66: Gen. HR McMaster's Tactical/Strategic Lessons Learned from his War Fighting Experience. Liars, Defending Bad Leaders, Jiu Jitsu Strength, & Dealing w/ The Grind

0:00:00 - Opening/Gen. HR McMaster's account in the First Gulf War. The Battle of 73 Easting. Tactical & Strategic lessons learned. 0:57:23 - The 4 Fallacies of Warfare. 1:24:50 - QUESTIONS and ANSWERS from the interwebs. 1:24:56 - Should you defend bad leaders to your men? 1:40:05 - How to avoid taking things too personally. 1:51:51 - Using too much strength in Jiu Jitsu. Training for better technique. 2:01:54 - What to do when someone lies, betrays trust, or "destroys" you. 2:15:12 - Direct Attack and Indirect Attack strategies. 2:17:21 - Dealing with the Daily Grind Struggle. 2:27:49 - Suggestions on how to actually employ Extreme Ownership and Discipline. 2:30:42 - Support, Cool Onnit http://www.onnit.com/jocko, Amazon https://www.amazon.com/?&tag=jocko20-20&camp=216797&creative=498533&linkCode=ur1&adid=1DKYGWXQBV0KNEZ3MZZX&, JockoStore http://www.jockostore.com stuff, with Jocko White Tea http://www.jockotea.com and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes) https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/psychological-warfare/id1183222322. Extreme Ownership (book) http://amzn.to/2jonHTx, (Jocko's Kids' Book) Way of the Warrior Kid http://amzn.to/2n9k6I9, and The Muster002 http://www.extremeownership.com 2:58:04 - Closing Gratitude Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 66 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  At 3:25, the troop once again received orders to attack. I gave an order full of enthusiasm. I told the troop, "We attack in five minutes to the 70 easting." This is the movement we have all awaited.

• 0:29Jocko Willink?

  Although we knew the general locations of large enemy units, we had not received detailed intelligence about the enemy we were to encounter. I had a feeling however, that this time, we would meet the enemy. Lieutenant Gautier, known for his deadpan sense of humor, asked on the radio, "What kind of contact can we expect?" I replied, "Enemy contact." He said, "Roger, that's the best kind." And the troop rolled forward through the blowing sand.

• 1:03Jocko Willink?

  And that's a, that's a little excerpt from a personal account, from a guy by the name of H.R. McMaster. You may have heard about recently, coming into a higher profile job in the current administration. But he's a very interesting guy. And I wanted to talk a little bit about his experience and some of the things that he said about, that's the way he sees things. And so he was in this big battle in the first Gulf War, as a captain. So, you know, in charge of a group of 140 guys. And he fought in this battle called the Battle of 73 Easting.

• 1:47Jocko Willink?

  And I'm gonna go to a little excerpt from Wikipedia that sort of gives you the broad. ID of what was going on. The Battle of 73 Easting refers narrowly to the violent armored combat action that took place in the final hours of 2nd ACR's covering force operation in the zone of 2nd Squadron and in the northern third of the 3rd Squadron zone. In the battle, 4 of 2nd ACR's armored cavalry troops, Troops E, G, and I, with Troop K contributing to I troops' fight, totaling about 36 M1A1 tanks, defeated 2 enemy brigades, the 18th Brigade and later in the day, the 9th Armored Brigade.

• 2:32Jocko Willink?

  So, it's interesting. You have a legitimate tank battle, right? Like a WWII-style tank battle that took place in the First Gulf War, and that's what this is talking about. And McMaster, at the time, McMaster's was in charge of Eagle Troop.

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  So, they got some good details in here, and again, this is very simple, one of the best, clearest descriptions of what happened. It was actually on Wikipedia, so I just pulled some of that. So, here we go. A little bit of what Eagle Troop did. "At 4:10 PM, Eagle Troop received fire from an Iraqi infantry position in a cluster of buildings. Eagle Troop Abrams and Bradley's returned fire, silenced the Iraqi guns, took prisoners, and continued east with the 2 tank platoons leading. The 9 M1A1 tanks of Eagle Troop destroyed 28 Iraqi tanks, 16 personnel carriers,

• 3:30Jocko Willink?

  and 30 trucks in 23 minutes with no American losses."

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  So, you've got 9 tanks against 28 tanks and 16 personnel carriers and 30 trucks, and the 9 tanks win. That's just domination, battlefield domination. And there's a bunch of technical reasons, as well as leadership reasons that we're gonna get into.

• 3:57Jocko Willink?

  Next. "At about 4:20, Eagle crested a low rise and surprised an Iraqi tank company set up in a reverse slope defense on the 70 Easting. Captain McMaster, leading the attack, immediately engaged that position, destroying the first of the 8 enemy tanks to his front. His 2 tank platoons finished the rest."

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  They're just hammering, hammering these Iraqi tanks. Three kilometers to the east, McMaster could see T-72s, those are the tanks that the Iraqis are using, in prepared positions. Continuing his attack past the limit, the 70 limit of advance. So, the way maps are set up, there's there's coordinates on them, and each one of the coordinates has, each one of the the lines that runs north-south has a, has a label to it, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73. So he had been told not to go past the 70 easting, that's what they're saying. That was his limit of advance. These are all really common military terms. They say, hey, you're not allowed to go past this road, or this, this coordinate on a map, and they just call that a limit of advance. So, he was supposed to stop at 70.

• 5:06Jocko Willink?

  He has to get after it a little bit harder. Continuing his attack past the 70 limit of advance, he fought his way through an infantry defensive position and onto high ground along the 74 easting. And this is going, now that I mixed this in here with the Wikipedia, which was a very simple explanation of what happened. Now going into a personal account that McMaster wrote himself when he was a young captain.

• 5:32Jocko Willink?

  So here we go, from Captain McMaster's account. Lieutenant Gifford called me from the command post to remind me that the 70 easting was the limit of advance. We were already beyond it. I told him, I can't stop. We're still in contact. Tell them I'm sorry. Gifford explained the situation to the squadron headquarters on the radio. Major McGregor was forward with our tanks and fully understood the situation. If we had stopped, we would have forfeited the shock effect we had inflicted on the enemy. Had we halted, we would have given the enemy farther to the east an opportunity to organize an effort against us while we presented them with stationary targets. We had the advantage and had to finish the battle rapidly.

• 6:14Jocko Willink?

  We would press the attack until all of the enemy were destroyed, or until they surrendered. So that's a pretty bold move to just push and it's also a risky move and I'll tell you the biggest risk of it is having a blue on blue situation unfold. I think it makes it a lot easier the fact that this was daytime and that that just makes it everything so much more clear in the daytime. But you could obviously make some mistakes if you're if you're pushing that limited advance is there for a reason and you might have some other group that's controlling that sector. You also might have air power that the air power might be told, hey, if you see any vehicles moving past 70 easting, you can start dropping bombs. So you do have to be very cautious when you make an aggressive move like this.

• 6:56Jocko Willink?

  And I bet McMaster himself would go back and say, you know what I should have done is I should have given him a heads up, hey, I'm pushing past 70 easting. Please, you know, let everybody know. So now this is going back to the to the Wiki account here. There he encountered and destroyed another tank unit of 18 T 72s. In that action, the Iraqis stood their ground and attempted to maneuver against the troop. This was the first determined defense the regiment had encountered in its three days of operations. Still, the Iraqi troop had been surprised because of the inclement weather and were quickly destroyed by the better trained and better equipped American troops. After defeating that force, McMaster sent a scout platoon of two Bradleys north to regain contact with troop G.

• 7:41Jocko Willink?

  In doing that, the scout platoon encountered another Iraqi tank position of 13 T 72s, which they destroyed with tow missiles. So as these guys are just everywhere they they find these these these Iraqi tanks, they're just crushing them. And this is going back to McMaster's account again. I jumped on top of my tank to give the crew room to cross load ammunition while I monitored the radio. I surveyed the fires which the which surrounded the troop. It seemed as if the action had only lasted seconds. I felt no significant emotion during the battle. I think I had simply been too busy. I realized that I had not eaten all day.

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  I turned to an MRE, packaged, and devoured a dinner of cold potatoes and ham. I gulped down some water and the quick infusion seemed to slow the flow of adrenaline.

• 8:38Jocko Willink?

  So I thought that was interesting. He was just doing his job, you know, he wasn't getting emotional and just getting it done. And then the ceasefire comes the next day. And that's it. The war's over. Like, I mean, the war was 72 hours and the war's over. And so he kind of talks about what he was thinking here, once they hear the ceasefire. Back to McMaster's account. Eagle troop had taken no casualties. I and other soldiers offered prayers of thanks to God. We did not gloat over our victory. We'd simply done our part in liberating Kuwait from the treachery and inhumanity of Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard henchmen. We surprised the enemy on the 26th of February.

• 9:24Jocko Willink?

  That surprise and the bold action and teamwork of the troop soldiers contributed to the rout that is now known as the Battle of 73 Easting. In general, the Iraqis were unprepared for the United States Army. Americans are better trained and equipped. The true decisive factor, however, was the American soldier. He is the best at what he does and absolutely dedicated to serving his country. Our soldiers were aggressive in battle, yet demonstrated great discipline and compassion for their enemy. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to serve with them in this action. Captain H R McMaster, E Troop 22 ACR.

• 10:12Jocko Willink?

  So, and I didn't go into it too much of, I didn't go into it at all, but they took a lot of prisoners as well. They weren't just killing everyone. There was a lot of people that were surrendering, a lot of Iraqi soldiers that were surrendering, and they were doing their best to take care of those guys. And there were also some that pretended to surrender and then attacked. So they had a little bit of both. And they, as McMaster said, they showed great discipline and compassion for the enemy. Now, I didn't, you can, you can go online and you can read the full account of what this whole battle felt like, but He, he recently wrote, so now he's a lieutenant, he was a captain at the time, an O3, and now he's a lieutenant general, a three-star.

• 10:54Jocko Willink?

  And there's a, a website called thestrategybridge.org. And there's an article there, which is written by McMaster. And he goes through the lessons that he learned in that battle. And the, the, the article is called something along the lines of, hey, guidance for small unit leaders. So I thought there was some, some good, solid lessons learned that he brought back. So I'm gonna go, go through them. Number one, lead from the front. Leaders must be forward to gain a clear picture and make decisions.

• 11:38Jocko Willink?

  As Sergeant Harris engaged with 25mm, Lieutenant Gautier moved forward to assess and further develop the situation. So, so to explain that, you've got a sergeant that's like engaging the enemy, and then the lieutenant, he doesn't just sit there. He goes forward to find out what's going on and assess what's happening. So as a leader, when your troops are getting busy doing the work, what can you do? Don't get, don't get target fixated on your own guys and the work that they're doing. Look around, go forward, move to a different position where you can see more. Back to the book. Gautier fired a tow missile into the center of the enemy position in the village to orient our tanks.

• 12:18Jocko Willink?

  After our gunner, Staff Sergeant Craig Koch fired a subsequent tank round to mark center. All nine tanks fired high explosive rounds into the village simultaneously to suppress the enemy position. Despite the secondary explosions in the village to its south, 1st Platoon maintained its primary observation to the east. So, he's basically marking the position. Lieutenant Gautier basically marks the position.

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  So not only did he move and observe what was happening, then he's directing everyone else once, once he does that. So it's a really simple comment. You hear it all the time. Lead from the front. Now, can you get too far forward? Yes, you absolutely can. If you're, if you're the guy that's actually engaging the enemy and you're having to, you know, either with your weapon in a tank or your weapon, your personal weapon on your rifle, and you're the leader and you're actually shooting bad guys, well, then you got some issues because you need to be looking around. You need to be seeing what the next move is going to be. So lead from the front, but always the dichotomy is there. Don't go so far forward that you lose the ability to look around and observe what's, what's happening. Number two, shoot first.

• 13:31Jocko Willink?

  If you know where friendly forces are, and there is not a danger of civilian casualties, do not hesitate to shoot or conduct reconnaissance by fire. The side that shoots first has a tremendous advantage. Staff Sergeant David Lawrence was the commander of First Platoon's Northern Most Bradley. When his gunner Sergeant Bradley Feltman said, "Hey, I've got a hotspot out there. I'm not sure what it is." Lawrence responded, "Put a toe in it. See what it is." A toe is a toe missile. Lawrence identified the hotspot as a T-72 as the turret was ripped from its hull in the ensuing explosion. Our troop's experience was consistent with Erwin Rommel's observation in his World War I book Infantry Attacks. And this is Rommel talking.

• 14:16Jocko Willink?

  "I have found again and again in encounter actions, in encounter actions, the day goes to the side that is first to plaster its opponents with fire." Shoot first. And how do I translate that? Real simple. Be aggressive. Now, he points out, Very clearly here, you know, where there's where you know where friendly forces are. Yeah. Right? You know where friendly forces are because obviously that can go sideways. And by the way, when he pushed past his limit of advance now also no one knew where he was. So he needed to be careful in that situation. But that that aggressive, being aggressive with fire is something you have to do.

• 15:00Jocko Willink?

  And and you can see like they saw a hotspot out there on their thermal. I don't know what this is. Yeah, put a tone in it. Which we we know it's not good, guys. Okay, blast it.

• 15:10Jocko Willink?

  We had a, I'd been in Baghdad on my first deployment for like a couple of days. And we went out on a on an operation and anyways, when we were coming back, we got ambushed. And it wasn't a big deal, but like, you know, we received fire and so we returned fire. And and basically, we returned fire heavily and and we were getting after it. This is when we didn't have any armor on our Humvees. They were just they were just open. They didn't have doors. So we didn't have armored Humvees. Not many people did in Iraq at that time in 2003. So what we had done is we had taken the doors completely off and then we'd taken our seats and turned them so they faced outwards.

• 15:54Jocko Willink?

  So we and we we'd have our feet like hanging out of the Humvee or maybe sitting on these these big rails that we'd built along the side. And so we'd be facing out. It was you were in a position, you were basically in a position to shoot at all times. And because the way a Humvee is set up with doors on either side and then people in the back, you had 360 degrees of of visibility and of fields of fire coming out of every Humvee. And so when we got, we were driving, we were on the, we had just done a little operation. We were coming back and as we were coming back, we started taking fire. And so we just returned fire and it was a massive return of fire. Like I think the enemy was pretty overwhelmed with it.

• 16:36Jocko Willink?

  And we got back and everyone was kind of like, well, we kind of, we kind of laid it down. We went through a lot of rounds in a very short period of time. And the reason I'm saying this story is because that was my platoon. And so we get back and and we're kind of debriefing. And then the next day. We're going out on another operation and I don't know if this story is going to make any sense, but the next day we're going out on another operation and one of my bros, who wasn't, who is my senior enlisted advisor at the time, but he wasn't on that mission that we just did. And he's, he goes, listen, if you guys take contact, you need to shoot back. You can't be afraid to fire. And I made some combat like, don't worry, we'll be good to go. No one here is afraid to shoot.

• 17:20Jocko Willink?

  And then everyone laughed because they knew that we put down a lot of lead. If you want, if you want to trade bullets with us, we'll play that game. We don't mind trading some bullets. So the same thing though, if you start feeling like you're going to get contacted and that's another thing they used to teach us, you know, when you're in a firefight, where do you think the enemy might be? And we heard this a lot, the Korean Marines, we're talking, the Marines, US Marines that were in Korea, we're talking about that, hey, you're going to put fire down where we think the enemy might be. Cause that's where, you know, you're looking at a, an area and there's a, a good covered position. There's a bad guy's probably going to be there, put fire on him. Shoot first. Lesson number two from General McMaster. All right. Number three.

• 18:04Jocko Willink?

  Fight through the fog of battle. Be prepared for confusion and concurrent activity. As we suppressed enemy positions in the village while Lawrence was launching a missile, the troop received permission to advance to the 70 easting. I instructed first platoon to resume, to resume movement to the east. Lieutenant Pescheck did not respond immediately because Lawrence was reporting on the platoon radio net. Contact, contact, east, tank. Simple orders and complete reports are essential to maintaining common understanding in battle. So there's another example of got to keep things simple.

• 18:46Jocko Willink?

  And he's specifically talking about how you communicate with other people on the radio. That's what he's talking about. You have to communicate simply and clearly in order for people to understand what's happening. That can mean if you give, try, a lot of times you see this, people try and give too much detail. Right, listen to this. Contact, contact, east, tank. That's it. Where's the contact? It's to the east. What is it? It's a tank. That's it. That's what we need to know. Now, everybody knows what's going on. If you said, "Hey, I've got a contact. He's about 480 meters. It is a T-72 tank. It's moving in an eastward..." No, we don't care about any of that right now. We don't care about any of that. Just tell us what is happening.

• 19:30Jocko Willink?

  And that's one of the things that can help you fight through the fog of battle. Now, that contact call is actually a standard operating procedure, I'm assuming, which is, because we would do this in the SEAL teams, you'd give what type of contact it is, what direction, or sorry, what bearing and what distance. So you'd say, "Machine gun fire, 150 meters, 4 o'clock." And now, everybody gets a very quick read of what's happening, because you can't, not everyone's going to see where the firing came from. So even having a standard operating procedure to keep your verbiage limited is important. There's calls, everything we do in the SEAL teams basically has a very simple call that you can make,

• 20:12Jocko Willink?

  and it's broken down into like three words. Contact front, online. You know, that's it. Everyone knows what to do. Every SEAL, you tell them contact front, online, they know what to do.

• 20:27Jocko Willink?

  Number four.

• 20:29Jocko Willink?

  Follow your instincts and intuition. As Sergeant Feltman launched the tow missile, I decided to go to a tank's lead formation and instructed green and white, the tank platoons, to follow my move. First platoon pulled in behind as the tank wedge moved forward and covered the tank's rear. Third platoon retained responsibility for flank security. Gotta maintain that flank security. As we began moving forward, first platoon, responding to the contact report on their platoon radio net, began firing 25mm high explosive munitions across the front. It was a little unnerving for the tanks as we moved forwards. I gave first platoon a ceasefire order. Red one, this is black six, ceasefire.

• 21:15Jocko Willink?

  The two tank platoons were slightly delayed. As our tank came over the crest of the imperceptible rise north of the village, Sergeant Craig Koch, the gunner, reported, "Tank's direct front." I counted eight T-72s in prepared positions. They were at close range and visible to the naked eye.

• 21:37Jocko Willink?

  So, he's talking about trusting your instincts and trusting your intuition and my... And that's what he's doing here. He's seeing things happening, he's seeing things unfold, he's like, he says, "Hey, go into this formation." Boom, everyone goes into this formation. He's acting off of instinct. But what's important here is where do your instinct and where does your intuition come from? It comes from training and experience. That's where it comes from. Now, it could be hard to get combat experience. We hadn't had a tank battle in... Well, since World War II. There's been no major tank battles and here these guys, none of these people have ever been in a tank battle before. And now they're in a tank battle. So how do you do that? You gotta do realistic simulated training. That's what you have to do. And you have to make this, the... Realistic, it's gotta be surprising. It's all the things I talk about all the time.

• 22:20Jocko Willink?

  It's gotta be surprising, it's gotta be unknowns, you gotta do things that people aren't expecting. That's what you have to do so that they can develop their instincts, so they can develop their intuition. Because if you're inexperienced and you don't know what you're doing and you just decide you're gonna follow your instinct, your instinct can be wrong.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:38Jocko Willink?

  It can be wrong and the let, it's like jujitsu, right? You take a new person in jujitsu, their instincts are gonna be wrong, period, end of story, right? I mean, the classic is if someone is mounted on you, then they, you try, yeah, you either do one of two things. You try and push them off of you, you're getting arm locked, or you turn around, you turn over and they're choking you. But each one of your instincts is wrong. Your instinct needs to be elbow escape or, you know, uh, oompa escape. Got to be one of those two things, but those instincts only come from training. It's the same thing with these combat scenarios, how you have, you can't just try, don't just trust your instinct as a matter of fact.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:14Jocko Willink?

  Make sure you've trained yourself, make sure you've prepared yourself, and then make sure that you detach. Cause that's another thing that can screw up your instincts, is your instincts, you're feeling pain, you know, I was rolling with Andy yesterday, he will put like pain on me. He'll, he'll put his elbow in my ear or something, and all he's trying to do is get me to, to make the instinctual move.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:40Jocko Willink?

  Of, I'm gonna reach up and pull his hand away. If I do that, I'm getting arm locked.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:44Jocko Willink?

  Right? You can't do that. Have to just accept the pain.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:47Jocko Willink?

  Just, just deal with it. Go grind harder, Andy, bring it.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:51Jocko Willink?

  Here, your instinct, if you start taking fire from a certain position, that could, your instinct could be, oh, we're gonna get down and move over here. You gotta remember, you gotta detach enough that you say, oh, I need to check my flank, I need to see what else is going on here, I need to assess these other situations that might be unfolding.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the, and that's where that kinda experience, well, in training, come in and a lot of it can be things that aren't really conscious too. And it comes with like, let's say, you know, in a relationship situation, let's say I know you-

• 24:23Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I'm sitting over here trying to talk about war and fighting, and you wanna go straight to relationships this early in the show? Alright, do it.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  I'm not even necessarily saying, you know, romantic or boyfriend or from, any kinda relation, if you know the person really well, you can tell when something's off just a little bit, be like, hey, something bothering you, they gotta be like, oh, no, no, all good. And they can, you know, they can be real convincing with, yeah, yeah, no, I'm all good, but you, you know, your instinct because you have so much experience with them, you know?

• 24:47Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you're right, and you're right in the fact that, you know, when I talk about de-escalation, right? If you come in and you say, hey, Jocko, this is crap with the way we're doing this. If my instinct is like, no, it's not crap, that's my instinctive response, like, no, screw you, I'm right, you're wrong. But what I really need to do is say, hold on a second, detach, let's assess what Echo's saying. Echo normally doesn't do this, right? Why is he doing this? Something is going on, don't, I'm not gonna trust my instinct, right? Now luckily, like you said, through training, through knowledge, right? In this situation, I know that you don't act that way. So, yes, follow your instincts, follow your intuition, but make sure that you've trained to develop them. And also, I like to question them.

• 25:30Jocko Willink?

  When I feel something, I just don't go with it immediately. I wanna go with it, and I most likely will go with it. But there's also a possibility, I say, well, not a possibility, but when I say, hey, we need to move here, I go, okay, what could be happening? Is this a position that the enemy might be in? Is this a move that could be getting set up on me? No, I think I'm pretty solid, or at least as I move there, I'm gonna be aware of it. I'm trusting my instinct, but I'm being cautious.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy how like, you hear that talking, police, you know, like cops have like good instincts.

• 26:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure, for sure.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Because of like, the repetitious patterns of bad guys.

• 26:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure. I was gonna say something else, too. Oh, there's plenty of times where if you don't trust your instinct, you will get crushed, right? I mean, you think about, in a jujitsu perspective, but when you get good, you're not thinking about anything. You have to just use your instinct. Your training, your muscle memory is what's working. And the same thing with police, you know, they get to a point, you get into a situation, if they're not going off their instinct, they're gonna get, they're gonna get burned.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:35Jocko Willink?

  Cause they learned.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, and that's the trained instinct, how you were saying, like that's the trained one, as opposed to the untrained instinct.

• 26:42Jocko Willink?

  Yes. Day one, being a, being a police officer, out on the beat, they're not gonna have, they're not gonna have any, a fraction of what you deal with that cop 10 years later. And you, and that cop's like, hey, listen, I see your hand, I see you got some blood on your knuckles, I know what happened, here, tell me what's going on, you know what I mean? Whereas a young guy might be, whoa, whoa, getting in your face about something.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, or a guy's like being, uh, too nice. You know how like, the cop can tell, like, oh, this guy's being too nice?

• 27:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And there's like a mediocre level of niceness that's like, okay, that seems like, like he's mellow. But if a guy's being like too aggressive, or too defensive, or too nice, they can tell. You know, there's something suspicious, you know? Maybe a new guy might not be able to tell that, you know what I mean?

• 27:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, absolutely. Alright.

• 27:27Jocko Willink?

  Next one, number five. Use standard unit fire and battle drills. Aim to overwhelm the enemy upon contact and retain the initiative through speed of action. As Sergeant Koch fired the main gun and destroyed the first tank, I sent a contact report to the troop. This is black six, contact east, eight armored vehicles, green and white, you with me? Sergeant Koch destroyed two more tanks as our tank platoon accelerated movement. All nine tanks began engaging together as we advanced. In approximately one minute, everything in the range of our guns was in flames.

• 28:09Jocko Willink?

  Fire distribution and control allowed us to destroy a much larger enemy force in a very short period of time.

• 28:18Jocko Willink?

  So how do they do that? Good, solid, disciplined, standard operating procedures. And you, I'm telling you, you think about how simple this is. He, he says, this is black six, contact east, eight armored vehicles, green and white, are you with me? That's the whole, that's the whole detailed plan. Hey, there's bad guys over there, we're moving east, let's go. And everybody says, alright, we've done this thousands of times, we've drilled it, we rehearsed it, what, what do we do right now? And they probably had little standard operating procedures, hey, guys on the, you know, on the left flank are gonna start flying at the left vehicles, guys on the right flank. They had all these procedures work out so that in less than a minute, victory. Less than a minute.

• 29:04Jocko Willink?

  So, develop those good standard operating procedures, disciplined procedures. And when I talk about freedom on the battlefield, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Discipline equals freedom on the battlefield. Cause when you have those disciplined procedures, he doesn't even have to, he has the freedom to maneuver, he has the freedom just to say, hey guys, there's the enemy, let's take care of them, boom, it's done.

• 29:27Jocko Willink?

  Next one. Number six. Foster initiative. Every trooper understood how our platoons and the troop conducted fire and maneuver. Our tank driver, Specialist Christopher Hedensog, knew that he had to steer a path that permitted both tank platoons to get their guns into the fight. He turned forty-five degrees to the right and kept our frontal armor towards the first enemy tanks we engaged. He drove through a minefield, avoided the anti-tank mines, reporting on the intercom, "Sir, I need you to know, we just went through a minefield." He knew that it would be dangerous to stop right in the middle of the enemy kill zone.

• 30:08Jocko Willink?

  Hedensog saw that our tank platoons had a window of opportunity to shock the enemy and take advantage of the first blows that Sergeant Koch delivered. So, clearly, this is decentralized command, right? And you just think about this first, "Every trooper understood how our platoons and the troop conducted fire maneuver." Everybody knows what to do. Everybody. And here's this kid, he's probably eighteen years old. What is he, a specialist? Yeah, specialist. He's probably nineteen years old. And he's got, he's leading, right? The commander's in charge, but there's a guy that's driving, that's picking the course where they're gonna go. And again, think about this. The captain, he's not saying like, "Hey,

• 30:49Jocko Willink?

  six degrees left, six degrees to the right, get forty..." No, he's not giving any of those orders. And if you think about it, could he have been able to do that? He's dealing with all this other stuff. He's dealing with fire control. He's dealing with the position. He's reporting back up the chain. He's got all this other stuff going on. He doesn't have time to tell this guy where to go, but it's decentralized command. That specialist that is leading the tanks from an actual driving perspective, he knows what to do. He knows the procedures. And so, he's able just to do it. He even knows, he knows it so well that when he sees that we're in a minefield, he assesses the threat. "Okay, we're in a minefield. I see three mines. I'm gonna steer around them the best I can, but if we stop,

• 31:32Jocko Willink?

  we're gonna be, we're gonna be open to getting attacked by the enemy. So, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna keep moving." And he made that decision on his own. The right decision. He made that decision on his own because he understood the overall objective and the procedures that they would follow and what was most important. So, that's a great example of decentralized command.

• 31:55Jocko Willink?

  Number seven.

• 31:58Jocko Willink?

  Use tanks to take the brunt of the battle. Tanks drove around the anti-tank mines and Bradley's and other vehicles followed in their tracks.

• 32:10Jocko Willink?

  Our squadron's S3 tank commanded by Major Douglas McGregor hit an anti-tank mine, but the blast damaged the tank only slightly. It continued the attack and made a repair when we halted. We ran over anti-personnel mines, but they sounded like microwave popcorn popping and had no effect on armored vehicles. The rate of our fire of our tanks allowed enemy tanks to fire only two errant main gun rounds at the outset of the battle and two later as the troop assaulted. Enemy machine gun fire had no effect on the troop's advance. The psychological shock of our tanks advancing undaunted toward their defensive positions

• 32:55Jocko Willink?

  paralyzed and panicked the enemy.

• 32:59Jocko Willink?

  So if you don't know anything about what I'm talking about, I apologize. But tanks are massive, A1 Abrams tanks are massive and they have extremely heavy armor. They're 68 tons and as he's saying here, these, even the anti-tank mines aren't, aren't, aren't stopping the tanks. And

• 33:23Jocko Willink?

  the, the anti-personnel just is nothing, but Bradley's are smaller, not as big, not as big and not as heavily armored. So the, the tanks are laying down, you know, driving and then the Bradley's are just falling in their tracks in case they hit any mines, they're, they, they would hit the Abrams tank. But my, so what I take about, so how can we apply this to, you know, everyday life? How can we apply this to business? You know, they're saying technically, specifically use tanks to take the brunt of the battle, right? This, this is the way I look at this. From a business perspective and from a life perspective.

• 34:01Jocko Willink?

  Play to your strengths, right? What is the strongest thing they've got are these tanks? And it's the same thing that we run into in business and it's the same thing you run into in life and jujitsu everywhere. What are you, what are you strong at? What are your strong areas? And that's what you focus on. That's what you use to lead your, your advance. Now, do we train for our weaknesses? Absolutely. You know, we do that all the time. Do we, do we, when we have a weakness in a business? We don't go, hey, let's just cover this up. No, we, we focus on it so that we can prove it. But if we're going to go to market with something, let's go to market with something that we're good at. Right? If we're gonna, if we're gonna try and set up some expansion into a new area,

• 34:46Jocko Willink?

  let's set up the expansion into a new area that we're familiar with, that we're good at, that we're strong in. Let's not say, hey, you know what? We've been making, we've been making cars for the last 50 years. Let's go over here and make computers. No, we're gonna make cars. Okay, let's make trucks too. We know how to build vehicles. That's what I'm saying. And you see this all the time with jujitsu. What do jujitsu guys do? What they should do, which is try and, try and play to your strengths, right?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  In competition.

• 35:17Jocko Willink?

  Competition, right? Of course, when we're, when we're training, we pray to our weaknesses, right? We wanna, oh, I'm, I'm, I don't like people being across side. Cool, let them get across side.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:27Jocko Willink?

  I don't like being on the bottom. Cool, I'm gonna be on the bottom. But in competition, what are you good at? How do you get the person to play your game?

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  That's the question.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's everything too, right? Like even at work, you're gonna train the new guys, but you're not gonna send the new guy, you know, to make contact with the, you know, potential client or something.

• 35:46Jocko Willink?

  The big client, yeah. Don't send the new guy, send the strongest, send the tank. Send the M1 Abrams to meet the new client. That's got big potential. So play to your strengths. Use tanks to take the brunt of the battle.

• 36:01Jocko Willink?

  Next, be prepared for misfires and degraded operations. Lieutenant Jeff De Cefontos tank crew came around the village, destroyed an enemy tank and acquired a second tank at very close range that was traversing on them. A round got stuck in the breach of the cannon, meaning this cannon's not going to shoot anymore. The loader grabbed hold of the loader's hatch, kicked the round in, the breach came up and the gunner Sergeant Matthew Clark destroyed the T-72. In another example, Staff Sergeant Digby ordered Private First Class Charles Bertubin to reload tow missiles.

• 36:44Jocko Willink?

  Bertubin could not get the cargo hatch open, however. When the lightweight wrestler, guy's a wrestler, good for him, kicked the hatch release, he sheared it off. Rather than tell Bradley, his Bradley commander, that he could not get the toes reloaded, he jumped out of the back door while the vehicle was under small arms and machine gun fire. He climbed onto the back of the Bradley, loaded both missiles, then tapped his Bradley commander on the shoulder while yelling, "Toes are up!" Staff Sergeant Digby nearly jumped out of his skin because he thought an Iraqi had climbed onto the Bradley.

• 37:18Jocko Willink?

  So, here's these little malfunctions going on with your weapons. And what do you do? You deal with it. And I think I said this on the last podcast with Leif. We have a little saying.

• 37:32Jocko Willink?

  Nothing works, everything sucks, right? And that's what you gotta prepare for. You count, if you rely 100% on those radios, those radios aren't going to work. If you rely 100% on your weapon, okay, you better learn those drills, you better learn how to, how to fix and adjust your weapon very quickly, go to your secondary, whatever the case may be, you gotta drill those things, you gotta be ready for problems, you gotta be ready for Murphy's Law to kick in.

• 37:58Jocko Willink?

  Next, number nine. Coordinate between platoons and ensure mutual support.

• 38:06Jocko Willink?

  The burning tanks and personnel carriers of the enemy's first defensive line formed a curtain of smoke that concealed enemy further to the east. As our tanks assaulted through the smoke, we saw other enemy armored vehicles and large numbers of infantry running to get back to subsequent trench lines and positions. We destroyed the enemy armored vehicles quickly and shot the infantry with machine guns as we closed the distance with them. Pockets of enemy soldiers threw up their arms. Our soldiers were disciplined. Turrets turned away from any enemy soldier with his hands raised. Tank platoon leaders asked the scout platoons to pick up observation of the enemy infantry as their Bradleys came through the smoke.

• 38:49Jocko Willink?

  The scouts saw that the enemy had used a false surrender to gain a better position. Enemy soldiers were re-shouldering their rifles and rocket propelled grenades. Our Bradley surprised the enemy and killed them before they could engage our tanks effectively. Cover and move. Cover and move, real simple. That's what that one is. Mutually supporting, that means we're helping each other out. That's what cover and move is.

• 39:20Jocko Willink?

  Next, number 10.

• 39:23Jocko Willink?

  Take risk to win. Because Eagle Troop pressed the assault, the enemy could not respond effectively.

• 39:33Jocko Willink?

  Right, that's, you're gonna find that. In any case, you want to get the person on their heels, you want to get your opponent on their heels. As we cleared the westernmost defensive positions, our executive officer, Lieutenant John Gifford, broke in on the radio. "I know you don't want to know this right now, but you are at the limit of advance. You are at the 70 easting." I responded, "Tell them we can't stop, tell them we're in a contact and we have to continue this attack, tell them I'm sorry." We, that's a part I already covered. We had surprised and shocked the enemy. Stopping would have allowed them to recover as Erwin Rommel observed in infantry attacks.

• 40:15Jocko Willink?

  The man who lies low and awaits developments usually comes off second best. It is fundamentally wrong to halt or to wait for more forces to come up and take part in the action.

• 40:31Jocko Willink?

  Eagle troop continued to attack toward another very subtle ridge line on the enemy position. On which the enemy positioned his reserve, a coil of 18 T 72 tanks. Major Mohammed later told one of our troopers, this is the enemy commander of this unit. Major Mohammed later told one of our troopers that he had not known he was under attack. Until a soldier ran into his elaborate command bunker yelling, tanks, tanks. By the time he got to his observation post, all the vehicles in defensive positions to the west were in flames. He ordered the reserve behind him to establish a second defensive line. It was too late.

• 41:13Jocko Willink?

  Eagle troops tank crested the rise and entered their assembly area. The tanks were starting to move out when we destroyed them at close range.

• 41:25Jocko Willink?

  So it's not only take risk, it's be aggressive. That's gotta be your default mode. Default mode is aggressive. Press that attack. It's interesting when, I mean, clearly it happens in combat. You start getting the upper hand, keep going, keep going. And it happens in jujitsu as well. You know, if you can get that person on the run, you're attacking them with two, three, four different things at the same time. That's when they're done and that's a bad feeling when you're, when that's happening to you. You're falling behind in the Oodle loop and they're just getting, getting all inside your loop. You're defending something and you feel the other thing happening.

• 42:03Jocko Willink?

  Not good, but those, again, take risk, but yes, be aggressive. Now, those were the lessons from this, this one battle. You know, this one battle at 73 Easting and now.

• 42:21Jocko Willink?

  Obviously McMaster stayed in the Army. He went up through the chain of command and, and now we're going to go to 2005, 2006, the Battle of Tal Afar in Iraq, which this, this battle was led by who is now a Colonel McMaster. He was a captain at the time of this 73 Easting Battle. Now he's a commander. He's commanding the 3rd ACR, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. And this is very similar to the Battle of Ramadi, what happened in Tal Afar. And the reason, one of the reasons why it's so similar is that Colonel McFarland,

• 43:02Jocko Willink?

  who was the commander of the 11 AD that led the fight in Ramadi that I was there to support. The first thing he did when he went back to Iraq, when, when McFarland went back to Iraq for that deployment in 2006, he took over for McMaster. And McMaster was in Tal Afar. So McFarland shows up in Tal Afar and says, "Hey, this is what I did. I did a little something called seize, clear, hold and build. This is the strategy we do. We pushed into these enemy controlled territories." And, and then it had become so pacified in Tal Afar that they were able to take most of the 11 AD and send them down to Ramadi. And when they got

• 43:46Jocko Willink?

  down to Ramadi, McFarland, who's a brilliant guy, had listened to everything McMaster said, looked at how he did it, and then applied the same strategy in Ramadi. Now, he had to make adjustments to it for sure because it wasn't exactly the same. But luckily, he was a smart, creative guy that said, "Oh, we gotta make these adjustments," but he didn't. But the, the overall concept came from what McMaster, from what McMaster did up in Tal Afar. And so, there was an article.

• 44:16Jocko Willink?

  In the New Yorker, written by a guy named George Packer, and the article is called, "The Lesson of Tal Afar: Is It Too Late For The Administration To Correct Its Course In Iraq?" And this, this article came out April 10th, 2006, probably three or four days before I arrived in Ramadi in 2006. So that's when this article came out, and you can see, he's saying, "Hey, look, is it too late to correct the course?" Well, actually, a lot of people in 2006 weren't even admitting that we were on the wrong course. You know, because what we were doing at that time, and I've talked about this a bunch,

• 44:57Jocko Willink?

  what America had been doing at that time is, is going out, grabbing bad guys, one at a time, two at a time, and bringing them back to base, and putting them, arresting them, capture-kill missions, and what's interesting is, that's, that's, that's an attrition, that's a war of attrition, right? You have a certain number of bad guys, we're gonna go catch them all. And it really wasn't working. It really wasn't working. That's why in 2005, 2006, enemy attacks were up 300%. And, you know, 2005, 2006, our whole country, well, I shouldn't say our whole country, but many people in our country, including a lot of major politicians, were saying it was unwinnable, and, you know, we, we just need to get out,

• 45:41Jocko Willink?

  it was a quagmire and all that stuff. So, that's because we were not on the right strategy. And actually, if you take this, and you apply it back to Hackworth, when he basically said during the end of the Vietnam War, and he said, "Look, we're not gonna win." He wasn't talking about we couldn't win. He was saying, "We're, we're fighting the wrong kind of tactics. We're doing the wrong thing here." You keep saying, "Hey, what's our body count? What's our body count? What's our body count?" That's a war of attrition. "Hey, we lost this many guys, you lost that many." That's an attrition warfare. It's World War I. I mean, I always use World War I as the classic attrition warfare. "Hey, we're gonna go over the trench, we're gonna kill as many of you as you can, and hopefully it's less than us, and we're gonna see who can last longer." That's a punch, that's, that's, "Hey, Echo, we're just gonna stand here.

• 46:26Jocko Willink?

  You punch me, I'll punch you. You punch me, and whoever goes down, you know, loses." Well, guess what? What do we look like at the end of that? We're all beat up, right? Both of us. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter how good we are. So, these guys were thinking, maybe instead of doing punches to the face, we should do a little jujitsu, a little, something a little bit more tactically sound. And it wasn't just go out, grab bad guys, just go out and try and kill bad guys. Because we learned, 2003, 2004, 2005, that's three years of doing those type of operations. And real progress wasn't being made. It certainly wasn't made in Ramadi at this point. Again, there was guys that were doing incredible work. And you do have to go out and attack the bad guys and go after those critical nodes, for sure.

• 47:12Jocko Willink?

  But we were focused so much on that, that we were ignoring a lot of what was happening with the populace and politically, other areas that needed to be addressed. So, this article came out, and again, it's from The New Yorker, written by George Packer. Came out April 10th, 2006. And here, we're going to this article, back to the article. "The lesson that McMaster and his soldiers applied in Tal Afar were learned during the first two years of an increasingly unpopular war. When we came to Iraq, we didn't understand the complexity, what it meant for a society to live under a brutal dictatorship with ethnic and sectarian divisions."

• 47:54Jocko Willink?

  He said in his hoarse, energetic voice, "When we first got here, we made a lot of mistakes. We were like a blind man, trying to do the right thing, but breaking a lot of things." Later, he said, "You gotta come in with your ears open. You can't come in and start talking, you really have to listen to people." I mean, okay, that is just, this whole thing is just a great summary of a humble man, right? He's saying, "Look, when we came here, we didn't understand the complexity." That's humility. He says, "We didn't understand what it was like to live under a brutal dictatorship." That's humble. He says, "When we first got here, we made a lot of mistakes."

• 48:40Jocko Willink?

  He's not saying, "Oh, we did everything right." No, "We made a lot of mistakes." "We were like a blind man trying to do the right thing, but breaking a lot of things." So, they're trying. He admits that we're trying, but we're breaking a lot of stuff. Later, he said, "Listen, you gotta come in with your ears open. You can't come in and start talking." Okay, leaders around the world, pay attention to that right there. You don't need to come in and start talking. Come in with your ears open and listen. And he says, "You really have to listen to people." Very clear, very great leadership guidance right there. Back to the article. "They didn't even want to say the 'I'-word, one officer told me.

• 49:25Jocko Willink?

  It was the specter of Vietnam. They did not want to say the insurgency word, because the next word you say is quagmire. The next thing you say is the only war America has lost. Vietnam. And the next thing you conclude is that certain people's vision of war is wrong." So, we had a hard time, again, just as America admitting, "Hey, this isn't just a bunch of thugs running around. There's an organized insurgency here. We needed to fight it like an insurgency." We had a hard time making that mental transition as a nation. And I'll tell you, when I, I've told this story before.

• 50:06Jocko Willink?

  When I got to Ramadi and I looked at what was going on, I literally read the counterinsurgency manual that was written by, basically by General Petraeus, who's a brilliant guy. And these guys, McMaster, I think McFarlane, they all helped him write that article or write that book. So, this was a totally different attitude. And, you know, you hear it here that people, people back in DC, they didn't even want to use the word insurgency. They didn't want to use that word, because it makes everyone think of NOM. And we lost, right?

• 50:44Jocko Willink?

  So, the article, going, going a little bit deeper on that. Back to the article. The Pentagon's strategy in 2003 and 2004 was to capture, was to combat the insurgency simply by eliminating insurgents. An approach called "kill capture." Khaled Sep, a retired special forces officer who now teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, said of the method, "It's all about hunting people." I think it comes directly from the Secretary of Defense. I want heads on a plate." So, he's talking about Rumsfeld right there. You'll get some people that way, but the failure of that approach is evident.

• 51:26Jocko Willink?

  They get Hussein, they get his sons, they continue to work every week to kill more, capture more. They've got facilities full of thousands of detainees, yet there's more insurgents than there were when we started. In "Dereliction of Duty," McMaster wrote that "a strategy of attrition was, in essence, the absence of a strategy." What a great line that is, right? And so, so McMaster wrote a very harsh critique of the Vietnam War and the way it was run. Again, not, not a critique of the boots on the ground and the troops that fought, but a critique of those back in DC that were running it.

• 52:09Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, this is just, this is just an incredible statement, that a war of attrition is, in essence, the absence of strategy. This is like, okay, what do you do, what do we do? Just gonna, we'll go kill as many of us as we can. Okay? That's, if that's your strategy, not a strategy. It's like when you get into an MMA fight, what's your strategy? The guy goes, "I'm gonna punch him in the face until I win." Right? That's not a strategy.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Put my head down and start swinging.

• 52:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's not a good strategy. Don't, don't do that. You need to have a little bit more strategy than that.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:45Jocko Willink?

  Um, back to the article, if we're not stupid and we don't quit, we can win this thing. And again, what's important, this is 2006. This, this Major McLaughlin, McLaughlin, he's another person that's interviewed in this article. He's talking about like, we could lose this thing, right? So if we're not stupid and we don't quit, we can win this thing, Major, Major McLaughlin said. History teaches you that war at its heart is a human endeavor. And if you ignore the human side, yours, the enemies and the civilians, you set yourself up for failure. It's not about weapons, it's about people.

• 53:33Jocko Willink?

  That's very, it's very true, and I'll tell you where it's true. It's true in war, clearly, and it's true in business too. And you get people that don't understand the human side of business. They don't understand that they're dealing with human beings and they treat people like numbers. They're not going to be successful. Now, you also get people that go so far in, in the other direction that all they care about is their people. And guess what? Now they're making bad business decisions and they're hiring more people and they're keeping them. They're not letting anyone go and they're running themselves in the ground because their overhead's too much and they cause destruction. But on the other side, you've got someone that's like, oh, no, bean counter, right? Nope. You, you let that person go, no severance or whatever, limit.

• 54:16Jocko Willink?

  You do that methodology, you're going to end up with no business either. Because they're people, because they're people. If you treat them like robots, you're, they're not going to work for you. They're going to, they're going to rebel against you. The robot will do what the robot is told, but people aren't robots.

• 54:33Jocko Willink?

  So you've got to remember that human side and, and obviously in war, and that's, that's one of the reasons that we're able, if we're able to talk about this stuff to businesses, we're able to talk about combat leadership to businesses. The first, oftentimes the first thing that the business that's bringing us on has to get a grip on is the fact that. We were in charge of people, not Terminator robots, right? We, Leif and I use that term all the time. The people think, oh, you're in the military, oh, you run a Navy SEALs. They do whatever you, no, no, not true, they're people.

• 55:10Jocko Willink?

  And guess what? The enemy are people. They have thoughts, they have passions, they have desires. And guess what? The civilian populace that you're working amongst, those are human beings too. And they're not just gonna listen to what you say. And you can't just, for instance, can't just throw money at them. Right? You can't just throw money at them. They don't care about that money. You know, it was really interesting, I talked about this, this news story I saw on Vice News of a guy going into, he was a, and I don't remember the reporter's name, but he's a young reporter, spoke Arabic, and he goes into Ramadi while it was surrounded by ISIS. And ISIS was getting ready to take over.

• 55:54Jocko Willink?

  And he's saying, hey, he's talking to just normal people. And he's talking to this one guy and he says, you know, the guy's saying, look, we really need help. We hope America comes back. And the reporter says, well, why don't you just leave? Why don't you get out of here? And the guy says, I live here. Right? I live here, I'm not going anywhere. That's a human, right? That's a human, that's a sentimental value. It's like my house that I live in. You're not gonna take my house from me. Like if you, if people came to try and take my house away from me, there'd be a fight. And, and it wouldn't end well for anybody. That's sentimental, right? So you have to remember that these human beings are human beings.

• 56:38Jocko Willink?

  And that's the, one of the key things that, that McMaster, really, McMaster really understood. Really understood this fact. And, and you know, I'm giving a lot of credit to McMaster, but there's a lot of, I mean, there's way more guys than I'm talking about that I don't have them, not going through their names. But there's a lot of guys that contributed to this idea and did an outstanding job. You know, he's getting the credit because he's the guy in charge, right? I'm giving him some credit because he's the guy in charge. But I guarantee if you asked him, he'd say, well, no, I had this captain that did this, and I had this major that did that, and he had all these people. But he's the guy, just like if something's gone wrong, he'd be responsible. Well, some stuff went right, so you get the credit there, General.

• 57:23Jocko Willink?

  Now, he wrote these

• 57:27Jocko Willink?

  these four fallacies of warfare, which I find very, very interesting. And so we learned kind of the tactical side of what he learned from his battle of the seventy-three Eastings, easting, you know, he had ten lessons learned, pretty tactical stuff, right? Now we're getting into a little bit more strategic level. We're talking about

• 57:50Jocko Willink?

  war as a broad, in a broad sense. And so here's what he says about these four fallacies of war warfare. There are four fallacies about future war that are preventing us from learning from our most recent experiences. McMaster said, "These fallacies are portrayed in such a way that they reduce risk to United States interest, when in fact, they exacerbate risk, because they over-rely on capabilities, and they purposely ignore continuities in the nature of war."

• 58:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so he's saying, "Look, the, the way they portray these things is it makes everything good for America, but they actually make things worse for America." Because they ignore things in war that are always the same. This is war we're talking about. The nature of war does not change. Okay, his first fallacy.

• 58:47Jocko Willink?

  The vampire fallacy.

• 58:50Jocko Willink?

  It's a vampire fallacy. It's a vampire because you can't kill it and it comes back every ten years. This is the belief that a narrow range of technological capabilities will deliver fast, cheap, and efficient victory in future war. The latest manifestation is the belief in a new range of technological capabilities, everything from big data analytics to artificial intelligence to drones and robotics and so forth. So, so what does that mean? We have an idea that we can, as a, as a nation, just we were so, so technologically advanced that nothing can stand up to us, and we can just use these precision weapons to take out enemy targets, and then it's over.

• 59:37Jocko Willink?

  It's a fallacy. It's a vampire. It's gonna come back. You can't just kill it. It's gonna come back. And, you know, obviously, we've seen, we saw that in Iraq. We had all kinds of technological advances over the enemy. But they continued to come back. And when we walked away, they came back strong. They were called ISIS. Now, I think that's pretty self-evident what that means. Now, what does this mean in business and in life? Well, to me, what this means is, there's no easy solution. There's no easy solution to things, right? We look at something, we go, oh, we can just do this.

• 1:00:21Jocko Willink?

  We can just use some certain new technology, or we can just use some app, right? Oh, if I get an app to track my diet, then I'll be good to go. No, gotta stop putting the sugar in your mouth to be good to go.

• 1:00:42Jocko Willink?

  People want the shortcut.

• 1:00:46Jocko Willink?

  They want to, they, they think that there's an easy way to get things done. And there's not. You have to do the work. There's a vampire out there. What you gotta do is you gotta grab that vampire. You've got to cut its head off. You've got to soak it in holy water. And then you've got to dry its bones out in the sun. That's what kills a vampire, alright? That's the attitude you have to take. You can't just think there's gonna be a shortcut. We'll be able to, we'll be through with this vampire, you know, tomorrow. Because I have a, a, a cool gun. I'm gonna shoot him. No, bullets don't kill them. Gotta go harder.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the correct way to kill a vampire isn't to cut his head off. It's the, it's the wooden stake into the heart. That's, I think you might be thinking of Medusa or something.

• 1:01:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay, just kinda FYI?

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  The holy water part was correct, though.

• 1:01:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just, just so FYI? I don't, I don't mean to call you out here. I actually Googled how to kill a vampire.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Nah, that's wrong, though. Mythology is, it says otherwise. He, you stick a wooden stake in his heart. Crucifix will get him if you have faith. Sunlight will kill him. So that was correct.

• 1:01:59Jocko Willink?

  Holy water.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Holy water will get him for sure. Yeah. And um, yeah.

• 1:02:03Jocko Willink?

  Stay corrected.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know what what website said. Cut his head off.

• 1:02:08Jocko Willink?

  Uh, oh, don't trust Google. Lesson learned. See, you know what I did right there? Took a shortcut.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:02:14Jocko Willink?

  I took, I I thought it was a vampire. Just Google it real quick. We're good to go.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  You know what you did? This is what this is my, what I think you did. I think you Googled it, which is fine. But here's the thing about Googling something. Googling is not the answer. It's what you find from Google. And if you just go for the first one or the the one that looks like the most simple.

• 1:02:30Jocko Willink?

  Do you see the iron- the irony here? Is that I tried to take a shortcut and I'm wrong. And that's the same, that's the vampire fallacy in its own right.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:02:38Jocko Willink?

  Boom, there it is.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Proves the point.

• 1:02:41Jocko Willink?

  All right. Next. The Zero Dark Thirty Fallacy. And that's the name of a movie about the the killing of Bin Laden. This is the idea, Zero Dark Thirty Fallacy, this is the idea that all you have to gain to do to gain a victory in war is to gain visibility of an enemy's network structure and then conduct raids against that network. Either with special operations forces or nodes. So the problem with both these fallacies, of course, they represent important capabilities you need to have.

• 1:03:21Jocko Willink?

  But these are capabilities that masquerade as strategies and simple solutions to the complex problem of war. Neglecting war's political nature, neglecting war's human nature, neglecting war's inherent uncertainty based on the interactive nature. And finally, neglecting that it is ultimately a contest of wills.

• 1:03:49Jocko Willink?

  So, the idea that you can, again, it's attrition warfare. And I'll be honest with you, I never really looked at this as attrition warfare until I was reading, researching for this podcast. I never, I always said, "Hey, you know, it's raid mentality. Hey, we can just capture all the bad guys." But to say, "Yes, that's attrition warfare," that's exactly what it is. And especially for me, because I look at World War I as so awful and it's an example of attrition warfare and that's what makes it so bad. This is attrition warfare too. "Hey, we're just gonna capture, kill all the bad guys." How do you do that? What we're forgetting is, what about this line? "When you do that, when you just say, 'Hey, look, all we need to do is capture, kill the bad guys,' this is what you do.

• 1:04:32Jocko Willink?

  You masquerade that capability to be able to do that, which is an awesome capability. Awesome capability. But that capability masquerades as a strategy." And what you, listen to the things that you forget about. This list is classic. The complex problem of war. You neglect war's political nature, human nature, inherent uncertainty, interactive nature, and you neglect that it's a contest of wills. So, that's, and there's some great YouTube videos where McMaster's talking about that big lesson, learning that this raid mentality was, it's part of, it's part of the way you defeat an insurgency.

• 1:05:16Jocko Willink?

  Part of the way you defeat an insurgency is capture, kill, and the bad guys. It's awesome.

• 1:05:22Jocko Willink?

  But there's so much more you have to address. That's like saying, "Hey, the way you win in jiu-jitsu is to armlock the person." You could even say as broad as, "The way you win in jiu-jitsu is to submit somebody." Right? So if I taught you every submission I knew, but I didn't teach you how to transition, didn't chi chi on any positions, you would, there's no way you could win. It's the same thing. Is submission important? Yes. That's what a raid is. A raid is the submission. It's one piece of it. It's not the whole game, though. It's not the whole game. And I think that's what he's making very clear here through that Zero Dark Thirty fallacy. Next one is the Wild Kingdom fallacy.

• 1:06:06Jocko Willink?

  Back when America was wholesome, there was no reality TV, no Kardashians or anything. So on Sunday nights, American families would watch this wildlife show called Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. And that show, what happened on that show is the host Marlon Perkins would send his assistant, Jim, to conduct exotic and occasionally dangerous field work. This is the belief that we could be like Marlon and just get Jim or other militaries to do our fighting for us.

• 1:06:42Jocko Willink?

  And this is a way in the minds of some people to reduce risk, but it actually increases risks because you are relying on other people whose interests are oftentimes incongruent with your own interests. And not only don't have the capability to fight and do what you need to do, but oftentimes don't have the will to do it.

• 1:07:09Jocko Willink?

  So he's saying this idea that we can just, hey, we'll just have the Iraqis do it. Sounds like a good idea, right? Cause I don't want my guys to get hurt or killed. There's a problem with that. The problem is they can't do what we do. They can't do it as well as we do it, and they probably don't have the will to do it. Now, credit to the Iraqis right now, they're moving through Mosul. They're getting after it. They're heavily backed by American forces, but they're, they're taking the lead for sure. So, but when we were in Ramadi, those guys didn't have the will that we had. They didn't, didn't mean as much to them, if you can believe that. I know it sounds crazy. We had a battalion of Iraqi soldiers, talking about this with Leif, we had a battalion of

• 1:07:52Jocko Willink?

  Iraqi soldiers, so 500 Iraqi soldiers that had come to Ramadi as, to, to help out in the fight, they left. They abandoned. They quit. A battalion of Iraqi soldiers. And here's the weird thing.

• 1:08:08Jocko Willink?

  The reason they brought this battalion in, one, we needed more manpower. Number two, they were Sunni. So Ramadi was a Sunni city and bulk of the army at the time was Shia. So the Shias coming in and fighting in Ramadi, sometimes the Sunnis would say, hey, wait a second. Why are these Shias in here? So the idea was to bring the Sunnis in to help. And the Sunnis got scared. The Sunni battalion got scared and left. And one of the reasons they said, well, it's in a Sunni city. And I just said, wait, wait a second. Well, that's the whole point. These are your people. These are other Sunnis that are getting murdered by insurgents.

• 1:08:50Jocko Willink?

  So it was just, it was a tough situation. And my point in saying that, and there's a whole, there's a whole another discussion we could have on that. But the point is that in order to win that fight, we had to be on the ground. The Iraqis were not going to do it by themselves. They were not going to. And that's what this fallacy is. Hey, that if we just direct other people to do it, then we'll be good to go and we don't have to take any risk. Now, again, how does that translate to what we do? You know, business? How does that translate to business? How does that translate to life? For me, it's real simple.

• 1:09:34Jocko Willink?

  The important things that you gotta do, you gotta do. The, the hard things that you gotta do, you gotta do. You know, okay, Tim Ferriss, can we outsource some stuff? Yes, we can. Don't worry, Tim. We'll outsource some stuff. But the important stuff, you have to do. You gotta do it. You gotta do it yourself. If it really means something, you have to do it. You have to have the will and you have to make it happen. Because if I outsource something to somebody, if I say, hey, I really don't feel like reading this book. You know, I really don't feel like reading this book for the podcast. Can you read this for me? Well, yeah, somebody's gonna read it, but they're not gonna have my perspective on it. And they're just gonna give me some notes and I'm gonna sit here and read them.

• 1:10:19Jocko Willink?

  We're not gonna get the product that we need. Because that's important. I have to do the work myself. No one can, I can't outsource that piece. Can't do it. There's actually been people that said like, hey, I can read the books for you and give you notes. I'm like, hey, I appreciate the offer. No, I gotta read it. I gotta do the hard part.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, now you say.

• 1:10:40Jocko Willink?

  Trying to outsource that stuff, Echo Charles.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  No, no, no, not keep it in-house for sure. The, the congruency of, of interests, you know, that's a big one. Cause you can even think that the person has the, the same interests. And really you both can think that, but just maybe in a different way, especially when you're thinking creatively. Like how you present this and what parts you think are important.

• 1:11:01Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  Are gonna be slightly different, even if the person has the same interests as you, it's gonna be different. So then at the end of the day, when you expect a certain result, it's gonna be different.

• 1:11:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Let yourself down.

• 1:11:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, I just, somebody just wrote, cause we're doing Musashi, which is a giant book. And someone was highlighting Musashi the other day. And kinda took a picture of it and he said, you know, I wonder how close Jocko's highlights are gonna be to my highlights. And you know what, they're gonna be close. They might even be right on.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 1:11:27Jocko Willink?

  But they might not be.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:28Jocko Willink?

  And I'm, I can't say, hey, bro, send me your book and your notes and then we'll do the podcast and I'm just gonna cheat. Can't do that. Just like you can't say, hey, you know what? Iraqi forces that aren't ready, that don't have the same, here's the big problem with the Iraqi forces at the time. The Iraqi forces at the time didn't have a vision of what their country could be like. So, so think about that. We Americans, we had, we had inherently, being from America, we have a vision of what freedom is like. We, we know what that is. Iraqi soldiers didn't know what that is. They, they thought, man, they lived under, under Saddam for their whole lives. I mean, all the soldiers that we worked with, lived under Saddam their whole lives. That's all they knew.

• 1:12:13Jocko Willink?

  So for them, we say, no, you're gonna have freedom. They're like, oh.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know what that means.

• 1:12:18Jocko Willink?

  What does that mean? I don't know what that means. We're, we're thinking, hey, don't worry, these guys will fight, they're gonna fight for their freedom. They're gonna fight for their Sunni brothers, they're gonna fight for their Iraq. They're kinda like, we don't even know, they didn't even really have a good vision of what Iraq is. Iraq is a country that we used to be underneath Saddam. And now it's not, and we don't know what that means. We don't know what that looks like. We Americans had a vision of what that looked like. They didn't have it. So how are they gonna fight for it? To your point, they don't see what we see.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:45Jocko Willink?

  They had a different opinion.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:47Jocko Willink?

  So who's got to go on there and, and have, and who's going to have the will to fight? The answer is us in that particular case. And it's the same thing right now, like even in Mosul, even in the last time when Ramadi was taken back by, by the Iraqi forces, good, good on them. Props to the Iraqi forces right now. They're backed up by Americans. Americans are, are saying, hey, look, this is the vision. This is what you're going to do. This is how we're going to take this part of it. And that is the big difference of why they didn't have the will. They didn't understand what they were fighting for. And you take anybody and put them in that situation, you don't even look at Vietnam War, right? If you look at the Vietnam War, our, our American soldiers, some of them, you can go watch interviews.

• 1:13:31Jocko Willink?

  You know, they were saying, I don't know what I'm fighting for.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Jocko Willink?

  Hey, they, they were actually questioning, I don't know, we know what America's like anymore, right? It was really reading, reading this book by Jim Thompson, you know, longest held POW ever. And when he got back, he was kind of, when he got back to America, you know, he was gone from 1964 until 1973. When he got back, when he left, America was fairly conservative and, and patriotic. When he gets back, people are burning flags, people are protesting. He, he was taken aback by it. And so, so if you took somebody that left for Vietnam in 1970 and America's in turmoil and all that,

• 1:14:15Jocko Willink?

  it's hard to have the same vision that they had had in 1964, which is like, hey, America, we're going to go stop the communists. Communists are bad. Communists are bad. But then you start having the American Socialist Party that telling you that communists are good. And all of a sudden, the kids over there going, hey, look, I don't even know what's going on, but I'm not sure I want to die here in this jungle.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:36Jocko Willink?

  And that's problematic. And it's the same thing with, with the Iraqi soldiers. They just didn't know what they were fighting for. If you asked them what they were fighting for, they might say a paycheck. Very few of them would say, I'm fighting for a free and stable Iraq.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:52Jocko Willink?

  Very few of them. Now, some of them fought against truly heartfelt, fought against the insurgents. They didn't like the insurgents.

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:59Jocko Willink?

  The insurgents were murdering people and raping women and torturing people. They didn't like that. And they'd fight hard against them, but that wasn't, not everyone experienced that.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:15:09Jocko Willink?

  Not everyone saw that.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so and I'm sure they're kinda like, you can tell them what you're fighting for, you know? And they can answer you.

• 1:15:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  But you don't feel, it's like, you know, like, your dad tells you when you're young, your dad tells you, "Hey, clean your room. I want this room spic and span."

• 1:15:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you don't get it.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, "I'm gonna take this whole mess, I'm just gonna put it in the closet, just so he'll stop, "Leave me alone" kinda thing, you know? And then meanwhile, the dad, your dad, has this vision, it's like, "Like, what's up with you? Why didn't you clean your room? Don't you understand?" kinda thing.

• 1:15:44Jocko Willink?

  Yep. No, you don't. You don't understand that your dad's trying to teach you that discipline equals freedom?

• 1:15:50Jocko Willink?

  My kids were running late this morning, going to school. Why are they running late? Cause their rooms are messy. You're running late. Everything's stressful now when we're heading to school. Why is that? Well, because your room is messy. Lack of discipline. Lack of discipline causes mental stress. Mental stress is not freedom.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:10Jocko Willink?

  But to your point, even trying to explain to the Iraqi soldiers why they're doing what they're doing, on a really big level like that, is difficult. Is difficult. Now, occasionally you get a good leader. There were some, there were some good leaders. There was one of the generals that the Delta Platoon commander worked with. He was a good dude. He was a good leader. And, and the Delta Platoon commander actually had some really good Iraqi scouts as well, that really believed in what they were doing. And I know that be, the reason I differentiate a little bit, the Delta Platoon commander worked very consistently with the same guys, a bunch, as, as Leif was working with multiple different groups. So, the Delta Platoon commander had some more tight relationships with some of those guys. Leif did too.

• 1:16:53Jocko Willink?

  But anyways, some of those guys understood what they were fighting for. But it's hard to, just like you said, explain what freedom is.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:03Jocko Willink?

  And the other piece of it is, in the, in those situations, explaining what freedom is, is still no guarantee at all

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:11Jocko Willink?

  that freedom is coming your way. These guys have been through so much turmoil. That country's been through so much turmoil. They're like, "Hey, you know what? We don't even know, you can promise us that? But doesn't seem like we're doing too well. How do we know you're gonna win? How do we know we're gonna win? We don't know that. So you know what I'm gonna do? Lay low, see where this thing falls? And then I'll, then I'll step up. Once I know who's gonna win,

• 1:17:34Jocko Willink?

  tough.

• 1:17:37Jocko Willink?

  Next. The RSVP fallacy. Thank you for the kind invitation to the war, but the United States regrets it is unable to attend. This is the belief that you can just opt out of war. It's a narcissistic approach to war, which we define only war in relation to us and what we'd like to do.

• 1:18:03Jocko Willink?

  So this idea that you can just be opt out doesn't work. The bottom line there is that you gotta get in the game. The game's gonna take place, the game's gonna happen and you're gonna be affected by it. That's the key point. It's not a game that takes place on a field. It's a game that takes place on a field and expands out into the crowd, into the stands, into the town. And stuff starts getting burned and riots take place. So you have to get in the game.

• 1:18:40Jocko Willink?

  That was the, that was the fourth fallacy of war. Now, I, I think that all those really show not just how smart McMaster is, but also how

• 1:18:53Jocko Willink?

  open minded he is, which is a very important quality. I also think he's a realist. He's a realist and looks at things in a very real way. You know, this is the what's happening and this is what we need to do to deal with it. And also what's great about McMaster is that he's not afraid to speak his mind. And he's got, kinda got in trouble for that along the way. So I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how McMaster handles all the challenges that are ahead of him right now, not only in DC, but in the world.

• 1:19:35Jocko Willink?

  So it's gonna be interesting and we wish him, or I certainly wish him the best of luck in that pursuit.

• 1:19:46Jocko Willink?

  So leading off of little McMaster and um think about going to a little Q and A at this time.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:19:53Jocko Willink?

  It's been a little while since we did Q and A here.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:57Jocko Willink?

  I've been doing Facebook Live.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:20:00Jocko Willink?

  And when I've been doing Facebook Live. I've not, I I'm purposely not preparing at all. That's my goal. My goal is to not prepare at all. Because. And and the the second or the yeah, it was the second one that I did. I started looking at the questions ahead of time and I was saying, okay, well, maybe I'll just take a couple of notes here. And all of a sudden I started preparing for Facebook Live. And then I realized if I'm going to prepare, I'll make it the podcast. So, no, don't prepare. Facebook Live, ask me your question and I'll answer it there on the spot. It's fun. It's different, right? It's easier. I can't do two podcasts a week because don't have time to prepare for them.

• 1:20:46Jocko Willink?

  But can you Facebook Live? You can slide that thing in.

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  Doesn't preparing for a live? Thing with the dynamics of Facebook Live, doesn't that defeat the live kind of purpose in a way?

• 1:20:58Jocko Willink?

  It it does, but we could do this podcast on Facebook Live. So we could prepare it and we could put it on Facebook Live. We could do that. But then it would be a rehash of what we're doing. And. The other piece of it is, is I think the Facebook Live is a way of people seeing.

• 1:21:21Jocko Willink?

  A little bit more of me as a normal human being.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:21:24Jocko Willink?

  And not me as. A guy with all the answers on stuff like, no, you asked me a question. I don't really know. You know what I mean?

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:32Jocko Willink?

  And and also, you know, obviously on this podcast is is usually pretty serious. And so I'm not like that all the time. So maybe they could see, well, I I I have a serious side, no doubt.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:21:46Jocko Willink?

  But I'm not like that all the time.

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Jocko Willink?

  So I think Facebook Live is a good way to say, and plus, I don't want to answer some questions here. Be for a couple of reasons. Number one, man, when somebody listens to the podcast, I want to make sure they're getting something.

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:22:05Jocko Willink?

  Of qua- high quality, right? Not, not just some fluff, right? We're not doing fluff here. If we need to do fluff on the podcast, we just won't do the podcast because I don't, I don't want somebody to press play and waste time.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:18Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Jocko Willink?

  I don't mind fluffing around and talking smack on Facebook Live because it's, that's what it is. It's an open forum. We're gonna have some fun. We're gonna get after it a little bit, but it's not gonna be super heavy. Because if you want that, come here, get your podcast on.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  Yep. Yes, kind of more lightened up a little bit.

• 1:22:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's not like that's, it is not like I said, okay, hmm, let's see, I need to show them my light side. No, but if you talk to me live.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:22:51Jocko Willink?

  It, it's like when Jody came on, Jody came on like after we were hanging out for, for like an hour. He's like, yeah, man, when I was coming down, I just thought you were gonna be like full on psycho the whole time. And I was like, yeah, I'm not full on psycho the whole time.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:03Jocko Willink?

  If we're eating a burger, we're good. I'm not gonna be sitting there while I'm eating a burger saying, let me tell you what. No, I don't want to do that when I'm eating a burger. I want to enjoy that burger.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, makes sense. But yeah, if it's a live Q and A, you know how like at like the muster or, you know, when you guys, okay, we're gonna do some Q and A.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  That's the example of like a live Q and A. You don't prepare for those questions, you know?

• 1:23:28Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and also what's interesting about those questions is those, I've given some, I mean, if you think about any of the podcasts that I've gone on. Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, the, those, those guys asked me some heavy questions, right? Those guys weren't just asking, we weren't just BSing, right during those. So there's no guarantee that I'm not gonna get, get a little bit serious on Facebook Live or whatever. I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do what people ask me.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 1:23:58Jocko Willink?

  But.

• 1:24:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, during the muster, we do a lot of Q and A during the muster. We get all kinds of questions. There's some really funny questions that require funny responses. There's also some, some real serious ones that require very serious answers. And what's interesting, and this happens on Twitter, too.

• 1:24:19Jocko Willink?

  Somebody asked me some dead serious question, like a very serious, you know, something that's emotional to me like about losing guys.

• 1:24:28Jocko Willink?

  Or, or something like that, guys killed in combat and I'll, I'll respond to it. And then two tweets later, someone says, you know, I'm gonna have some mint chocolate chip ice cream tonight. You know what I mean? And so you go through these, if someone's read, they must think I'm schizophrenic because I'm answering real serious. Then it's real light and then it's just kinda weird.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, roller coaster, man.

• 1:24:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's an emotional roller coaster on the Twitter.

• 1:24:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, Lord. All right.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  So Q and A.

• 1:24:57Jocko Willink?

  Q and A, Echo Charles. Back in the game.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  Back in the game. All right, so yeah, first question, Jocko and Echo. Should you defend bad leaders, AKA your superiors, to your men?

• 1:25:14Jocko Willink?

  Think about that question. This is a good, it's a good question. And we haven't done Q and A in a while and that's why I want to start off. Think about that. Should you defend bad leaders that are, people that are in charge of you? Should you defend them to your men? Now, this is really a perfect example of the dichotomy of leadership.

• 1:25:36Jocko Willink?

  And this is one of those situations that makes leadership very, very hard because it requires a nuanced balance to handle this correctly. So, on the one hand, if we, if we...

• 1:25:53Jocko Willink?

  Say our boss is a bad leader. And doesn't know what he's doing. Don't forget, oh, the boss, hey, Echo, our boss doesn't know what he's doing. He's an idiot. We undermine. His authority for sure, and we undermine the authority of the whole chain of command. So. Should you? Call out when someone sucks. You say, oh, that guy sucks. He's terrible. Should you do that to your leader? The answer is no. You can't do that. You can't do that because you're undermining everything. So you got a horrible leader? You can't just sit there to your boys and say, hey, this guy's an idiot. Can't do that. However.

• 1:26:33Jocko Willink?

  If you give full support. To this horrible boss. Then your troops.

• 1:26:43Jocko Willink?

  Who know? A good leader from a bad leader. They know what's stupid and what isn't. They know this. They know this. And if you are sitting there backing them 100%.

• 1:26:54Jocko Willink?

  Then. They're gonna know that you either actually agree with the bad leader, which is bad. Or that you're too weak. To stand up. And say, hey, boss, what we're doing is wrong. So you can't go to one extreme. The boss is an idiot. You can't go to the other extreme. The boss is awesome. Think about how hard that is. Think about what I'm saying. This is very, very challenging. So. What can you do? Well, okay, first of all. As a subordinate leader, it is your duty to push back, right? To to say, hey, boss, I think we're doing the wrong thing here. And this is why we spend a lot of time trying to build relationships with our bosses so that we can have candid conversations with them, right? Sometimes.

• 1:27:38Jocko Willink?

  It's hard to do that. It is. I understand. But. When you have built a relationship, then you can go to your boss and say, hey, look, this isn't, this isn't good. Now, once you've done that, then you can go to your, go to your, your troops and you say, hey, look, I went to the boss, this is what I told him. You know, I told him that, hey, doing this method isn't going to work well. He explained to me while we're doing it, this is what he said. So this is why we're using this method. I know it's not popular with you guys, but it's, it's, here's the reason why we're doing it. So, so you made progress, right? Your guys are saying, okay, well, he at least stood up to the man. And now he gave us an answer. He told us why we're doing

• 1:28:19Jocko Willink?

  what we're doing. So that's good, too. But the other thing is, one of the easiest way to do this is to provide an honest opinion. Truth, truth is going to be your friend here. Truth is going to be your friend. Now, I should, I should put a caveat around that. Because the truth might be, you think your boss is a complete idiot and everything he's saying is stupid. Okay, so I, I take it back. Don't use full on truth. And this is so, this is so interesting, too, because clearly, truthfulness is a huge, you know, it's a value that I've hold very dear, right? And you got to be truthful and all that. I'm telling you right now, do not be true. If you think your boss is an idiot, and you

• 1:29:04Jocko Willink?

  think the method that he's picking or the plan he's got is stupid, don't be truthful with your guys and go down there and say, boss is an idiot. It's not going to help your team, right? We have to be smart about what we're doing. But when you, when you do that, what you need to do is keep it somewhere in the middle. Okay? So, when you say something negative, don't get all crazy with the negative. Don't get all nuts with the negative. What you want to do is say, so you say something like, hey, look, I'm sure there's some better ways of doing this, but this is the decision that was made and we need to make it work. Right? So I'm not saying it's horrible. I'm saying, look, hey, guys, I'm sure there's some better ways, but guess what? This is what we are being told to do right now, and

• 1:29:49Jocko Willink?

  we're going to do the best we can. Notice that I'm putting it from like them to the we, I'm making, I'm taking ownership of it. This is now ours to execute. So you want to do that? All right. And, and I also want to focus more on

• 1:30:05Jocko Willink?

  As much as I can, I want to focus on not the personality of the boss. But I want to focus on like the what we're being told type thing or what the mission is. Cause I don't want to bring, I want to keep the personality of the boss at bay. Sometimes you get a boss that has such a raging asshole personality that you have to say something. Like you just, you have to explain. And that's when even then you want to ratchet it down a little bit. You don't say, hey, the boss is an asshole. Yeah. The boss is an idiot. No, you don't say that. You know, you say, hey, look, guys. I know the boss is, is not exactly perfect. But I think he means well with what he's trying to do. And that way, we need to focus, for that reason, we need to focus on executing. Cause it's not going to help us to sit here and complain about the boss. He might not have the greatest personality, but you know what?

• 1:30:50Jocko Willink?

  His intention is good. So let's support him. You know what I mean? Something like that where you're not, you're, you're not giving him full support, but you're not completely throwing him under the bus. Again, this is so hard to do because let's face it, the boys, the troops, they know what's up. They know when that boss is an idiot. They know when he's unprofessional. They know when he treats you like shit. They know that stuff. And so if you bowed out, if you break and you give that to them, yes, you're right. The boss is a jerk. Yes, you're right. The boss treats people like shit. Yeah. If you give them that, you're, you're hurting the situation. And that's why also when you're in a leadership position, your job oftentimes is to buffer

• 1:31:36Jocko Willink?

  between the jerk boss and the boys. You don't, the boys should never know that the, the kind of stupid harassment that you get from your boss, the boys should never know that. They should think, hey, Jocko says this guy's good to go. We're good to go. They should never think that this guy's an idiot. So again, in both cases, it's like you can't go hardcore. You can't go hardcore against either the plan or the person.

• 1:32:09Jocko Willink?

  But you also, at the same time, you need to give a little bit of a pressure release. Just a little bit of a pressure release, you know? You gotta give them just enough that they go. You know what you want them to think? You want them to think, hey, Jocko gets it. He knows. He's not admitting it to us and good on him. He's, he's keeping it professional. They know, they, they know that Jocko, they know I don't love the boss, but they know I'm keeping it professional. So therefore they, they accept what I'm saying and they stay part of the team.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it kind of feels like, I'm kind of imagining myself as one of the boys. You're my boss and we don't really like your boss.

• 1:32:54Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  I feel like, sure, if I was made to feel better in whatever way, just a little bit better, that pressure release, so you said, just a little bit better about the, the mission. Okay. And I trust you because of how you always handle things or whatever. You know what? All right. It's not the best, funnest, whatever. It's not my first choice, but at least we're doing it together. You know, I trust you and all right, let's do this kind of thing.

• 1:33:18Jocko Willink?

  And, and one of the key things you just said is trust. So if you trust me and the boss is saying to do something completely ridiculous, and I come down and say, Echo, guess what we're gonna do? We're gonna, we're gonna dig this hole and then we're gonna fill it back in. I want to do it six times today. Let's get to work. And you know it's stupid. And I come down and try and sell that to you.

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:39Jocko Willink?

  Without any explanation.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  With that voice?

• 1:33:42Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah, with that voice, I'm gonna lose trust. You're gonna, you're not gonna trust me as much. Now, if I come down and say, hey, hey, boys, hey, bring it in. This is what's going on. Yeah. See, I'm going back to another voice here. Going back to the leadership voice. If I say, hey, guys, here's what's going on. I know this is gonna come across as a strange task. We're gonna get it done. We gotta dig these holes and we're gonna fill them back in. We're actually gonna do this six times today.

• 1:34:07Jocko Willink?

  Again, I know it's not exactly what we were planning to do today, but look, let's get after it. Let's get it done. And let's prove to everybody that we can make this happen faster than, and all of a sudden we're, we're gonna be working to get after it. You know what I mean? It's no factor. Whereas again, if I go into like a dorky nerd voice and try and say, we are going to do this because it's the best plan ever.

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:26Jocko Willink?

  You, I'm losing trust with you.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:27Jocko Willink?

  I'm actually hurting my trust. So this is a really, really nuanced thing and my best advice here.

• 1:34:36Jocko Willink?

  Is to try and keep it in the middle, right? Try and keep it, and I'll tell you, probably lean a little bit, lean towards being professional, lean towards supporting the chain of command, because, because the guys are gonna know, when you give them that little, little pressure relief, when you say, hey, I know this is, this is a little bit of a strange plan. As soon as I say that, everyone's like, okay, he understands, we're good, and we'll do whatever he says. Hey, Jocko, okay, Jocko, we get it, you gotta, you gotta have us do this, cool, let's do it.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:03Jocko Willink?

  It's when I come down and say, hmm, and again, you'll realize that this is, this is the opposite. I say all the time, you know, if you come down and say, the boss's plan, we gotta do this. I always throw that as like the worst possible leadership is, hey, we gotta do this because we were told to do it. That's the worst possible leadership, not saying to do that. What I'm saying is a little pressure relief, just a little pressure relief of, hey, look, I threw up a different plan. I thought my plan was a little bit better, boss came up with this, this idea, we're gonna go for it, it's close enough. Just something like that, just like, hey, I know, I know.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  I dig it, yeah.

• 1:35:38Jocko Willink?

  That's it, little, little, just give them a little, a little nugget.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like I would feel if you were to be like, this is such a dumb plan, and I don't know why we gotta do it, or whatever, I'd be like, wait, wait, then why are we doing it then? You know, you're, you're my boss, like, why are we doing it then, you know? And I wouldn't wanna do that.

• 1:35:54Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  So yeah, it's like right in the middle there.

• 1:35:57Jocko Willink?

  It's leaning towards being professional, it's leaning towards supporting the chain of command, with just enough of a pressure relief to, to have them say.

• 1:36:06Speaker 01

  I'll tell you a story, this is real, real quick, this was in.

• 1:36:09Jocko Willink?

  Dude, take your time, I want you to tell me the longest story, we're going back to ninth grade, bring it through, bring it through high school and college.

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  It's weird that I even thought of this, so we, we, you know how like in, in class, right, this, uh, early high school freshman, you know, in class, they're like, hey, get into groups, we're gonna do this thing. And, um, so we got into these groups and, and we did some project, little thing during class. We're done, halfway through class, we're done, and we're about to present, the teacher looks at it, and is like, oh, you guys gotta do it again. But the teacher doesn't tell everyone, she tells just this one girl, Marla is her name.

• 1:36:44Jocko Willink?

  Marla.

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  Marla comes back from talking to teachers, she's like, she was kind of the leader, no one does it, but at that point, she was kind of the little leader, the liaison between the group and the teacher. So she comes back, she's like, she's like, we gotta do it again. And everyone's like, what? She goes, we gotta do it again. Like, you could tell she had accepted it. But just her being like sighing kind of demonstrated that, hey, she feels the pain too. I dig it, but hey, guys, you know, we're not gonna complain or anything. It was just that little subtle thing, but that's exactly what it did. It kind of, it basically accepted the order that none of us really wanted to hear. But at the same time, she demonstrated that, hey, she feels it too, you know? And let's do what we did again, of course, and whatever. I don't even know what grade we had.

• 1:37:28Jocko Willink?

  Got an A+, I'm sure. Marla working her leadership skills on the teams.

• 1:37:33Speaker 01

  It was weird that, I mean, I don't know necessarily that she intended to do that, but that was the exact effect. And you can, thinking back, I can see the elements, you know? The little pressure release was her not saying, don't talk to me like that. She said, we gotta do it again. You know, she didn't like oppose anybody. Just her little mannerisms.

• 1:37:51Jocko Willink?

  You know what she didn't do? She didn't jump completely on board with the teacher.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:56Jocko Willink?

  And be like, we gotta do this again. It sucked. No, she was like, hey, look, we're gonna have to do this again. You know what I mean?

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  It was just the tone. It was perfect.

• 1:38:03Jocko Willink?

  Enough. And I'll tell you, this, this question, I'm surprised it took so long to get this question, because this is a really, really good question, and it also is a incredibly important skill to be able to walk this line, and it's tricky to do. And it's a very, it's, it's sort of, this might be one of the,

• 1:38:25Jocko Willink?

  this is like the type of thing that helped me a lot in, when I was in the teams, was just being able to do this enough, because you get told to do some dumb shit in the teams, man. And you know what? It's like, okay, being able to translate a stupid, something stupid, and give enough pressure relief.

• 1:38:45Jocko Willink?

  To to make guys not just go, Jocko is just, you know, company guy.

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:49Jocko Willink?

  Right? He's a company guy. He just, oh, he doesn't stand up for us. No, actually, I do. But this is, you know, like Leif telling that story about doing paperwork. Where I'm like, no, we're gonna do all the paperwork. I I I went, I held the company line. But like, in such a dynamic or such an overboard way that guys were like, okay, yeah, we're gonna win.

• 1:39:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:09Jocko Willink?

  This is a competition.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:11Jocko Willink?

  So that's good times.

• 1:39:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a me, it, cause it seems like, okay, all that paperwork, it's it's almost like the paperwork was like an affront. It was like, hey, what?

• 1:39:20Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  Us against them kind of thing, whoever told us to do the paperwork. And you were like, yeah, it's us against them.

• 1:39:25Jocko Willink?

  And we're gonna do this thing.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. You know, so it's like you take it to the.

• 1:39:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That's something I've done, I've actually done that a fair amount. I talked about this story before, but like at Officer Candidate School, every little stupid rule that they threw at us, I did it to the nth degree and had everyone in my class do the nth degree where they were just.

• 1:39:40Speaker 01

  Going ballistic.

• 1:39:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, going ballistic. So a story like that, where we're just go, we're gonna take what they're, take the order and carry it out to the extreme and take pride in doing that. That was another little tactic that got used by me along the way.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we're gonna do that. We're gonna do it so hard, you're not even gonna know what your name was. That's another tactic you can take, for sure. They want us to polish these boots? They want us to, they want us to clean this thing? We'll do it. Watch this.

• 1:40:09Jocko Willink?

  All right, next question.

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  Next question. Jocko, has there been a situation in which you took something too personally?

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  How do you avoid taking things personally?

• 1:40:19Jocko Willink?

  So the initial reaction is like, no, man, I don't take things too personally, no. But the actual fact is, yeah, I take, I take everything personally, right? Like, I mean, I, if I do something bad, I am very personally, I don't like it at all. If I do something poorly, I don't like it at all. I take it very personally. If somebody gives me feedback, I I take it personally. This is like, it's an ego thing. It's a pure ego thing, right? And I, I just had to say this at a group I was talking to, just because I say ego is bad all the time, ego is good too. Ego is what drives you. Ego is what makes you wanna be number one. Ego is what is, brings you pride in your work. It makes you work harder to give, deliver good product and and be a good

• 1:41:03Jocko Willink?

  leader and a good employee and a good person, right? That's ego. The problem comes.

• 1:41:10Jocko Willink?

  When ego or taking things personally actually prevents you from listening to the critiques that you're being told. That's, that's the problem. So for instance, we'll take this little podcast right here. I just got some critique on it the other day. Yeah, I got somebody, somebody sent me a little critique and they said that I didn't explain, because we had Andy Snumpf on here and Andy was kind of rattling off that his, his career in the teams and as he was rattling off the career in the teams, he lost some people, not a bunch, because it wasn't that complicated, but he lost some people. And, and for instance, he used an acronym, an acronym, LPO, which stands

• 1:41:53Jocko Willink?

  for leading petty officer, which is the, which is the second senior enlisted person in a SEAL platoon. And I didn't explain that when he said it. So there's an example. So when I heard this, my first reaction is like, oh, you don't know what LPO is? Cool. Go Google it. Go Google it. Why are you asking me? No brace, stop, talk. And then that was pretty much, you know, my, my ego was saying, hey, I can't believe this person doesn't even know. How dare you. And then as I thought about, I was like, well, you know, I need to, I need to make sure in the future that I'm more, that I'm more aware of what guys are talking, especially when I'm sitting here talking to another SEAL, who we have a common language and we are talking about things in very conversational

• 1:42:37Jocko Willink?

  mode. So we're not caring about anybody else. And that's sort of what the podcast is often is like, we're not, we're not talking to everyone that's listening at this moment. We're just kind of talking to ourselves or amongst ourselves. And so when he throws out this words, I need to be more aware of them. So if I took it personally, I might not listen. If I actually listen, I can do a better job. So that's, that's kind of it. And basically that's the same with anybody when anybody receives any criticism of any kind, they get, they take it personally.

• 1:43:13Jocko Willink?

  And I think the thing is, two things. Number one, get over it so you can listen to what the criticism is. And, and also remember this. This is kinda weird. I, I think, maybe I'm wrong. What do you think?

• 1:43:27Jocko Willink?

  The more angry, and the more personally you take some criticism, the truer it actually is. Is that possible? When something really bothers you, it's probably something that really bothers you because you know it's true. Like when somebody says something that just doesn't matter to me, i- i- it's, you know, I don't take it personally. Oh yeah, they just think that. Don't worry about it. I'm not worried about it. But when somebody says something that I know is true, and they're pinging me on it, that's means I get even more, take it more personally and get more angry about it. And, and then that should be an indicator, hey, this is something you actually need to fix.

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it actually has to do with insecurity more than anything. So it can be, it can be super true, or it can be kinda true, or you can just be questioning whether or not it's true. If you're insecure about it, that's when it's gonna, because you can be like, there can be, okay, you know, let's say guys have a receding hairline. And they're like, oh, I don't, I don't care about that at all. It's totally true, you know? And, or let's say I do care about it. I don't like it, but I, I've known it for the last, I don't know, 20 years, whatever. And someone's like, hey, you know, your hairline's receding.

• 1:44:34Jocko Willink?

  Do people still care about that?

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 1:44:37Jocko Willink?

  I don't think they do anymore.

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  I don't know, but I'm just saying, you know, certain things that's um, and if you know about it, or, you know, and you know it's true, and see, you won't necessarily be bothered by it. But if you get someone who's like, it's starting to recede, or it's early on, or it's like, dang, and they won't necessarily be, this is just an example, hypothetical, but they won't necessarily be concerned about the actual hairline receding. They're more concerned about, oh, do I look old, or am I unattractive now, or am I losing it now, or something like that. That's what they're insecure about. So when someone points out some symptom of that insecurity, that's when they're like, well, you don't gotta say that, or you know, they get all, oh man, that goes for kinda anything. So maybe, I don't know, maybe it's someone saying, hey, you didn't explain this enough.

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  Maybe you're like, wait, what are you saying? Was that a junk episode kind of thing? Or, or something like, did I not? Um, you know how you, you're good at explaining stuff and simplifying them or whatever? Maybe it was like a, an attack on that or something.

• 1:45:34Jocko Willink?

  Maybe it's a personal point of pride.

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you know, exactly. I don't know. Yeah, but maybe. But that's typically what people get mad about. It's not necessarily if they know it's true or not. It's if they're insecure about it.

• 1:45:45Jocko Willink?

  Right, well, you wouldn't be insecure about something that wasn't true.

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  Uh, no, but here's the thing, but sometimes you do. Cause you know, and you, sometimes it's like a weird like mental, uh, like problem. But, you know, girls, for example, I'm not saying all girls, but I'm gonna totally generalize right now. But, you know, the girl's like, hey, do I look fat in this? The girl's like in awesome shape or whatever. And you're like, uh, or they always think they're fat. That, it's not true.

• 1:46:09Jocko Willink?

  That's not the right response, by the way. That little wishy washy thing? That's not, that's not a good response.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  Example though, you know what I mean? So it's like that kind of stuff, you know? People are just insecure about, about stuff sometimes.

• 1:46:20Jocko Willink?

  Oh, and even though the girl's in really good shape.

• 1:46:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, that's horrible.

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  Or, or even guys, when, especially like if they're into like their physique or something like that, where I don't know, they're at a party or so. I've heard guys like they go to parties and they'll do like dips or pushups before they walk in. Because like, so they're like more pumped. I, I swear and.

• 1:46:41Jocko Willink?

  Is that why you're doing some pushups?

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? So like, yeah.

• 1:46:47Jocko Willink?

  You were just a little insecure about what I just said.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  Anyway, uh, you know, they'll get that kind where they'll be like, oh, I'm, they'll think that, oh, I'm not looking very cut up or something like that, you know, like that kind of stuff, when it's not true.

• 1:47:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, no, I think, I think that's a, a good point. And I think the bottom line is when we take things personally, I, I, I think it's actually not a negative thing because it means that you're, there's probably something that you need to work on. But I think what we need to watch out for is taking it personally and therefore being mad and either being mad at the person that told you, which the person probably could be out of line, you know, saying some stuff that's offensive, but even if someone offends you.

• 1:47:35Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, let's fix it so you don't have that that that weakness or that insecurity anymore. And so just know what your red flags are, know when you're taking something, everybody takes stuff personally.

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:44Jocko Willink?

  I'm like Mr. Detachment and I take stuff personally all the time when somebody says something to me, I'm like, oh, okay. Dang, what I need to do better.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, you do a good job of seeing the the big picture, though. You know, like, because a lot of times, you know, when, I don't know, I always think back to, you know, the the relationship. Like, okay, let's say, let's say I'm at home, I'm mowing the lawn, I, you know, did all this, these great housework chores, whatever.

• 1:48:09Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  You know, dad comes home, mom comes home, and they're like, hey, I thought I told you to take out the trash. Meanwhile, everything else is pick and span. So I'm like, I'm mad, you know, how dare you say that to me when I did this, me, me, my thing, my thing. But at the same time, they're right, you know, so you do a good job of like, you'd be able to kind of recognize that, even though you probably feel those same feelings.

• 1:48:32Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  You won't, your default isn't, what about this, and fight back and and make the problem bigger. It's kind of like, you'll feel it on the inside.

• 1:48:41Jocko Willink?

  And recognize the red flags of what's happening and go, oh, yeah, okay.

• 1:48:46Speaker 01

  I gotta remember to take out the trash, because the truth is, that's correct.

• 1:48:49Jocko Willink?

  That is correct.

• 1:48:49Speaker 01

  Doesn't matter if you did the lawn or not, the trash was a thing, you know, so, yeah. Yeah, you do a good job of of recognizing that part. I think a lot of times, in our case, we don't do such a good job.

• 1:49:03Jocko Willink?

  You know, I'm gonna throw this out there, this is a little off subject, but it just made me think of it, I was talking to Dave at at the gym yesterday, and he was listening to the podcast and and he he lost his, he lost his dad. And like six months ago, and he was listening to a clip from the podcast of me basically saying, hey, because someone asked what good comes from when someone dies.

• 1:49:30Jocko Willink?

  And he he said, look, you covered a lot of stuff and it was super powerful and it was was very helpful. And he said, but there's a one more thing. He said, there's one more thing that has come from my dad's death that is good. And I said, what? And he said, it was like a slap in the face of go out and and get after it. You know, and I kind of left that out and I've I've talked to other people and clearly, you know, when you lose someone that's close to you. See, the reason I guess the reason that I didn't think of this is because in the teams, you kind of like you you guys get killed, you know? And we all kind of already live with the feeling of, hey, man.

• 1:50:15Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I say it all the time, I'm going to live the best life I can. But for someone in the civilian sector and they haven't had any, any, they haven't lost anyone, they haven't had anyone died close to them. They get the feeling that many of us, many people walk through the through the world with of I'm going to live forever. You know, I'm not going to die and I got all the time in the world I need, I got time. And so he made this great point. He said, you know, for me, when my dad died, he's, you know, he's in his mid twenties and he's been kind of, you know, I don't want to say the word relaxing, but he's been, you know, fairly, he's been cruising kind of. And he's, he realized he can't, he can't do that, you know, he needs to, he needs to get after it.

• 1:50:58Jocko Willink?

  So, cool, cool story, cool feedback. I thought I should let everybody know that's another good thing when if you lose someone and you you're not accustomed to that and you don't see how precious life is because a lot of times it's pretty easy to forget. It's pretty easy to forget how precious it is when, when it's right there, when it's given to you, you know, it's just like food. It's pretty, pretty easy to forget. I mean, how precious was the was the crappy loaf of French bread with sticks and bugs in it that Colonel Reader got when you got to the prison camp in Hanoi? That was precious. And you know what? Even Colonel Reader, three weeks later, he was like, oh, this that bread, even he's here, he's laughing, he's like, that bread sucked. I was like, sir, here you said it was like the best thing you've ever had. He goes, well, it was at first.

• 1:51:42Jocko Willink?

  So we all get, we all get this attitude that, you know, hey, this is always going to be here. Well, it's not always going to be here. So don't, don't treat it like it is. Taking that for granted. Yep.

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 1:52:00Speaker 01

  Hi Jocko. I'm being told in Jiu Jitsu that I'm using too much strength to execute techniques and dominating roles. I get after it in the gym and try to be stronger and fitter. I already limit my strength against same weight training partners and definitely don't pull, don't bull rush or overpower lighter partners. I want to improve my Jiu Jitsu knowledge and understand the intent of reducing my strength and reducing my strength to learn the skill. But where, where is the balance? I feel like, I feel like I'm doing, uh, being penalized for working hard and being strong. And there has to be an element of strength to technique, right?

• 1:52:43Speaker 01

  Now that I'm trying to do zero strength, working weak positions and they still go 100% on me, I'm not learning anything, right? That's what he's asking.

• 1:52:54Speaker 01

  What is, what is my 25% stronger than my training partners 100%? I've trained no gi for four years, but gi only for 12 months. Don't judge a white belt warrior.

• 1:53:07Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so. You know, I don't think anyone is saying use zero strength. And just be a, I used to have a, uh, kids in the kids class that would just like flop around, like use, they'd be like noodles, you know? Especially when you're a partner, right? And I'd say, hey, don't be that. So no one's telling you to use zero strength. That's not the, that's not the, the goal here. You just want to use less strength. And I'm the same way, man. I work out so I can be strong. And when we're rolling, if I have to use strength, I'm going to use it. You bench pressed me off, off you the other day from a cross side.

• 1:53:43Speaker 01

  All technique.

• 1:53:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:46Jocko Willink?

  You even claimed it at the time. You were like, that's all weight lifted. So, so that's good, right? And you, you used it because you had to use it. You were going to get punished and you're like, oh no, I'm not going to, I'm not going to have Jocko across the side this early in the roll. So boom, got bench pressed.

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  People were watching too.

• 1:54:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. So. So yeah, we, we want to be strong for sure. But I'll tell you, this is a, this is a key thing. When I'm going to train with someone, I'm going to use just enough skill and strength to stay slightly ahead of them. Just enough. I'm not trying to crush them.

• 1:54:21Jocko Willink?

  If someone's, and I'll tell you, if someone's way lighter than me, then, but they have kind of equivalent skill, then I'm gonna try and limit my strength as much as I can. So it's jujitsu versus jujitsu, for sure. But I'm definitely gonna use my strength if needed. For, really, for a couple of reasons. The first reason is because of ego.

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:54:42Jocko Willink?

  Right? I don't wanna tap. I don't wanna get caught in a bad position. I don't like that.

• 1:54:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:46Jocko Willink?

  You know, if you ca- if you train, like, when we're done training, I'm definitely using strength because I'm dripping with sweat. Right? I mean, I'm using physical attributes. But that's not the only reason. The other reason that you have to use your strength sometimes is you don't wanna give people the false sense of security that, hey, that worked, right? Even your good training partners, like, you don't wanna say, oh, the guy gets a position, so you just tap.

• 1:55:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:55:13Jocko Willink?

  Because in a competition or in the street, the person's not just gonna tap. They need to do it right. So, that's it. I guess the bottom, the bottom line is, that my guess is, is this dude is probably using too much strength. He's probably one of those guys that's naturally really strong, and he works out, and he's thinking, I've been training no gi for four years. So now when I put this gi on, man, I'm angry about it because I'm falling behind a little bit. So I'm gonna use some strength.

• 1:55:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:40Jocko Willink?

  I would say, man, just try, try and relax. And just, one of my favorite pieces of advice to give, relax harder.

• 1:55:51Jocko Willink?

  Just relax. Try and flow when you roll a little bit. And it definitely will make you, it'll make you better in the end. The more you relax, the, the, the more, the better you'll get in the end.

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and certain, I found that, like, certain guys, that's just their, just their method, really.

• 1:56:07Jocko Willink?

  They're just strong.

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's how they roll, and they're just aggressive physically, that's how, and... I found that they can, a lot of times, they can get more technical, you know, but really, that's kind of their, their strengths in a way and that's, it's just their way of rolling. And some guys are the opposite.

• 1:56:25Jocko Willink?

  You know what, now that you mention it, there's some people that are like that, they have like an on and off switch. They're either all on, or they're just super docile.

• 1:56:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's almost like-

• 1:56:35Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta find that middle ground if you can.

• 1:56:37Speaker 01

  If you can, but people are different, like, let's say, um, like, remember Franklin?

• 1:56:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:43Speaker 01

  He's real flexible, crazy. Okay, consider him, where he's gonna be real technical and flexible and flowy and stuff, and that's his jiu-jitsu. You can, he can, I need to be more strong and rigid and aggressive. He can train that, but his default is that flowy, flexible way. And, and guys who are like this, I think, that's gonna be kind of their default. They can train, kind of deviate a little bit and get it more for sure, but that's kind of just their, that's, that's the vehicle they have, you know?

• 1:57:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  And it's, it's almost like a genetic thing. It's not genetic, I know that, but it's, it's kind of, it's almost like the foundation of their-

• 1:57:18Jocko Willink?

  Franklin was a trip to roll with because he was so flexible, but not just in a normal way.

• 1:57:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:27Jocko Willink?

  You know what is flexible in his? His spine was flexible.

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  Yes!

• 1:57:30Jocko Willink?

  Like, when you'd put your weight on him and he would just, like, like jellyfish.

• 1:57:34Speaker 01

  Like an octopus.

• 1:57:35Jocko Willink?

  It was, it was, yeah, it was like an octopus. That's exactly what it was like. Hey, I wish he kept training, man. He was so good.

• 1:57:40Speaker 01

  I saw him pretty, not too long ago.

• 1:57:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was-

• 1:57:43Jocko Willink?

  He's trained it like occasionally.

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. He, yeah, he was getting good for a while.

• 1:57:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, really good.

• 1:57:47Speaker 01

  Still good, though. Still good. Um, but yeah, it's kind of, it, there's, it's more of a mental thing. Like, if you mentally had, there's drills like you can do. You remember, um, Jerry Loudon was his name? He jammed up his knees, but we used to do this thing. He's like, hey, let's just flow, right? And you know how people say, let's just flow, so-

• 1:58:05Jocko Willink?

  Then they're trying to kill you.

• 1:58:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, he wouldn't though. He would be, like, his flow would be like a fast pace, and you could even try to hold him down and, and he'd just be like, flowing, flowing, flowing. He would get you in a good position, then he'd get right out of it into another, you know, like, he was really good at flowing, to the point where, bro, you get kind of tired because you're moving so much. It's not full speed flow. It's almost full speed, though.

• 1:58:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:26Speaker 01

  So, I remember doing that a lot with him, and it- Really translated. When I would roll, it would be like, I felt like that difference in technique.

• 1:58:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know. That's really good. I, I do, I always do a warm up round with Andy. Like that, we just go position, position. We're going, but we're going, like, you know, we're just go, we're flowing.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:45Jocko Willink?

  That sounds, I like that word.

• 1:58:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:47Jocko Willink?

  But that's what it is. I mean, that's what it is. The, the, don't ever do that with Dean.

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:58:53Jocko Willink?

  No, I'm serious. Don't ever, you know, don't ever say, listen to him say like, hey, let's just get warmed up. Because he's not gonna do that.

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:02Jocko Willink?

  He's gonna flow until he's in a good position. He's gonna smash you. So don't do it. You have to just go hard.

• 1:59:06Speaker 01

  No. Yeah. Okay. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Andy's real good at that.

• 1:59:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  Stuff too.

• 1:59:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:12Speaker 01

  But that's a good way though. Like if you.

• 1:59:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's a good way. That's a good way. If you can, that's a good, I see what you're saying. That's a good way to learn to relax more.

• 1:59:20Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah.

• 1:59:21Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:59:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. When that becomes more common because let's face it, I mean, if you're strong and you're going into roles and people, if to the point where people are saying, hey, you're, you're using too much strength.

• 1:59:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, if you're.

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  That means you're getting like, getting after.

• 1:59:33Jocko Willink?

  If you're hearing that from multiple people.

• 1:59:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:35Jocko Willink?

  There's an issue, man.

• 1:59:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:37Jocko Willink?

  That's that. My point is even though you're saying, saying, hey, some people are just that way. Don't accept that. Like who, the guy that asked this question, don't accept Echo's thing of saying some people are just that way. Cause that means you're just gonna keep doing it and you won't get better. Cause he will, the more you relax, the better you get.

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And of course I don't mean it like that.

• 1:59:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know you don't. Yeah, I know. I know you don't. But I'm saying like, don't get that misconception that that's what Echo's trying to say. Hey, you're just that way. Go with it. No, don't go with it. Listen to what Echo's saying when he's saying, hey, find somebody to flow roll with and just let it flow.

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's gonna be pretty rare. You find a person who's kind of default method is this and then.

• 2:00:17Jocko Willink?

  By the way, I just realized, I don't say flow roll. Cause I was thinking about what I say to Andy. Or we don't say it anymore. We just do it. But I used to go, hey, let's get a warm up round. So I call it a warm up.

• 2:00:26Speaker 01

  Warm up. Okay.

• 2:00:28Jocko Willink?

  Flow roll.

• 2:00:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. But sometimes not a warm, sometimes it's just like a technique sharpener.

• 2:00:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay. I guess we have to accept these words.

• 2:00:34Speaker 01

  Let's say he does do.

• 2:00:38Speaker 01

  Let's say he does do some flow rolling, some drills and gets better at it. I would, I would guess. That there is gonna be a significant remainder of his game that's gonna be this aggressive game.

• 2:00:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure. Yes. No, the dude's gonna be aggressive for sure. Holmes is aggressive on the mat, for sure.

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  Another little mindset that might help is think less competitively. Cause you know how like a lot of people when they're, and really it's true though. Here's the thing, this, this element needs to be there. Where when it's time to spar, it should be competitive. Otherwise, it's like, what are we doing? You know, I want it, if, I want you to be competitive because I want an accurate look of what it's like to roll with Jocko or a guy like Jocko, big, strong, good at jiu jitsu, whatever. If you're just flow rolling with me and non-competitively every single time, I'm not getting the work that I need.

• 2:01:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's what I was talking about earlier too, is that's why you gotta go hard sometimes. Yeah, you gotta use strength.

• 2:01:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it should be competitive, but if some, if people are complaining you're going too hard, you're going straight up like every roll is ADCC on the line, life or death, you know, kinda more in that direction.

• 2:01:48Jocko Willink?

  The Moon Giles.

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if you think maybe less of that and understand that this is, this is training, if you wanna get less using strength and stuff, you gotta kinda train that stuff.

• 2:01:59Jocko Willink?

  I like it.

• 2:02:01Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 2:02:02Jocko Willink?

  Next question.

• 2:02:03Speaker 01

  Jocko, I need some advice, if you've got time.

• 2:02:06Jocko Willink?

  We got time.

• 2:02:07Speaker 01

  What's a good course of action when someone lies, betrays trust, or just plain destroys you?

• 2:02:17Jocko Willink?

  Move on.

• 2:02:20Jocko Willink?

  Straight up, move on, forget them, they are lying and they are untrustworthy, so move on. Now, sometimes this can be hard, especially if they've somehow tied themselves into your life, especially like for instance, you get the kids involved in a divorce scenario, you, you can't move on, but you have to mentally move on. You have to emotionally detach from that human and that's hard to do.

• 2:02:54Jocko Willink?

  Because obviously, they were someone that you trusted. And the reason I know that you trusted them is because they got to a point where they were able to betray your trust and destroy you. So, they, they, it's hard. But the fact that they trust, that you trusted them, the fact that you had that relationship, that's even more reason to walk away. It's even more reason to move on. You gotta see them for

• 2:03:26Jocko Willink?

  what they are. And this is an important piece right here. This is an important piece. This is something I learned as a young lad out there in the world. That person is not who you thought they were.

• 2:03:43Jocko Willink?

  Right? They are not who you thought they were. The idea that this person

• 2:03:52Jocko Willink?

  was a trustworthy, faithful companion is not true. It is not true. That person does not exist. They didn't exist, and they don't exist. It was in your head. It was in your head that this person was trustworthy and you, they were everything you wanted them to be, and they were faithful, committed. That is a lie. They are not that person.

• 2:04:16Jocko Willink?

  They have proved it.

• 2:04:19Jocko Willink?

  They've proved it by their actions. So, move on, and at the risk of sounding callous, get over it.

• 2:04:32Jocko Willink?

  Get over it. Do not dwell, do not dwell on, do not dwell on, on, on what it was. And don't dwell on what it could have been. You hear when guys go through bad breakups? You know, it's, I just, I thought we were gonna, it's like, no, don't dwell on that. Deal with what it is right now. What that person is. Deal with reality. Accept reality and be, be thankful for reality. Be thankful that you were able to learn before you invested more into this person. Be, be, be thankful that you found out when you did, that this person was a liar. That this person was unfaithful, untrustworthy. Be, be thankful.

• 2:05:18Jocko Willink?

  That you know it and you know it now instead of later. And you know what else is going to make it a lot easier to get over these situations is recognize that there's plenty of people out there in the world that are trustworthy and that are faithful, good people. There's, they're out there. Go find one of them. But

• 2:05:38Jocko Willink?

  don't think that that person that you had was the only one in the world. They're not. And you know what? If that, I've sometimes, sometimes people have a hard time making that trust because they're so caught up and they, they, they don't want to meet someone else right away. That's fine. Start with yourself. Right? Rely on yourself. Trust yourself because we, when, when someone breaks our trust, we, we, we question ourselves too.

• 2:06:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:06:03Jocko Willink?

  Like we think our, my judgment's bad. I'm not a good judge of human character because I totally put my faith in this person and look what they did to me. So now we don't trust her. So you've got to build that trust up. You've got to build that trust up back again with yourself. How do you do that? Read, write, learn, work out,

• 2:06:26Jocko Willink?

  be alone. It's okay to be alone. Some people get freaked out when they're alone. It's okay to be alone. It's okay. It's okay to be alone. It's no big deal. Enjoy it. Do something productive and build that trust up in yourself, you know? Look back at the situation, learn from it. We do that. It's an op- post operational debrief. Oh, you've put too much trust in somebody? Cool. They broke your heart? All right. Roger that. Let's see what were the steps? What should I have recognized? How many times did I say, well, you know, they didn't call me, but it's probably just because their phone was out of battery. No. Once your phone runs out of battery once, okay, you don't let it happen again, right? So you start seeing those red flags, see the mistakes that you made and then look for them

• 2:07:08Jocko Willink?

  next time around because you deal with people all the time that they, they made mistakes the first run. They go back and they make the same mistakes the second run. They go back and make the same mistakes the third run. That's when you've got to start blaming yourself.

• 2:07:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:22Jocko Willink?

  On your situation. That's why, that's why I said you've got to like build a relationship with yourself. You've got to learn yourself. You've got to trust, you've got to learn to trust yourself. So spend some time doing that and

• 2:07:37Jocko Willink?

  Then when you go back and you start dealing with people, because that's what that's what you gotta watch out for is that you become a hardened criminal. You don't trust anybody. Like you were talking about cops. You know, sometimes cops have a hard time because they're dealing with scumbags all day long.

• 2:07:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:07:51Jocko Willink?

  And it builds up this, this mistrust of other people. So you don't want to have that happen. You want to be suspicious of people, but you want to be able to build trust once they prove themselves. So take those small steps. And start to build up over time. Don't just jump in and give someone a hundred percent trust out of the gate. You don't know them. You don't know them, you know? Back in the day, back in the day when old hardcore bands used to have this T-shirt that just said, trust no one. I was like, yeah, that's legit, right? You don't, don't go out of the gate with the big trust on somebody with important stuff. Don't do it. But the good news is, like I said, there's plenty of people out there that are good people that you are.

• 2:08:34Jocko Willink?

  Give you, that you can give all your trust to. Just take it slow, brother.

• 2:08:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's so crazy how you just explain that so simple and it makes total sense when you're in the situation though.

• 2:08:47Speaker 01

  Emotions, you know, like you can't just detach and be like, what are the red flags? No, you're too busy missing the person or whatever.

• 2:08:55Jocko Willink?

  You're a disaster.

• 2:08:56Speaker 01

  So, and again, but even that.

• 2:09:01Jocko Willink?

  Throwing things, looking at pictures. That's the worst.

• 2:09:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't look at pictures.

• 2:09:05Jocko Willink?

  Get out the picture and stare. I've seen guys do that. I'm like, bro, just give me that. Let me throw this away for you. It's not going to help. That person is, that was always to me was, was explaining like, listen. Cause guys, what she was, no, no, she wasn't. That is a lie. That person that you put, put together in your head that you've assembled in your mind, that person doesn't exist. They don't exist. The, the person that you dealt with was a liar. Was unfaithful, was a cheater. That's the person. The person wasn't this person that you're putting forth in your mind. That person doesn't exist. So stop.

• 2:09:42Speaker 01

  But, but you don't understand the good times.

• 2:09:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know, I know, I know.

• 2:09:46Speaker 01

  It's a trick. Here's the trick. Okay, so.

• 2:09:50Speaker 01

  If, okay, that person a liar, that person a cheater, and what I kinda said there was like, you don't understand the good times, that's a real part of it.

• 2:09:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 2:09:56Speaker 01

  That's really, it's like, sure, they did this, sure, she flats my tires when she gets smashed, or all that.

• 2:10:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:10:02Speaker 01

  But the good times we have are so good. So, it's, it's, it's proof that it is, it's not about the person. It's not about the person that you can see all the red flags and how they mistreat you from time to time, or that you're beat. It's about yourself, and how you're sad now because of all these reasons. But the trick comes with, what, one of the tricks comes with, same thing I said about drinking, where it's your brain, because it's like chemicals, when you bond with someone in certain, in certain ways, and it's different from, you know, it varies from person to person, but it's like, I think it's like oxytocin, or I don't know, something where it's, it's.

• 2:10:34Jocko Willink?

  We'll go with just something.

• 2:10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, I don't wanna go into, but you feel this bond with this specific person, that's why you have these feelings, even though this girl like, lies to you. You see her lying text messages on your phone right now, you're looking at, meanwhile, you still, still miss them, it's a trick, because it's saying like, that your emotional, like, well-being is attached to this person, kinda thing, right? And all the other stuff you just kinda ignore. So, just like, I was saying with drinking, right? Well, I know, consciously, like, I'm gonna be hungover tomorrow, I, I won't get anything done, all this stuff.

• 2:11:05Jocko Willink?

  Weaker.

• 2:11:06Speaker 01

  Why do I wanna drink so bad right now, you know, kinda thing? And it's the same thing, the chemicals in your brain are telling you like, this girl is essential for you, you know, for your well-being.

• 2:11:16Jocko Willink?

  She's not.

• 2:11:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, that's the logic, though, that's the logic, it's a trick, yeah.

• 2:11:19Jocko Willink?

  Don't listen to the, don't listen to your brain, listen to me. She's not essential.

• 2:11:23Speaker 01

  That's why you're, bro, I'm telling you, but that's the logic, which, those chemicals are blocking.

• 2:11:28Jocko Willink?

  I have seen so many situations where guys are just, and, and what's horrible, is I'm sitting here saying this, it's, you could be smacking someone in the face, telling them, move on, move on, and they're not gonna listen.

• 2:11:42Speaker 01

  That's, that's a powerful trick.

• 2:11:43Jocko Willink?

  So, you gotta make that decision, yeah, that's, that's, that's, it's hard. And guys ruin their lives, I mean, girls do too, girls and guys, they ruin their lives, you know, with, over somebody that is completely abusive, whether mentally or physically, that just completely abusive, and they'll ruin their lives for this person. That per, and, see, in my mind, I think it's because they build a person. They build a person on the framework of reality. They build a fantasy.

• 2:12:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:10Jocko Willink?

  And they're in love with that fantasy.

• 2:12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:12Jocko Willink?

  And they wanna keep it going.

• 2:12:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:12:14Jocko Willink?

  It's a fantasy, so stop.

• 2:12:16Speaker 01

  And they, and they ignore like all the quote unquote red flags.

• 2:12:19Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:12:20Speaker 01

  And they remember the good times, even if it's like, like 10 minutes.

• 2:12:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:23Speaker 01

  A week. They remember those good times, they ignore the, the, the red flags. For, because of that, that, you know, that trick, that chemical trick in their brain. And so it reinforces that thing that they built. You know, that fantasy that they built, like, it's true.

• 2:12:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:38Speaker 01

  It's this big, the reality is this big.

• 2:12:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:41Speaker 01

  And look, the fantasy, and they just attach to it.

• 2:12:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:44Speaker 01

  You ever see, uh, like, a friend or whatever, cause I'm assuming you're, you've never been in this situation? Like, you ever had a, a friend where they're really into it, they're almost ruining their lives, they're in bad shape or whatever? And then, whether it be all of a sudden, or years later, whatever, they're thinking back and they're like, what was I thinking?

• 2:13:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:00Speaker 01

  Because the chemical trick, so to speak, wears off. And then they can see all that logic that you're talking about.

• 2:13:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:06Speaker 01

  And like, oh my gosh, man. It's, it's almost like, it's almost like you feel like you were a different person. When you recover from that thing.

• 2:13:14Jocko Willink?

  I mean, just the fact that you can't talk any sense into people when they're in that situation.

• 2:13:19Speaker 01

  It's a trick.

• 2:13:19Jocko Willink?

  You gotta try and, yeah, it's hard, it's hard.

• 2:13:22Speaker 01

  But I think knowing that that's it, it's a chemical in your brain that is tricking you. And it goes for a lot of stuff. Donuts, like, all this that's tricking you. If you know, like, eh, and you say, eh, I'm not gonna be tricked, I feel it, I feel this, I feel the sadness, I feel missing this person. But it's a trick, you know?

• 2:13:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:40Speaker 01

  That helps, it totally helps.

• 2:13:42Jocko Willink?

  I like it. So, move on, man. I know it's hard. Trust us.

• 2:13:49Speaker 01

  Speaking of moving on, next question.

• 2:13:54Speaker 01

  Unless we wanna talk about this some more?

• 2:13:56Jocko Willink?

  No, I think we need to move on.

• 2:13:57Speaker 01

  Okay, exactly, right, let's move on.

• 2:14:02Speaker 01

  In what circumstances do you recommend direct attack?

• 2:14:04Jocko Willink?

  I will, hold on.

• 2:14:06Speaker 01

  Oh, we're not moving on, you're stuck on it?

• 2:14:07Jocko Willink?

  No, but what's horrible is, man, people kill themselves.

• 2:14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:11Jocko Willink?

  In these situations, over a lie.

• 2:14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:14Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's to me, that's the trick, but it's a lie. And, and guys or girls get so distraught over this fantasy that doesn't exist. And what's really jacked up is if they could just move on, they'd find a reality that was actually congruent with what their desires are. It's out there.

• 2:14:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:33Jocko Willink?

  You can see people all over the world, they're, they're, they're in relationships, having fun from every level, right?

• 2:14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:40Jocko Willink?

  There's someone out there, but you, you get caught up in this mental trap and, and obsessing over a fantasy. It's a fantasy. Don't, don't, don't obsess over the fantasy, man. There's, you can, you can get over it and there's plenty of other human beings out there that are awesome. So go find one of them and in the meantime, hang out with your badass self.

• 2:15:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:15:04Jocko Willink?

  Become a better person.

• 2:15:06Speaker 01

  Man, working out is a big one.

• 2:15:08Jocko Willink?

  For sure, for sure. That's, that's a hundred percent. Just get, get in the gym and get after it. Jiu Jitsu solves everything.

• 2:15:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:15:16Jocko Willink?

  Lifting solves everything.

• 2:15:20Speaker 01

  Okay. So what circumstances do you recommend direct attack in combination with indirect? If any, or do you have any examples?

• 2:15:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So we talk about flanking all the time. I always recommend a combined attack, right? If you only attack the flank, well, then the enemy's going to adjust and they're going to put all the fences there. Now it's not a flank anymore. Now it's the front.

• 2:15:39Speaker 01

  Becomes the, yeah.

• 2:15:40Jocko Willink?

  So, so you need to feign attack or at least you need to attack with some minor level of force directly. So that the enemy has to defend what you're doing. And I mean, clearly when, when we're, examples are pretty easy to come up with. We're, when we're doing raids, like assaults on buildings, you're going to attack that building from multiple directions. At a minimum, at least you're going to set distractions on some of the other directions. And the same thing, we were setting up overwatches. Yeah, we're going to have, a lot of times we'd have a main overwatch and we'd have a little, little flanker overwatch. So when you come to get us, you're going to pay. And like a classic L shaped assault.

• 2:16:22Jocko Willink?

  There's a reason it's called an L shape. It's shaped like an L. You have a, you have a, a fire, a base position. That's going to put down fire on the target and then you have a maneuver element that's going to come in from the flank. But even with that, you, you, you have to do a base element and a maneuver element. There's a reason. Cause you're gonna, the base is gonna put down fire. And then the maneuver is going to maneuver it. So. Yes, those are, those are clearly some of them. It's the same thing. Yes, it's the same thing in the business environment. Right? In the business environment. If you're going to maneuver into a new market. You don't just walk away from your other market, right? You don't, if you're going to develop a new product, you don't throw away your old product. No, you keep, that's your base.

• 2:17:07Jocko Willink?

  You keep that going and then you flank. So it makes sense there.

• 2:17:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So absolutely. When you, when you're gonna attack, attack from. Both directions. I, in fact, I do that most of the time. So.

• 2:17:29Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 2:17:32Speaker 01

  This actually isn't really a question. It's more of a comment.

• 2:17:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I kind of turned it into a question, I guess.

• 2:17:38Speaker 01

  You responded to the comment. Very polite. Sure. Anyway, comment goes. Just want to say a quick thanks. I struggle with the daily grind, trading days for dollars. But you helped me make it happen.

• 2:17:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And my comment was like, okay, well, thank you, I guess. Because I hope at the same time that you're grinding, that. You're trading, that you're, I hope that you're not trading days for dollars long-term. Because long-term, that's a losing proposition, right? If you're grinding. And it's not doing something you want to do, if it's a grind that you can't embrace. Then. You gotta find a way out of that, right? You gotta find, you can't trade, you don't want to trade days for dollars. Cause dollars don't mean anything. Days is all you got. So you gotta find a way out.

• 2:18:33Jocko Willink?

  Now, this does not mean you need to be rash about it. This doesn't mean tomorrow you walk in, I'm not doing this job anymore. I'm out and now you're broke. No, don't be rash and don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. But do come up with a long-term plan about what you want to do, how you want to do it, where you want to do it. And this might take one year or two years or five years. It might take five years to get to where you want to be. That's okay. That's fine. It's, it's actually kind of cool. When you're grinding right now, because you know there's something that you're working towards in the long run, that's actually awesome. So, but, but you gotta have an exit strategy.

• 2:19:16Jocko Willink?

  You gotta have an exit strategy. You gotta plan and figure out how much money it's going to take and what are you going to do? You're going to work two jobs. I'm going to save all my money right now. I'm going to invest here, pay off my mortgage, whatever it is you're going to do. So that you can get yourself in a position where you actually enjoy doing what you're doing. That's what you want. And the one other cool thing about this, like, like I say, man, it's cool to grind, man. That's what we're here to do. You're here doing stuff, right? If you're not doing anything, well, then what are you doing? So the, the other thing that's cool though about grinding and working is, is that when you get that freedom, right?

• 2:19:59Jocko Willink?

  That you work hard for, it's going to be so much more worth it. The discipline that you put into place to get to that freedom that you want, it makes that freedom so much more worth it. So appreciate it. I'm glad you're grinding. I'm glad you're grinding hard, but don't just make that trade. It's not a square trade, days for dollars, not a square trade. Get it back under your control. And we've had, I've actually had some really cool feedback on the podcast of people that have hit me up and said, hey, You told me to plan an exit strategy. I wish I could find this. A guy said, you told me to plan an exit strategy? He's like, that was whatever nine months ago. I saved my money. I just did this. Now I'm in another business. I'm kicking ass. Thank you. Right? So it can be done.

• 2:20:42Jocko Willink?

  It's one of the things about cool about being a human being. You got free will. You can make stuff happen. So go make it happen.

• 2:20:50Speaker 01

  No, man, and that's there's not a lot of tricks there too. Where, you know, that we talk about the discount hyperbolic discounting. When you, when you basically go for the short term payoff. Be in at the expense of the long term payoff. So let's say you have an exit strategy. Four or five years. It helps. Actually, this is like for real help night and day where if you look at that end exit strategy as like a, you know, a goal or whatever. And the time in between now and then is preparation time. That's all that is like. So a lot of times like I remember when, when I was working at the nightclub. That was, that was a full on like, ooh nightclub, cool job, all short term payoff stuff, living kind of day to day.

• 2:21:34Speaker 01

  Week to week, I get my paycheck. I go hang out, go work paycheck hang. So it's all just short term payoffs, right? So I was in there for like years.

• 2:21:42Jocko Willink?

  How many years?

• 2:21:44Speaker 01

  Seven. So wait, no, six. So I was the end of like almost seven. So yeah, nightclub. So. I remember thinking when I was like over it already, um, I remember thinking dang, I, I feel like I wasted a lot of years. I think back now I didn't because I learned a lot of like psychological stuff, but um. I remembered like reflecting and being like, man, I spent, yeah, I went to college, all this stuff really slacked through college. I spent it the same way. Just like, okay, I'll take this class because I may or may not pass it, whatever. I just want to play football and be cool, whatever. And I reflect and I think dang, I spent my life preparing for nothing really consciously. I mean, passively I did because I liked certain creative things and that, you know, materialized for sure, but.

• 2:22:28Speaker 01

  Actively like consciously, I was never, you know, certain people, they're like, I want to be an architect and that's it. And I'm doing it. And I know a lot of times if there's family history and certain things, it's like they know, you know? And they wind up doing it a lot of time.

• 2:22:42Speaker 01

  But I reflected and thought, man, I'm here. I spent my life up to this point preparing for nothing in life. I know about working out. That's it. So a lot of times when you're making, you find yourself in a grind that without like an exit strategy or something like that, a lot of times that will be the case. Like I've spent my life kind of preparing for nothing, really. But that's the good thing how you're saying. It can take a year, it can take two years, five years, whatever. Start preparing for that five years. And at the end, when the five years comes, you are prepared, straight up. If you spend one year doing something, focus, like, hey, I gotta get, even something like, I'm gonna play the piano. I don't know, anything. Bow and arrow, I don't know. You spend one year focused on it. At the end of the year, you're gonna be pretty prepared.

• 2:23:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:26Speaker 01

  Compared to the average person. So you spend like two years, five years preparing whatever that exit strategy is, and you're for real prepared. Spend, look at that time as this is preparation time.

• 2:23:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's, if only somebody comes up to you, you've been working at the nightclub for a year, and says, hey, Echo, what are you gonna do with your life? And you're like, you wouldn't, you would immediately say, well, well, let me phrase that another way. Echo, are you planning to, you know, be a nightclub bouncer for the next 25 years? Your answer would clearly be no. Okay, so what are you getting ready for?

• 2:24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:04Jocko Willink?

  Because a lot of times, this person is aware that they're in a grind. A lot of times, people don't even realize that what they're doing, that they're, they're, they're marking time is what we call in the military. You're, you're marching, but you're not going anywhere.

• 2:24:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:20Jocko Willink?

  Your feet are going up and down. You're spinning your wheels. So, think about, that's a great point that you just made, is what, what were you preparing for? If you would have been learning to play the piano, boom, you could be in the game right now.

• 2:24:31Speaker 01

  Right now, yeah.

• 2:24:32Jocko Willink?

  But, so, that's an important thing, especially when you start talking to people that are younger, you know?

• 2:24:37Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 2:24:38Jocko Willink?

  When they're 15, 16, 17 years old, because they're marking time. You know, they're having fun.

• 2:24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:43Jocko Willink?

  But it's cool to have fun. Let's make sure we're making some progress and building some capacity to have a better future, all the time. What can you do to build capacity for your future? Hey, you know, you heard Andy Stumpf and I talk about this, and we, we didn't even recognize that there's anything else you could do besides be in the teams. Like, that's it. That's it. And that's kind of, that's kind of good. Because when you're in teams, you don't want to be thinking about anything else. And luckily, the teams does give you preparation for other things in life. Cause you're in a leadership position, you're going up, you're learning skills, you're learning. Whether you're learning parachuting, I mean, you're learning stuff. Guys get out of the teams all the time. They become cops, they become firemen. They, they, all kinds of good jobs.

• 2:25:27Jocko Willink?

  But if you're not in a job like that, you're in a job like a being a nightclub bouncer. Hey, it's a fun job, right? It's cool. You're having a good time, but let's make sure we have an extra strategy on that one.

• 2:25:39Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And it doesn't even necessarily mean, like if I wanted to be ultimately, and I'm just saying being conscious of it. Where if I wanted to be a nightclub owner or something, perfect. I'll stay right in there. And but here's the difference is I'm not, I wasn't consciously spending that time preparing for anything. I was going for tomorrow. I was going for, you know, this weekend. That was, that's all I was going for. And a lot of times, I mean, in the nightclub, it was, cause it was like a very recognizable payoff. You know, cause it's fun and there's this party going on. But even in these grinds, like, um, let's say I was working for a moving company one time. It was the same thing. I was looking for the weekend. It sucked, but I was like, the work part sucked.

• 2:26:21Speaker 01

  But I was looking forward to getting off work. Okay. The relief is so it's, it's the same dynamic, just kind of negative. You know, it's like negative versus and the positive is the relief kind of thing.

• 2:26:29Jocko Willink?

  That one, the moving company made you want to, it forced your hand to want to go do something else. Like a different lifestyle. Whereas the nightclub, you can get, you can get distracted and into that where you're like, hey, this is just going to be cool.

• 2:26:42Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. So it's that, that carrot and the stick, you know, you know, so the nightclub was, I was just eating that carrot that was right in front of my face. Every day or every week or whatever. The, the moving company was like, I'm just trying to run away from the stick that's hitting me every day kind of thing. So I guess it just depends on how much you hate sticks and like carrots.

• 2:27:00Jocko Willink?

  It's just so good. And like you said, we don't listen to our parents or we don't listen to our people around us. We don't listen to, we just don't do it.

• 2:27:06Speaker 01

  It becomes noise. That's why even you saying, what do you, what do you want to do with your future, bro? I've heard that since, literally since I could understand English. What are you going to do with your, what are you doing to prepare for your future? What are you going to do? Do you see yourself doing this? Oh, yeah. No, I don't know. Leave me alone. It's just, it's a meme already, you know? You hear it all the time, so it doesn't mean anything. That's why a lot of times it takes like someone to either rephrase it or straight up like show it to you somehow, you know, where it hits you.

• 2:27:30Jocko Willink?

  Or like Dave was talking, his, his, he was cruising and his dad died. And you got shown real quick, like, hey, what am I doing? So, good stuff to think about.

• 2:27:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean personally, I just got tired of it, man.

• 2:27:44Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:27:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, I'm glad you did.

• 2:27:51Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 2:27:52Jocko Willink?

  I think we got time for one more quest.

• 2:27:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:58Speaker 01

  Jocko, I've read your book Extreme Ownership. My son and I listen to your podcasts on the way home from hockey practice. And while I can see your message, I can't bring myself to employ it, which I would like to do so very badly. Any suggestions?

• 2:28:15Jocko Willink?

  Well,

• 2:28:17Jocko Willink?

  everybody wants to employ extreme ownership and discipline so very badly.

• 2:28:25Jocko Willink?

  But everybody also wants it to be easy. Right? They want some, some secret power that just makes it happen. And, and they think that I

• 2:28:40Jocko Willink?

  hold the, the magic key that's going to make discipline the easiest thing in the world. Well, I can tell you that taking ownership of your life, it isn't easy.

• 2:28:53Jocko Willink?

  And living the life of discipline isn't easy. In fact, it's hard. That's why it works.

• 2:29:06Jocko Willink?

  And so if you want to employ discipline, there's only one way to do it. You employ discipline. Stop looking around for suggestions on how to employ discipline. Because I'll tell you that

• 2:29:24Jocko Willink?

  listening to this podcast is not going to give you discipline. Reading the book is not going to give you discipline. You have to impose discipline on yourself, you.

• 2:29:37Jocko Willink?

  And you do that

• 2:29:40Jocko Willink?

  with steps that you execute, small steps. Get up early. Work out hard. Attack your daily tasks. Crush your job. Don't waste time on, on, on meaningless activities.

• 2:30:03Jocko Willink?

  That's how you employ discipline. You get aggressive in making things happen. Be the discipline. That's it. That's it. It's that simple. And I'll say it again. If you want to live a disciplined life, that's what you have to do. You have to be the discipline. And I think that's all I've got for tonight.

• 2:30:46Jocko Willink?

  So Echo.

• 2:30:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:30:49Jocko Willink?

  I know you've been kind of stepping up the discipline and ownership. Why don't you take some ownership right now of telling people how they can support this podcast if they want to.

• 2:31:02Speaker 01

  I will. I will. Before supporting this podcast, I think we all should support ourselves in this way. Similar to like on the airplane, like I said before, you know, the airplane, the oxygen mask, you gotta put on yourself before you can help the infant. Not that, not that this podcast is an infant or nothing. Well, maybe it is one year, whatever. Anyway, you know what I mean? So if you're, I've been into working out more, more consistently, which is saying a lot because I was, you know, I'm no stranger to the workouts. I've been supplementing my workouts with supplements, as you know.

• 2:31:47Speaker 01

  Um, krill oil, just got some more. Boom. You know that when you get new krill oil, like I get it now before I run out, you know? I mean, it seems obvious like, oh.

• 2:31:56Jocko Willink?

  Stockpile. Yeah. You're, you're an adult now and you're prepared. I like it.

• 2:32:01Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Which is new for me. I mean, the buzz is still going.

• 2:32:04Jocko Willink?

  I'm out of krill oil. I'll order some now. It'll be in in a week.

• 2:32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, no, that's not going on anymore, which is another demonstration of discipline, really.

• 2:32:13Jocko Willink?

  I like it. We count that.

• 2:32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's kind of counts.

• 2:32:16Jocko Willink?

  It's a daily discipline, including ordering krill oil before you're out. That's a good point.

• 2:32:21Speaker 01

  Right. It's true.

• 2:32:21Jocko Willink?

  I like what you've done there.

• 2:32:23Speaker 01

  When it comes in, I'm not even out of my old butt. When it comes in, it feels good. The krill oil's in.

• 2:32:28Jocko Willink?

  It feels good to be prepared.

• 2:32:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. So yeah, you feel prepared. You are prepared.

• 2:32:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you are.

• 2:32:34Speaker 01

  Feel it cuz you are, straight up. Anyway, krill oil, if you don't know.

• 2:32:39Speaker 01

  What's krill? Omega threes, is it?

• 2:32:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:43Speaker 01

  Anyway, it's real good for your joints. And really, that's the, I mean, omega three is good, cool. But the question is, if you don't know, it's kinda like, what does that do for me? You know, well, how is that gonna look? How's the omega threes gonna benefit me? In in the krill oil situation, it's your joints. Especially if you do a lot of pressing exercises and jujitsu. Actually, I shouldn't say especially, I'm just saying including, but not limited to hard pressing and jujitsu exercises.

• 2:33:12Jocko Willink?

  Like what you done there?

• 2:33:13Speaker 01

  I'm telling you, man, it's the truth. Um, anyway, yeah, so get on that krill oil if you have joint.

• 2:33:19Speaker 01

  A joint situation, really.

• 2:33:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Or if you don't.

• 2:33:23Speaker 01

  Or if you don't, preventative.

• 2:33:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:25Jocko Willink?

  I need to do more preventative stuff in my life.

• 2:33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's funny, I'll take them. Like, I'll pour them out, you know? And they look like jelly beans.

• 2:33:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:34Speaker 01

  I didn't realize they looked like, my daughter, she's four. She's like, oh, jelly beans! But you smell them. Nah, she don't bite them. She, you know, you smell them.

• 2:33:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:44Speaker 01

  They smell like krill oil.

• 2:33:45Jocko Willink?

  Hey, I was on deployment, so they make disgusting jelly beans. Have you ever seen those before? They they make jelly beans that taste like puke, that taste like.

• 2:33:53Speaker 01

  What, like on purpose?

• 2:33:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like a joke. So I was on deployment in Iraq. And somebody sent me a a care package, a care package, right? They were being funny. They sent me some of them bad tasting jelly beans. I didn't look at the label. I just opened them up cuz I hadn't had any candy in a while. I wanted some candy.

• 2:34:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:15Jocko Willink?

  Boom, took a mouthful.

• 2:34:17Speaker 01

  Just puke all up in there. Dang.

• 2:34:20Jocko Willink?

  It's disgusting.

• 2:34:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the krill oil jelly beans, more or less the same thing.

• 2:34:24Jocko Willink?

  You don't wanna bite them and eat them.

• 2:34:25Speaker 01

  Except, yeah, the the packaging is different, so they don't, you know.

• 2:34:29Jocko Willink?

  Where can you get those things anyways?

• 2:34:33Speaker 01

  If you're interested in these krill oil tablets is what they are. Um, no krill oil, little tablets. Yeah, you eat them. Chew them if you want. Swallow them, I recommend because they smell and taste like krill oil. Anyway, but they're good for your joints. Yeah. On it. Okay. So the, really all the supplements you're gonna wanna take is from Onnit. So go to Onnit.com slash Jocko if you want the 10% off. But like I said, back to the support part where, okay, so you know how like when you work out and then you ever work on your like, hey, my knees or my elbow or something is bothering you?

• 2:35:14Speaker 01

  It's like your whole body's working fine. You can bench a bunch. You can squat a bunch, but it's like your elbow. It's like, you know, you're, you're only as strong as your weakest link.

• 2:35:27Speaker 01

  Elbows, knees, that's your weak link right there. That's what the krill oil does. That's what it alleviates. You know, that's important is what I'm saying.

• 2:35:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I agree with you.

• 2:35:38Speaker 01

  Here's the thing. I didn't really understand that. But bro, I've, I've done it where I've taken like ibuprofen to like, okay, it's because it's just pain, you know? It's not like I'm gonna pull, like if it's your muscle or something, like a strained muscle.

• 2:35:51Jocko Willink?

  It's not an injury.

• 2:35:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like your pain, but it'll inhibit because you have a little thing.

• 2:35:55Jocko Willink?

  What made you decide to start taking krill oil? I mean, I know I take and I was like, yeah, you should try it. Or did I say that? Or did you start trying on your own?

• 2:36:03Speaker 01

  It was you, but I've, I heard about it. You know, my wife, my father-in-law would always say krill oil is better than fish oil. I was like, cool. I don't even take fish oil. So it didn't really mean much to me. I left.

• 2:36:13Jocko Willink?

  Nothing.

• 2:36:14Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm looking for gains, bro. I'm not over here jacking steel. Yeah, bro. Leave me alone with the krill. But yeah, that was it. And you mentioned it and, um, you know, I. You're not hobbling around in pain or other stuff. Say if Jocko doesn't let me go try and then.

• 2:36:30Jocko Willink?

  And I got it from a guy that was like a powerlifter, really strong and he was, you know, fifty six years old when I met him. He was in great shape and I said, what do you do? He said, krill oil.

• 2:36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. I told, um.

• 2:36:42Jocko Willink?

  That's not the only thing. He also works out hard and all that stuff, but it's a good thing to know about.

• 2:36:47Speaker 01

  That's really, that was kind of my point, really. You know, like my, you know, you can be strong, but when you got your elbow jacked up from being strong, really, you know, you, you gotta patch that little thing naturally, like, um, cause it's not like you're putting cortisone shots or, or in my case, I'd be proffering just to mask the pain so you can get gains. It's different. It's like a whole thing. I was telling, um, Taylor, I was talking with him, we rolled for a little bit. Did we? No, we didn't roll, but we were just talking and, uh, I told him how old I was and he was like, what? You know, it's the krill oil, man.

• 2:37:24Speaker 01

  Notice I didn't mention how old I am.

• 2:37:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:27Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, uh, if you like krill, actually there's some good, oh, you know, the part, okay, so there's this total strength and performance too. Um, I was, I was looking at that because it's real interesting, like stuff in the clinical studies, it's over time. So it is considered a pre-workout. So typically when people.

• 2:37:45Jocko Willink?

  So I should take it consistently?

• 2:37:47Speaker 01

  Consistently, yeah. Your gains, it's like a cumulative effect. You know what I mean? Just like krill oil though, really, like, cause here's why I got tricked. I didn't get tricked, but here's why I misunderstood.

• 2:38:00Speaker 01

  Is usually a pre-workout has like caffeine and stimulants in it, you know, and sure it'll have like other stuff allegedly. I don't know. But usually you take a pre-workout so you get fired up physiologically to go lift, get big pump, get all this, you know, this performance stuff or whatever from the caffeine and all that.

• 2:38:19Speaker 01

  Total strength and performance doesn't have caffeine.

• 2:38:21Jocko Willink?

  No, it doesn't.

• 2:38:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's a different, it's a whole different kind of system that's giving you, you know, the benefits.

• 2:38:27Jocko Willink?

  It feels good, though.

• 2:38:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that and but Shroom Tech too, same thing, where you can take it that day and you'll feel it that day.

• 2:38:33Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 2:38:33Speaker 01

  Cause it, you know, helps you use oxygen.

• 2:38:35Jocko Willink?

  That's why, like I said, I double, I double dip on those two.

• 2:38:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, get all up in there, all up on it and down for it.

• 2:38:40Jocko Willink?

  Actually, my trip to South Africa, I didn't have either.

• 2:38:42Speaker 01

  Oh dang.

• 2:38:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:38:44Speaker 01

  You're going, um, what do you call it? When you don't take the supplement.

• 2:38:47Jocko Willink?

  Going slick, I guess.

• 2:38:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we had some good rolls down there, too.

• 2:38:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:52Jocko Willink?

  I was, I was thinking to myself, like the guys that were down there, Chef and Richie, they're like, "Hey, you know, tomorrow night," cause I went and rolled the first night at their Fight Fit. And the, the first night, you know, we trained a little bit, you know, but we were hanging out. And then they said, "Hey, when you come back tomorrow, we're just gonna do like 10 rounds, 10 five-minute rounds." I was like, "Okay, cool." And then I got home and the next morning, or the next afternoon, we were heading over there. I said, "Yeah, I wouldn't mind having a little bit of Shroom Tech right now." But I didn't have it, I had to go slick.

• 2:39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39:25Jocko Willink?

  Good times.

• 2:39:26Speaker 01

  Amen, you know, and hey, going slick, that's cool, but you don't have to.

• 2:39:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no. I didn't want to. I wanted to have a little bit of that Shroom Tech with me.

• 2:39:35Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, some of us, we don't want that beef, you know, so we're gonna take the Shroom Tech. We're gonna take the, the, to me, again, back, not to go too deep on the krill oil. But that one, I think, is like an essential, that's like an everyday thing, you know?

• 2:39:49Jocko Willink?

  Krill, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:39:50Speaker 01

  Like people, they'll drink coffee every single day.

• 2:39:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't.

• 2:39:52Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And I say, "Cool, drink coffee," but it should be like that. Because the krill is way more beneficial than the coffee. I think coffee is more like, it's like an immediate thing. Anyway, anyway, you like the stuffs, um, these cool supplements, good supplements, the best supplements, everyone knows this already. Go to onad.com slash Jocko for 10% off.

• 2:40:16Speaker 01

  Also, a good way to support the podcast

• 2:40:20Speaker 01

  is the Amazon click-through. All, all that is, is before you do your Amazon shopping, click through the website. I got a banner, little Amazon shopping banner. Got the dot com, got the dot co.uk one, and I wanna say the Germany one, too.

• 2:40:38Speaker 01

  Over there on the side of the website, jockopodcast.com and also up top on the navigation menu.

• 2:40:44Jocko Willink?

  Easy to find is what you're saying.

• 2:40:45Speaker 01

  Easier than it was before, for sure.

• 2:40:47Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's good.

• 2:40:47Speaker 01

  And then on the store, I think it's like in the support tab. Anyway, before you do your Amazon shopping, click on that first, then do your shopping, regardless of what you're buying. I always make the sodium in the water reference, because really, that's what it is. Really, that's the best reference. I mean, the best analogy, you know?

• 2:41:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:41:07Speaker 01

  It is, bro.

• 2:41:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay, okay, I said, okay, dude.

• 2:41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the way, the tone was like, whatever. But here's the thing, that's a big deal. Small piece of sodium, drop it in water, see what happens. Just see what happens. Actually, don't do that. Look up a video, see what happens. That's what's good. And that's what you are, really. You do the small action.

• 2:41:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, I think the biggest thing is, people don't, people think it's not a big deal. That's the thing. They think it's just a little piece of sodium.

• 2:41:33Speaker 01

  Tell that to the sodium, yeah, when he hits water. So, yeah, you go, and you do small action, takes two sec, literally two seconds. Boom, click, and big reaction, good support, good reinforcements. What if you kind of needed some reinforcements, and it took just one click of a thing, and it brought just a full-on reinforcement into your situation? That's good, right?

• 2:41:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:55Speaker 01

  Small action, big reaction.

• 2:41:56Jocko Willink?

  Sounds good to me.

• 2:41:57Speaker 01

  Anyway, that's what the Amazon click-through does, and that's how you do it. Go to jockopodcast.com, click on the Amazon button before you do the shopping. Boom, instant support. And you can subscribe to the podcast on whatever iTunes provider, platform you use. iTunes.

• 2:42:16Jocko Willink?

  Stitcher.

• 2:42:17Speaker 01

  Google Play. And others. Yeah, subscribe if you haven't already, leave a review if you're in the mood, if you were moved by Jocko's words.

• 2:42:29Jocko Willink?

  Or Echo's words.

• 2:42:31Speaker 01

  Or Echo's words. Leave a review, you know? See what up. Also, subscribe to our YouTube channel. We have a YouTube channel. I know a lot of people already know that.

• 2:42:46Jocko Willink?

  And a lot of people have YouTube channels.

• 2:42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:48Jocko Willink?

  How do you distinguish which one's good and which one's not good?

• 2:42:51Speaker 01

  Right. Well, here's a good thing about subscribing to YouTube channels is you just click subscribe. And I think, I guess, you know, it shows the new videos in your feed. You can elect to have a notification or not.

• 2:43:04Jocko Willink?

  It's good to have a notification and it doesn't annoy you because for something to annoy you, it'd have to happen a lot. But since you don't make a lot of videos.

• 2:43:11Speaker 01

  I do now though. That's the thing. Actually, it depends on what you mean by a lot. So at least two a week will be uploaded.

• 2:43:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:43:18Speaker 01

  One will be the podcast. One will be something else.

• 2:43:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I think that is a, that you just threw down the gauntlet. Now everyone's gonna track your videos.

• 2:43:26Speaker 01

  I know, man.

• 2:43:27Jocko Willink?

  Do it. Hey, if Echo doesn't put up at least two videos a week from here on out, we can attack him on the interwebs.

• 2:43:34Speaker 01

  Verbally, please. Yeah, man. No. Hey, I'm accountable, you know?

• 2:43:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Well, yeah, you just made yourself accountable. So that's good.

• 2:43:41Speaker 01

  There it is. But yeah, subscribe.

• 2:43:43Jocko Willink?

  A little bit of that extreme ownership.

• 2:43:47Speaker 01

  Anyway, good thing about subscribing to YouTube, you can just unsubscribe like anything else. It's not like these, you know, these marketers who email you stuff.

• 2:43:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:55Speaker 01

  It's like, hey, unsubscribe to your email list.

• 2:43:58Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I bought one can of chicken from you four years ago and you're still emailing me.

• 2:44:03Speaker 01

  I didn't even subscribe.

• 2:44:04Jocko Willink?

  Good. Yeah, stop.

• 2:44:05Speaker 01

  Why do I have the option to unsubscribe to your email list when I didn't even subscribe to it?

• 2:44:10Jocko Willink?

  Get away from this.

• 2:44:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's not like that kind where you click unsubscribe and then they email you again, by the way.

• 2:44:17Jocko Willink?

  This is just to confirm.

• 2:44:18Speaker 01

  We're sorry to see you go. Why this? Why? And then you gotta fill out, it's not like that.

• 2:44:22Jocko Willink?

  And then six, and you're, you will stop receiving email in six to eight weeks.

• 2:44:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, some, something. Yeah, it's not like that. Unsubscribe, done. Problem solved. And then you resubscribe. It's totally up to you. Empower yourself on the subscribing situation. That's YouTube.

• 2:44:39Speaker 01

  So yeah, some videos on there will, um, we'll try to keep you. Somewhat occupied on there. It's good. Anyway, and also Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko Store. jockostore.com. If you wear shirts and you want to represent that way, I think we're gonna put some new shirts on there. Some new stuff. You know what I did? What we did really is, you know, people listen to you, Jocko. I listen to you, but the good thing about you is actually, actually, one of the, one of the reasons I listen to you is because you listen to me. And you listen to others, you know? We listen to others. So people be like, hey, XYZ, make that into a shirt. Or, you know, hey, you said that, make that into a shirt. Or they'll just come up with their own thing, you know?

• 2:45:23Speaker 01

  Prioritize X, I don't know, whatever. Make it a shirt. So during that listening,

• 2:45:30Speaker 01

  I kinda, we kinda just took it to heart in a real general way. And there's some new stuff.

• 2:45:36Jocko Willink?

  I like that. It's good. It's good. Options. But you can't, we can't make every shirt that everything.

• 2:45:42Speaker 01

  No, and I-

• 2:45:43Jocko Willink?

  Cause you just don't, that wouldn't be practical.

• 2:45:46Speaker 01

  No, it wouldn't be. And some, I mean, I gotta be honest.

• 2:45:48Jocko Willink?

  Plus I say, I say some cool stuff. I also say some dumb stuff. Somebody might pick some dumb stuff.

• 2:45:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, or you know, something that maybe wouldn't translate onto a shirt that someone would actually wear, other than maybe a handful of people. Then we'll just say some shirt ideas make more sense than others. We'll just say that.

• 2:46:07Speaker 01

  But nonetheless, uh, we are listening and this is gonna be a result of it with some, you know, maybe some new stuff. Uh, there's also some patches, cool patches, the Velcro ones and whatnot, um, hoodies, rash guards, performance. I think we'll do another rash guard design as well. Not gonna get rid of the old one, the old ones, the, the, the current ones. That one's dope too. Nonetheless, just more options, you know? Guys wanna get after it and have different looks. Maybe even have two in rotation that look different. Boom. So yeah, we'll do that. Anyway, all these things, you can look at them. If you like what you see, one, two, three things, whatever, however many things, get it. Support that way.

• 2:46:47Jocko Willink?

  Good way to support.

• 2:46:47Speaker 01

  Such a good way, yeah. Um, yeah, and, and you're representing. So it's kinda like, it's, it's like an official way to kinda just jump in the game, you know? You know what I mean?

• 2:46:59Jocko Willink?

  I do.

• 2:47:01Speaker 01

  I saw, remember, um, ah, I don't know if, yeah, you met him, right? Yeah, yeah, Sam, he came in the gym, shaved head.

• 2:47:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:47:08Speaker 01

  So he was just sitting there in the, down in the lounge downstairs. I'm, I'm going to get something to my car real quick. I see, I see the shirt. Of course, I'm gonna say something, but before I say anything, I'm thinking in my mind, look at this guy representing hard. And the thing is, I don't know him, you know?

• 2:47:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:23Speaker 01

  You know, he's a guy I haven't met or whatever. And you get that feeling like that guy's representing. And that's the feeling you get really, you know, when you see somebody in the wild with it.

• 2:47:31Jocko Willink?

  Well, actually, speaking of that, I got a little story to tell. Somebody hit me up and they said, hey, I was out in the wild, saw someone with a, with a Jocko Podcast T-shirt on, walked over to him, threw the bona fides on him.

• 2:47:48Speaker 01

  What is that bona fides?

• 2:47:49Jocko Willink?

  Bona fides is like, you ever seen like a spy movie where I come up and I say, it is cold and dark in the winter.

• 2:47:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47:57Jocko Willink?

  And the person responds, in March, it will be warmer. And now we know we're good to go. So what was the bona fides? This dude walked up to the other dude with a trooper T-shirt on and he said, good evening, Echo. And boom, they knew what was up.

• 2:48:11Speaker 01

  Dang, yep.

• 2:48:12Jocko Willink?

  So I think that's become the official bona fides of Jocko Podcast. If you, if you see someone in the wild and you, you know, it might be a situation where you can't just get crazy.

• 2:48:21Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 2:48:22Jocko Willink?

  You just gotta walk up and say, good evening, Echo. And then they'll, then you can do your burpees.

• 2:48:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Exactly. And that feeling, that feeling is real though. That feeling that I had when, when you see is like, oh yeah, you kind of know, you know, anyway, it's cool that way. A little, little added layer. If you will. Anyway, also psychological warfare. If you don't know what psychological warfare, this is what it is. It's an album with tracks. And this is, they're not music tracks. They're not Jocko's hardcore band tracks. Bronson's children's tracks. It's not that. What it is is little, they're not even excerpts because they're just lone tracks for specific things. And those things are, if you're feeling weakness at any point, while you're trying to consistently get after it,

• 2:49:09Speaker 01

  wake up early, or work out, or stick to your-

• 2:49:14Jocko Willink?

  Mental QRF, Quick Reaction Force.

• 2:49:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:17Jocko Willink?

  Got some weakness hitting you? Cool, here we go. Boom. Call the QRF. Here they are.

• 2:49:21Speaker 01

  I kinda look at it as like a spot.

• 2:49:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:24Speaker 01

  Like one-

• 2:49:24Jocko Willink?

  And for those of those people that don't lift, a spot is when someone helps you-

• 2:49:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:28Jocko Willink?

  Lift whatever weight you're trying to lift.

• 2:49:29Speaker 01

  And, and not to split hairs, but really it's not necessarily there to help you. It's, I mean ultimately a help, general, but-

• 2:49:35Jocko Willink?

  To make sure you don't go down.

• 2:49:36Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. So if you're slipping, if you wanna really get after it, I'm gonna work up every single day. No days off, one year.

• 2:49:45Speaker 01

  Big, big tall order right there. Just like if I'm, I'm gonna bench this 10,000 pounds, whatever.

• 2:49:51Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna make two videos a week.

• 2:49:56Speaker 01

  I'm gonna bench more than I've benched before, but I'm gonna go for, I'm gonna go for my one rep max. It makes sense to have a spot. You might get that one rep max and not need the spot, but it's there. If you fail, like if it's like too much, or it feels like too much, or that guy's there to just nudge you as much as you need. That's really, this is just how I look at it.

• 2:50:16Jocko Willink?

  Accurate.

• 2:50:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, potentially, right? Yeah. So basically what it is, is you put the track on, like, oh shoot, I'm about to skip this workout. I'm about to make this workout day a rest day.

• 2:50:26Jocko Willink?

  No, you're not.

• 2:50:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't wanna do that.

• 2:50:28Jocko Willink?

  No, you can rest tomorrow. Today you work.

• 2:50:30Speaker 01

  Rest on the day that you have scheduled for rest, for real in your thing. Don't just impromptu make it a rest day because you feel like it's not how it works. If you need a little spot in doing that, you listen to a track called Workout, Get, what is it? Workout? I don't know, one of the workout spots. Cause there's, there's a couple for workout, there's one for waking up.

• 2:50:50Jocko Willink?

  There's three for waking up.

• 2:50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, see? And there's one for kinda sticking to the diet plan, you know, like there's that kinda stuff. And um, yeah, you put it on and-

• 2:50:59Jocko Willink?

  There's one for getting, for forcing yourself through creative blocks.

• 2:51:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:05Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 2:51:05Speaker 01

  Which kinda sounds like impossible, but let me tell you, oh, it's possible.

• 2:51:11Speaker 01

  I would say, I will say, that this will get you through it 100% of the time. Like I, I'm trying to imagine the feeling that you would, that would result in your heart if you listen to this and you still skip the workout.

• 2:51:26Jocko Willink?

  Ugh.

• 2:51:28Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, it's hard to fathom the feeling you would have. Anyway, it's very helpful and a real good spot, you know? And it's Jocko talking to you, so he's like kinda there with you, you know? The guy you want there, that's my opinion. Anyway, it's called Psychological Warfare, it's on iTunes, so if you just do a search, Psychological Warfare, Jocko Willink. Get that, you can support that way, but this is one where this is real good support for yourself. Make it your ringtone, the wake up.

• 2:51:52Jocko Willink?

  The wake up call, yeah.

• 2:51:54Speaker 01

  Clear it with your wife first, because you could have some problems.

• 2:51:56Jocko Willink?

  Spouses do not like.

• 2:51:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good one. And it happened, happens to be number one still on iTunes.

• 2:52:05Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 2:52:05Speaker 01

  Yep, since day one, by the way.

• 2:52:07Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that's, thank you for the support on that one.

• 2:52:13Jocko Willink?

  All right, while you're on Amazon, real quick, this is a couple of things I have to cover, legally have to do this.

• 2:52:21Jocko Willink?

  Jocko White Tea, we're, it looks like we're gonna have to go put a warning on it, because there's a little situation going on, got a, a trooper hit me up on Twitter, and this is what he said, "Warning,

• 2:52:35Jocko Willink?

  I started drinking Jocko tea and the wife became pregnant." Should be on the label. So, he was also wondering if the child would arrive as a brown belt in jujitsu. Now, to be honest with you, we should have tested this further. You know, we should have tested this further, we didn't. And we aren't 100% sure if babies produced under the influence of Jocko White Tea will be a brown belt. They will be a purple belt, minimum, but they might not be a brown belt. But fertility, yep, it's confirmed. Prenatal jujitsu skills?

• 2:53:17Jocko Willink?

  Confirmed. And confirmed to a level of about 147%. So, order the tea, make it, drink it. It tastes so good, tastes like.

• 2:53:29Jocko Willink?

  Victory. So you can get that. You can, you can also preorder Way of the Warrior Kid book. Now Uncle Jake is trying to explain to Mark what a warrior is. So he gives him a notebook that has various warrior codes in it. He's got the Ranger Creed. He's got the SEAL Code. He's got the Marine Corps Core Values. He's got the, the seven virtues of Bushido. It's the Samurai Code. He's got the code of chivalry for knights. He's got the Viking laws. So he's got all these like warrior codes in there. So that young Mark knows what is up. And we should all, we can all kind of need to know what is up with some of them.

• 2:54:14Jocko Willink?

  The Vikings, you know, you might not think, you might think yourself, ah Viking laws, what, you know, what can a Viking teach me? Why would I need to know Viking laws? How could I possibly get anything? So you get Way of the Warrior Kid, you order it, you will, you start going through the Viking laws. Let me tell you what they say. Viking laws. Be brave and aggressive. Be direct. Grab all opportunities. Use varying methods of attack. Be versatile and agile. Attack one target at a time. Don't plan everything in detail. Use top quality weapons. Be prepared. Keep weapons in good condition. Keep in shape. Find good battle comrades. Agree on important points.

• 2:54:57Jocko Willink?

  Choose one chief. Be a good merchant. Find out what the market needs. Do not promise what you can't keep. Do not demand overpayment. Arrange things so that you can return. Keep the camp in good order. Keep things tidy and organized. Arrange enjoyable activities that strengthen the group. Make sure everybody does useful work. Consult all members of the group for advice. Hey, this Viking laws are 1,200 years old. Is there anything you might be able to get out of that?

• 2:55:40Jocko Willink?

  Yes, absolutely. We could all take something away from that. So.

• 2:55:46Jocko Willink?

  Bunch of warrior codes in there. And by the way, Mark, he ends up writing his own warrior kid code.

• 2:55:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:55:53Jocko Willink?

  The kind of kid code that I wish I would have lived by. You know what I'm saying?

• 2:55:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:55:59Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna help some people out. Also just released, we got the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual coming. This is what you were asking for, a book. It pretty much represents what we talk about this on this podcast. Thoughts and action. The thoughts are aligned with what you hear on this podcast. The actions are more detailed than what I say on the podcast. More granular, more specific workouts of food intake, martial arts. So Discipline Equals Field, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, you can get some of that.

• 2:56:31Jocko Willink?

  You can also pick up a couple of copies of Extreme Ownership, of course.

• 2:56:36Jocko Willink?

  Lessons of Combat Leadership that we talk about on this podcast, by the way, from Henry V to H.R. McMaster. Spans a pretty good time. And those lessons of combat leadership translate to business and life, and they're laid out in Extreme Ownership very simply and very clearly. So what you do is you order one for you, and then you order one for everyone in your chain of command, up and down. Get some.

• 2:57:03Jocko Willink?

  muster, May 4th and 5th, New York City, Marriott Marquis, register now, book your hotel, book your travel, come and get it. You know, it's morning P T. That's what we start with. Full days of leadership training, leadership discussion, Q and A, a lot of Q and A. Also, just hanging out, we're gonna, we're gonna be sitting there with you, eating lunch, eating breakfast, whatever. Leif's gonna be there. JP's gonna be there. Dave Burke, who's coming on the podcast, is also gonna be there.

• 2:57:36Jocko Willink?

  A bunch of you all are gonna be there. That's one of the best things about it, is meeting everybody. And of course, Echo is gonna be there. We knew that.

• 2:57:43Speaker 01

  Cruising.

• 2:57:44Jocko Willink?

  He's gonna be cruising.

• 2:57:48Jocko Willink?

  So come on to that. We're in the game in that and we'll be in the game with you. Getting stuff solved. And while you're waiting for that, if you want to get in the game with us now, you can find us on the interwebs, find us on Twitter, Instagram, and be on that Facebook. We're there too. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks for listening to this podcast. Thanks for supporting the podcast. We appreciate it. We're glad we have you out there in the game with us and to the military personnel

• 2:58:28Jocko Willink?

  that are out in the field right now in harm's way, protecting freedom around the world. Thank you to the police and law enforcement that are out on the streets right now, protecting us from criminals. Thank you. And of course, to the firefighters, EMTs, and other first responders that are waiting right now for us to call when an emergency takes place. Thank you. And to everyone else that is out there doing your best, builders and biologists,

• 2:59:13Jocko Willink?

  farmers and framers, scientists and sales reps, engineers and educators, leaders and frontline sled dogs. Thanks to all of you for taking ownership of your life, for being the discipline, and for getting out there into the world with a clenched jaw and a furled brow and getting after it. So until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.