

  Yeah. Kind of like when you're at the mall.

• 28:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was just gonna say, when you've got a family, this is something you actually have to legit come up with. Okay, if we get separated, here's where we're gonna meet and here's what time. And by the way, if we don't make that muster, for whatever reason, the next one will be here. And so you've got to have a little contingency planning with the fam. Make sure it's all good.

• 29:09Echo Charles?

  What does muster mean?

• 29:10Jocko Willink?

  Uh, muster means bring everyone together and

• 29:12Echo Charles?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:13Jocko Willink?

  Count how many people you have.

• 29:15Echo Charles?

  I'm gonna say that next time.

• 29:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, say muster is at so and so.

• 29:22Jocko Willink?

  Next one.

• 29:25Jocko Willink?

  A well-established maxim of war is not to do anything which your enemy wishes and for the single reason that he does so wish. Okay, that is pretty self-explanatory. Don't do anything that your enemy wants you to do. You should therefore avoid a field of battle which he has reconnoitered and studied.

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  You should still, you should be still more careful to avoid one which he has fortified and where he has entrenched himself.

• 29:58Jocko Willink?

  A corollary of this principle is never to attack in front of a position which admits of being turned. So, one of the, one of the biggest pieces that I take away from this, and this is, you should still be more careful to avoid one which he has fortified and where he has entrenched himself. I used to give my guys warnings about this, about these fixed positions that are entrenched. And I wasn't talking about combat. You know what I was talking about? I was talking about debates. I was talking about debates because you, there's, there's guys

• 30:43Jocko Willink?

  in the SEAL teams that would lure you into some kind of a debate about, let's say, the strategy that the SEAL teams were using, the strategy, the way things that they, the way they thought things should be done. And the, the thing is, these guys would sit there and have this argument with amongst themselves and, and with other people. And so they would, they would have these kind of fortified positions on them. And you roll into it and you're like, you've got your experience, but you're not ready for a debate on it. You're not ready for these fortified positions that they're gonna throw at you.

• 31:20Jocko Willink?

  So, don't engage in these battles. And, you know, it's like, I, I was doing Sam Harris's podcast, you know, and I, and I went up there and there were some things that I thought, well, you know, he might ask me about some of these philosophical opinions on things. And of course, I mean, I was ready to, to have a discussion, but what I wasn't ready to do was like, stand my ground on the topic of free will with, with Sam Harris, a guy that's literally written an entire book, which is called Free Will, and he has his own. So, for me to engage with him, it's an entrenched position. It's something that I'm not going to...

• 32:03Jocko Willink?

  I I'm not gonna win and I'm I and in fact, you know, it's not it's not like Sam Harris is a pretty mellow guy. It's not like he's going to get in an argument, but I wasn't even gonna make any practical points.

• 32:14Echo Charles?

  Right.

• 32:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, and so I'm just always very cautious. And again, in the business world, you get people that understand some part of their business so well. You have to be very careful. You have to plan when you're gonna engage with them because otherwise you're gonna get just, you know, destroyed.

• 32:35Echo Charles?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:38Echo Charles?

  Yeah, Sam Harris's position on free will is pretty fortified, I would say.

• 32:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's and and and the scary thing is, is that you can actually be right about something. But if you're going against someone that's got a fortified position, you can still lose the argument and look stupid. Um, not that there's anything wrong with looking stupid, but you know, you wanna pick your battles. I mean.

• 32:59Echo Charles?

  Right. Yeah, not that Sam Harris isn't right or anything like that.

• 33:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Echo Charles?

  Like you're just saying in general.

• 33:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, no, I wasn't definitely wasn't talking specifically about about Sam Harris. That's just a great example because again, it's a guy that's literally written a book.

• 33:14Echo Charles?

  Right.

• 33:15Jocko Willink?

  Called free will.

• 33:16Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 33:17Jocko Willink?

  So if he wants to talk about it and I wanna say, no, I don't agree with you. He's just ready for that, you know, just like if we we said, you know what, hey, let's let's train jujitsu. I'm ready for that. I've been in every position that that is gonna happen in jujitsu. I've been in there a thousand more times than him.

• 33:34Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 33:35Jocko Willink?

  Because I've been training for a really long time. So if we have that discussion about free will, it's gonna be the same thing. I'm just not gonna.

• 33:40Echo Charles?

  We have.

• 33:41Jocko Willink?

  Bring anything to the table.

• 33:42Echo Charles?

  Is that kinda like um the guys who who are really into conspiracy theories, you know? And they're if they present it to you, they're gonna have all this research and websites and documentaries that they went to in your, you know?

• 33:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:54Echo Charles?

  Even even if your facts are like stronger, they have so many other weapons and they're ready for that war. They're ready, they're entrenched and fortified, like are you saying?

• 34:02Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 34:03Echo Charles?

  So, yeah.

• 34:04Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 34:04Echo Charles?

  That's a hard war to to win.

• 34:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because I'm not gonna go like we've talked about before, I'm not gonna go and and dig through the interwebs and watch video upon video about.

• 34:14Echo Charles?

  Just to fight that war.

• 34:15Jocko Willink?

  Just to fight this war.

• 34:16Echo Charles?

  It's not even necessarily to prove anything, right? Or it's just you got just to fight and win that war.

• 34:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The passage from the defensive to the offensive is one of the most delicate operations of war.

• 34:29Jocko Willink?

  And I actually have a note of what I think is the most difficult operation of war. And that is linking up under fire. And again, you know what, now I'm talking tactically.

• 34:44Jocko Willink?

  To people that are listening to the show that are currently serving in the military and the police. Linking up with other units, other friendly units under fire is is one of the most difficult things to do because there's so much confusion, people are shooting. You're trying to bring friendly units together, there can be bad guys in between you and obviously if there's bad guys in between you and the other good guys and you have to shoot at the bad guys, that means you're shooting at good guys too, your bullets can hit them. So it's a very, very, very challenging thing to do. So be careful when it comes time to link up under fire. And you know what I think of when I think of this?

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  I think of when you see companies merge. It's they're, you know, they're, they're moving together. And there's just, it's very challenging. There's confusion. There's a disorder, there's a, there's a merging of the chain of commands of two different groups. So it's, it's very challenging. And so anybody that's going into some kind of a merger scenario, you've got to recognize out of the gate that this is one of the most hardest military operations and one of the hardest business operations to do. So you've got to be aggressive with it, you've got to plan it, you've got to be clear about it, you've got to do it in a simple way.

• 36:17Jocko Willink?

  Don't think that you're just gonna merge two companies together and it's going to be all good. It's a very challenging event to participate in.

• 36:35Jocko Willink?

  It is a violation of correct principles to cause corps to act separately without communication with each other. In the face of a concentrated army with easy communications.

• 36:51Jocko Willink?

  This is the same theme. This idea that you want to stay together, you want to work together. You want to, and I'll fill this word out there in case people didn't catch it the first time I said it. The word mutually support, or the words mutually support. You want to mutually support each other. Now, what we find in the business world is you get different elements inside of a company that do not work together. They don't communicate with each other. And it's the same thing as being out on the battlefield and you got your platoon and I got my platoon and if we're not talking, how are we helping each other? It's, we're not. And if we, if you try and hit the enemy, and the enemy's bigger and stronger than you are alone, well, he's gonna beat you.

• 37:36Jocko Willink?

  And then if I try and, you know, later, even if it's an hour later, I try and hit him. Well, guess what? He's bigger and stronger than you, and he's bigger and stronger than me, he's gonna beat me. We have to join together and work together. It's so obvious. I know it's obvious. And you know what? You'd think it'd be obvious to people on the battlefield, and yet Napoleon himself felt the need to write that down as a maxim because people don't do it.

• 37:56Echo Charles?

  Right.

• 37:57Jocko Willink?

  And Leif and I, in our book, we have the law of combat called cover and move. And that's what it is. It's about mutual support. It's about working together. It's about teamwork. And it's about not having silos in your organization where one person just is gonna be on their own, or one element's on their own, and another element's on their own, and another element's on their own.

• 38:19Echo Charles?

  Are you talking about, like, just structurally, where that's how you kind of run the business? Or are you talking about where they don't communicate because, eh, I don't really like that guy?

• 38:27Jocko Willink?

  It's both those.

• 38:28Echo Charles?

  Oh, okay.

• 38:29Jocko Willink?

  Now, well, structurally, I mean, you have to have things structurally. There will be separate elements structurally in the military. I mean, in the military, there's, you know, there's artillery. That's a separate element. There's, you know, logistics. That's a separate element. You've got, then you've got the infantry.

• 38:47Jocko Willink?

  Companies and there'll be separate infantry companies, but they're all separate. But they have to work together. They have to mutually support. They have to communicate. If they fail to do that, well, in a business, you've got the same thing. You've got a sales branch. You've got an operational branch. You've got an administrative branch. You've got a, a marketing branch. And all those branches, they have to work together too.

• 39:05Echo Charles?

  Right. Yeah. So in, um, on a personal level, let's say, you know, I don't like Jenny from HR. So, you know.

• 39:16Jocko Willink?

  I can't stand Jenny from HR.

• 39:17Echo Charles?

  Yeah. So, so we're not gonna, we're not gonna talk to her, you know, we're just, we don't need her. You know, we're just gonna continue without her kind of, kind of attitude.

• 39:26Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that's a classic example. If anyone decides that for personal reasons or whatever, they're not gonna work with someone else. That's exactly what I'm talking about. And it does happen in, it, it happens so often in businesses. It's ridiculous. And it, and it happens in the military too. It happens in SEAL platoons. It happens in interservices. And, and that's just a huge obstacle to overcome. And like I said, that's why Napoleon Bonaparte himself put it in his maxims.

• 39:58Jocko Willink?

  Another one, one battalion sometimes decides the issue of the day. So which battalion is that gonna be? We don't know. Which element is gonna hit that critical situation? This to me is bringing it back to, you know, being prepared and giving, you know, making your teams strong, all of them, in balancing them. Because one battalion, or one element, or one team, or maybe even one person can decide the issue of the day. So balance is very important.

• 40:39Jocko Willink?

  I just couldn't help just going tactical with Napoleon on some of these. I really couldn't. It's just great stuff.

• 40:46Echo Charles?

  I understand.

• 40:48Jocko Willink?

  It should be adopted as a principle, never to allow intervals through which the enemy can penetrate between the different cores forming the line of battle. Unless you have laid a snare. Into which it is your object to draw him.

• 41:04Jocko Willink?

  This is very simple for people that are in the military to understand, and I just kind of talked about it. If you and I are the good guys. And we have guns, just you and me. And we allow a bad guy to get in between you and me. And he has a gun. Now, what is that? Do you, do you understand?

• 41:23Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Jocko Willink?

  What that does? If I want to shoot the guy and I miss by a quarter of an inch, who does it hit?

• 41:28Echo Charles?

  Right, potentially me.

• 41:29Jocko Willink?

  It hits you, yeah. It hits you because it's Murphy's Law. Not even, potentially it will hit you, it's Murphy's Law. So, you want to always, again, this goes back to, you know, unity of command. And having your elements working together and not allowing other elements to penetrate in between your forces.

• 41:48Echo Charles?

  Interesting how he added unless. It's to snare him, like unless that's like you're baiting him into a trap kind of thing. That's interesting how he added that specifically, like that's kind of a dope little thing to do.

• 42:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it is a. I don't know if Napoleon would have said it was a dope little thing to do. But.

• 42:09Echo Charles?

  But it kind of is though, that's the thing.

• 42:11Jocko Willink?

  And this is the next one. Same theme, the camps of the same army should always be so placed as to be able to sustain each other. Right? You always have to be able to mutually support.

• 42:27Jocko Willink?

  Mutually support.

• 42:31Jocko Willink?

  As you would say. That is important.

• 42:43Jocko Willink?

  A good general, good officers, commissioned and non-commissioned, good organization, good instruction, and strict discipline make good troops independently of the cause for which they are fighting.

• 43:01Jocko Willink?

  Independently of the cause for which they are fighting. A good general, good officers, commissioned and non-commissioned, good organization, good instruction, and strict discipline make good troops independent of the cause for which they are fighting. So you can actually just have a incredibly strong force that can operate at a high level regardless of the cause that they're fighting for.

• 43:29Echo Charles?

  Right.

• 43:30Jocko Willink?

  Just because they have those things.

• 43:32Echo Charles?

  Right.

• 43:34Echo Charles?

  Yeah, like, kinda what I've told you before, where if you, you know, you were trained in discipline, trained in all these things, all the way down to just, okay, for example, if you, if you were trained in, by whatever means, you're trained to show up on time every single time.

• 43:50Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:51Echo Charles?

  Where, you know, never be late.

• 43:54Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 43:54Echo Charles?

  To the point where being late could very well be the end of the world for you.

• 43:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 43:59Echo Charles?

  Like, train that hard and never being late. That's gonna, for a certain situation, like you're in the military, right? So you can never be late in the military. So now when you get out, when you show up for work, when you show up for drinks with your friend, chances are you're never gonna be late.

• 44:15Jocko Willink?

  Of course.

• 44:16Echo Charles?

  And that goes for, you know, the skills, the discipline, and everything else you're trained in.

• 44:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 44:24Jocko Willink?

  The first quality, and this is, now we're just gonna get after it. The first quality of a soldier is constancy in enduring fatigue and hardship. Courage is only the second.

• 44:45Jocko Willink?

  So the first quality of a soldier is constancy in enduring fatigue and hardship. That is the, this is Napoleon Bonaparte saying that the most important thing, the most important quality of a soldier is that they, that they can endure fatigue and hardship.

• 45:03Jocko Willink?

  Courage is only second. Poverty, privation, and want are the school of the good soldier. So now, when you look at any of the elite military training schools that those get, that people get put through, well, what is it about? It's about poverty, privation, and want, you know? It's about being hungry, cold, tired, miserable. That's what they do. You know, privation, I looked that word up actually. A state in which things that are essential for human well-being are lacking.

• 45:47Jocko Willink?

  And that's what they do. And, you know, for me, you know, I always talk about like, you know, I don't sleep a lot. I wake up early. That's one of those things that, it was pretty natural to me luckily. There's some biological genetic reason or whatever. But that was very helpful to me, very helpful for me to not have to sleep a lot.

• 46:08Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 46:08Jocko Willink?

  And being able to suffer through that well was, was beneficial. And, you know, there's a lot of guys that have that, that talent. And people that don't have that talent have a rough time.

• 46:20Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 46:21Jocko Willink?

  As, you know, as warriors in a real sense.

• 46:30Jocko Willink?

  You should, by all means, encourage the soldiers to continue in the service. This you can easily do by testifying great esteem for old soldiers. They do that very well in the military, you know, the older, more experienced veteran soldiers get a lot of respect. The pay should also be increased in proportion to the years in service. There's a great injustice in having no higher pay to a veteran than to a recruit. So that's. That's good. Now, when I read this, this didn't particularly strike me as an important maxim to bring up, but it reminded me of a story that always stuck with me.

• 47:13Jocko Willink?

  And so I was over in Ramadi and I was working with a, with a battalion called the First of the 506, Banda Brothers. Sure. Red Currie, just unbelievably awesome and heroic soldiers. And I went over there for a meeting with the commander of the battalion. And I showed up to the meeting early, of course, I was meeting him in his office, but, and this guy was, uh, was just an incredible leader and an incredible soldier and really an incredible man

• 47:53Jocko Willink?

  that I could not have any more respect for. And, uh, you know, I'm not saying his name right now because I don't want to interrupt his privacy and his world. You know, I don't know if he wants to have his name said on a podcast, you know, and we talk about him in the book and I don't put his name in there either. And again, this is out of respect for people's privacy and also out of, you know, security reasons, you know, he doesn't want to have the insurgents and terrorists of the world knowing that he was this guy. So, but I will tell you this, the guy was just a fantastic leader. And, uh, so I went to this meeting with him. It's just a one-on-one meeting. I forget what we were talking about. But I showed up early and he's in there and I can hear him, you know, he's, he's kind of talking to a soldier. I can't hear what he's saying.

• 48:37Jocko Willink?

  And there's just a soldier. And what's interesting about this is these, the army, seeing the SEAL teams, when you go, when you join a SEAL platoon for two years or whatever, how, however long it's going to be, you stay in that SEAL platoon, you do a workup cycle and then you go out on deployment. And

• 49:00Jocko Willink?

  The army does a little bit differently. The army, you could be three months into a year-long deployment to Iraq and they will just, uh, they'll just leave. That'll be their time. Their time in the army is up and they'll go home. Or, and then some new guy will show up and they'll be in the middle of deployment and that's how they do it. The SEAL Teams doesn't really do that. You know, you kind of stick together for an entire straight six or seven month deployment.

• 49:25Jocko Willink?

  So I show up to this meeting with the battalion commander and the soldier that was in before me walks out. And, uh, the Colonel, I sat down, I said, "Hey, sir, how you doing? Good to see you." He's like, "Hey, good to see you frogman." And he said, "You know what? That right there is a soldier's getting out of the army." And I said, "Oh, it's interesting how you guys do that." And he said, "Yeah." And he, and I said, uh, you know, "What do you say to these guys? When they're getting out of the army and it's the middle of a deployment?"

• 49:59Jocko Willink?

  And he looked at me and he said, "You know,

• 50:02Jocko Willink?

  when I deal with a soldier that's getting out of the army, he said, "A lot of people will, will say, 'You can't leave us now. You know, you gotta stick it out with us. You gotta stay here. We need you.'" And he said, "When I deal with a soldier that's getting out of the army, I look at him and I shake their hands and I say, 'Thank you for your service.'"

• 50:31Jocko Willink?

  And

• 50:33Jocko Willink?

  that to me was just awesome to, to, to have a totally different attitude. Because the SEAL Teams is like that as well. Someone's gonna get out of the SEAL Teams. They're not gonna be on the middle of deployment, but when you get back, they'll go, "Oh yeah, I'm getting out." And everyone says, "Oh, you're a quitter, blah, blah, blah." And it's just a different attitude and what does that, what does that tell you about your community when you say, hey, you know what, I'm gonna move on, I'm gonna take care of my family, I gotta, you know, I got whatever going on in my life and I'm gonna get out of the SEAL teams and people are like, oh, you're a quitter.

• 51:03Echo Charles?

  Hmm.

• 51:03Jocko Willink?

  And that's normal and they do that in every branch, it's not just the SEAL teams. And here was this guy and his attitude was, he's gonna say, thank you for your service.

• 51:10Echo Charles?

  Hmm.

• 51:11Jocko Willink?

  Appreciate everything you've done and I wish you the best luck. That guy is more willing to change his mind because he's like, wow, I'm working for an incredible leader, the army's awesome.

• 51:21Echo Charles?

  Right.

• 51:22Jocko Willink?

  And that, that story always stuck with me.

• 51:24Echo Charles?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:24Jocko Willink?

  About, about how to treat people. About how to treat people, this is a guy that put his life on the line for months on end.

• 51:35Echo Charles?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:36Jocko Willink?

  And all he did was just say, thank you for your service.

• 51:38Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 51:39Jocko Willink?

  That's a leader right there.

• 51:40Echo Charles?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:46Jocko Willink?

  Next one. It is not by harangues at the moment of engaging. Soldiers are rendered brave. Veterans hardly listen to them and recruits forget them at the first discharge of a cannon. If speeches and arguments are at any time useful, it is during the course of the campaign by counteracting false reports and causes of discontent, maintaining proper spirit in the camp and furnishing subjects of conversations in bivouacs. These several objects be, may be attained by the printed orders of the day.

• 52:26Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and so this is, again, as a leader, in a leadership position, this, he's basically saying, look, at the moment of combat, all your yelling and screaming and trying to motivate people is too late. The veterans like, the, the veterans aren't gonna listen to you and the recruits, once the cannon goes off, they're not hearing you either. So your main focus needs to be, you know, during the, the non-firefight scenarios. That's when you get people with the mindset that's gonna drive them through these bad situations. If you're trying to do this, trying to encourage people during the, during the firefight, you're late.

• 53:10Jocko Willink?

  Theme of the night. Nothing is more important in war than unity in command. When, therefore, you are carrying on hostilities against a single power only, you should have but one army, acting on one line, and led by one commander.

• 53:32Jocko Willink?

  Does that even need? Explanation? Not really.

• 53:39Jocko Willink?

  Unity of command.

• 53:43Jocko Willink?

  There are certain things in war of which the commander alone comprehends the importance. Nothing but his superior firmness and ability can subdue and surmount all difficulties. This is the burden of command. This is recognizing when you're in a command position, and when you're in a leadership position, there are some things that are yours alone. And you have to drive from the top. And I, I talk all the time about leadership being at every level. And, and how the lowest ranking guy is a leader and the person above him is leader all the way through the whole chain of command. But this statement, which I agree with, as much as I know that leadership throughout the chain of command is infinitely

• 54:28Jocko Willink?

  important. It is important as a leader to understand that there's some things that you and you alone are going to understand, and it's your responsibility to ensure that that piece of the battle is handled correctly.

• 54:52Jocko Willink?

  This one's a little bit long. I'm gonna read it anyways.

• 54:57Jocko Willink?

  "To authorize generals and officers to lay down their arms by virtue of a special capitulation under any other circumstances than when they constitute the garrison of a fortified place would unquestionably be attended with dangerous consequences. To open this door to cowards, to men wanting in energy, or even misguided brave men, is to destroy the military spirit of a nation."

• 55:26Jocko Willink?

  From Napoleon. "There can be no surrender."

• 55:32Jocko Willink?

  An extraordinary situation requires extraordinary resolution.

• 55:39Jocko Willink?

  Note taken, underlined in red. An extraordinary situation requires extraordinary resolution.

• 55:50Jocko Willink?

  How many things apparently impossible have nevertheless been performed by resolute men? Who had no alternative but death?

• 56:02Jocko Willink?

  Strong words, very strong words.

• 56:06Jocko Willink?

  And we could go throughout military history and find case upon case where I would tell you, yes, absolutely, that commander made a wise decision to surrender. And you know, that's, there are situations where that happens. But I think the main point of this is that to have that out there, to have that as a thing.

• 56:31Echo Charles?

  Right, right.

• 56:32Jocko Willink?

  Is not smart, is not smart. And you know, going in with MMA fighters and telling them like, listen, if you get caught in a submission, don't tap, let it break. If you get put in a choke, go to sleep. Just, there's no submission, you are not tapping. Now, I've said that to guys and I've had some guys get out of some crazy submissions that they should have tapped and maybe they got a little bit injured, but they got out. And I've also had guys get caught in like some devastating submissions and been like, oh, you know what? Okay, I'm gonna tap because, but the fact that that attitude wasn't out there.

• 57:14Echo Charles?

  Right, okay.

• 57:14Jocko Willink?

  That like, like, okay, you know what, if you get caught, you know what? Just tap. I mean, you're not gonna say to a fighter, okay, look, if you get caught in a bad armlock, you know, just tap. No, no, if you get caught in a bad armlock, get out of it.

• 57:26Echo Charles?

  Yeah, in competition.

• 57:27Jocko Willink?

  Let it break.

• 57:28Echo Charles?

  Like in MMA fight.

• 57:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 57:29Echo Charles?

  I mean, obviously not.

• 57:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:31Echo Charles?

  Okay.

• 57:32Jocko Willink?

  No, yeah, in training, sorry, folks, if you're in training, tap early and tap often.

• 57:38Echo Charles?

  Yeah, okay, so when you say having that be a thing that's out there, meaning there's almost not, I don't wanna say ashamed, but almost like etiquette is to not surrender. That's etiquette. And it's so much etiquette where it's here, you don't surrender. Here it is. It's written in plain English, don't surrender.

• 57:55Jocko Willink?

  Right, right. And it's not even etiquette. There's a better word for it. There's a word, I don't know what it is, but it's not etiquette. It's, it's our ethos.

• 58:05Echo Charles?

  Right, right.

• 58:05Jocko Willink?

  That's what it is. It's our ethos is do not surrender.

• 58:08Echo Charles?

  Right. So when someone does surrender, when it's a good move, how you say like every once in a while, there is, it's like, man,

• 58:17Echo Charles?

  there was literally no other option that could be conceived. Yeah, yeah.

• 58:20Jocko Willink?

  But to not have it out there, you know that that commander took it to the nth degree and said, you know what? All of my men are gonna die for no reason now if I continue on with this. So therefore, we are going to surrender and then, and hopefully we'll come back to fight another day.

• 58:36Echo Charles?

  Yeah, otherwise, yeah, it's, if, you know, if, if, I don't know, someone even has this much mental weakness going in, he could get, and that could kick in at a whole nother time.

• 58:48Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 58:48Echo Charles?

  And now he's under this certain kind of mindset that, man, I could look for the easiest way out right here. You're not real tired. Or, man, my shoulder got hurt on that last one.

• 58:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 58:59Echo Charles?

  So maybe I'll just, you know, but if he's in that mindset that, don't give up, you just can't surrender, he won't even consider that. That won't even enter his mind.

• 59:08Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm talking about. That's exactly what I'm talking about.

• 59:13Jocko Willink?

  Such conduct, such conduct ought to be prescribed, pronounced infamous and punishable with death. The generals, officers and soldiers who in battle have saved their lives by capitulating ought to be decimated. He who commands the arms to be surrendered and those who obey him are alike traitors and deserve capital punishment.

• 59:37Echo Charles?

  They're saying if you give up, you should.

• 59:38Jocko Willink?

  You give up, you die. That's exactly what they're saying.

• 59:41Echo Charles?

  Alright.

• 59:42Jocko Willink?

  That's exactly what they're saying.

• 59:47Jocko Willink?

  Now, we're gonna get in a little bit of uh, something that we now refer to as extreme ownership.

• 59:55Jocko Willink?

  A general in chief cannot exonerate himself from responsibility for for his faults by pleading an order of his sovereign or the minister when the individual from whom it proceeds is at a distance from the field of operations and but partially or not at all acquainted with the actual conditions of things. So, you, if I tell you to do something and it doesn't go well for you, you're out in the field and I told you, "Hey, charge this machine gun nest," and you do it and everyone dies and you come back and say, "Hey, it wasn't my fault, it was Jocko's fault." The point is here, no, doesn't work that way. Does not work that way.

• 1:00:41Jocko Willink?

  Hence,

• 1:00:44Jocko Willink?

  it follows that every general in chief who undertakes to execute a plan which he knows to be bad is culpable. So, if I tell you to go attack that machine gun nest and you know it's a bad plan and you execute it anyways, your fault.

• 1:01:00Echo Charles?

  That's kinda like, I mean, that whole idea is you take responsibility for your direct actions, right? So, it's kinda like, if you do the opposite of that, it's like, okay, I, you know, I was speeding, I got caught, right? I got speeding, I got a ticket, is that my fault? Cause, yes, it's my fault, but in a way, if I don't wanna exercise this concept, in a way, it's my parents' fault for having me. Or maybe not teaching me the value of following traffic uh,

• 1:01:30Jocko Willink?

  I'm not going to have this discussion with you. That's just completely ridiculous.

• 1:01:35Echo Charles?

  It's the same thing, no?

• 1:01:36Jocko Willink?

  You can't blame your parents for your speeding, Echo Charles.

• 1:01:41Echo Charles?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 1:01:41Jocko Willink?

  I'm not gonna let you do that.

• 1:01:42Echo Charles?

  That's the point, that's the point I'm making.

• 1:01:43Jocko Willink?

  No, that's, and the point here is that if you're doing something, this is even more of an extreme point, this is if your parents tell you to speed and you go out and get caught speeding and pulled over, you go, "Hey, my parents told me to speed."

• 1:01:56Echo Charles?

  Right, even more direct, yeah.

• 1:01:57Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm saying is, you knew it was wrong, you knew you shouldn't be doing it, and what Napoleon is saying is, it's your fault, you're culpable.

• 1:02:04Echo Charles?

  Gotcha.

• 1:02:05Jocko Willink?

  Period.

• 1:02:07Jocko Willink?

  Period.

• 1:02:08Echo Charles?

  Would you suggest, let's say.

• 1:02:11Jocko Willink?

  Period.

• 1:02:12Echo Charles?

  You knew it was wrong. Would a better plan of action be expressed that you know that the the mission or whatever is wrong?

• 1:02:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you should be like, hey, I'm not doing this. Oh, in fact, he goes on. He should communicate his reasons, insist on a change of plan, and finally resign his commission. Rather than become the instrument of the of his army's ruin. This is just the, this is the most, probably the most powerful thing we're gonna talk about tonight. I'm gonna read it again. A general in chief cannot exonerate himself from responsibility for his faults by pleading an order of his sovereign or the minister. When the individual from whom it proceeds is at a distance from the field of operations. And but partially or not at all acquainted with the actual condition of things. So this is, this is an order that's coming on from high from somebody that doesn't know. Hence, it follows.

• 1:03:00Jocko Willink?

  That every general in chief who undertakes to execute a plan which he knows to be bad is culpable.

• 1:03:09Jocko Willink?

  He should communicate his reasons, insist on a change of plan, and finally. Resign his commission. So quit his job. Rather than become an instrument of his army's ruin.

• 1:03:25Jocko Willink?

  Every general in chief who in consequence of orders from his superiors. Gives battle with a certainty of defeat is equally culpable.

• 1:03:36Jocko Willink?

  This is ownership. This is, hey, I got told to do something. I don't agree with it. Hey, boss. Look, you gotta listen to me here. This is not the way we need to execute this. Here's a better plan. Here's another plan. Here's a, here's an alternative. Because if you. Give battle with the certainty of defeat, you're culpable. Regardless of who told you to do what. Individual responsibility. And this is especially important to have this concept coming from somebody that was as.

• 1:04:06Jocko Willink?

  Egotistical and expected so much discipline from his troops to have Napoleon himself saying this, like if it's a bad order, you shouldn't do it. This is Napoleon saying this. So that's how important it is to have this, this culture in your organization to make sure that everybody knows regardless of what you get told, you've got to do the right thing.

• 1:04:34Jocko Willink?

  And it's everyone's individual responsibility to take extreme ownership of everything that's happening and not just say, you know what, I'm gonna point my, point my finger up the chain of command, blame them when something goes wrong. I, I've talked about this before, you know how many times I blame my bosses for things that went wrong? Zero. Never blame my bosses. How could it ever be their fault? I was in charge.

• 1:04:57Jocko Willink?

  And if they told me to do something that was stupid, I would tell them, look, I'm not doing that. Here's why. Let's find a better way.

• 1:05:14Jocko Willink?

  The first qualification of a general in chief is to possess a cool head so that things may appear to him in their true proportions and as they really are.

• 1:05:30Jocko Willink?

  It's beautiful. It's a beautiful statement. Possess a cool head so that things may appear to him in their true proportions and as they really are. He should not suffer himself to be unduly affected by good or bad news.

• 1:05:49Jocko Willink?

  The impressions which are made upon his mind successively or simultaneously in the course of a day should be so classified in his memory that each shall occupy its proper place. For sound reasoning and judgment result from first examining each of these varied impressions by itself and then comparing them all with one another.

• 1:06:13Jocko Willink?

  So you're gonna hear all these things, all these different impressions you're gonna get, rumors, gossip.

• 1:06:22Jocko Willink?

  Reports, probably heard this, the first report in war is always wrong. Can hear all that stuff and you gotta, you gotta detach from it. You can't get emotional. You gotta categorize them and then, once you hear them all, you can look at them and assess them all in their own light.

• 1:06:39Jocko Willink?

  There are reason, there, there, there are some men who, from their physical and moral constitution, deck everything in the colors of imagination. With whatever knowledge, talents, courage, or other good qualities these may be endowed, nature has not fitted them for the command of armies and the direction of the great operations of war. So anybody that gets emotional, that colla, that, that hears something and lets it cloud their decisions, that gets too close to problems, they're not cut out to lead in war. And I 100% agree with that. And they're not cut out to lead in any situation.

• 1:07:27Jocko Willink?

  To be familiar with the geography and topography of the country, to be skillful in making reconnaissance, to be attentive to the dispatch of orders, to be capable of exhibiting with simplicity, the most complicated movements of an army.

• 1:07:46Jocko Willink?

  These are qualifications that should distinguish the officer called to the Station of Chief of Staff. And my favorite of those is to be capable of exhibiting with simplicity, the most complicated movements of the army. I talk about all this, this all the time. It's one of our laws of combat. It's a chapter in Extreme Ownership that we wrote about in simplicity. And a lot of times we talk about giving clear, concise orders, simple, clear and concise orders. So that's, that's another mark of someone that can lead well, is someone that can take complex ideas, simplify them and communicate them in a simple manner.

• 1:08:29Echo Charles?

  Is that like, you know how in jujitsu, you'll, you'll like people name moves?

• 1:08:33Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:08:33Echo Charles?

  They'll do like, they'll give moves name, but each move will have like, you know, four, five, six, 10 parts to that move, details that are important to, to make the move. You name it one move, you've learned that whole move. So it takes these complex.

• 1:08:50Echo Charles?

  Orders or moves and simplifies it.

• 1:08:52Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:08:52Echo Charles?

  Especially when you're communicating, you know, do this.

• 1:08:55Jocko Willink?

  Yes, and and there are, I mean, there definitely are coaches that can take complex moves and break them down very simply. And that is, that is what makes a good instructor, right? That is what makes a good instructor, is someone that can explain to you exactly what you do with your weight, exactly where you put your forearm, exactly. And then, and then explain to you that, you know what, this might be a little bit different from you, for you, because you're a different human. But here's exactly what I do, and here's the effect that I'm looking for when I do it.

• 1:09:28Jocko Willink?

  Very simple. That's what we're looking for. The first principle of a general in chief is to calculate what he must do to see if he has all the means to surmount the obstacles with which the enemy can oppose him. And when he has made his decision to do everything to overcome them. Again, that's to me is about commitment. Next. War is composed of nothing but accidents. And although holding to general principles, a general should never lose sight of everything to enable him to profit from these accidents. That is the mark of a genius. In war, there is but one favorable moment. The great art is to seize it.

• 1:10:15Jocko Willink?

  It's business. Obviously. Jiu Jitsu, obviously, fighting, obviously, these, that's just, there's, there's moments. There's opportunity. There's opportunity. And when you when you have that opportunity, the art is to seize it. Very simply. Defensive war does not exclude attacking, just as offensive war does not exclude defending.

• 1:10:45Jocko Willink?

  Although its aim may be to force the frontier and invade the enemy's country.

• 1:10:53Jocko Willink?

  I just think it's important to not only think about, hey, you should be attacking and defending at the same time, and defending and attacking at the same time, but also, we gotta remember the contradiction in the fact that he's a guy that talks about offense, offense, offense, but even he has to balance that with defense. Even Napoleon has to balance things. And we'll do the last one. A doubtful general who acts without principles and without plan, even though he lead, even

• 1:11:33Jocko Willink?

  though he lead an army numerically superior to that of the enemy, almost always finds himself inferior to the latter on the field of battle. Fumblings, the middle course, lose all in war. And I just like the fact that he's talking about principled leadership. And I would say that principled leadership, not just in a leadership position, but as a person. What are your principles as a person?

• 1:12:11Jocko Willink?

  And if you have principles as a human, and you stand by those principles, you're gonna be successful. You're gonna win. Whereas if you take the middle course and you waver, or you don't, just don't have principles on which to stand, then you fall apart. And I think that everybody should look to define what their principles are. Yeah. Actually define them. Mm-hmm. I can tell you that, I would love to tell you that when I was, you know, 19 years old, I sat down and wrote down Jocko's Principles of Life. I didn't do that. I wish I would've.

• 1:12:56Jocko Willink?

  And I, and I can tell you that as I grew up in the SEAL teams, there, I probably added principles. And I, and I added some bad ones, and I added some good ones. And I think that those, those principles though, when you get to a point where you know that your principles are solid, and honestly, to me... The best or the biggest thing I've done to define the principles that I live by is really the book that Leif and I wrote, Extreme Ownership. That's the, that was the culmination of 20 years in the SEAL Teams and putting together the principles that, that, that I live by

• 1:13:40Jocko Willink?

  and to survive by. So I think it's just very important to think about what your principles are as a person, what you're trying to achieve and have those principles like a guiding strategy underneath everything that you're doing. And that's one thing that's good about these podcasts is that, you know, I'm, I'm, I've been lucky enough to capture some of these, you know, like the, the letters that we read last time, these counseling letters. I'm talking about my personal principles in those. Those were my principles on how to lead.

• 1:14:13Jocko Willink?

  And so I think it's important to come up with those principles and define them and let those principles reflect, you know, who you are as a person and what you want to be. And I wish that I would have been told to do that when I was 13 years old. Because I think it is that important as a person.

• 1:14:38Echo Charles?

  Yeah, and it, it seems like anyway, that defining your principles, it, it seems like that's a, um, that's kind of an ongoing process.

• 1:14:49Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:14:49Echo Charles?

  Because it's one of those things where you think you have your principles, you know, but I don't know, for example, you, you could have just heard it on some speech that really resonated with you. So you, oh dang, you think you have these specific principles now, but you haven't really defined them. You just kind of liked how that sounded and you maybe thought of one, two, three situations where dang, that applies to me.

• 1:15:12Jocko Willink?

  And let me tell you what you're talking about right now. Your number one principle should be free your mind and, and, and have humility. To never say the principles that I'm standing upon are never going to change because I know everything right now. And we've talked about this before.

• 1:15:28Echo Charles?

  Yes.

• 1:15:28Jocko Willink?

  I know. I I would if I look at myself ten years ago, I know nothing compared to what I know now.

• 1:15:35Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:36Jocko Willink?

  If I looked at myself twenty years ago, I know even less. I'm just a lost animal out in the woods. So you have to, you know, build these principles and like you said. Uh, and I think there's a difference between being a flip flopper, like, you know, you hear politicians get. You know, oh, you're a flip flopper because you said you don't support gun control and now you. And now you you you do support it. Now you don't support it or whatever. You do support. Bringing in refugees or not. So and people get called a flip flopper and and I actually. I think there's some core principles that shouldn't change, even for a politician and even for a person. But there's a lot of peripheral.

• 1:16:17Jocko Willink?

  You know, I think there's peripheral principles that do evolve and do change and you do end up with different priorities in your life. And I think that's. Okay, you know, there was a a large portion of my life. What where the SEAL teams was absolutely the most important thing and nothing else was even. A close second, including things like my personal health, including things like my own family. Including things like my future, the everything was just completely. Unimportant compared to the SEAL teams. And while that makes for a fired up SEAL.

• 1:16:58Jocko Willink?

  And and I wouldn't trade that. I wouldn't even want to change that principle. I mean, tha- that's what I needed at the time to do a good job. But, you know, at some point I had to say, okay, I. I need to think about something else, you know, there I need to evolve as a human.

• 1:17:14Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:14Jocko Willink?

  And and, you know, little things like I need to take care of my family, you know, I need to actually pay attention to them. And not just pay attention to my SEAL platoon or my SEAL task unit or the guys I'm working with. So you. So I think it's okay to evolve your principles, but I think more important. Is that you need to define your principles and where you are. And that also is a way to. Check your growth and see what course you're on.

• 1:17:42Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:42Jocko Willink?

  You know, this is one thing that I talk about. Uh, when I was in the SEAL teams, I used to talk about this.

• 1:17:49Jocko Willink?

  The most important piece of information on the battlefield. What do you think the most important piece of information on the battlefield is, Echo?

• 1:17:59Jocko Willink?

  Echo has no idea.

• 1:18:01Echo Charles?

  I can come up with an idea, but it'll take a little bit.

• 1:18:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so I used to ask that question to everybody, to senior guys, junior guys. And they'd all kinds of, you know, where, you know, where the bad guys are, what, you know, where the target is. I mean, everyone would have different answers. And there's actually only one answer. The most important piece of information that you can have on the battlefield is where you are. Is to know where you are on the battlefield. Do you know where you're at? If you don't know where you're at, does it really matter if you know where the enemy is? No, because you don't even know where you are.

• 1:18:35Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:35Jocko Willink?

  If, if you don't know where you're at, can you even navigate correctly? No, because you don't even know where you are. If you don't know where you're at, can you get close air support? Can you call for aircraft to come in and drop bombs? No, you don't even know where you are. So that piece of datum, when you, when you apply that to life, how do you know where you are? If you're not tracking what your principles are?

• 1:19:01Echo Charles?

  Right.

• 1:19:01Jocko Willink?

  The answer is you're not. You're not going to, you're not going to know where you are and you're not going to see how you evolve. And when I work with businesses, I use the same principles. Businesses will go out and operate off of instinct. Now, you have to trust your instinct and you have to understand it, but you also have to track what the facts are. You know, I say like, where are your metrics? How do you know what you did last year this time? In profitability? How do you know what you did in sales? How do you know what you did in product development? If you're not tracking it, you don't know where you are on the battlefield. And if you don't know where you are on the battlefield, you're lost.

• 1:19:38Echo Charles?

  So that your principles kind of just continue to be more and more informed. You know how like you, you talk about when you're 13 or 16, however old, where you think you have these principles, because I don't know, you listen to Henry Rollins and they're there. But as you conduct yourself through life with an open mind and all these, you're offered all these different perspectives that start to solidify your principles. So. You talk about the difference between a flip flopper and then and someone who's

• 1:20:08Jocko Willink?

  Who evolves.

• 1:20:08Echo Charles?

  Simply open minded and evolves. Yeah, the difference is that Someone who continuously evolves will have an open mind at the same time have pretty concrete principles.

• 1:20:19Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:20:19Echo Charles?

  So when they're offered something significant that is simply a difference in perspective that is gonna that's gonna essentially on a in a fundamental way align with their principles. If their principles are fairness and you know, these these things that are inarguably good as far as being part of your principles. They're gonna evolve when these separate perspectives get presented to them. And thus solidifying their principles even more.

• 1:20:48Jocko Willink?

  Yes. And Echo just used the word thus, and I like that. I like that. No, it's true. And I think that's a I think this is good. Good thing to keep in mind as you know, people move forward is what are your principles? How are they evolving? How are they improving? Have they gotten better? Those are great questions for every individual to ask. Those are questions I'm asking myself right now on the Jocko podcast live. It's happening. So speaking of which, we got some questions.

• 1:21:24Echo Charles?

  Speaking of questions.

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of questions.

• 1:21:26Echo Charles?

  The first question, in episode five, you mentioned treating people with a blank slate. How do you deal with misjudging a person? In the event of you misjudging?

• 1:21:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so that was, you know, in reference to a person that that we went through a counseling sheet on and the fact was that I had heard some bad stuff about him, you know, bad he had a bad reputation, etc. And so I was saying that, hey, you know, I I treat everyone like a blank slate. And

• 1:22:04Jocko Willink?

  So first of all, I talked about this before is I set low expectations for people. I don't have a super high expectations of what they're gonna do and how well they're gonna deliver. And actually, somebody hit me on Twitter today and said something along the lines of, "I like the fact that everyone with you starts at zero."

• 1:22:23Echo Charles?

  Right.

• 1:22:24Jocko Willink?

  And he said, "I'm the same way." He was the same way. And I think that's a, it's a pretty good attitude to have, like everyone starts at zero, you know?

• 1:22:32Echo Charles?

  And that's a better way to put it, in my opinion, than low expectations.

• 1:22:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like, "Okay, you have a zero." And, and again, I don't mean to sound like a negative person, but I just don't set high expectations. I set them at zero.

• 1:22:43Echo Charles?

  Right.

• 1:22:43Jocko Willink?

  Like, "You show me who you are. I'm not gonna predict one way or the other." I understand that people do crazy things. And, and people are crazy in many ways. Their ego, their personality, their issues, I mean, people, their emotions. People do crazy things. So I don't, that's another thing that keeps me from giving people all kinds of credit out of the gate. And, and I do weigh what other people say. You know, I, I take it into account, but I definitely am careful to use my own judgment and not cloud my vision with what somebody else said about so and so.

• 1:23:25Jocko Willink?

  So, you know, how do I deal with misjudging a person? It's kinda what we were just talking about. I, I don't set permanent judgment on someone and say, "Echo's bad, and I don't like him, and I don't trust him." That's not a permanent thing, you know? I, I'm gonna build from zero. And I'm gonna say, "Oh, you know what? Actually, hey, he, he did a good job with that." Or, "Hey, he had my back on that." So I'm not stuck in my ways. And I don't, I don't hold grudges against people and say, "This person's never gonna change." That being said, man, it's hard to change the spots of the leopard, you know? People are who they are, and it's very difficult.

• 1:24:08Jocko Willink?

  Yes, sir, some people can grow and change and evolve, and that's great. But a lot of people, they are who they are, and so you have to take that into account as well.

• 1:24:17Echo Charles?

  Right. Yeah, when you say, like, trusting someone, let's say someone burns you in whatever way, and then, you know, a week later, whatever. They had your back in a way that was really unexpected compared to, you know, that action that they did. So basically what that does is help paint an overall picture of what kind of person this is to you. So where it's like, okay, maybe I can trust them in this type of situation, when these benefits and, and, and detriments are, are in play. And these other situations, I can't. So it's kind of this. And then as you have more and more experience with people, they paint more of a picture.

• 1:24:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:48Echo Charles?

  So trust, even saying trust, that's such a broad brush, you know, certain incentives are involved, involved. You can't trust a certain person to do or not do certain things, but offer up different incentives and, you know, you can trust them.

• 1:25:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And so I think the same thing that you're just saying is what I'm saying is, I don't, I'm not going to misjudge someone because my judgment is not a permanent, all, all powerful statement of one time.

• 1:25:13Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:13Jocko Willink?

  I'm constantly looking at people and like you said, learning impressions of their whole, their whole entity.

• 1:25:21Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:22Jocko Willink?

  What they're all about. Next.

• 1:25:26Echo Charles?

  So, starting out in jujitsu, how do you find a good gym in your area?

• 1:25:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So this is actually a question, you know, we plucked one out of many of people that have hit us up on, on Twitter about where to find a good Brazilian jujitsu gym. Because people, I think people have heard us talking about jujitsu and they heard me talking about it with Joe Rogan, you know, herbie talking about with Tim Ferriss. I mean, it's something that I talk about, something that is definitely a big part of my life. I know it's a big part of your life as well. And so people think, you know, I'd like to check that out. And I think that's awesome. And i- if you're out there and you're going to ask me if you should start jujitsu, and you're going to give me a whole bunch of quantifiers that you're old, or you work a lot, or you, you've been sick, or you've

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  been injured, or whatever you're going to tell me. And I, I can tell you 99.99, 99.9% of the time, my answer is going to be yes, you should start jujitsu.

• 1:26:25Echo Charles?

  Except if your sickness is contagious.

• 1:26:27Jocko Willink?

  Except if your sickness is contagious, or if you're a bully. Or you're a sadist.

• 1:26:33Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:33Jocko Willink?

  If you're an evil person that's hungry for power, I'm, I'm gonna tell you, don't.

• 1:26:37Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:37Jocko Willink?

  Um, start jujitsu because you're gonna use it for bad things.

• 1:26:43Echo Charles?

  Yeah, and even before that, I think you might get it turned on you. You know how like, cause it's really easy to, depends on the school, but for the most part, it's really easy to spot a bully when it comes into the gym. And it, and it doesn't fare well.

• 1:26:59Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't.

• 1:26:59Echo Charles?

  I mean, it'll maybe fare well for a day, or even maybe one five-minute match or something like that, but man, it doesn't.

• 1:27:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, jujitsu is a self-regulating scene.

• 1:27:10Echo Charles?

  For the most part, yes.

• 1:27:11Jocko Willink?

  A self-regulating scene, very few people can maintain, and, and most people with bully, bullying attitudes don't have the humility to continue in jujitsu for a long time anyways.

• 1:27:22Echo Charles?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:27:23Jocko Willink?

  So, it, it, that's another way that it self-polices. So, how do you find a good, uh, jujitsu gym? Obviously, you start with Google, you find out some locations. To me, proximity is very important, so you want a place that's, you know, on your way to work, on your way home from work, or close to your house, so it's somewhere that you're gonna get in there and train. Because you don't wanna sign up for a gym and never go because it's too far, too out of the way. So proximity is definitely a, a factor. Then you gotta ask yourself, what are you looking for? Because jujitsu gyms vary tremendously in how they're set up, how they're run, and all those things. I mean, there's really super traditional

• 1:28:03Jocko Willink?

  Brazilian jujitsu gyms where they, you, you bow before you get on the mat, you bow after you're, you bow to the instructor when you're gonna talk to him. You are very, they're very strict with uniforms, so you know, only a white uniform, you have to have this certain patch on your uniform to represent the school. That's, that's one type of, uh...

• 1:28:25Jocko Willink?

  Atmosphere that you could have, then you could have a very loose atmosphere where it's like, you know, you're gonna come in, you're gonna train. There's no bowing. There's, there's handshakes and there's respect, but it's not as overt and not as imposed as it would be in a more traditional Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school. So what are you looking for? You know, for me, I always, you know, and, and if you come to my gym, it's a very, it's a very relaxed atmosphere in terms of traditionally imposed discipline, but when you roll, there will be discipline imposed.

• 1:28:58Echo Charles?

  But it's pretty dynamic though. Like we have such a big group of people that to go in there and, and to get a non-competitive role is you can easily do that.

• 1:29:10Jocko Willink?

  Yep, that's true.

• 1:29:11Echo Charles?

  In fact, you, you, it's easy to choose. It's easy to be like, okay, I know this role with this group and it's gonna, it's gonna be.

• 1:29:18Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna go over here with this crew today and they're gonna bring it. Or you know what? I'm gonna chill with these guys over here and we're gonna work on some technique and maybe I can ask this guy about that. Yeah. So that's, that's good. That is good. Um, you, you know, there's also, hey, are you gonna go to a school that's very focused on sport Jiu-Jitsu?

• 1:29:34Echo Charles?

  Right.

• 1:29:34Jocko Willink?

  Which is, hey, we're gonna compete. We're gonna learn the techniques that are very applicable to, to competing in Jiu-Jitsu.

• 1:29:44Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:45Jocko Willink?

  Um, or am I gonna do something that's more towards self-defense or and/or MMA? And a classic example, I think of that is the, uh, is the 50-50 guard where, and it's a position in Jiu-Jitsu, if you don't know Jiu-Jitsu, where if you're in a no rules situation, you're very vulnerable to a devastating submission called a heel hook. And so it's, but there's, there's certain competition rules that don't allow for heel hooks in that position. So depending on what kind of school you're at, one of them, you're gonna get, you're gonna be in a, in a different situation in that, in that one position. And, and you know, actually at our school, we do, we do both. But do you wanna do MMA focused? Do you wanna

• 1:30:30Jocko Willink?

  do gi or no gi? And again, there's benefits to both those and they're both fun and I like training both. Um, so, so you gotta kind of think about what you're looking for.

• 1:30:41Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:41Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then bring that into the school and, and then go try some classes, you know? Take some classes at a school and see what they're like. What are the other students like? You know, what kind of atmosphere is it? Uh, do they have like the similar goals? If you want to compete, if that's your goal, then are the other people that you talk to? Are they like, yeah, I compete all the time? There's a tournament coming up? Or are they like, yeah, you know, we compete sometimes? Or actually, I don't care about competing. Cause there's plenty of people that train jiu-jitsu that they don't care about competing. Is there, you know, what's the attitude? What's, is there egos? Yeah, are, are people rolling with you trying to kill you? Which, which 99% of the time in a jiu-jitsu school is not gonna happen. But it can happen. It can happen. So what?

• 1:31:26Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then it's like, what was the instructor like? Is the instructor personal? Is it, is the instructor, you know, what we were talking about earlier? Is he clear? Is he concise? Does he understand? Can you understand him? Can you understand the way he's explaining moves? Now there's a, you've got to give a little leeway there. If you jump into a class, that's an advanced class, you're not gonna understand everything. You know? And people ask me on how to get started on jiu-jitsu? And I tell them, go immersion training. Just like a language. Just get in there and start training and you're gonna get destroyed at first. And then you're gonna slowly learn. And the next thing you know, that's the fastest way to learn a language is to get immersed in it and do the same thing with jiu-jitsu. Uh, is the instructor having fun? Is the guy having fun or the girl? Are they having fun teaching?

• 1:32:11Jocko Willink?

  Is it a fun thing? Because you want jiu-jitsu to be fun. And you want the instructor to be having fun. Cause if the instructor's not having fun, well then what? You know, what are they gonna be like in six months? If they're not having fun today? Then what are they gonna be like in six months? So that's, that's another important piece.

• 1:32:28Echo Charles?

  Yeah, the, when you talk about what, um, what you're looking for? You know, in, in jiu-jitsu?

• 1:32:36Echo Charles?

  And in my experience, there's so many elements of it to look for. Like if, you know, when you, if you say, okay, do I, do I want to learn MMA? Learning MMA or fighting is the sport of fighting compared to like, for example, the, the Gracie Academy Torrance. Their jujitsu self-defense in regards to fighting, getting into a fight or if someone attacks you in a fight, that's way different than training in MMA. Training in MMA is a sport of MMA, you're gonna learn a lot of moves that you're not, you're probably not gonna learn things that a quote-unquote "an attacker", I mean, you, you will, but it's not focused on that. You're not gonna learn stuff that an attacker is gonna do to you. So, even that differentiation is just the fighting part alone. That's not to mention the competition part.

• 1:33:21Echo Charles?

  The gi, the no-gi, the, you know, all these dynamic moves. Like, if you go 10th Planet, 10th Planet compared to, like, Gracie Academy Torrance, are almost like...

• 1:33:30Jocko Willink?

  Two different sports.

• 1:33:31Echo Charles?

  Almost, yeah.

• 1:33:32Jocko Willink?

  They are, but at the same time, you're gonna get, you're gonna get jujitsu.

• 1:33:37Echo Charles?

  That, that's it.

• 1:33:38Jocko Willink?

  And you're gonna get jujitsu. And, and that's the important thing, is to get jujitsu. And, just like we talked about the evolution of your principles, let your, you know, your game should evolve as well. And almost everybody that's never done jujitsu before, if you said, "Well, why do you wanna take jujitsu?", 90% of them are gonna say, "Oh, self-defense." Right? And, because, you know, people say, "I wanna learn to defend myself." There's not too many people that are gonna be saying, "You know what? I really have become interested in the cerebral aspect of jujitsu." Which, maybe some people that listen to us talk about it, or listen to Joe Rogan talk about it, you know, they'll say, "Oh, that guy's talking about this thing as if it's a very cerebral experience." So, maybe someone, but, but most people, "Yeah, I wanna learn how to defend myself, I wanna make sure..."

• 1:34:22Jocko Willink?

  So, but you're gonna evolve past that. Because after six months of training, you can handle yourself in the street, regardless if you went to 10th Planet or you went to the Gracie Academy, you're gonna be able to handle yourself in the street.

• 1:34:32Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:33Jocko Willink?

  And so then it becomes an obsession of, "How did that move happen?" And, so that's what you gotta, that's what you gotta be ready to evolve.

• 1:34:42Echo Charles?

  And when you're at that point, if you go to, you know, School A versus if you went to School B, your experience is gonna be a lot different. And it's gonna depend on what you were looking for in the beginning. But nonetheless, yeah, if, if it is, obviously, if it's a jujitsu school, yeah, that's, that, that part's not really gonna change.

• 1:35:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You're gonna learn jujitsu, which is a beautiful thing.

• 1:35:07Jocko Willink?

  Uh, the other thing that I gotta say is you gotta, jujitsu, as much as I love it, jujitsu is not a religion. And, you know, uh, the, the black belt instructor at the school does not have contact or direct communications with God, right? So, just, I, I think, keep that in mind. It's a person that is trained in a sport for longer than you, okay? So, just keep that in mind. It's not a cult. There, there should be an open atmosphere. In my opinion, you should be looking for a jujitsu school that has an open atmosphere, not a cult controlling atmosphere.

• 1:35:53Jocko Willink?

  You know, that being said, and, and I said this already, respect. Yes, absolutely. You should respect the people that are there and respect your training partners and respect your instructors, for sure, but you shouldn't be worshiping them and they shouldn't be expecting you to worship them. So, just be advised, because jujitsu, it should be fun, it should be friendly, it should be engaging, the atmosphere should be good, and it should be competitive without being cutthroat. You know, you, you should wanna go without fear of having a death match every single night, unless that's what you're looking for. And you just said that, Echo, I mean, like, I go in every night looking for a death match

• 1:36:35Jocko Willink?

  against Dean, against you, against Andy, you know, against who, Craig or Greg, I mean, our crew of murderers. I'm, I'm going in for a death match every night. And even when I don't want a death match, I give it to them, because, because that's how I'm getting better and that's part of my own personal will to say, you know what, regardless, I'm in there to put it on the line and, and throw it out there. And if they get the best of me, cool, so be it. I learned, I got better, and I, I definitely got better than I would if I was either A, sitting on the side of the mat, B, rolling with someone that's not as good, or C, staying at home.

• 1:37:14Echo Charles?

  Right.

• 1:37:15Jocko Willink?

  So...

• 1:37:16Echo Charles?

  Yeah, that's so interesting how, how it really does accommodate who you are. Like you, when you, when you go in looking for a, a death match every night. That totally makes sense because of who you are and who I understand you to be. But at the same time, in the same gym, on the same mat.

• 1:37:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:33Echo Charles?

  You can have.

• 1:37:34Jocko Willink?

  There's people chilling and rolling.

• 1:37:35Echo Charles?

  Ben, who's, you know, he's, you know, he's, you know, ends up getting his black belt, a bunch of knowledge, but he is not going for any death match.

• 1:37:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:42Echo Charles?

  He's, you know, older guy. Um, that's what's so, in my opinion, good about it.

• 1:37:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:48Echo Charles?

  So it accommodates who you are so much. Like me, I do both, like some days death match, sure, but most days.

• 1:37:53Jocko Willink?

  You do death match like once every?

• 1:37:55Echo Charles?

  Every two weeks.

• 1:37:56Jocko Willink?

  Once every two weeks, we get the death match from Echo. Uh, so yeah, go out there, enjoy jujitsu, um, but make sure you don't fall into a cult.

• 1:38:08Jocko Willink?

  Next.

• 1:38:10Echo Charles?

  Do you eat fruit? And if so, how often? And if not, why not?

• 1:38:19Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:38:22Jocko Willink?

  So, okay, do I eat fruit? Sometimes I eat fruit.

• 1:38:25Echo Charles?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:38:27Jocko Willink?

  Uh, but if you were to ask me if you should eat fruit, I would basically say no, I don't recommend it. And again, this is just, uh, if you talk to Dom D'Agostino, who's a doctor, or, or Mr. Paleo himself, Rob Wolf. If you, if you go and listen to his podcast, or Dr. Peter Attia, you know, who I've talked about before. These guys, they know what they're talking about and they will tell you what I'm telling you. And these guys will back it up with science upon science upon science. So. Fruit, carbohydrates, spike your insulin level, just not good for you. Um, again, am I an extremist?

• 1:39:09Jocko Willink?

  No, have some blueberries. Get your blueberries on. Get your blackberries on. That's awesome. But take a bunch of fruit and put it with some apple juice and mix it up in a blender. And eat, you know, 400 grams of carbohydrate in one shot? No, don't do that. It's not good for you.

• 1:39:30Echo Charles?

  Have you ever eaten, and I'm not saying when you're on the program, so to speak. Have you ever eaten the whole box of donuts?

• 1:39:37Jocko Willink?

  Negative.

• 1:39:39Echo Charles?

  Have you ever eaten?

• 1:39:40Jocko Willink?

  I ate a bag of Hershey's Kisses one time. And it did not make, did not work out good.

• 1:39:46Echo Charles?

  So when you say you don't eat fruit, that's more of like when you're on the program?

• 1:39:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you, you want to know when I'm on the program?

• 1:39:55Echo Charles?

  Yeah, bro, when, when you're on the.

• 1:39:57Jocko Willink?

  Now.

• 1:40:00Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, I, I, when, when you're, when you're trying to eat clean, which you should be trying to eat clean eighty percent of the time, as anyone will tell you. Um, you know, keep it clean and, and keep it to, you know, fat and, and protein. If you can, do it.

• 1:40:19Echo Charles?

  Little bit of a subject change. When?

• 1:40:24Echo Charles?

  If ever, is it a good time to blow up at someone to lose your temper? Well, blow up at someone and lose your temper, two different things, right?

• 1:40:33Jocko Willink?

  I think, I think, I think most people would think that they are the same thing. Losing your temper and blowing up at someone. And I can tell you that is almost never good to do that. And when I say almost never, I mean, never with the tiniest caveat of there is some possible scenarios where it might need to happen. So if you lose your temper, you blow up at somebody, what are you, what are you showing? You're showing that you can't control your temper. And if you can't control your temper, then what can you control? Right? That, and I'm not saying you should show no emotions. Because if you show no emotions, then you're a robot and robots can't lead people and people don't follow robots.

• 1:41:16Jocko Willink?

  So there's some, obviously some level of showing emotions is needed. But if you're losing your temper, you're not thinking clearly. And if you're not thinking clearly because you've lost your temper, you can't even read their reactions to what you're saying and you're, the fact that you're blowing up is, is clouding your own vision. The fact that you're losing your temper is.

• 1:41:42Jocko Willink?

  Clouding your own vision. And so you gotta detach in order to be observant, in order to watch what your actions are. So. If you do have to blow up. And when, okay, so when, when does this almost never happen? If you, if you were working for me. And you did something wrong. And I said, Echo. And it was grievous. It was like, pretty grievous. Like, it could have got someone hurt. And I said, Echo. Hey. Do you, this was bad. This is what happened. I, I don't know what I did wrong that thought that made you think that would be okay, but whatever I, image I gave you. That made you think this was okay, I, this is the worst mistake I've ever made. We can never let this happen again.

• 1:42:27Jocko Willink?

  Okay, and you're like, yeah, okay. And then. Four days later, you do it again. And I'd come at the same approach, maybe a little bit different, like, hey, Echo, I, I, I don't know if there's anything I could do to make this more clear than I did. What can I do to make you understand? So we might go three or four, five iterations, maybe one more iteration, I should say. Three iterations of you not, you failing to do what you're supposed to do and getting someone hurt or almost getting someone hurt. So now I go, okay. He hasn't listened to the indirect approach. He hasn't listened to the direct approach. He hasn't, I've taken ownership of it. He hasn't taken any yet. I need to come at him at a different angle. Okay, I need to lose my temper with him.

• 1:43:09Jocko Willink?

  And it's gonna be a calculation, and I won't actually lose my temper with him. But I will. Raise my voice. I will get loud. I will point. And I will make damn sure. That you understand that this infraction that you have committed is severe and grievous and can never happen again. And that's the situation where I would quote unquote, blow up at somebody. It is so rare. That.

• 1:43:39Jocko Willink?

  It's so rare that in my military career, off the top of my head, I can remember one and only one incident of this. Where I actually said, you know what? This was, this was a bad mistake. I could see where these guys think they might be able to get away with this again in the future. And I'm going to make sure that they realize that.

• 1:43:59Echo Charles?

  Was it the kind where they, it's not like they made the same mistake? It was more like they chose to do something.

• 1:44:06Jocko Willink?

  They chose to do something a certain way. And in my, my assessment of it was that they would do it again. If I didn't make it perfectly clear that this could never happen again. And so I raised my voice, I pointed in the face and you know, gave them 20 seconds of, of intensity. And the situation never happened again. And they apologized.

• 1:44:39Echo Charles?

  But overall.

• 1:44:41Jocko Willink?

  Not a good thing. Don't lose your temper, people. Don't do it.

• 1:44:46Echo Charles?

  Yeah, I would say losing your temper. Not blowing up at someone, losing your temper, like for real, losing it. Uh, uh, it's, you're gonna be hard, it's gonna be hard to think of a situation where that's cool.

• 1:44:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay, and I'll tell you, you want to know when I lose my temper? Or, because I'll tell you, I do lose my temper. It happens once every six months and it is almost always with inanimate objects. Namely, objects that print or copy.

• 1:45:14Jocko Willink?

  Or compute in some way. You know, electronics. Sometimes I, I get, I get angry.

• 1:45:21Echo Charles?

  Yeah. You probably want to keep that in, in private areas, right? You don't want people to see that.

• 1:45:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like my wife will hear me once every six months, you know? And she'll come in and she'll be like, printer? And I'll, yeah. She says, you're stupid. I go, I know. She goes, it doesn't care if you yell at it. You know, I say, yeah, I know.

• 1:45:44Echo Charles?

  No, in my experience, I found the same thing. Looking, we're looking, okay, here's the next question. Your specific lifting workout, your weekly training schedule, including jujitsu.

• 1:45:58Jocko Willink?

  This is a big question. And this, for those of you that do jujitsu out there in the world, this is like when someone says, hey, hey Jocko, how do I pass your guard? Cause I have a good guard. And so, you know, someone that is a, a blue belch will say, you know, hey, hey, how do I pass your guard? You know, and they, and, and literally, I have guys at the gym that are brown belts and black belts that pass my guard once every six months, you know? So my guard is good. And, you know, here's a blue belt like, hey, how do I pass your guard? So this, this question kinda reminds me of that a little bit. Specific lifting workout and weekly training schedule on jujitsu. So this is, this is a big ask.

• 1:46:44Jocko Willink?

  And here's the problem that I have with this. I'm an individual. And I have strengths and weaknesses. I have whatever little injury thing that I'm working through at a particular time. I have things that I like to do and I have things that I don't like to do. I have, I'm, I'm an individual. And my workout is for me. And, and I've taken, and I've, you know, sometimes people, I'll go on a trip and there'll be a guy that's an athlete and he'll say, oh dude, you know, I wanna, I wanna go through one of your workouts with you. And I say, okay. And I've done that and, and I've had guys,

• 1:47:27Jocko Willink?

  like almost hospitalized from going through one of my workouts. And

• 1:47:35Jocko Willink?

  that's not good. And then I've had other guys, like there's guys out there that will just crush me in a workout, you know? And especially, you know, there's workouts that I have that I could beat most of the world in, you know? There's workouts that I have that I could crush anybody in. And then there's workouts that some, you know, Yoga instructor could put me through that would crush me, right? So my point is that you get some people that would die doing one of my workouts. And you get some people that would, it'd be my, one of my workouts is no impact because they're an incredible athlete. And so why would either one of them want to do my workout? It doesn't make any sense that they would want to do that.

• 1:48:18Jocko Willink?

  So what I've been trying to think, because I get asked all the time. What's your workout? What's your workout? What's your workout? And so what I've been trying to figure out is how to do this. How do I?

• 1:48:30Jocko Willink?

  How do I communicate what I'm doing? And what I've, what I've been kind of

• 1:48:38Jocko Willink?

  going through the idea in my head is putting together a, like an ebook. And I actually put this out on Twitter. I was like, oh yeah, I'll do an ebook. And people like ebook, ebook, yeah, do it, do it. So it's an idea that's already been floated out there. Unfortunately, there's not been a lot of time to be writing ebooks. But what the focus would be, would be, yeah, like the types of exercise that I do, yes. But, and, and you know, kind of the numbers of that I do of them. But more importantly, going to, from a leadership perspective is, what is the intent? What is the commander's intent of my workout? What am I trying to accomplish? Because for you and me to accomplish the same thing is going to be a very different workout, right?

• 1:49:22Jocko Willink?

  If, if I want to, if I want to take myself to a, to, to an anaerobic threshold for a total of 15 minutes. What I would do to get there is very different from what you would do to get there. It just, it just is. If I wanted to destroy my legs with heavy squats, it would be very different between what you would do and what I would do. So what's important is, is not the actual exercises that I'm doing. It's the intent and am I achieving that intent? Am I achieving that intent? Like, I can do a decent amount of pull-ups, right?

• 1:50:03Jocko Willink?

  And, and in one of my pull-up workouts, I might do 500 pull-ups or 300 pull-ups.

• 1:50:11Jocko Willink?

  There's a lot of people that can't do 100 pull-ups. So.

• 1:50:14Echo Charles?

  Oh, just in the workout. Right, not 300 pull-ups.

• 1:50:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, I can't do 300 pull-ups in a row, no. I wish I could. But, but my intent is to, you know, max, do, do a number of maximum sets of pull-ups. And then do a number of slow, you know, very good form, maximum sets. And, and the intent is to get stronger at pull-ups by doing, you know, a high number of maximum sets. And I think that intent to give to people would say, okay, so that way if Echo's not good at pull-ups, and you go, okay, well, I'm gonna go in and I know what the intent is. I'm trying to get to a point of failure even on one single pull-up. And it might take you only 15 minutes to do that and 30 pull-ups, you know, or whatever the case may be.

• 1:51:01Jocko Willink?

  And for someone that's really good, a rock climber, it might take them, you know, 45 minutes and they might be 600 pull-ups deep before they get there. And so that's kind of the idea I'm batting around. I don't know if people are that really interested in that. I think a lot of times people want a formula. And I, I don't think I'm gonna give out a formula because the formula's gonna be different for different people at different times in their lives and ages and body weights and, you know, male or female, there's just all so many variables.

• 1:51:36Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:36Jocko Willink?

  But I think if I can give out what the intent of my workouts are, then we're in the right place.

• 1:51:43Echo Charles?

  Yeah, it, but those, those different variables and stuff, that, that could very well be the reason that people want your workout. Cause there's, there's two things, there's probably more than two, but two big things that kind of come along with wanting your specific workout. And one would be just to kind of immerse myself into what you go through in a workout. And how does that feel and how do I kind of measure up? You know? Um, and then, so those two things, like, what does it feel like to do a Jocko workout?

• 1:52:13Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 1:52:13Echo Charles?

  Like, how, how hard is it? You know, he's gonna do, you know, 600 pull-ups in a workout limit, you know, like, how does that feel? You know, is that the hardest thing I've ever done? Or, you know, is that just, oh, this, you know, these workouts aren't that hard?

• 1:52:26Jocko Willink?

  Jocko's a punk.

• 1:52:28Echo Charles?

  Right, well, no, no, that's the second part. Does it, you know?

• 1:52:32Echo Charles?

  How do I measure up? If he does, you know, twenty sets of squats with whatever weight? How do I measure up? Can I get all those twenty sets? Or can I get that weight for twenty sets? You know, so those two things. One, they just want to immerse themselves in your world, in your world as far as workouts go.

• 1:52:48Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:52:49Echo Charles?

  And the second one is, is how do I measure up? I know that's kind of what I think when, when someone's like, oh, here's, here's our workout. Like those CrossFit workouts, like some of those, just mentally, I, I do that. Like, okay, this guy's doing twenty pull-ups in a row.

• 1:53:04Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:04Echo Charles?

  Like, how many can I do? You know, I measure it. And then, at the same time, it's like, this is, you get to understand what these CrossFitters do.

• 1:53:14Echo Charles?

  You know, and then, like I said, they go back and forth of those two things. And I think that, that, that is interesting. Like, if you were to tell me what you did this morning for a workout?

• 1:53:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:23Echo Charles?

  Like, I'd be interested, on top of the fact that, oh, maybe I want to do that workout for me, for results, for myself.

• 1:53:31Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:53:31Echo Charles?

  And, yeah, you're right. It may or may, I'll probably have different results. Even if I do that, the same workout as you for, you know, six months, I might have different results. But that part about measuring up and just knowing who you are and kind of what you stand for, and this is the workout that you do, just understanding that, I think that's significant, too.

• 1:53:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I would love to tell you that I'm some, you know, physical specimen, but I'm not. I'm actually not the strongest guy. I'm not the fastest guy. I'm not the most flexible guy. Um, I try hard. And I also am a result of, my, my physical aptitude is like a, is like a, is like a, a brownish-gray, um, paint. Because I, I mix up so much stuff in there that I'm the result of...

• 1:54:25Jocko Willink?

  You know, I'm not bright red.

• 1:54:28Echo Charles?

  Right, right.

• 1:54:28Jocko Willink?

  I'm not bright blue. Because those two things, you know, the, the strength has been mixed with endurance, has been mixed with flexibility, has been mixed with, all these things have been mixed together, and I don't wanna get too much of any of them.

• 1:54:43Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:43Jocko Willink?

  Because then I'm losing something else. And so, so I'm kind of this, this, this kind of average in many categories. And, and my numbers in very few of them would impress anybody.

• 1:54:57Echo Charles?

  You're pretty strong.

• 1:54:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and, and, and, and you know, like, but I'm not one of those people that's on the mat that you go, man, that guy is just freaking strong, you know, well, at least I, I, it's hard for me to judge, but I know that, uh, I guess people say, oh, you're strong.

• 1:55:13Echo Charles?

  Yeah, sometimes, I think that.

• 1:55:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:55:16Echo Charles?

  You're like that guy on the, you know, you ever play video games?

• 1:55:19Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:55:20Echo Charles?

  Okay, so, let's say you play, uh, I don't know, football, video game, you play football, so when you analyze your players, it'll have all these attributes, speed, hands, acceleration, right? And it's like, I don't know, zero to 10. So you're the guy who has all like eights.

• 1:55:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:37Echo Charles?

  Instead of the guy with two tens and then a three, you know?

• 1:55:40Jocko Willink?

  But like, anybody that's listening to this podcast can beat me in a bunch of categories.

• 1:55:45Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:45Jocko Willink?

  You know, they got tens and some stuff.

• 1:55:47Echo Charles?

  Right, right, yeah.

• 1:55:48Jocko Willink?

  And, and I don't, I don't have any tens in anything.

• 1:55:51Echo Charles?

  That's okay, not everyone can have tens.

• 1:55:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:57Echo Charles?

  Um.

• 1:55:58Jocko Willink?

  Next question.

• 1:55:58Echo Charles?

  Next question, yeah.

• 1:56:01Echo Charles?

  Um, would you talk more about how you view aggression, positives and negatives?

• 1:56:10Jocko Willink?

  Well, like everything.

• 1:56:16Jocko Willink?

  In life and in leadership and in your personality, it has to be balanced. Aggression has to be balanced. And you know, one of the, one of the things from, from the book is, you know, you gotta be aggressive but not overbearing. So yeah, you gotta be aggressive to be a leader. You've gotta be, because if you're gonna make things happen, you've gotta be aggressive to make things happen. You, you have to make things happen. You know, I always say to people like, oh, they wanna make money. I'm like, oh, you, you just make money. You have to take, you have to take that money. It doesn't, it's not gonna fall into your house, into your lap. It's not gonna make itself. You have to take it if that's what your goal is. In jujitsu, you're, you're not gonna get better just by being.

• 1:56:58Jocko Willink?

  You have to take the, the progression. You have to take it and make it happen. And, and that's the same thing with anything in life. So, so aggression definitely comes into play. But for instance, in a leadership position, if you're completely aggressive all the time, your subordinates will not want to communicate with you. They won't wanna debate with you. They won't wanna say, hey, boss, I don't agree with what you're saying here. Cause they're afraid you're gonna go, hey, you don't know what you're talking about. We're gonna go my way or the highway. That's what they're gonna expect. So you can't be overbearing. You know, on the mat, you can't exhaust yourself with aggression. And that's one of the things, you know, that I think from hmm, purple to brown belt,

• 1:57:41Jocko Willink?

  which is, you know, your, your six to eight years in the game is where people start to calm down and realize that that aggression needs to be tampered and controlled. And people have to relax. Um, and in combat, obviously being aggressive and being aggressively decisive is important. But if you go too far with that, you're running to your death. So you have to modulate your aggression. Uh, you have to modulate your aggression. You can't abuse it. You gotta use it, but you can't abuse it.

• 1:58:16Jocko Willink?

  And I don't wanna discount aggression in any way. Because, you know, I always say that your default mode should be aggression. Like, when you, when you hit the reset button on your brain, you, you should come out of that reset being aggressive. Because that, that, be, be aggressive, be proactive, make things happen.

• 1:58:40Jocko Willink?

  Be on offense, you know, not sitting back and waiting to be attacked or waiting for a situation to occur. No, make that situation occur. Go. So, that's my view of aggression, and

• 1:58:58Jocko Willink?

  and it just has to be balanced. And there's, there are still times where, you know, if you meet aggression with aggression, it's actually not good. You know, you, you see this in jiu-jitsu, you see this in escalating, you know, when you're either in a confrontation of some kind to somebody. Aggressively escalating something might be a good choice and might be a bad choice. You know, there's always the bully that as soon as you, you say, "Hey, you know what? I'd love to fight. In fact, fighting is my favorite thing to do. Let's go." A guy that's like, "No, man, I was, I was just kidding." So aggression will win there. Um, or, you know, if someone's really being aggressive and you just knock them out, well, then that's, that's a better handling of the situation.

• 1:59:39Jocko Willink?

  But there's also times where there's, you know, maybe there's multiple attackers or there's someone that's, you know, you're in the street. Not, it's, it's always better in the street to avoid the confrontation, you know? Does that person have a knife? Does that person have a ga- gun? Is, does that person have a communicable disease? Does that person have friends around the corner? Is that person a lawyer who's gonna sue you? I mean, there's all these reasons to get into, to, to not get into a fight in the street. So, so aggressively meeting aggression with aggression is probably not that smart. It's probably better to avoid this scenario. And, and the more time you spend in, you know, in combat sports, boxing and doing jiu-jitsu, the, the more likely you are to be able to be like, you know what?

• 2:00:23Jocko Willink?

  I don't need to prove anything to this guy. I'm, it's, it means nothing to me. I prove myself on the mat every single day. I got nothing to prove to, to Joe drunk idiot over here. So, I think that again, I think your default mode should be aggressive, but make sure that you maintain enough detachment of the situation that you can see if you're being overly aggressive and it's leading you to a bad scenario.

• 2:00:50Echo Charles?

  Okay, last question. You talk about mind control. Can you expand your thoughts on that subject?

• 2:01:01Jocko Willink?

  Mind control.

• 2:01:06Jocko Willink?

  You know, when people think of the word mind control, they think of controlling other people's minds. And when I think about mind control, I think about controlling your own mind. Because, you know, while I am obviously a physical person and we spend a lot of this podcast tonight talking about physical culture and I embrace physicality, but we are our minds. And I'm not gonna be, you know, going into a Sam Harris philosophical rant on what it means and where the you actually is

• 2:01:50Jocko Willink?

  and whether there's a soul or a brain or whatever, your heart or some other conjured up place. This is what I know, is that you,

• 2:02:01Jocko Willink?

  your mind, the thing that is listening and comprehending these words right now, that is you. And that thing, that mind, you can control. You, you are the machine and you can control the machine. And people ask me, "How do I get tougher?"

• 2:02:27Jocko Willink?

  Be tougher. They, they ask me, "How can I wake up earlier in the morning?" The answer is, wake up earlier in the morning. "How can I work out consistently every single day?" Work out consistently every single day. "How can I stop from eating sugar?"

• 2:02:49Jocko Willink?

  Stop eating sugar.

• 2:02:55Jocko Willink?

  What about the emotions?

• 2:02:58Jocko Willink?

  How can I stop missing that girl, or that guy, whoever, whoever broke up with me? How can I stop missing them?

• 2:03:08Jocko Willink?

  Stop missing them.

• 2:03:13Jocko Willink?

  That is mind control. You have that ability. You just have to assert it. You have to decide that you're gonna be in control, and that you are going to do what you want to do.

• 2:03:29Jocko Willink?

  Weakness doesn't get a vote. Laziness, they don't get a vote. Sadness, no, no vote. Frustration, no vote. Negativity, you don't get a vote.

• 2:03:48Jocko Willink?

  I don't even give my temper a vote.

• 2:03:52Jocko Willink?

  So, the next time that you're feeling weak, or you're feeling lazy, or you're feeling soft, or you're feeling emotional, tell them that they don't get a vote. Tell them you are declaring martial law on your mind. You're declaring mind control.

• 2:04:15Jocko Willink?

  And impose what you want on your brain. Impose the discipline, and the power, and the positivity, and the will.

• 2:04:28Jocko Willink?

  And use that mind control to move your life where you want it to be. It's the things I always say, get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

• 2:04:46Jocko Willink?

  Don't let your mind control you.

• 2:04:51Jocko Willink?

  Control your mind.

• 2:04:54Jocko Willink?

  And once you control your mind,

• 2:04:59Jocko Willink?

  then

• 2:05:01Jocko Willink?

  you can set it free.

• 2:05:06Jocko Willink?

  And I think we'll close with that for today.

• 2:05:09Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:09Jocko Willink?

  That's about all of God.

• 2:05:11Echo Charles?

  Good advice right there.

• 2:05:13Jocko Willink?

  And you know, if you're out there and you want to communicate with us, you want to carry on this conversation, you want to continue down this path,

• 2:05:25Jocko Willink?

  you can do so on Twitter.

• 2:05:29Jocko Willink?

  I'm @JacoWillink and Echo is @EchoCharles.

• 2:05:36Jocko Willink?

  I want to thank everyone for listening. I want to thank you for subscribing to this podcast, for placing reviews on this podcast, for spreading the word about this podcast.

• 2:05:53Jocko Willink?

  And most of all, I want to thank you for getting after it. This is Jocko and Echo, and until next time, out.