Jocko Podcast 7: Where Does Discipline Come From? Project Jaffna, Gains, & BJJ

Project Jaffna (Book). Internet questions: Gains While Getting Older, BJJ Partners, Where Does Discipline Come From? 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 7 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  Ambush of Dominating Patrol at Nidunkini.

• 0:17Jocko Willink?

  Nidunkini is a small village in the midst of the jungles and its extensive cleared patches were developing as farms. The village had a couple of rice mills closed for a long time, a school, a dispensary, and a small market next to the school. The market was itself a road junction with houses and huts around. Northeast of the market, a couple kilometers away, was the post of the IPKF held in strength. North of the market was a pond, its rising embankment facing the post. It had become necessary to dominate

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  Nidunkini by day as well as night at the height of operations in 88 and early 89. Thereafter, dominating the market became a routine and a gospel for the next battalion, since the relieved battalion in its handing over notes had mentioned the same. So the new battalion got into the rut and carried on without once asking why this action was necessary. So much so that the new units dominating patrols even occupied the same trenches in the same fashion for the same period and checked the population in the same manner. One change

• 1:41Jocko Willink?

  it made was to stop occupying the double, the only double-story building in the bazaar and instead occupy only the ground-level trenches in the midst of the market. The second change was to stop searching the nearby school and other buildings where trenches and bunkers were made thoroughly before occupying them. The third change over, over a period was to stop being inquisitive about the increase or decrease of public attendance in the market, school, and other buildings.

• 2:21Jocko Willink?

  The battalion for months had not been involved in any kind of encounter, not even caught or seen a mouse.

• 2:33Jocko Willink?

  So this is setting the stage, and I'm reading from a book called Assignment Jaffna, which is about

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  the war, the long civil war in a small country called Sri Lanka. And it's written by a lieutenant general,

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  Sardish Pandey, who was a commander there on the ground. And what's interesting about this book, it is a very rare book. In fact, I, after I picked it up and started reading through it, and I figured other people might want to get it. I looked on Amazon, and it's a rare book that you have to buy from individual buyers. And the reason that I have it is because I bought it on the ground in Sri Lanka in the 90s, when I was attached to a SEAL unit that went to Sri Lanka to help train the Sri Lankan soldiers to fight against the Tamil Tigers,

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  which was an insurgent terrorist group called the LTT, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam. It is an ethnic group that lived in Sri Lanka and had been mistreated and had now wanted their own state. So this opening of this book, or the opening of the chapter that I just read about this ambush is, catches a couple of things that I think are very important. Number one, you heard me say that the new battalion got into this rut and carried on with this mission without once asking why it was necessary.

• 4:18Jocko Willink?

  And I think this is very important for everybody to remember that when you get tasked with something, you need to ask why you're doing it. You need to understand why you're doing something. Don't just carry on because it's the way it's always been done. Ask that question, why? And one of the things that I learned a very hard lesson on, on my first deployment to Iraq, we would get, you know, we'd get a target that would come down the chain and, and they'd tell us, hey, there's a, a bad guy in this building. And we would literally get a map of some area of Iraq or Baghdad or some city in Iraq like Baghdad. And on the map, there would literally like a, like a,

• 5:01Jocko Willink?

  like a cheesy movie, there would be a red X on the target building. And that would be the building and we'd go out and hit it. And I remember one time we did an operation and we went and took down this target, the building that had the big red X on it and got the guy that we thought was a bad guy. And anyways, to make a long story sure, short, when we got the person back

• 5:28Jocko Willink?

  and we interrogated him and went through the intelligence that we had taken from the house, it turned out the guy was not a bad guy. He was just a guy that had been, you know, somehow mixed up with a, with, with something that ended up giving us this quote unquote intelligence. And so from then on, and, and as I dug, as I pulled the thread on the red X, I figured out that, you know, just someone had, had three houses to choose from and for whatever reason, put the X on that house. They had no real intelligence behind it. And so I always would tell the story to the young SEALs and say, you know, find out who put the X on the target building and make sure that there's a damn good reason why they put that red X there.

• 6:11Jocko Willink?

  So it's also going back to the, to the paragraph that I started with, is you could see that these guys were occupying the same trenches, the same fashion, the same period and the same manner. So they are definitely locked into a pattern that is going to cost them dearly. And it goes on to talk about the only changes, they did make some changes, but all the changes were negative. All the changes were wrong. For instance, They didn't occupy the one double story building. Now, anyone that knows anything about tactics, knows that you want to take the high ground. You always want to have the high ground. And here they were in this bazaar and they didn't take the one double story building. So,

• 6:54Jocko Willink?

  when you're in a two story building and everything else is a one story building, it gives you, you can see much further. It's a dominating position. You can shoot up, shoot people much easier. And so you, you have to take the high ground and, and there's a seal that, I know that kind of took that thought. And he had a great quote, which was, "Take the high ground or the high ground will take you." And you know, when I talk to people about moral or ethical issues, I use that very quote. "Take the high ground or the high ground will take you." So, you know, stay on the straight and narrow path. So going back to this.

• 7:39Jocko Willink?

  On a routine round of the day's morning activity, a patrol of about 20, got out of the post at daybreak, ambled along the road to the rice mill, entered the market, dispersed into the different trenches and bunkers, got into them and started the day's dominating work. And this term dominating basically means, they're going to go out and, and control the area. That's what, that's what this term is, is referring to when they use this term dominating. Majority of the trenches were in the, were adjoining the school premises. The schools closed as it was a holiday. Doors and windows were locked from the outside. Attendance in the market was thin. Some shops had not opened.

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  Normally, they should have. So if you remember earlier, it says the third change over a period was to stop being inquisitive about the increase or decrease of public attendance in the market. So it's like the Scooby Doo, old Scooby Doo cartoon, where you know, they say, oh, it's quiet, a little too quiet. And that's exactly what this is. And this is something that we would see in Ramadi. You'd see the streets clear out because the, the local populace would know somehow that there was an attack that was imminent.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:02Jocko Willink?

  Around breakfast, all hell broke loose. The doors and windows of the school suddenly opened fire and started

• 9:13Jocko Willink?

  and started incoming into the trenches and bunkers in front, almost at point-blank range. Thereafter grenades were thrown into the trenches. As those few outside the school tried to react, the militants occupying the double-story building brought murderous fire on them below. Every movement was picked up. The two-inch mortar detachment which had stayed off and was still behind across the school was only, was the only element not hit or engaged. It quickly got behind some cover and fired a few bombs. Then they too were picked up. Barely a few managed to get behind some building on the other side and kept a desultory volley of shots. It was all over in the market. But not on its outskirts.

• 9:57Jocko Willink?

  So now, you have these guys that had been in these positions and clearly the insurgents had set up on them completely. And just unleashed and in moments had them gunned down. The post, so the post is where these guys had patrolled to this market from. The post reacted quickly and sent a relief patrol directly to the school through open paddy fields.

• 10:24Jocko Willink?

  The militants had correctly anticipated it. As you can imagine, the militants knew exactly where the post was. They knew when they hit these guys that the, they would send reinforcements. Here come the reinforcements, they're ready. They gave a searing welcome to the relief party and pinned it to the ground. The post mortars had been deployed and fired on the bund of the kalam, which dominating heights of the militants had immobilized the relief column. The militants seemed to be enjoying it as they pumped automatic fire into the post itself from the nearby jungle edge. Although this fire was more in the nature of gesture of defiance. So, they not only were hitting the market, but they had coordinated so that when the market, when they started to attack the, the...

• 11:10Jocko Willink?

  The Sri Lanka, or sorry, the Indian soldiers in the market, as soon as they started that, then when that reaction force came from the post, they hit the post as well. As quickly as they had, half an hour later, the militants stopped firing as quickly as they had started it, and melted away with the booty of weapons from more than a dozen killed and wounded soldiers of the dominating patrol.

• 11:36Jocko Willink?

  So obviously, a horrific situation. And this is where the general asks some questions, some poignant questions. What kind of training had this battalion done?

• 11:51Jocko Willink?

  What manner of mental, attitudinal, professional preparation had it achieved before being inducted into the battlefield in Sri Lanka? What attention did its previous brigade and divisional commanders give to training and attuning it before dispatching it to Sri Lanka?

• 12:09Jocko Willink?

  Surely, it was forced to keep doing its stationed duties, providing working parties for golf courses, clubs, sports events, and other peacetime activities senseless.

• 12:23Jocko Willink?

  So, what he's saying there is that while this

• 12:29Jocko Willink?

  force was back in India, instead of training, what they were doing was, you know, helping with golf events and taking care of the local sporting events that they were doing, helping with the clubs, cleaning up, they weren't training for war, which is what they should have been doing.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  And that's the domination squad?

• 12:47Jocko Willink?

  That's the domination squad. Yeah, this is the guys. They were not ready.

• 12:56Jocko Willink?

  Where the CO stood up, resisted peace, peacetime demands made by selfish, peace-oriented, peace-oriented brigade and divisional commanders, and trained their men, they and their units did well. They saved, they saved on casualties and sought the enemy. So he's saying that the commanding officers back in India that stood up and said, "Look, we're not gonna, we're not gonna manage the golf game, we're not gonna go clean up the, the, the club over there, we're gonna train for war." Those guys did well. Where newly inducted units failed and senselessly suffered, the blame must squarely and entirely fall on the unprofessional, indifferent brigade and divisional commanders

• 13:40Jocko Willink?

  from whose formations such units came as reliefs in Sri Lanka. It was a breach of faith all along, so very painfully callous and unprofessional, even as late as the beginning of 1989. So you had this, the IPKF, which is the Indian Peacekeeping Force, who has really fought in all kinds of different wars all over the world. But they had been sent into Sri Lanka to try and quell the violence between the Sri Lankan government and the LTT. And they, first of all, they thought they were going to be getting, they thought they were going to be on a peacekeeping mission. And they ended up not being, I mean, they ended up being on a peacekeeping mission,

• 14:22Jocko Willink?

  but they ended up in serious combat with the Tamil Tigers. So it's these questions that he asks, you know, what kind of training did they have? What attention was paid? These are things that if you're in a leadership position, you should be asking yourself, what position are you putting your people into? And how well have you trained them for it? And if you have not trained them for it, then you need to train them for it. And also assessing where you are going to end up. And this is something that when I was running training in the SEAL teams, I was always training guys for the worst case scenario.

• 15:05Jocko Willink?

  In fact, we would do, we would set up operations where we'd tell them, okay, you're just going to go and meet with the local tribal leader. And we'd, you know, we'd have actors that were going to play the local tribal leader. And we just want you to go in there and, you know, drink tea with them and try and gather some information from them. And so they'd go, okay. And if they didn't prepare properly, they would get destroyed because of course we'd lure them in and say, oh yes, the tribal leader is ready to meet with you. Oh, great. Lure him into the room. And then all of a sudden you take that guy hostage, you kill him. And then you start, so we'd cause total mayhem. But the point was you always had to prepare for the worst case scenario. And that's obviously not something that happened here. I'm going into another ambush.

• 15:52Jocko Willink?

  It was a good unit, had trained and prepared well before coming into Sri Lanka in late 1988. It had well taped up drills, the unit and subunit commanders planned their operations as innovatively as circumstances permitted and took pains to avoid routine. So these guys were a little bit sharper. One of the biggest things you need to watch out for in a combat situation is routine and doing the same thing over and over again and giving a pattern, a pattern of life that people can recognize and take advantage of. So these guys were trying to avoid that. Their one slip up was that they did not take enough pains to detect the setting in of routine and inclination

• 16:35Jocko Willink?

  to find comfort in slackness.

• 16:40Jocko Willink?

  So that means they did a good job when they were fresh, but once they started feeling tired, they would slip into routine and they'd slip into slackness.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Like complacency?

• 16:53Jocko Willink?

  Complacency.

• 16:56Jocko Willink?

  As a newly inducted unit, the men were alert, up and about and keen. And for a long time, nothing happened. And this is something that people try to express about combat, but combat is often a lot of waiting. And sometimes they picture this, sometimes they portray this well in the, in the better, in the better movies about combat, they show, you know, these long periods of waiting and that can be what combat is. And, and what's happening here is this unit is there and for a long time, nothing's happening. So when nothing happens, you start to get more and more complacent.

• 17:40Jocko Willink?

  In mid-May 1989, on a day when the road to Elephant Pass had to be opened by the unit, one of the posts and route detailed its platoon to ensure security of a stretch of road for a distance of about two kilometers.

• 18:00Jocko Willink?

  The platoon split into four parties of six to seven men each, and set out to search the road physically and secure an area astride to it, a distance of three hundred to five hundred meters, within its given beat.

• 18:17Jocko Willink?

  Having cleared the roads, these parties established squads three hundred to four hundred meters away from the road, from where they could observe the road stretch and the area astride it. At varying intervals, one squad was to move out and relieve the next one and so forth. The chain of relief would go, sometimes clockwise, sometimes anti-clockwise. This was to overcome boredom, avoid routine, and keep mobile at odd times, and thus dominate the stretch. So what they're doing is they've got their little squad set up, and then occasionally, one squad would go move to another squad's position, and that squad would go to another squad's position. So they would just do that to keep moving, keep mobile, not get complacent.

• 18:59Jocko Willink?

  The road had been kept open for the whole day for up and down convoys. So they had to keep this road open because they were running convoys to another area. Adjacent to the road ran the railway line too, over which that day two trains were to run. It would be a long day, as all such road rail opening days were. So this is kind of a common mission for them, to secure these roads and these railroad tracks, to get convoys through, to bring logistical supplies to other parts of the military.

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  The platoon secured the area and saw the convoy and the trains through by about ten thirty. So ten thirty in the morning, they'd gone by. They would now have to wait for the returning convoy and trains in the afternoon. The sun was well up in the sky, and the men were being baked. Humidity added to the discomfort.

• 19:55Jocko Willink?

  It was time for the squads to get up and move out to relieve the next one. Number one and number two squads were north of the T junction about four hundred to five meters, five hundred meters away from it. Number, number four and three squads were opposite one and two respectively, south of the road. Number one squad, however, over a period, had quietly decided to reduce this distance and establish itself next to the T junction in a thick coconut grove, which had good shade. So there's that opportunity. Instead of baking out in the sun, we're just gonna kind of get a little bit closer to the road, get a little bit closer to the T junction. We're gonna sit in some shade.

• 20:39Jocko Willink?

  The squad occupied the grove as it had been doing and relaxed against the trees.

• 20:46Jocko Willink?

  It was comprised of six men. They did not feel the necessity of posting sentries. No guards were out.

• 20:57Jocko Willink?

  The militants had noticed this routine. So this whole time they're being observed. And you know, that's something you've always got to expect. You've always got to expect that you're being watched.

• 21:07Jocko Willink?

  About fifteen militants with weapons slowly drove a vehicle to the T junction and went on dropping a few members at four or five places around, oh, sorry, across the branch road, opposite the unalert squad, barely forty meters away.

• 21:27Jocko Willink?

  Then they occupied a few old trenches dug by the IPKF during the previous year. So here are these guys, basically asleep and sitting in this coconut grove. And forty meters away, I mean, you played football, forty, that's less, less than half a football field away. You've got the insurgents getting in position.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Is it indicating that they were doing that on purpose like that was their tactic to lull them to sleep a little bit? Or is it just kind of just sheer complacency on that part that is taking advantage of?

• 22:02Jocko Willink?

  I don't think they had a way to lure them to sleep. I'm sure that they were watching this area. I'm sure that this was an area that they had done this mission before and so they probably sat there and watched them do this three or four or five or 10 times in the past and when these guys lay were stayed alert then they wouldn't attack them. And they just watched and waited and finally one day they see him. It's it's a hot day. They go down and watch. They see them getting complacent. And they move into position.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's not like they were waiting as a tactic like let's not do anything and create this feeling of inactivity. So so they go to sleep. It just happened. They happened to get complacent and they capitalize.

• 22:36Jocko Willink?

  They watched them over and over again and every time that that squad was alert, they just said, okay, we're not going to hit them. You know, we used to say that about when we were driving on my first deployment to Iraq and we'd be driving around in our Humvees with no armor on them. Slick Humvees and we we would say, look, our protection is that we're going to look alert. We're going to have our guns scanning. We're going to be, everyone's going to have a gun pointed at the at the, you know, at a target somewhere, wherever you think would be a target. So that if an insurgent is going to attack us, they're they're going to look at us and say, you know what? Let's wait till a little less aggressive convoy came through. And it and it usually worked. I mean, we only got ambushed a few times and and so so generally I assume that that worked well for us considering how often ambushes were happening.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:21Jocko Willink?

  Around 1100, around 1100 hours, all of them poured bullets into the resting squad. Not one remained alive. Not one could fire back. Thus, just then, the number four squad, which had upstuck from its location south of the main road and was going to number one's location to relieve it, entered into the inferno. The opening volley of the militants who were watching caught and killed four of this party too and wounded the other two, just as they were entering the grove. Out of these two, one succumbed soon, but the other, who survived, froze, took no further part, perhaps feigning death and survived.

• 24:06Jocko Willink?

  Hearing this firing.

• 24:10Jocko Willink?

  The number three squad, which was about a kilometer away, rushed in very fast.

• 24:17Jocko Willink?

  And was at the site in less than ten minutes, even as the militants were still firing.

• 24:23Jocko Willink?

  The number two squad also reached the site a little north simultaneously to engage the retreating militants. This promptness was good, but was not.

• 24:37Jocko Willink?

  But what was not, was that the two groups having connected, or having contacted and exchanged fire with the militants at that, at the site, did not pursue the militants and allow them a clean break. And they allowed them a clean break. So these other two squads, when the firing started, they rushed in from two different directions and actually were in a good position to do some big damage to the militants. But they didn't.

• 25:06Jocko Willink?

  It is all the more regrettable because the two parties had contacted the militants from two directions and were thus in a position of considerable advantage. Instead, all of them converged on the site and started getting hold of the dead and wounded.

• 25:23Jocko Willink?

  So instead of attacking, they all just converged on the guys that were dead and wounded and started taking care of them. The losses amounted to ten killed and one wounded. The militants suffered one dead. So again, a horrible situation. The glaring example of crass complacency on the part of our brave soldiers, who neither firmly adhere to the spirit and content of basic tactical teaching, nor thinks it's necessary to use that little brain God has given.

• 25:56Jocko Willink?

  Our teaching and officering methods make sure that the soldier does not use his gray matter and develop guile.

• 26:06Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna read that part again. Our teaching and officering methods make sure that the soldier does not use his gray matter and develop guile. So what he's saying is, the way that they train these troops and how they treat them, they get them so that they don't use their, they don't use their mind, they don't use their brain. And that's something that we've talked about on this podcast multiple times.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  What, just going automatic, like boom boom?

• 26:34Jocko Willink?

  No, to try and make sure that the training that you do expands your brain and makes you think. And I told quite a few stories about how my goal, when I was running training, was to put these guys in situations where the only way out was to use their brain. Not to use their physical skills, not to use the tactics that they already knew, not to fall back on, on their training that had been embedded into their brain, but to think of their own solution to a problem.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, yeah.

• 27:06Jocko Willink?

  You know, when you, when you, in ju, it's like in jujitsu, when you see someone that is really masterful in jujitsu, that person that you consider that is the person that you see get into a position and they do something completely unexpected. That's the kind of training that I want to do for people, to put them in positions where they have to do something that's unexpected and new and that they created.

• 27:28Jocko Willink?

  "Nobody from the patrol could be punished. Those who made the mistake were already dead."

• 27:41Jocko Willink?

  It's a damn shame.

• 27:45Jocko Willink?

  So, to talk a little bit about this book, this book, as I said, it's called Assignment Jaffna, by Sardish Pandey, Lieutenant General Sardish Pandey.

• 27:58Jocko Willink?

  And here's his opening to the book, and I think this is one of the most honest openings to a book I've ever heard. This book is an attempt to present to the reader an account of Operation Pa Wan, our considerable endeavor on military diplomatic political front in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1989, a period of over two and a half years. And this is where I think this guy is just beautifully honest. I lay no claim to scholarship and research on the subject, nor have I had ready at hand documentary backup to substantiate my remarks and conclusions. I have not attempted to consult others who are closer to the decision makers or even

• 28:41Jocko Willink?

  the decision making process itself. I kept no notes, no diaries, not even, not even compared notes with my peers, colleagues, or subordinates. With my seniors, I had the normal, all-too-human quota of professional animus. I did my job as I understood, perceived it, or sorry, perceived and thought it appropriate. In my post-retirement glow, I simply reminisced. Memories resurged as I did so, not always with precise contextual precision perhaps, but with sufficient clarity to heat up, illuminate, and see through this effort.

• 29:20Jocko Willink?

  And this is something that I, I, whenever I'm, the books that have always kind of hit me, and the books that we've used in this podcast are these books that I find value in, and that's the books with kind of unaltered thoughts, and it's usually coming from the person itself, and that's, that's one thing that automatically gives me a, a, a negative impression, or not a negative impression, but I love hearing the voice of the person that did it. You know, I want to hear from that person. As soon as you interpret it, as soon as someone else interprets it, you know it's getting spun somewhere or another, intentionally or not, there's a different viewpoint. And you know, this is something that I used to, when we, when we were running training,

• 30:05Jocko Willink?

  or when I was running training, and you'd have a guy do something. You'd have a guy come into a room, and you know, this is just a training operation, but you'd have a guy come into a room and, and there'd be, you know, a doorway, or a prisoner, or a hostage, and they would do something like, like dumb, or crazy, or wrong, but...

• 30:25Jocko Willink?

  You know, some guys would say, you know, go and do it again. You know, go and do that again. And although we would definitely make them do it again, I would always make them deal with what they did. Because they they they did whatever their instincts told them to do. And what your instincts told them to do, guess what? Your instincts were wrong, now you still have to deal with it.

• 30:44Jocko Willink?

  So I like these guys that that talk about what they did, and as you can see from those first two, you know, stories. This guy's talking about what they did wrong, what what what happened bad. And his assessment of of why. I'm going to continue. It is the account of the happenings as seen through the eyes of a divisional commander, who in war, in my opinion and experience, is the main link between strategy and tactics, and the main difference between perception and insight. So he's in a good position, he's kind of seeing what

• 31:22Jocko Willink?

  was, you know, how that strategy of what the what the goal was, how that got interpreted into the ground.

• 31:32Jocko Willink?

  There are others who cherish macro level viewing and tend to underrate ground realities. This is another thing that I always look for. Now, of course, I'm interested in what the generals say. Absolutely, I'm always interested in what the presidents say, or what the the the prime minister says, and how the generals took that, and what they did with it, and those broad strategies. I'm very interested in that, I always want to read about that. And what he's saying, that there's others that cherish the macro level viewing, which is what that is, the generals, and tend to underrate the ground realities, and I agree with him. I belong to the former category.

• 32:13Jocko Willink?

  Mine was termed a worm's view, and I preferred it that way. Meaning he is the guy that was on the ground, and this is what he saw, as he as if he was a worm on the ground, that's how on the ground he was. I knew exactly where I stood.

• 32:32Jocko Willink?

  It is this that produced considerable disillusionment, friction, and differences with superiors, superior headquarters, and planners. Once again, this is something that I always find intriguing. When you get these guys, these soldiers, people like Hackworth, people that are dedicated, you know, lifelong military members, and they get this twist of disillusionment and suspicion against their higher headquarters. "I kept shouting myself 'horse,' but the juggernaut rolled on unheeding."

• 33:12Jocko Willink?

  So despite this guy's protests and talking and trying to explain, the juggernaut rolled on, unheeding. There is a school of thought which says that mistakes were bound to be made in the complex and undertaking of projecting power outside our national geographical confines, and that these have to be taken in stride. So yeah, hey, look, we're gonna have mistakes, they're gonna happen, we just have to deal with them and move on. But he goes on. "My contention is that if we consider ourselves professional soldiers and experts in concerned

• 33:53Jocko Willink?

  fields, then there was no need to and no excuse for committing most of these mistakes. After all, it was human lives and limbs which were being lost. We know we have an abundance of manpower, even cheap human lives in this country, but that does not give us the power of attorney to waste them." And I think that's a sentiment that anybody that's been on the front lines can understand,

• 34:30Jocko Willink?

  is that it's easy to write those checks from the government, or from the rear echelon, or from the safe place. But those checks that you're writing are human lives, and no one should write that check without a heavy burden on their mind.

• 34:59Jocko Willink?

  There is a good deal of "I" in the narration. It is not so much because of my ego to show up myself or to put others always in the dock, but simply because it is a compilation of what I, as a cog in the gigantic wheel, saw, felt, perceived, and got influenced by. I think it's interesting that this guy is saying, "Look, the book's about me and I apologize, and I'm not trying to be egotistical." And actually, in reading that right now, I know that on multiple discussions that I've had about the book that Leif and I wrote, we're doing the same thing. We're like, "Look, it's not, it's, you know, sorry, it's a...

• 35:43Jocko Willink?

  We're not... It's not about us, it's about what we learned." And I think he's trying to make the same statement there.

• 35:52Jocko Willink?

  Sri Lanka was a fascinating assignment, the most challenging of my life, the most tense, the most rewarding.

• 36:02Jocko Willink?

  And I think that anybody that's been in tense combat will tell you that's the most rewarding thing that they will do in their life. I am grateful to my colleagues, subordinates, peers, and our magnificent men, steady, solid as they are.

• 36:23Jocko Willink?

  I have a high regard for the LTT, for its discipline, dedication, determination, motivation, and technical expertise. So there he is, he's talking about the enemy. And you've heard me say it on here, is you have to respect your enemy. And there he is. He has high regard for the LTT and its discipline and dedication and determination and motivation and their technical expertise. That's everything.

• 36:51Jocko Willink?

  But, "find little justification in its senseless, mulish, destructive insistence on continuation of military means in the search of an honorable solution to the Tamil problem in Sri Lanka."

• 37:07Jocko Willink?

  And he goes on. "I thank some of my erstwhile subordinates for helping me refresh my memory. Most of them took me seriously in war and remained two steps ahead of me in their spheres. God bless them." So.

• 37:23Jocko Willink?

  "Like me, looking at the guys that worked with me and for me, I hold them in the highest regard for taking care of me." Then he's saying the same thing. "Fashion apart, I genuinely feel I must dedicate this personal account to the young officer, the young soldiers, and the Jaffna Tamils who made me a good soldier and a better human being in my own eyes."

• 37:52Jocko Willink?

  I think that's just an outstanding opening for a book.

• 37:59Jocko Willink?

  Now, getting into the tactics.

• 38:06Jocko Willink?

  "On their arrival," he goes on to say, "our tactics were predetermined, straitjacketed, predictable, and reactive. These rose only a little above what is known as minor tactics in military terminology. That is tactical arrangements and drills at section and platoon level.

• 38:25Jocko Willink?

  Counterinsurgency operations demanded far more innovative and integrative formulations at company, battalion, and formation levels."

• 38:35Jocko Willink?

  This is

• 38:37Jocko Willink?

  obviously something that we had to deal with in Ramadi, and that was this idea of counterinsurgency. You know, it's, it's so, it's infinitely more complex than a situation where, you know, two uniformed military groups are fighting against each other. Everything is clear. It's very easy to understand. You know, they have a different shaped helmet, they have a different colored uniform, and we're gonna get on our different sides of the lines and we're gonna go and destroy them. And an insurgency is just infinitely more complex. People mixed in with the populace, the populace swaying back and forth on who they support, wanting to protect the populace from the insurgents.

• 39:18Jocko Willink?

  Some of the populace supporting the insurgents and some of the populace supporting the, the, the host nation or the friendlies. It's just a, it's just an infinitely more complex situation.

• 39:30Jocko Willink?

  How he explains it, counter insurgency remains essentially a company and platoon commander's battle task. So he's saying that it is those frontline guys that are actually gonna make it happen. However, he goes on, their concerted, integrated, mutually responsive and interconnected employment demands particularized tactics at battalion and brigade levels. And what that means is that the person who's overall in charge has got to do an outstanding job of explaining what the mission is and explaining how it's connected and explaining how what is gonna happen on the frontline is gonna affect the broad strategy. That getting that commander's

• 40:11Jocko Willink?

  intent down to the front lines is critical. And this is something that when I was in Ramadi and I was working for Colonel Sean McFarland, who's now General McFarland, who is just an unbelievably outstanding leader, but he was able to get his intent, you know, from him to the battalions, to the companies, to the platoons, to the squads, and right down to the frontline leadership. Very, very similar situation that Colonel McFarland was able to execute in a just a, just an outstanding way.

• 40:48Jocko Willink?

  So now,

• 40:51Jocko Willink?

  we get to beyond the, the strategy or beyond the tactics. And as we talked about on the last podcast, what always interests me more is the principles of war and how different people in different situations see those principles and how those principles of war

• 41:11Jocko Willink?

  can be translated into principles of life.

• 41:16Jocko Willink?

  And principles of business and principles of fighting and principles of relationships and everything that you're doing. And really, also, the principles of the war within and the war that we have within ourselves to beat back the insurgents that are in our mind, you know, beat back the emotions that are in our mind that are trying to make us weak and trying to bring us down and trying to keep us from being the best that we can be. So those principles of war apply to so many different things. And that's why I find them so fascinating.

• 41:55Jocko Willink?

  And luckily enough, the good general has a section that's called Principles of War.

• 42:04Jocko Willink?

  Principles of War distilled from conventional warfare are well-known, but their degree of relevance in insurgency wars is not the same.

• 42:16Jocko Willink?

  Again, we're talking about insurgency much more complex. Insurgency is total war in the sense that involves people too in an intimate and positive manner. Employs all sinews of war, political, social, economic, psychological, diplomatic, and military. It exemplifies determination and readiness for great sacrifices in pursuance of its goals.

• 42:46Jocko Willink?

  It ex- I'm gonna read that again, Echo. I'm not sure you got it. It exemplifies determination and readiness for great sacrifices in pursuance of its goals. So what you're trying to achieve in insurgency, in a counterinsurgency situation, is so hard to achieve.

• 43:05Jocko Willink?

  It is so difficult to achieve. Insurgency is an unrelenting, low-intensity, long-drawn war, with time and opportunity serving the interests of the insurgent. And wherein the insurgent designs to overcome his weakness in one sphere with strength in the others. So, in an insurgency,

• 43:31Jocko Willink?

  they don't have tanks, but they have time. And they can wait you out, and they can just pick away at you. The death of a thousand cuts, that's what the fear is, and that's how the insurgent is going to win. Is the death of a thousand cuts. And when I think about

• 43:52Jocko Willink?

  me, or you, or us as individuals, it's those little things, it's those little cuts, it's those little times, it's those little those little situations where you cut yourself a little bit of slack.

• 44:05Jocko Willink?

  And that's the insurgent winning. That's the insurgent beating you.

• 44:12Jocko Willink?

  So, the principles themselves. Relentless pursuance of the aim.

• 44:22Jocko Willink?

  The L T T E was clear in its aim and unrelenting in its pursuit.

• 44:31Jocko Willink?

  Ilam and political settlement on its terms. Ilam was the name that they wanted to give the the state for the the Tameels. And that was their clear aim with no, no other possible modifications to that. They wanted their own state, period.

• 44:50Jocko Willink?

  On the other hand, we were not very clear about our aim. Destruction of the L T T or weakening it. If the latter, then to what degree? We had not fought through the eventuality of the Sri Lankan government refusing to fulfill its part of the accord obligations. We did not know what to do with a warring L T T hostile population. Or recalcitrant Sri Lankan government. And as it finally turned out, we were not even sure of what our national interests were. And what military infantry intervention and later military operations were required to achieve.

• 45:30Jocko Willink?

  This is when you hear all the time about people saying, oh, you got to write down your goals. This is what they're talking about. You gotta know what your goals are. You gotta have them clear. And then you gotta have a relentless pursuance of the aim. That's how you get things done.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  It's kind of like when people are like, I gotta get in better shape, but that's it.

• 45:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it needs to be a clear goal. What does that mean? Is that a certain amount of running? Is that a body weight that you're trying to reach? Is that a strength goal? What is that goal? Do you write it down? Do you know exactly what it is and is it clear?

• 46:07Jocko Willink?

  Next. Aggressive spirit. It's an interesting how we keep hearing this word aggression and aggressiveness in all these different principles of war. Aggressiveness is so important. And we talked about it on the last podcast. And I talked about how it had to be balanced. But it it has to be balanced. But man, it has to be there. That aggressiveness has got to be there. In low intensity, long drawn conflict, unflagging aggressive spirit is of vital importance. Far more than in conventional offensive action. The L T T E had realized it thoroughly and practiced it with great deliberation and to great effect.

• 46:53Jocko Willink?

  We were somewhat lacking in it.

• 46:58Jocko Willink?

  And why I think this insurgency and this talking about an insurgency when we're talking about life and becoming better.

• 47:06Jocko Willink?

  Is because it is a long-term struggle, right? You know, um, the, the war, the, the conventional war is a fast war where you, you, you know what's gonna happen. You know what your, you know who your enemy is, you go and you fight him and it's done. It's very easy. The conventional, I mean, the, the, the insurgent war is more like what we go through as humans trying to improve. Because it's a long, drawn out struggle. And we're, we got pieces of our brain that are changing sides, just like the local populace might. And it's very, very challenging. And that's why this notion of aggressiveness. And knowing what your aim is and then this relentless pursuance of this aim. And getting aggressive as you pursue that aim.

• 47:50Jocko Willink?

  Can you see how, how important those are? Obviously in an, in a counter insurgency situation, but also as you develop your plan to become a better person and a better leader.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:02Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely critical.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Especially, I mean, one of the many things similar to the insurgent comparison. Is the temptations that come up every day. No matter if you're trying to, I don't know, make more money, you know, with your own business or, or get in shape. Get in shape is, is a good one, I think.

• 48:21Jocko Willink?

  It's easy to talk about.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a lot of parallels that in my opinion are really clear. So these temptations, just like the insurgents, they'll pop up or they won't be around. For a day, two days, and then one day it's your best friend's birthday and you know, he's going to, I don't know, Dunkin' Donuts or something for, you know, his

• 48:42Jocko Willink?

  There it is.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Birthday and

• 48:43Jocko Willink?

  There it is.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  All of a sudden, yeah.

• 48:44Jocko Willink?

  Insurgent attack.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they come up every day, unexpected. Well, sometimes they're expected, but sometimes not expected.

• 48:51Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  It's just so dynamic in that way where all these things are there to kind of get you.

• 48:55Jocko Willink?

  And what's good, when those things come to get you, get in the aggressive mindset where you get aggressive with that situation. You get aggressive with those donuts. And I don't mean aggressively eating them. I mean aggressively putting them in the garbage.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and that's so true. And when these things do come up, it's so, it's so much, I don't say ea- yeah, I would, I would say easier to be like, no, I'm, I'm, I'm on the program right now. If you're aggressive, if your approach is, if you're like, you know, I'm gonna allow excuses to get in my head or kind of, kind of pussyfoot around and be like, well, you know, moderation is alright, kind of thing, and have that attitude. It's gonna get you, man. It's good, yeah. If you're aggressive, you can take, you know, take a sta- take, in a way, take pride in the fact that, nope, I'm not eating those donuts. Nope, I'm not drinking, I'm not going out to the club drinking, I gotta rest, I gotta work out in the morning or whatever. Yeah, that, that aggression does help, man.

• 49:43Jocko Willink?

  That aggression does.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  In fact, it's, it's almost like if you don't, if you do kind of, just kind of tiptoe your way through it.

• 49:51Jocko Willink?

  It wins.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, it's like you can't even get it done.

• 49:54Jocko Willink?

  It's the same thing with this, with a counter insurgency. You have to be aggressive. You can't let those little things creep in.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:00Jocko Willink?

  And you've got to keep that relent- relentless pursuance of the aim, and you gotta do it aggressively.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:06Jocko Willink?

  Next. Surprise. This embraces surprise at tactical, strategic, and political levels.

• 50:16Jocko Willink?

  The IPKF, that's the Indian Peacekeeping Force, could not do anything, could not do anything. In, in the tactical field, it was unable to match the LTT mainly because of the lack of innovation and serious application of all our professional acumen to stymie our, to stymie the LTT. Our methods largely remained conventional.

• 50:42Jocko Willink?

  So surprise. And how important surprise is now.

• 50:49Jocko Willink?

  How do we surprise ourselves? I can tell you, you gotta surprise yourself. If you, if you can't surprise yourself, it means you lack creativity. If you're not coming up with new ideas and new ways to do things, you're lacking creativity and you're lacking surprise. So, you know, I was, I've been traveling a bunch lately. And guess what? Sometimes in a hotel room. And I gotta get creative on how I'm going to aggressively pursue my aims. And that means I gotta do, you know, maybe my workout is 300 burpees. That's it. Boom. No squat rack there, no pull-up bar, no rings, no rower, nothing, no kettlebells, no. And guess what? I'm, my soul gets crushed.

• 51:33Jocko Willink?

  But that's just being creative and aggressively adapting to the situations that you get put into. So you got it, you gotta maintain that adaptability, that creativity all the time. And I think that's absolutely critical.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Man, and it's one, yet another one of those times where it's so easy to be like, dang, this hotel doesn't have a gym.

• 51:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Or, or dang, there's no like really healthy food or, there's the McDonald's right there.

• 51:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  There's no healthy food in this town even.

• 52:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  So.

• 52:03Jocko Willink?

  That, that healthy food thing, especially when you look, start looking at intermittent fasting.

• 52:09Jocko Willink?

  You know, oh, you're in the airport and they don't have, you know, all you can get is those, those little hot dogs wrapped in a pretzel. Those things are so tasty, but you know, like you should not be eating those, right? And sometimes you, you're like, oh, okay, I'll eat them. Why? You should be on the intermittent fast when you're in the travel situation.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:32Jocko Willink?

  You don't need to be eating.

• 52:35Jocko Willink?

  And I'm telling you this right now, and it's fresh in my memory, because I had two of those bad boys this morning.

• 52:41Jocko Willink?

  And they were good.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the weakness crept in.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:45Jocko Willink?

  And I got some of those pretzel wrapped hot dogs.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Dang, nobody's perfect, nobody's perfect.

• 52:52Jocko Willink?

  Next one, mobility and flexibility.

• 52:58Jocko Willink?

  The insurgent must develop intelligent and guileful flexibility in planning, conducting, and overseeing actions so as to retain initiative, suffer the least damage, and yet keep the opponent guessing and in a prolonged state of readiness and uncertainty. So that's what the insurgent has to do. They gotta be super flexible. They gotta keep you guessing and keep you in a prolonged state of readiness. That's a, that, that sounds good, right? Prolonged state of readiness. That sounds good, but it's actually not good. When you, when you're constantly on edge, that's what wears people down. It breaks them down over time. But where we failed was we did not exhibit enough

• 53:39Jocko Willink?

  flexibility in our strategic and tactical plans and their guileful execution. We had to seize the initiative and pose challenges to the LTT, which we largely failed to do. So you, you know, mobility, flexibility, something we talk about all the time on this podcast, is having the ability to adapt and be flexible. And, you know, whether it's working out in a hotel room, whether it's, you know, finding something good to eat or not eating, because there is nothing good to eat, whether it's being in a leadership situation and you're adapting to a personality that you, that is awkward or different, or you're not ready for, or a situation that needs to be overcome, that's flexibility and mobility and you have to maintain that.

• 54:26Jocko Willink?

  Motivation and discipline.

• 54:31Jocko Willink?

  In prolonged, slow, bleeding, low-intensity, people-oriented struggle, motivation and discipline as ingredients of morale are far more important. The LTT and the people had both these to a remarkable degree.

• 54:52Jocko Willink?

  The IPKF's discipline was as good as any army's, even the LTT's. But its motivation was limited to the spirit of professionalism only. We were soldiers, we did as ordered. So the LTT had this passionate goal that they were going after.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:14Jocko Willink?

  And that encouraged their discipline. They understood why they were doing what they were doing. And that's something, they had that clear goal. They understood, why are we doing this? Cause we were on our own state.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:25Jocko Willink?

  Now, did the IPKF know why they were doing what they were doing? No, they did not. They just, he just talked about that. He just talked about how they could, they didn't know what their goal was. They didn't know how it was gonna affect. They didn't know, they didn't even know what their end state was supposed to be. So when you take that away from them, even though they're disciplined troops, they missed that last level. And that's why. Why are you doing this?

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:49Jocko Willink?

  And that is why it's so important for you as you try and reach your goals, as you try and get something done, you keep that in mind of why you're doing this. What's the end state gonna be? Cause it's so easy to lose track of the end state. I mean, if you're trying to make, you know, you're trying to get, gain 25 pounds of muscle, I mean, that's gonna take you a couple of years possibly.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 56:10Jocko Willink?

  If you're trying to make a million dollars, that may take you 10 years. Might take you six years. That's a long ways. And there's a lot of distractions that can come along the way.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and to your point, consider why. Why do you wanna gain 25 pounds of, we'll say, losing weight, right? So it's, it's, let's say you're, you have a photo shoot, or you're going on spring break or something like that.

• 56:31Jocko Willink?

  Let, let me just think of all the big photo shoots that have dropped weight. That's never happened. Let's talk about this. Let's talk about you're trying to lose weight, cause you're trying to be healthy.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:41Jocko Willink?

  That's a long-term goal that's realistic.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, and, and whatever that means, right? Healthy, um, or, or what if you're a healthy person already, but you just wanna...

• 56:51Speaker 01

  I don't know, look better, or, or achieve something.

• 56:55Jocko Willink?

  How about you've got a jujitsu tournament coming up and you gotta cut some weight?

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Right, cut some weight, right, right, exactly. So it makes it so much easier to, to cut, I mean, for the most part.

• 57:03Jocko Willink?

  When you have a specific goal.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you got a fight coming up, that, that guy's gonna cut that weight way quicker. You, you hear these guys cutting all this weight, like, oh yeah, he has a fight in a month and a half, and he gotta cut forty pounds, and then he'll do it.

• 57:17Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Cause yeah, I mean, obviously they're trained athletes as well, but that, that goal and understanding it, man, helps so much.

• 57:23Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Especially when, I'm gonna read this part again, and, and again, we talk about when you're trying to get stuff done as a person. It's a prolonged, slow, bleeding, low-intensity, people-oriented struggle. That's what it is, that's what you're up against.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:40Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's what you're up against. It's a low, anything that's worth achieving as a person, it takes all those, it's long, it's slow, it's you know, there's nothing, you go, oh, this is gonna be the ultimate achievement of my life, and it's gonna take you fifteen minutes to do it. No. It's gonna take you months and months and months and years of effort of blood, sweat and tears to get there.

• 58:03Jocko Willink?

  Now, continuing with discipline and morale. This goes into a section of the book where he starts talking about their performance, and we're gonna take a little bit of a, of a turn here. But I think it's important to bring up.

• 58:21Jocko Willink?

  In the initial stages of the war, in October to December of nineteen eighty-seven, there were complaints and reports of rape, looting, and wanton destruction indulged in by the IPKF.

• 58:36Jocko Willink?

  When a soldier is pushed and led into a blind alley, like the situation in Jaffna, where it suddenly changed from so well-tom-tommed peacekeeping operations into a full-fledged battlefield. He feels terribly insecure and starts seeing an enemy all over.

• 58:59Jocko Willink?

  So we talked about this earlier. These guys thought they were going on a nice peacekeeping mission and they put their blue helmets on and, you know, be a referee.

• 59:10Jocko Willink?

  Well, the referee gets attacked. And this is starting to talk about the psychological effect it has and they start seeing an enemy everywhere. You know, and this reminds me of when I was in high school and, and I was lucky enough to have a bunch of Vietnam vets that were putting me through high school. And when I was in high school, the movie Platoon came out. And of course, I was, you know, all into war and whatnot. So I went and saw the movie Platoon. And one of my teachers that was in Vietnam had seen the movie as well. And I, I asked him straight up, you know, hey, what'd you think of the movie?

• 59:49Jocko Willink?

  And he explained to me

• 59:53Jocko Willink?

  in a very solemn way that the movie depicted these Americans going in and, you know, brutalizing these villages and, and, you know, doing horrible things to these villagers. But the way he explained it to me, he said, listen, you know, we'd be in, in and around a village for three or four weeks. And in that three or four weeks, they, the Americans, would lose seven or eight guys to booby traps. And meanwhile, the villagers don't hit any booby traps. So they're out walking the same trails in the same areas through the right, same rice paddies. And the, the villagers aren't hitting any booby traps. They're not getting blown up. They're not getting killed.

• 1:00:38Jocko Willink?

  So that means they kind of know where they are. And he said that kind of frustration is exactly what this is talking about right here. In an, and I'm going back to it. In an insurgency sparked and sustained by an opponent who is dressed in civilian clothes, but shoots and blows him up unseen, suspicion alone takes a vicious turn. When he sees his comrades being killed by innocent looking civilians blending again into the civilian population, he gets into a rage and anger against the uncertainty and the unseen.

• 1:01:15Jocko Willink?

  At that point, his pent-up tension, welling feeling of helplessness, and burning desire to explode into a release of counterviolence, are in frantic search of a tangible object he can master, an object which is weak and helpless itself.

• 1:01:37Jocko Willink?

  What better object than a frightened, weak, cowering woman? An unguarded, wide-open shop? An unresisting, defenseless house and its feeble occupants, whose shelter the unseen deceitful opponent had obtained by whatever means?

• 1:01:58Jocko Willink?

  It is madness, the animal in him, that rules momentarily. He is wild, but just for a brief spell, if he can get a hold of himself, or if someone controls him in that moment of crisis, of cathartic explosion, he might in all probability get over his baser instincts. Where this does not happen, then the explosion manifests in counter-assault, rape, loot, and wanton destruction, seeking release from tension, fear, and rage.

• 1:02:39Jocko Willink?

  Education, motivation, communication, and company are good anecdotes. Anecdotes, sorry. Most culprits realize

• 1:02:54Jocko Willink?

  within minutes of their act and repent, weeping like children. I saw an officer with twenty-seven years of service breaking down like this.

• 1:03:12Jocko Willink?

  So that's what happens to people. I think there's so much in that paragraph. This, this paragraph about this pent up tension. And we've got to remember that it's extreme in a situation, you know, like this. The, the tension is extreme. The fear is extreme. The rage is extreme. But, and, and obviously for those that are listening that are in combat right now, that are deployed overseas, these are things that you, you have to watch out for. And especially as a leader, you've got to be the person that controls him in the moment of crisis, of cathartic explosion. As a leader, that's got to be what your job is.

• 1:03:55Jocko Willink?

  And also, as you work in businesses as a leader, you've got a sense now that things won't be as dramatic as this, but you can get people that do make mistakes in business. They make ethical mistakes. They make moral mistakes. They feel that pressure and they want to lash out and they make mistakes. And you've got to get them through those moments. You've got to pay attention to it. It is under these circumstances, back to the book, it is under these circumstances of total uncertainty, initial disorientation, sudden violence, inability to communicate because there was language differences and lack of effective control and education that excesses were committed by a few, by a few.

• 1:04:40Jocko Willink?

  But the command and leadership chain rapidly gathered their brood once again, within the warmth of their moral influence and disciplinary binding. Enquiries were instituted and disciplinary action taken against the defaulters. Warped minds had to be weeded out, but there were not very many. After February to March of 1988, the incident rates dropped to almost zero. So they were able to get control of the situation, to weed it out, get rid of the sadists and the folks that couldn't control themselves.

• 1:05:19Jocko Willink?

  But this is the the type of pressure that you see military people under, and especially in these counter insurgency operations like we've had for the last 10 or 15 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, where you have a local populace, you have IEDs, you have indirect fire mortars and guys are getting killed. And where do you place the rage? Where do you, where does it come out? And that is a huge challenge for for leadership to try and keep that in check to the best of your ability. And speaking of leadership,

• 1:06:03Jocko Willink?

  from the book, what we lacked in many an instance was what I should specifically emphasize, inspiring leadership. If the leader, particularly the formation commander, did not inspire his command, then that body of troops would be at half its effectiveness. So Leif and I talk about extreme ownership. Leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield, and here it is another example of saying, you know, he's saying that if the leader is not inspiring, they're going to be at half their effectiveness. For instance, if he visited a post and the men did not talk warmly, inquisitively and fondly about the visit for the next week or 10 days,

• 1:06:44Jocko Willink?

  and if they did not perceive a challenge left behind by the commander, did not feel a spontaneous desire to meet it in thinking it hard to solve, and thinking hard to solve it, embracing to present an innovative novelty to the commander on his next visit, then it is better that this type of commander did not visit at all. So he's saying, you know, if you're not inspiring, if you're not inspiring your people, it's better not even to show up.

• 1:07:12Jocko Willink?

  Many formation commanders failed to inspire. Not many of them roughed it out with the troops on patrols ambushes, staying in their posts at night on road opening and raid or heli landing missions.

• 1:07:26Jocko Willink?

  And this is an example of kind of a negative example, and this is very clear. And you actually see this portrayed in in movies about Vietnam a lot, and you'll you'll get that very quickly. The brigade commander would land by a helicopter in a post on a helipad which had to be secured. So I mean, soldiers had to go out and like, secure this helipad somewhere and set security around it and move the brush and make sure there's no mines on it, etc., etc. Then the general would breeze past a few bodies lying in the muck and mud. Beam a flashy smile to affect unconcern for danger. Have a hurried chat with the local leader. Blur out directions or orders.

• 1:08:06Jocko Willink?

  Sip a cup of tea or coconut juice, showing no concern for the soldiers who labored under those circumstances to prepare it. An offer before you could blink an eye would be offered as chop in his chopper. What inspiration could his men in the post draw from that?

• 1:08:26Jocko Willink?

  It's a stereotypical thing, and it really happens. It really does happen.

• 1:08:32Jocko Willink?

  And you know, you see that with, uh, you know, not just military leaders, but you see that with senior leaders in big companies where you know, the the folks on the front lines on the construction site or on the in a manufacturing plant. The boss is coming. So what do they have to do? They have to do all this preparation. They got to clean everything. Got to get everything dialed in and and then the guy shows up for five minutes and it took, you know, four hours to get everything ready. The guy shows up for five minutes, flashes a quick smile, and then leaves. Is anyone inspired by that? No, absolutely not.

• 1:09:10Jocko Willink?

  We had three types of officers.

• 1:09:14Jocko Willink?

  One category was that which thought, acted, moved about, was bold, and got down to business fastest, even in totally alien, confusing, unknown environment. Getting down to business. That's the guy. The second one consisted of those who had the brains and moved about as best they could, but lacked boldness and ability to inspire.

• 1:09:40Jocko Willink?

  The third category consisted of those who simply slogged when prodded. And complained about their troops not being trained, orders not being clearly given, and so on. They could do nothing else. Their units suffered. So that's the guy that doesn't take ownership of anything. Did you hear that? Complained about their troops not being trained. Orders not being clearly given and so on. That guy's not a good leader. Cause all he's doing is complaining. That is, their orders weren't clear. He's complaining up and down the chain of command. The guys below me aren't trained right. The guys above me aren't giving clear orders. This guy's a disaster. Don't be that guy. Don't be that leader.

• 1:10:22Jocko Willink?

  And here's a piece on. Leading from the front.

• 1:10:30Jocko Willink?

  They, there was a big battle. And there was a bunch of. Friendly casualties. And now I'm going to the books. Their belongings, dress and equipment. Lay tattered and strewn all over a huge playground. And I went up there on one of my visits. I thought this was disrespectful to the brave souls. And asked the escort team accompanying me. To help pick up all those items. And remove them from public gaze. To my acute horror, not one of them moved to pick them up. The escort team consisted of all denominations, but none dared. So, so here we are. He's out on this battlefield. There's all.

• 1:11:11Jocko Willink?

  You know, gear and, and personal effects of all these guys that were killed and it's just been sitting there and no one's. Moved it. And so he tells the team that he's with, like, okay, sir, go start rounding up the gear and, and they won't do it.

• 1:11:25Jocko Willink?

  It became painful to see such reluctance. I spontaneously got down from my open jeep, walked. Up to a pair of pouches. And a belt. And picked them up. Brought them to my jeep. And then the brigadier general that was with him did it as well. Was the next to do so. It was only after this that the rest of the escort team got down and gathered the other items. Little bit of leadership from the front right there.

• 1:12:00Jocko Willink?

  And I think we're gonna close with this section right here.

• 1:12:06Jocko Willink?

  Views and visits of senior generals and their interaction with field commanders and troops did little to inspire us subordinates, provided little worthwhile guidance, and clarified little as to what the whole game plan was about. So these guys had no idea of what the why was. Everybody lived and fought from one day to the next. No strategic view. Our wait for pearls of wisdom remained endless. What increasingly showed up instead was the political eye and bluster of the generals, the tentativeness and uncertainty of the army commander above them,

• 1:12:51Jocko Willink?

  and the army chief, which did little to change systemic incongruities and tackle the hidden rot.

• 1:13:01Jocko Willink?

  Consequently, boldness and experimentation became prominent casualties.

• 1:13:13Jocko Willink?

  So this glaring eye

• 1:13:19Jocko Willink?

  from the senior leadership snuffed out

• 1:13:24Jocko Willink?

  the creativity and the boldness of the troops. They actually

• 1:13:31Jocko Willink?

  made, you know, this intense

• 1:13:36Jocko Willink?

  scrutiny, like I said, it made the troops not want to do anything.

• 1:13:43Jocko Willink?

  And I think not only should you keep that in consideration as a leader, that you make sure that you're not snuffing out creativity from your troops, but also on a personal level, you can't let

• 1:14:00Jocko Willink?

  the fear of failure.

• 1:14:03Jocko Willink?

  Limit your boldness and your experimentation.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:07Jocko Willink?

  And that's something that happens all the time. People are afraid to step out and try something new.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I mentioned this before where a lot of the time, the reason for that is when people get punished for making honest mistakes.

• 1:14:22Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:14:24Jocko Willink?

  You, you, you definitely should not punish people for making honest mistakes. And when you are going to take risks yourself, you need to cut yourself some slack and realize that things might not go perfect.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:36Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you, I mean, a, a, an example that's sitting right in front of us right now is this podcast that we're doing.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:43Jocko Willink?

  Because, you know, people were asking, you know, hey, you should do a podcast, but there's, you know, okay, well, where's it gonna go? Do we really want to do it? What's the, what are people actually going to think of it? You know, it's one thing to have, do a podcast with a guy like Tim Ferriss or Joe Rogan or Sam Harris where you've got this, you know, famous individual. And of course, people want to listen to them, but who's going to want to listen to Jocko and Echo? So there's some, you know, let's, but, but, okay, what's the worst thing that could happen? We fail, no one listens to it. Okay.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:15:16Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't going to affect me that bad. You know, we'd move on and figure something else to do.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:22Jocko Willink?

  But that's the kind of thing that, that experimentation that can lead to good stuff.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:15:28Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't allow yourself to do that, then you're going to have problems. And the same way, if you don't allow your troopers to make mistakes, like you said, and try new things, and you don't encourage that, then they're going to be, their morale is going to be crushed and they're not going to make the progress that they need to make.

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you can kind of look at, at that type of scenario.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  In or from like an expanded point of view, like the big picture where if someone's not raised, I kind of mentioned this before as well, where if someone is raised in a really rigid household, where you know, the kid who's taking piano lessons, he makes one wrong key and he gets whacked with a ruler, right? And let's say if someone was just raised like that in life, every little mistake, they're going to be so reluctant to start something new. They're going to be so scared and a lot of times you don't even feel like you know why you're scared. It's just, just, it's just scary. A lot of anxiety comes when you think about or consider branching out, doing something new. Fear of like failure and all this is so embedded in you because of

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  that punishment that you received. So you're trained, you know, you're trained to avoid mistakes or new stuff that you might make.

• 1:16:45Jocko Willink?

  And that's something we've dealt with in the military for the last several years, last probably a couple of decades was this, we, we called it the zero defect mentality. Whereas like, okay, if this, if this, if this guy made any mistakes over his career, he was not going to be advanced, he was not going to be promoted. And they've really tried to move away from that because like you said, that completely suffocates any type of risk taken, any type of creativity, any willingness to go outside the box and try something new. It, it just suffocates it. So I was definitely never a person that would hammer people for making mistakes as long as they were, we'll call them good mistakes, not just, not just making stupid mistakes.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, being careless in general, when you know being careless is bad.

• 1:17:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that kind of wraps up the book Assignment Jaffna by Sardish Pandey. Great book. And I don't know if you can get ahold of it, but those are some major lessons that I learned from it. And again, I bought this book while I was in Sri Lanka and read it and it definitely influenced me. And, and as I started fighting a counter insurgency war myself, I would think about what they went through and how difficult it was for them. And I knew we would be facing some very difficult times as well.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's interesting how that is essentially.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  In a big way, the opposite of your book where he's, he's, th- this is basically a cautionary tale from beginning to end, just how not to do it.

• 1:18:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and although, and you know, from, from, from our book, our book has a lot of this was a mistake that we made, here's what we did wrong. Now strategically overall, it, it was a very successful, you know, what the army did and what the 118 did and what the 228, what all these soldiers and Marines did over a longer period of time with, with us SEALs as well, was successful overall, but we definitely point out the errors of our way because there's successful, there's successful operations outlined in this book as well, but you don't learn as much from them. I picked out a couple of the, of the ones that went wrong because of course you learn more from your mistakes. And you know, in, in the book that Leif and I wrote, it's definitely a lot of those stories about

• 1:19:01Jocko Willink?

  the mistakes we made because we learned more from them as, as brutal as that is, that's the reality.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's all.

• 1:19:10Jocko Willink?

  And before we get into questions, I, I do want to say if I did mispronounce, incorrectly pronounce anything from assignment Jaffna, I sincerely apologize. So my bust. I'm sorry.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  So with that, we'll go into some questions from the interwebs. So first question from Geeken Dad.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Jocko Willink, how do you deal with fatigue, both mental and physical?

• 1:19:51Jocko Willink?

  How do I deal with fatigue, mental and physical? I rest. And, uh, you know, when, when, if I'm feeling like just completely overtrained and weak, uh, I usually tell, well, I tell my fighters, I'd say, hey, you just got your butt kicked today. Go eat a big steak tonight, take tomorrow off. You know, you just need rest and it's pretty obvious when that happens. And so I do the same thing for myself. If I, if I'm feeling horrible and you know, you can see occasionally my workouts just consist of like, you know, doing some mobility training, rolling it out, you know, doing a big stretch. That's because I'm just tired and I know it.

• 1:20:33Jocko Willink?

  And so I just give myself some downtime. Um, I think it's very important to know the difference between being lazy and being overtrained. And it's very easy to make that excuse for yourself. And that's why I always err on the side of I'm working out, I'm training because, and usually then the next day, uh, so if I feel like exhausted today, I won't take today off, but I will take the next day. But I'll work out today just to make sure that I'm not just being lazy. So I'll do another workout, get another training session in or whatever the case may be. So I make sure that's not just that moment. Cause sometimes the next day you're like, you know, I'm not that bad. I'm going to get, I'm back in the game, back on the program.

• 1:21:18Jocko Willink?

  The, uh, the other thing people ask me all the time, I've probably written this a dozen times or more on Twitter is do I take naps? And the answer is yes. In fact, I slept on the, I flew today and I slept probably two hours on the plane. Um, and that's a little bit more than a nap and I'm not on a plane every day. So what do I do for naps? Yes, I do take naps. What I do for naps, and this is something that I learned, uh, from a high school teacher that I had. Was I walked into his office one day and he had his feet up on the desk above his heart. And I said, you know, what are you doing? And he said, oh, this is really good for you. You put your feet above your heart. And it allows the blood to circulate out of your feet and gives, you know, lets your, your veins.

• 1:22:02Jocko Willink?

  And your one-way valves in your veins rest a little bit. And gets little pools of blood out of random places. And it's, and it's good. And so I tried it and it felt really good. And so when I was going through seal training, I used to, when I'd come in, we'd, we have like a couple of minutes. Between evolutions and I just go in and put my feet up, set my alarm clock, sleep for a few minutes, you know? Nowadays, if I can, I'll try and sleep for like six to eight minutes. Set my timer on my iPhone. And you look like distressed when I said six to eight minutes.

• 1:22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Jocko Willink?

  You don't consider anything under the three hours to be a.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's not a legitimate nap.

• 1:22:39Jocko Willink?

  Not a legitimate nap. If I sleep for like an hour, then I'm up for too long at night. I won't be able to go to sleep. Cause I get too much rest.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  Got you. Yeah. Under what circumstances are you gonna take a nap though? Like how do you feel?

• 1:22:53Jocko Willink?

  I'm just tired. I feel myself like.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. Like sleepy tired.

• 1:22:56Jocko Willink?

  And that's the thing is I can do, if I'm, if my mind is engaged in something, or especially if my body's engaged in something, that's what's cool about working out. You can work out when you're exhausted. Cause once you start moving, it's not like you're gonna fall asleep while you're doing squats.

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:23:07Jocko Willink?

  It's like you're gonna fall asleep while you're doing pull-ups.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:09Jocko Willink?

  You're just gonna do the pull-ups. You're just gonna do the squats. And when you get done, you'll be tired. You go to sleep.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:23:13Jocko Willink?

  What's hard to do, and this is when, like when we were writing the book, when I was writing my section of the books, I'd be writing at night, 11 o'clock at night, 12 o'clock at night. Be trying to hammer through it. And sometimes I just fall, you know, I'd be falling asleep. Oh, man. So, but that feeling of, hey, I'm just falling asleep.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:23:29Jocko Willink?

  That's not good. You know? So when I'm feeling that tired, I'll, I'll power it out. But it's like one of those things where I also like to push through it. So sometimes just try and power through it because honestly, even a even a short nap for me will kind of make me stay up too late at night and all of a sudden it'll be one o'clock in the morning.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  Even six to eight minutes.

• 1:23:48Jocko Willink?

  Six to eight minutes, six to eight minutes, a power nap, a six to eight minute power nap can make you feel amazing.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:23:53Jocko Willink?

  It can make you feel amazing. Don't underestimate the power nap. It is a legit fool right there.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I actually took, used to take like fifteen minute nap, like ten fifteen minutes.

• 1:24:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  I know that's overkill for you, that's going into laziness.

• 1:24:08Jocko Willink?

  No, seriously, fifteen minutes is, yeah, you probably felt like.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Jocko Willink?

  Outstanding.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  But it only helps with the that sleepy type because let's say I'm used to a certain amount of sleep. Let's say I get two and a half hours less sleep than I'm used to. It goes way beyond me feeling just sleepy tired. It's like physically tired.

• 1:24:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 1:24:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't have that issue.

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, you're different. So if I take a ten minute power nap when I am lacking two and a half hours of my quote unquote.

• 1:24:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it'll make up for it, right?

• 1:24:38Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no. It helps me when I get my normal sleep, give or take, but I've been doing a lot of stuff during the day. You know, and you're like, dang, I did a lot. My brain was kind of used a lot and dang, I have this, whatever I gotta do now. Then you take the ten fifteen minute nap, then it it brings you right back.

• 1:24:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  And it typically will not mess with my sleep.

• 1:25:01Jocko Willink?

  I wonder how much of this is is just you just not just powering through stuff?

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably all of it, but nonetheless, that's how it is for me for sure.

• 1:25:12Jocko Willink?

  It'd be interesting to at some point for you to experiment with like lack of sleep and sleep deprivation and see how well you can perform. Like I've been noticing that where if I don't get a lot of sleep, I can still perform really well.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:26Jocko Willink?

  At some physical activities and then after a few days, though, I do, I did feel like garbage.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:25:31Jocko Willink?

  And there'll be some physical activities that I'll feel weak at, but.

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and. You're right. Well, there the, I mean, as long as it's like one time or even two times or so if I film or something and let's say I film in the morning, but then I've been up, you know, working late the night before. When I go into film, I'm like charged up. I'm sure there's all kinds of factors in there. A lot of it's like adrenaline, not like it's like this huge adrenaline rush, but there's that little bit of adrenaline because of the task, you know? So that helps. And um, a lot of times, just like how you said, if I made the decision like, no, I'm not gonna miss this workout at all, under any circumstances, then I happen to get two and a half hours less sleep than I and I go in and I how you say power through it, you can, you can totally do it.

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  But I'm seeking comfort fully, yeah, for sure. But it still does help though.

• 1:26:22Jocko Willink?

  But to answer the question, yes, if you're tired, sleep.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:26:26Jocko Willink?

  If you need rest, rest.

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:28Jocko Willink?

  And don't try and overtrain yourself. You probably are overtraining and and just need some rest.

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:36Jocko Willink?

  Next.

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  Um. We don't have an author on this one, but um, what what are your thoughts on freakishly strong guys in VJJ? Who go too hard, get hurt, and paint it as if it's your fault?

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Cause this guy rolled with the maniac tonight.

• 1:26:56Jocko Willink?

  The guy that rolled with the maniac. So we've all been there when we're rolling with the maniac. Okay, so this is a this seems like a pretty straightforward question at first.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:06Jocko Willink?

  But then all of a sudden, it gets really complicated. It really does. Who is at fault here? Right? So you you roll with the guy, guy's super strong, you catch him in the submission, and guess what? He doesn't wanna tap. And so the next thing you know, there's a little pop, there's a little crack, whatever, and you got an injury and the big guy that was going all crazy is like, I can't believe you did this. So the question is, who's at fault? And there's actually two sides to that story in a lot of ways because In from one, in one way, the higher belt, right, or a more experienced guy should never really hurt a lower belt, right? I mean, if if I'm a black belt and I'm going against a purple belt,

• 1:27:51Jocko Willink?

  I really shouldn't hurt that person because if I do, I probably meant to do it. I mean, of course, there's, you know, mistakes happen and I'm not talking, I'm talking about submission, right? I'm not talking about, hey, I I I went over and it made you roll your ankle or you caught your wrist as you were falling out or something like that. Those are just incidents incidental, you know, things that happen in jujitsu, but,

• 1:28:15Jocko Willink?

  you know, so the so the higher belt generally shouldn't be like putting someone in a submission and hurting them because experienced guys in jujitsu, they know when the tension is there on the arm or the foot or the knee, they know that that tension means the next amount of pressure is going to take this beyond the limit of the joint and they're gonna, you're gonna have an injury. So either the big guy, he's going psycho and he's got a big ego and that's why he's not tapping. So, so that must be his fault, right? Well, at the same time, if someone doesn't tap and then you hurt them,

• 1:28:58Jocko Willink?

  well, that's kind of jacked up too, because you shouldn't be getting someone's uh, uh, foot and cranking it or getting their arm and cranking it when you know, I mean, maybe they couldn't tap, maybe their arm was stuck or whatever. Now all of a sudden you hurt them. So I I really do think it's both. I think both people are at fault.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:18Jocko Willink?

  And I think that part of the dual safety mechanisms is jujitsu in jujitsu is that there's two people that can control the situation.

• 1:29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:26Jocko Willink?

  The one that's getting submitted should tap and the one that's doing the submission should, you know, should know to stop before the injury occurs. Again, there's a, there's about a million little things that can happen where you get injured in jujitsu. There's arm locks that get thrown on and it's a little tweak and and that that stuff does happen, you know, but but when I look at Dean and I, Dean Lister, who's my main training partner, I've been training with for 20 years, we we've put, you know, thousands, literally thousands and thousands of submissions on each other and neither one of us has ever hurt the other one. And neither one of us had ever gotten hurt from a submission.

• 1:30:06Jocko Willink?

  And I'm talking thousands of submission, of course, most of those, you know, many of those, most of those are him submitting me. But, I mean, I've submitted him many, many times as well. And never have one of us got a submission on the other one and hurt the other person. And I can tell you, he's let go of hundreds of submissions on me. And I've let go on many submissions on him because I go, you know what? Oh, I've got this, he's, you know, he's not tapping for whatever reason, we go to the next move. Or he gets me in some weird position, he, you know, he's got it, but he lets go and goes to the next, next move. And what's really cool about this is what you end up with is you end up with ego free training.

• 1:30:51Jocko Willink?

  Because the truth of the matter is, I don't care if Dean taps me. And I don't care if I tap Dean, like, and he doesn't care if he taps me and he doesn't care if he gets the tap from me. So what we are able to do then is take all kinds of risks and do all kinds of crazy flow drills and, and where we're really trying to get each other, but at the same time, we really don't care. And, and, and the biggest dichotomy of that is, I'm sitting here saying, I don't want to get tapped. You know, I don't care if I get tapped by Dean, but it drives me crazy when I get tapped.

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:31:25Jocko Willink?

  By Dean, it drives me crazy. You can hear, you're like, sometimes in the gym, I'll be like, ah, you know, I get frustrated because I got tapped, but, but it, it's frustrating at myself and it's frustration in the game and whatever, but it's not, it's not my ego being like, I didn't want to tap, it's just a frustration that I made a mistake or whatever. So that allows you to, to really learn more. Now, all this being said, if someone's just a big maniac that goes crazy the whole time and, and they're going to hurt you, well, then you gotta make a decision that you're not going to roll with them.

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:31:59Jocko Willink?

  I mean, clearly, y- you want to not get hurt, you want to continue training. So someone that's a, that goes crazy and is super strong, you don't want to roll with them. That being said, and this is one of, this whole thing has been a non-answer, isn't it? That being said, because, but when you do that, you've got to understand that you're avoiding a real issue. You're avoiding a big, strong guy and how are you going to deal with that guy? And, and you will get better dealing with the big, strong guy. That's what makes you, that's one of the key things that gets you better at jujitsu. So.

• 1:32:32Jocko Willink?

  You know, you, you, you wanna train with the big, strong guys, but that being said, once again, is if you train with a big guy and you get hurt, then you can't train anymore.

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:41Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta be smart, you gotta use your judgment, um, you gotta check your ego, you gotta roll with people that have their egos checked. Um, and I think that's, that's the best way to answer that. It's a long answer. It's probably not the most complete answer. But there is no clear cut answer because there's a lot of little nuances to every little roll in the jujitsu.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems like there's so many exceptions to, to all these situations, even when you say a higher belt should never hurt a lower belt. Um, a lot of times that can just depend, like what if you're not that much higher and he's bigger than you and more athletic? And when you go for a submission, really controlled or whatever, he's spazzing the whole time.

• 1:33:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  So even in your transitions, he's spazzing, he's spazzing. So really the, the, the only way you can get that submission is if you go fast and hard to get it, slap it right on, right? And let's say you do it and

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  in the midst of your arm bar, you had, in the midst of you slapping it on, you can extend it too much, boom, you hurt him. You know, so it's really just the nature of the role and a lot of times it's nobody's fault. That's just how two guys going crazy. Who care about the submissions they're getting? It, it happens and.

• 1:33:57Jocko Willink?

  But, but, but yeah, you shouldn't care about so much about the submissions you're getting. That's the bottom line.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  Well, unless, and, and Greg, Greg brought this up where he said, you should care, you should care about the submissions you get and you should care about being able to resist submissions as well because it's kinda your response. And this was really, this would understand the context we're talking, we're talking about like me and, and him. And the guys that, that I, I was talking about, I was rolling with, he said, it's your job to give them an accurate look. If you're a big guy who's, you know, you come in and you're, you know, however big and athletic. You have to give him that look and you have a certain skill level in Jiu Jitsu, you gotta give him that look. So you provide an accurate experience of rolling with a guy who's, you know, 215 pounds, round belt. You have to give him that.

• 1:34:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's true. So he's saying you can't go easy.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  You can't go easy. You can't, um, he's not saying you can't. He's saying, but if you put on a submission and that guy's not tapping, he's just giving you an accurate look. That your submission isn't submitting him. You're not submitting him. You're not tapping him out. And if he's tough and likes the pain or is not scared of the pain, well, that's the look he's giving you. So you have to complete the move. If you're not gonna break his arm, if you have that mindset, that's good too. But then you have to work on other situations that you would do in that situation. So if you wanna just control the, the, the fight more or, or something like that, then that's what you gotta do. But it is his job to give you that look.

• 1:35:23Jocko Willink?

  That is something that Dean and I will do that I think is awesome is let's say Dean puts a heel hook on me and instead of cranking it and making me tap, he'll hold it. And when he holds it, it gives me an opportunity to work some kind of escape. Now, sometimes he'll hold it and he, while he's holding it, he's adjusting his legs and he's actually getting me deeper and deeper into it where I can't, can't get out anymore. And eventually I realize I can't move and tap, not because of the pressure, not because of the pain, because I realize it's, it's checkmate and the game over.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:58Jocko Willink?

  The same token is as he's holding it, if I can figure out, I have time to think and consider and go, oh, what if I put my foot here? What if I grab this arm here? What if I spin this way or that way? And all of a sudden a real escape opens up. But I had time to think about it. Well, maybe next time I do it, I don't have to think. And now we actually have figured out an escape from the position.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:17Jocko Willink?

  And, and or either I figured out an escape or maybe he figured out the way to finish it with 100% reliability.

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:25Jocko Willink?

  So we actually have advanced the, the, that's probably the original advancement in the leg lock game for, for Dean and me was, and really for, for Dean more than me was him holding a submission and not, and allowing me to try different things to escape. And shutting them down. And then eventually where I was like, okay, now I've got you in a position where there is no escape.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  Got you.

• 1:36:48Jocko Willink?

  And that's how things like we end up with like the four, four eleven and ultimate game over. All that stuff came from holding those positions. Because if he just locked him on and cranked it, well, then I tap and then we start again. But he didn't have to adjust anything.

• 1:37:00Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:37:00Jocko Willink?

  And now you start building technique on top of technique, on top of technique.

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  And I'm quoting this here. Please, can I have some advice with dealing? Or please, can I have some advice for dealing with poor leaders at work? They have little respect for and the question. As a subordinate. How do you handle a leader who leads from a place of ego?

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  And isn't transparent with information?

• 1:37:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so these were a couple of questions actually that I got and. I, I just kind of bunched them together because my answer is going to be very similar for each of them. And it's actually very similar to a situation that I'm dealing with right now, the guy that I'm helping out. And I wrote. Um, something to him recently. And what happened was he's in a situation where. Uh, a leader had come in that didn't have the knowledge inside the industry they were working in. So he came from another industry, got put into a leadership position. And that guy, that new leader was resisting change and not giving support. To the new procedures that the guy I was coaching was trying to implement. So.

• 1:38:19Jocko Willink?

  He was kind of, you know, at, at a loss for what to do. You know, you've got this new manager that's coming in, that's inexperienced. And the, and the guy I'm coaching obviously doesn't respect him because he doesn't have a lot of knowledge in this industry.

• 1:38:36Jocko Willink?

  And so here's the advice I gave him. I said, you need to set this up to make the new manager look good.

• 1:38:44Jocko Willink?

  Make some adjustments to the words you are choosing, the tact you are taking, and the focus you are using to ensure that your changes make him look good, not bad. Now, this is so counterintuitive for people. It's so counterintuitive because they get that person that's above them in the chain of command that doesn't know as much as them, that's not as smart as them. And what do they want to do? They want to bring them down. They want to prove to everybody that they're better. I'm better than that guy. I know more than that guy. I deserve that guy's job. That's what everybody's instinct is to do. And it's wrong. It's wrong.

• 1:39:20Jocko Willink?

  Somehow, let the ideas come from him, or make him the approver, or the driver of some of the aspects that he can handle. So I'm actually saying, go out of your way to make this easier for this guy.

• 1:39:35Jocko Willink?

  Make him look good. Give him credit. It's your ego that wants to pull him down. Put your ego in check. Help him without being condescending or acting like you know more than him. He shouldn't even know you are helping him. Have you ever been? This is so fun to do, is when, you know, Echo doesn't know this section of the equipment. So, I don't say, hey, since you don't know this, um, I'll teach it to you. Right? This condescending tone of, you know, but instead of like, hey, have you ever seen the way this one works? I know you, have you ever seen this specific equipment before? Because the way it works, it's a little bit different than, than some of the other ones, is you gotta do this, this, and this.

• 1:40:19Jocko Willink?

  And you can sit back and you can accept that knowledge, without feeling like you don't know it.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:40:24Jocko Willink?

  So I'm teaching you, but I'm doing it in a clandestine manner. And that's what we're trying to do, because we're trying to build, what we're trying to do, we're trying to build a relationship here. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to build a relationship. And if I go, since you don't know how to use this, I'll show you now, what does that do? Puts you on the defensive, makes you, um, uh, considered to me to be a threat. Now I'm threatening. And that's not good. He shouldn't even know you are helping him. Respect what he does and show him that you respect it. So, hey, you know, I know this is, you probably haven't been down in the weeds on this type of gear in a while, but hey, this is the way, you know what I'm saying? Like, you actually, I actually respect the fact that you're up top in charge, and I'm just a frontline guy, but here's how you do this if you ever had to.

• 1:41:09Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:41:10Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? Just downplay what he doesn't know and subtly help him to learn it. Right? You know, you probably would never have to do this. This, this new equipment over here, I mean, I know it's a little bit below your level. Here's how it works. If you ever needed it, boom. You know what I mean? Not like, you don't know how to do this.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  Right, I do, yeah.

• 1:41:31Jocko Willink?

  You don't want an adversarial relationship with this new leader. You want him to support and help you. He will do that if you are making him look good. This is so easy, man. This is so easy and so hard, because everybody's ego will get in the way. Everybody's ego will get in the way. Extreme ownership often requires covert and clandestine indirect actions. So all these things that I'm talking about, helping the guy without him knowing, um, uh, letting him take credit for ideas without him knowing.

• 1:42:13Jocko Willink?

  All these little aspects, they're indirect actions. They're not going head to head. It's like jujitsu. It's jujitsu all the time. Everything's jujitsu. You don't wanna, if you know I'm gonna do an arm bar, I'm not gonna get the arm bar, right? You're gonna defend that. So I have to go take indirect actions and set things up and take my time and be clandestine and covert. This is chess, not checkers. This is where you need to master your ability to influence, which as we talked about a couple podcasts ago, is actually manipulation.

• 1:42:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:42:47Jocko Willink?

  I'm manipulating this guy to think that he's got something over me. I'm inflating his ego. While I'm putting my ego in check, I'm making him feel like he's even better. And that makes him feel good. It makes him wanna support me, cuz I make him look good. This is, this is just basic. If you do this wrong, the new manager will resist you at every turn. If you do this right, he will be your biggest supporter. Now, this is the same thing with leaders that you quote unquote, "don't respect." First of all, there should be something that you respect about everybody. Everybody that you meet, you should have some kind of respect for them.

• 1:43:31Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, if you don't respect someone, what is making you not respect them? It's your ego. It's your ego that makes you not respect people. Cause you think, "Oh, I'm better than them. I should have their job. They don't know what they're talking about, and I do." That's all ego. So put your ego in check and just be like, "Okay, this person's above me. They seem really inexperienced, but what can I learn from them?" "How did they get there?" If they're so dumb and bad at this job, how come they outrank me? Let me learn something from them. Let me learn something from them. Put your ego in check. And this is the key point. And anytime I talk about quote unquote, "leading up the chain of command",

• 1:44:15Jocko Willink?

  I will talk about this, that no matter what boss I work for, and I work for every different kind of boss, egomaniacs, psychopaths, wonderful guys, intelligent guys, brilliant guys, tacticians. I worked for every different kind of boss and I always had the same relationship with all of them. That was my job was to build that relationship and that was a relationship of high trust. So they trusted me, they were gonna stay out of my way and let me do what I wanted. And that's how you win. Which by the way, when you win, they should never know you win. They shouldn't even know that there was a competition happening. And that way you can do what you want. And so that is how you deal with people above you in the chain of command

• 1:44:56Jocko Willink?

  that you have little respect for, or that lead from a place of ego. You build a relationship with them. You don't go head to head with them. You're not gonna win going head to head with your boss. They're your boss. They have rank on you. If they're an egomaniac, they're gonna use that rank.

• 1:45:14Jocko Willink?

  If there's someone that you don't respect, you gotta build a relationship with them. If there's someone that's an egomaniac, you gotta build a really, regardless of the situation, the, the, the solution is the same. Build the relationship of trust. Help them. Build them up. Take a backseat. Let them get credit. It's all those things. And once you do that, you're gonna have, you're gonna have much better results than if you try and bang heads with them. Overcome them. Defeat them. Have an antagonistic relationship with them. It's never gonna work.

• 1:45:44Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:45:45Jocko Willink?

  So, play the game.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  You've been lifting heavy weights for many years.

• 1:45:55Jocko Willink?

  Indeed, sir.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  Now that you're in your mid 40s, are you still seeing gains in strength and muscle?

• 1:46:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, yes, I am. And as a matter of fact, I think one of the key, uh, kind of measurements of this is only a couple of years ago, I set my, my personal all-time record for pull-ups.

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:46:18Jocko Willink?

  A couple of years ago.

• 1:46:19Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:46:19Jocko Willink?

  Maybe a year or two ago.

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  How many did you do?

• 1:46:23Jocko Willink?

  Sixty-three? Yeah. So, uh, but that being said, obviously, y- you know, you're gonna go up and down. So, so, and you don't, you can't continually set records on a daily basis. So, so what do I do and what's driving me? So what I do is I'm constantly kind of going from goal to goal to goal. And I get on a path where I'm trying to do something.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:46:49Jocko Willink?

  And I'll get into something. I'll read an article or I'll see something and I'll go, that looks cool.

• 1:46:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:46:55Jocko Willink?

  That looks hard. That looks like a challenge. Or I don't think I could do that, but I'm gonna try.

• 1:47:00Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:47:00Jocko Willink?

  You know, so I'll say, okay, you know what? Man, I haven't deadlift heavy in a while. I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get my, I'm gonna get my 500-pound deadlift on. And so I'll just start focusing on the deadlift. And that's, I mean, I'm deadlifting every day, but I'm, I'm dead, starting to go heavy.

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:47:14Jocko Willink?

  Um, really working it. I'm starting to, all my, you know, uh, maybe I'll be deadlifting a little more often. I'll throw it in another day. And I'll, maybe I'll stop a little bit of that sprinting or a little bit of that high rep stuff.

• 1:47:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:47:31Jocko Willink?

  And I just start, you know, spending more time deadlifting. And after a while, you know, maybe a month goes by, month and a half, and I get where I wanna be.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:47:40Jocko Willink?

  Now... So I get to, I, let's say I get to 500. Get my 500 deadlift, feeling good. Now, I could say, you know what? I want to get 525, right? I could say that.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:52Jocko Willink?

  But if you think about what I'm gonna have to do, and anybody that lifts weights at all, knows that the difference, like, the higher you go, the, the harder it is to increase a little bit more. And, and really, what, what are you getting out of that? Like, like, in the real world, big picture, what are you getting out of an extra? You got 500 pounds, you can deadlift, what are you getting out of an extra 25 pounds?

• 1:48:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:15Jocko Willink?

  The answer is, the answer is not a lot. You know, the answer is, no one will ever know the difference between you at 500 pound deadlift and you at 520 or 525. No one's gonna know that difference. When they roll with you, when they look at you, they're not gonna know. And you will have to sacrifice other parts of your physicality in order to get there. You're gonna be slower at sprinting. You're probably gonna be heavier, so you're gonna be able to do less calisthenic workouts, or less, less repetitions in calisthenics. So, I'll get there. And then, once I get to like, that good goal that I'm looking for, then I'll just shift to another goal. And I'll start looking at something else. And,

• 1:48:59Jocko Willink?

  you know, whatever it's gonna be, a, a, a certain number of, you know, a 20 rep squat routine at a certain weight, I'll start heading towards that, or a certain number of muscle ups in a certain number of time, or whatever the case may be, I'll do that, and

• 1:49:14Jocko Willink?

  that's what I've been doing for, for many, many years. And I never go so far down one path and become so specific that it takes away a bunch from the other areas. Because, at the end of the day, you know, I want to be, uh, well-rounded.

• 1:49:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's,

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  that's a mature, I would say that's a mature.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  Pursuit right there, because when you're young, you wanna,

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  I mean, not you like everyone, but I'm just saying it's pretty general, pretty typical that when you're young, you wanna get, you set these now I wanna bench the most I can possibly bench and yoga or or the deadlift, for example, if you get 500 when you're younger, you wanna get that 2525.

• 1:49:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  You wanna get that 535, you wanna get that 555. Um, and you don't really see it, the big picture, you don't see that, that not only, yeah, you you're gonna have to spend so much effort just to get that little gains, which no one's gonna be able to tell unless you're in a competition or something like that, it's different. But not only are you spending that much time, you're avoiding time you could be spending developing other aspects of your fitness, if you're talking about working out. So I I fell into this, yeah, I fell into the same thing about a year ago, when I was never really into like conditioning in the gym. You know, like muscular conditioning and metabolic conditioning, never into that. Um, but once you do that, you find that dang, there's so many gains I can achieve doing this type of stuff.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  When, you know, you you I achieved the gains when I was young, lifting weights and getting this big bench or or big muscles or whatever. But in, when you're talking about like your physical body and fitness and stuff, um, gains in strength and muscle, there's almost endless ways you can develop strength and muscle.

• 1:51:04Jocko Willink?

  Or physical conditioning, you mean, physical conditioning as a whole.

• 1:51:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so and and strength is, I mean, I know strength is defined, but really, when you kind of talk about strength, that's like a, that's a general term. Like, you can even say his distance running is strong, like he has a strong aspect of his game or whatever.

• 1:51:21Jocko Willink?

  That's not true.

• 1:51:23Jocko Willink?

  Distance runners are usually not strong.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, but we'll just say his game is strong.

• 1:51:28Jocko Willink?

  Just say his conditioning.

• 1:51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's good or whatever.

• 1:51:30Jocko Willink?

  Is, I guess, what you'd call it.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  But either way, gains just in general, you know, um, and the more. Elements of physicality you have developed, the better off you're gonna be.

• 1:51:42Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 1:51:43Speaker 01

  So yeah, if you, if you, so a lot of times when, when they talk about gains in strength and muscle, that means the numbers, yeah, five hundred and now I'm getting five, you know, I'm mid forties now. Am I still getting gains in strength and muscle, but there's so many other gains to get in all kinds of different physical activities. And like I said, that's the mature way to pursue it, is to pursue all those things and set a cool goal. And when the diminishing returns start to come about, then you shift your goal again. And then at the end of the day, you're gonna, not at the day, but the big picture, what you're gonna end up with is this fully developed physicality. That applies to way more things in life than they would if you're just trying to get that bench up or that deadlift up.

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  So yeah, your pursuit, that's, that's, that's a very eye opening thing. I think I fell into it, but the way you put it, I think that's very important, especially when you start to get older. You know, when functioning overall is more important.

• 1:52:43Jocko Willink?

  This is not something that I just started doing when I got older. When we were young in the SEAL Teams, we would do this. We'd be like, alright, we're gonna get to bench three hundred. Once we were benching three hundred, we'd say, alright, we're gonna go and we'd be doing things like, hey, we're gonna do the six mile run an X amount of time. And then we get that, we'd say, oh, we're gonna do fifty pull ups. And then we get to that. So we've been doing this for a while.

• 1:53:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and I think that, yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of people that actually conduct themselves like that. Like I know Tim Ferriss kinda does that and just even more so than just in exercise, just in a lot of, in life, you know, he'll do that. He'll set a goal, he'll experience it or, and then he'll shift it and do something else. And there's guys who they kinda devote their life as almost like a hobby, but just a part of their life. Well, they'll, every year, they'll take on something new. They'll be like, I'm gonna learn the guitar, just this whole year. And then next year it's something else or whatever. Yeah. And more so than, I'm not necessarily saying that I think it comes with age. I'm just saying that's a mature way to, to, to get gains.

• 1:53:41Jocko Willink?

  It's a smart way to run your life.

• 1:53:43Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, very smart.

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  So, next question. Okay, you talk about people becoming aware as a leader.

• 1:53:56Speaker 01

  When did you become aware as a leader?

• 1:54:00Jocko Willink?

  I think I've actually told this story before, but it was, it is pretty clear memory to me. I was doing, I was a young SEAL, probably in my first or second, it was actually my second platoon, and we were taking down an oil rig.

• 1:54:16Jocko Willink?

  And oil rigs are very complicated, there's a lot of, there's different levels to the oil rigs, and there, you can see through all the levels because the floors are just made of grates, basically. So you can see multiple different directions, 360 degrees, and there's all kinds of gear and, and equipment all over the, the different levels. So it's, it can be pretty complicated. Anyways, we came up onto this level, so I'm in a SEAL platoon and we got 15 or 20 guys, and we come up onto this level and everyone, everyone spreads out in a line, and we're looking at the level and there's all kinds of complex stuff in front of us. And we're trying to clear it, you know, you're looking for bad guys or whatever. Again, this is just training. And as we're looking, everyone kind of freezes because there's so much complexity out there

• 1:55:01Jocko Willink?

  that everyone just kind of freezes.

• 1:55:03Speaker 01

  Just because of the physical layout?

• 1:55:05Jocko Willink?

  Just the physical layout. It's just confusing and it looked, you know, confusing.

• 1:55:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:10Jocko Willink?

  And complex. And so as I stood there, everyone froze.

• 1:55:16Jocko Willink?

  And as everyone froze, I, I basically came offline and put my gun to high port, and I said, "Hold left, move right." So, so I was able to step back, look around, assess a good solution for the situation. And once I assessed the situation, I just called out what to do. I said, "Hold left, move right," which basically means the guys on the left, stay where you're at. The guys on the right, we're going to move and, and do the clearance. And the guys did it. And I realized right then, you know, like, wow, I can, I can kind of... I think I got this. I think I got this. Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't, then I didn't all of a sudden start trying to take charge of everything because then the SEAL teams, you can't just as a new guy, step up and start taking charge of stuff. You know, you'll get put in your place.

• 1:55:59Jocko Willink?

  But I, I had that vision and the vision that I actually had was that vision of detachment, the vision of coming offline and stepping out of the tactical situation and realizing that when you step back, you can see everything. And that was like a miracle to me. And once I realized that, it was always easy for me to do that from then on. And not only that, but it, it became easy for me to do that in regular life and in other things that I'm doing and having conversations and dealing with relationships and making sure I'm not getting dragged down into these crazy relationship situations or, you know, business situations where there's a lot of emotion going on and saying, you

• 1:56:40Jocko Willink?

  know what, I just gotta, just gotta step back and, and observe this from a better vantage point that's more

• 1:56:49Jocko Willink?

  unbiased.

• 1:56:52Speaker 01

  Next question. What if you don't have a good mentor?

• 1:56:59Jocko Willink?

  So we, we talk about mentorship and how mentorship is important and it's good to have mentors and I would agree, it's good to have mentors if you can find them and you can't always find them. And so I think this individual that asked this question, what if you don't have a good mentor? What do you do?

• 1:57:15Jocko Willink?

  And

• 1:57:17Jocko Willink?

  for me, it actually brings back my memories of when I first got to the SEAL teams. Cause when I first got to the SEAL teams, it was actually pretty hard to find a good mentor that I, I looked at and said, you know, I want to be like that person and they were going to invest in you. So it was one thing to say, hey, that guy looks like a badass and I want to be like them. That was easy. But to have someone that says, hey, listen, new guy, I'm going to invest in you and, and you know, make you into a great SEAL, that, that really wasn't happening. Yeah.

• 1:57:53Jocko Willink?

  You know, we had, first of all, the reason, some of the reasons it wasn't happening was because there was guys that were, you were on constant going on deployments. And so it wasn't like someone would grab you and pull you aside and um when you got in a SEAL platoon, it became a little bit easier and you'd usually find somebody that's gonna at least take some interest in you. But the, like the Vietnam guys, they were around, but they were, you know, instructors and or working in the training department. So they didn't, you weren't gonna see them on a daily basis. They weren't gonna mentor you. They weren't gonna be there for you. And and I'll tell you, not only that, but the guys that I went through training with and and the guys that I ended up going to my first team with.

• 1:58:34Jocko Willink?

  We we actually wanted to be more hardcore than what we saw. You know, we actually wanted to take it to another level. And so to be honest with you, we kind of mentored ourselves. And we set the standard of what we thought a SEAL was supposed to be like in our minds and we started to act upon it. I mean, I I remember we were doing the the runs and the swims at the SEAL team with our full gear. So like a the guys at the team would be wearing, you know, sneakers and a pair of shorts.

• 1:59:14Jocko Willink?

  And we'd be wearing boots and a rucksack and they would be looking at us like we were kind of crazy, you know? But that was us kind of mentoring ourselves. And and we did that with everything, you know, we were spending time at the team on the weekends. We would inspect each other's gear over and over again and modify it, make sure it's squared away. And we were constantly trying to learn and teach each other different things. I remember trying to teach each other about the different radios that they had and different kind of knots that we had learned. And so we we were always just kind of mentoring ourselves.

• 1:59:48Jocko Willink?

  And so I think, you know, that's, that's the point is that if you can't find a good mentor, then you gotta become your own. And I think with, with the way the world is now, it's actually relatively easy to do that. I mean, first of all, you can, you can research what you wanna be like. You can figure out who you wanna be like, or maybe it's not who you wanna be like, but what aspects of other humans you can take and bring on board. Now, that is something I did with all kinds of seals. There was all kinds of badass seals that I said, "That guy's really good at this and I'm gonna try and get good at that too." Or "The way that guy acts in this situation is awesome and I'm gonna try and act that way too."

• 2:00:30Jocko Willink?

  So, it wasn't like I was trying to be like them, but I was at least trying to emulate the best aspects of these different individuals. And I think there's a lot of examples out there today where you can do that. You can look for people to emulate. You can, I mean, on YouTube, you can basically find out how to do anything. Um, in fact, you need to be careful that you're, that you sanity check some of the people that you look into on, on that. But I think the key, really, to mentoring yourself, it goes back to what we just talked about with detachment. Because you need to, if you wanna mentor yourself, you gotta be able to look at yourself and you gotta be able to look at yourself in an honest way.

• 2:01:12Jocko Willink?

  And that means you need to be able to detach yourself and observe yourself from that distant place. By distant, I mean three feet. I mean, just from just outside of inside your own brain. And if you detach, you can see where you're making mistakes.

• 2:01:29Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:01:30Jocko Willink?

  And you can see what the long-range you that you're striving for, you can see what it's gonna take to get there. And I think that's, that's what, that's what I've done when I haven't had a mentor, is I've figured out a way to mentor myself. And I think the goals that you set and the path that you draw out, and you detach yourself so that you can give yourself an honest observation of who you are and how you're doing, and I think that is a, a good way to handle it.

• 2:02:10Speaker 01

  Alright, um, I think we'll do one more, right? Last question.

• 2:02:17Speaker 01

  Uh, any thoughts on how to crank up the discipline? And, um, where does discipline even come from?

• 2:02:28Jocko Willink?

  Where does discipline come from?

• 2:02:36Jocko Willink?

  Just a classic question, and whoever asked that question, I would say, "Thank you for asking that question." Where does discipline come from? And, and the answer is actually pretty simple. And pretty obvious. Discipline comes from within.

• 2:02:58Jocko Willink?

  It's an internal force. Now sure, of course, you can have discipline imposed on you by some person, like, like a drill instructor, or like that self-help guru on TV, but the reality is, that type of discipline isn't the real type of discipline that we're talking about. That discipline isn't as strong, it won't survive that imposed discipline that someone else is putting on you.

• 2:03:33Jocko Willink?

  What you're looking for, and what you're talking about, and what you need is self-discipline.

• 2:03:42Jocko Willink?

  Now, self-discipline, as the very term implies, comes from the self. It comes from you.

• 2:03:51Jocko Willink?

  It comes from when you make a decision

• 2:03:56Jocko Willink?

  to be disciplined.

• 2:03:59Jocko Willink?

  When you make a decision to be better. When you make a decision to do more, and to be more.

• 2:04:10Jocko Willink?

  Self-discipline comes when you decide that you're gonna make a mark on the world.

• 2:04:20Jocko Willink?

  And if you think that you're not disciplined, or you can't be disciplined, it's because you haven't yet decided to be disciplined. It's because you haven't created that discipline yet. It's because you haven't become that discipline yet.

• 2:04:51Jocko Willink?

  So where does discipline come from?

• 2:04:54Jocko Willink?

  It comes from you.

• 2:04:59Jocko Willink?

  So make the decision, make the commitment, become the discipline.

• 2:05:09Jocko Willink?

  The discipline, the root quality that will improve every aspect of your life.

• 2:05:17Jocko Willink?

  And it'll make you better, and stronger, and smarter, and faster, and healthier.

• 2:05:25Jocko Willink?

  And most importantly,

• 2:05:30Jocko Willink?

  it'll make you free.

• 2:05:38Jocko Willink?

  And that's pretty much all I've got for tonight.

• 2:05:44Jocko Willink?

  And if you wanna continue this conversation, or engage in a conversation, you can find us on Twitter.

• 2:05:54Jocko Willink?

  I'm @JacoWillink, and Echo is @EchoCharles. So thanks to everybody.

• 2:06:05Jocko Willink?

  Thank you for listening, thank you for subscribing, thank you for leaving reviews, thanks for spreading the word.

• 2:06:15Jocko Willink?

  And most of all, thanks for getting after it.

• 2:06:23Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko and Echo, and until next time, out.