73: Confronting Abuse of Authority, Overcome Over-reacting, Tips for a New Leader, Alternatives to Firing Someone.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:00:44 - How to never over react to situations. 0:08:41 - How to handle being a NEW leader standing in front of your NEW team. 0:13:57 - How long to get the (BJJ) Blue Belt? 0:28:56 - Managing people who out-perform you--Best Approach. 0:34:32 - Effectively lead a team who's members' goal is only to be "THE BOSS." 0:45:59 - Lessons learned from 70+ episodes of JOCKO PODCAST. 1:07:11 - How can Jiu Jitsu reduce fear in life? 1:19:26 - Navigating Jiu Jitsu with nagging injuries or being injury prone. 1:29:10 - Capitalizing on a team member NOT being a team player. 1:35:37 - Confronting abuse of authority. 1:48:10 - Dealing with situations where you can't fire someone due to unions. 1:51:52 - Taking "Ego is the enemy" too far? 2:00:48 - What to do when you're over worked and coming up short.\ 2:04:10 - 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. 2:30:30 - Final 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 73 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  It has been quite a few episodes since we did some Q and A and answered some questions from the interwebs.

• 0:24Jocko Willink?

  We had a series of guests, hit a couple of books and just kind of slid a little bit on Q and A. So, Q and A.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:37Jocko Willink?

  Let's rock.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Let's.

• 0:41Jocko Willink?

  Quest number one.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Question number one, yeah.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Boom. Question number one, Jocko, do you have to make a conscious effort not to overreact to situations or is it natural slash ingrained now?

• 0:57Jocko Willink?

  I would say at this point, it's fairly ingrained and I don't overreact to a lot of stuff anymore. In fact, sometimes I just don't react to stuff. To be honest with you, when things are going on, I'll just be sort of, okay, yep, nod the head, you know, listen to what's happening, listen to the people freaking out and I don't, yeah, I don't overreact to a lot of stuff. That's, I think it's pretty ingrained right now. And I would say that in order to get there, you know, in order to try and move in that direction, because that is the best way to be. Again, I'm not saying to be a robot. I'm not saying you should have no emotions and you should never show any, I'm not saying that, but you shouldn't, you should have some control over those emotions, especially from a leadership perspective, right?

• 1:42Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm talking about here, from a leadership perspective. So, one of the things that you can do is when you, when you, when chaos starts to hit, you know, picture that, what does this look like from the outside? What do I look like from the outside? When somebody says something to you that's traumatic or is going to cause a disturbance or it's going to cause problems, immediately think to yourself, okay, what am I going to look like from the outside right now? What am I going to look like to them if they're recording this? In your head, like they're recording this and we're going to go sit down and watch it later. When they first came out with, in the SEAL Teams, when we started, started recording people as they entered rooms and as we did. Primarily close quarters combat scenarios. So you've got guys in tight quarters and they're making very

• 2:27Jocko Willink?

  quick decisions. And you start seeing what you look like.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:32Jocko Willink?

  And it makes you better. You know, that's why that's one of the reasons why you do it. The same thing with jujitsu. You've you've watched the tape or MMA. You watch the tape of what someone's doing. In football, they do that in every sport, right? They watch the tape, see what you look like, see what mistakes you made. So when someone hits you with something that's disturbing or is going to cause problems. Picture that you're being recorded and you're gonna have to watch the play by play later.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:59Jocko Willink?

  With your team and look at what how much you lost your temper, how much you got frazzled and what a disaster you were. So that's what I would picture. Or as you start to move in the direction of, hey, I'm not going to get frazzled by problems. I'm just gonna listen. I'm going to assess. I'm going to make decisions and move forward.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Pretty easy.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:24Jocko Willink?

  Pretty simple.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Dang, yeah, that that play when they say play, let's go to the videotape, you know, let's play in football. Man, in meetings, they, you know, big screen. Projector.

• 3:35Jocko Willink?

  Look at echo.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  The little laser pointer. Yes, exactly. So when men, when you mess up and everyone's looking, what are you doing here? They pause it and it shows you like mid mess up. You know, man, it's it's like they put you on the stage and just throw tomatoes at you. That's what it feels like.

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's how you get better, though.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, agreed. Totally agree. And in a way. I told you I used to do this where it had to do with more like getting mad, like if I find myself getting mad, you know, same thing, overreaction, kind of. Where I'd really shame myself, kind of like man, that's embarrassing. You got mad kind of thing. So it would be on my mind the whole time where anytime I felt myself getting mad, it'd be on my mind. Like, oh, look at me. I'm being one of those guys.

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  So it's kind of the same thing, but it's in your own head kind of thing.

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's it really boils down to something I talk about all the time detachment.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm talking about. Being able to picture yourself. What do I look like right now? Am I appearing to be a panicked, stricken?

• 4:36Jocko Willink?

  Loser.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:37Jocko Willink?

  Or MA calm, cool, collected leader that's gonna step up, make a good decision, assess the situation and move forward.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  Let's look like that guy.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  The winner, the leader. What about if you're like, what about, what about if you're tired? Like you didn't get a lot of sleep for a few days.

• 4:54Jocko Willink?

  Are you serious right now?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:55Jocko Willink?

  No factor.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  No, okay, it doesn't affect you. You know, people.

• 4:58Jocko Willink?

  You're right, you're right. People get irritable when they get tired.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:01Jocko Willink?

  Which I actually find amusing.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's a real thing.

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it is a real thing. So you know what that means? You need to, if you, if you're one of those people that's gonna be in that mode, you need to be aware of that. And you need to focus even more on not overreacting and acting like a baby because you're tired.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, exactly. That's a good one. Like a baby.

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like a baby. Yeah. What is a baby? Do you start crying?

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Yes. And that's actually kind of the point there where, you know, I used to be one of the, before I had kids, you know how when the kid is acting up? You know, your friend's kid is acting up and then you're like, oh, I want to bratty kid. But the parent of the kid always is like, oh, he's just tired or she's just tired and you're like.

• 5:39Jocko Willink?

  You thought it was a lie.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Wah, wah, wah. She's just tired. No, your kid is a brat. That's what you, you kind of think, you know, your kid's not tired.

• 5:46Jocko Willink?

  Echo always judging.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  No, I think most people without a kid, that's how. And after a while, you, especially when you have kids, you start to realize, oh, yeah, man, there's a difference in kids' behavior.

• 6:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  And it must be fundamental because this is a one year old we're talking about. You know, it's not like he learned to start crying when he's tired. It's like when you're tired, you're just less patient. Even as an adult, you ever been tired and you're like waiting for something?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Whatever, bro. When you're, when you're tired and you're waiting for something and it's not coming like as quick as you, you expected or what you're used to.

• 6:22Jocko Willink?

  Here's the problem that I run in with, with waiting or being held up or when I, this is how I realized I was a control freak, kind of. Is going to the airport.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:32Jocko Willink?

  Cause if you're running late in the airport, you can't control TSA.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:35Jocko Willink?

  They're gonna take and and of course. If if I'm on time for my flight. Waiting in the TSA line for five minutes is not a big deal at all.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 6:46Jocko Willink?

  If I'm late for my flight, five minutes is an eternity. And they're pathetic and they're losers and they're slow. And it's all on me.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:54Jocko Willink?

  It's all on me because I went to the airport late, so I'm not, I get to the airport early because I don't like to have the feeling of things I can't control. So I'm going to do the best to mitigate it. That's one of those situations. If you get all tired and then you get all. Angry and you start crying like a baby, then guess what? Get more sleep. And or and or because sometimes you don't have the choice and you get less sleep. So put yourself in check. And try and get control of those emotions instead of acting like a baby.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:23Jocko Willink?

  I put in in the Warrior Kid book. One of the lines is Mark, he's all bummed out and and the line was he started crying like a baby. And and and the the editors were like, you know, you might not want to say that, you know, it kind of gives a bad. Thing about crying, crying is bad and crying is babyish. And I said, no, actually, you're crying like a baby and babies cry and. You know, when you're a 10 year old kid, you shouldn't be crying like a baby. And it's him saying about himself, you know? So they they were a little sensitive about that one, but once I kind of debriefed him on it, we were good. The line remained. Mark. In his own words. Broke down and started crying like a baby.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, because crying like a baby technically is. Not the same thing as just normal crying for stuff.

• 8:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Like you're crying like, because why they say crying like a baby, really? It's probably because babies cry for literally everything, right? Anything that they're not happy about, the baby cry because he doesn't know how to talk. So if you're crying like a baby.

• 8:26Jocko Willink?

  You're crying.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  You're crying for every little thing.

• 8:28Jocko Willink?

  Every little thing.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  There you go. But if you're just crying over. You know, Hawaii Five O or or, you know, whatever the movie is you're watching, then that's way different. You know what I'm saying?

• 8:37Jocko Willink?

  The line remained, that's the good thing.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  That's the key right there. Next question. Any advice for a second lieutenant, one month into IOC and a couple of months from standing in front of a PLT? Platoon.

• 8:52Jocko Willink?

  Platoon.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Of Marines for the first time.

• 8:54Jocko Willink?

  You know what, I almost didn't answer this one because I answered it all the time for every different person that's going into a leadership position. But I'm gonna answer it one more time just to make sure I'm gonna make it brief, I'm gonna make it quick. But if you're going into a new leadership position, whether you're gonna be in charge of a Marine Corps platoon, or an Army platoon, or a SEAL platoon, or a division at a company, or a sports, whatever you're gonna be in charge of. The, the, the principles are the same, right? We're gonna be humble, number one. We're gonna listen. We're not gonna act like we know everything, cuz we don't, cuz we're new. There's gonna be a, a gunny sergeant in that platoon that actually does know a lot of stuff. You don't. You don't need to go in there asking, a- acting like you do.

• 9:39Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna take suggestions, you're gonna, you're gonna ask for advice, you're gonna heed the advice when it comes your way. Now, you're gonna work harder than everybody else. That, that goes without saying, you're gonna outwork everybody. They're gonna respect that. And then when the time comes to be decisive, and you've taken on board the various inputs, you're gonna be decisive. Once you've been decisive, that doesn't mean that you're gonna hold on and burn in with that idea, that decision that you made. You can change your mind sometimes, that's the one thing that always freaked me out about politicians, when a politician would change their mind and everyone say, oh, they're a flip-flopper. They changed their mind. I said, you know, more information comes to light and your attitude can, can evolve, you know, your opinion can evolve. That's not, that's not a horrible thing to me.

• 10:23Jocko Willink?

  Now, if you have somebody that's flip-flopping their fundamental principles, that can obviously, and, and if the reason for them doing that isn't for new information, it's cuz they want this person to vote for me, or that group of people to vote for me, well then, that's obviously a different thing. But for you to analyze your decision and then let it mature and change, that's not that big of a deal. And it's, and, and people get paranoid that, that your troops won't respect that. Like, I said, we were gonna come in for the West, so we're just, I'm not gonna change my mind cuz I'll look weak. No, no, no, you actually look weak by maintaining a stupid opinion, or maintaining course, that's a bad course or a bad decision. So.

• 11:06Jocko Willink?

  So don't do that. Just be humble. Be decisive when you have to be or when you, when you need to be. And then also remember, there's been all these other leaders throughout history, thousands and thousands of years that have stepped up and taken charge of stuff and gotten after it. So you're gonna make some mistakes. So is everybody. The people that are, that you're working for made mistakes too. That gunny sergeant made mistakes. You know, he wasn't perfect. So you're gonna make mistakes. Not, not, not that big of a deal. You make a mistake, what do you do? Own it. Learn from it. Move forward. So that's what you do with the new leadership position.

• 11:50Jocko Willink?

  And good luck, man. Platoon commander, platoon commander, platoon commander. That's what you wanna be and that's what you got. Go and get it. Semper Fi and thanks for your service.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, I think that's one, my opinion is that the, this question and this answer that you just gave that, I don't think that gets old, cuz that's a hard one.

• 12:12Jocko Willink?

  It, and, and no one feels comfortable. Actually, let me rephrase that. The people that feel comfortable, I'm ready to get in there, take charge, they're generally the least ready and are gonna have the worst performance because their, their, their ego's big and they believe that they're gonna crush it. This guy, this second lieutenant, he is humble. He's aware. He's, you know, hey, man, what can I do? How can I be ready for this? That's, that's the perfect place to be at.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, like a healthy amount of doubt.

• 12:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Leif, Leif told that story a couple of times where, when he was the executive officer of the SEAL Team or the ops officer to SEAL Team, if he called out, and I was running training, so his SEAL Team was going through training, and he would call, you know, the platoon commander, the troop commander, and he'd say, you know, how's everything going out there? And if he's, if they answered, we're crushing it.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 12:59Jocko Willink?

  Leif would say, uh-oh, we got issues. Cuz, cuz factually, he knew, he knew, you know, he knew I was running training. There wasn't anyone's gonna crush the training. And so if their answer wasn't, you know, hey, the training is really hard and we're doing our best, we're learning a lot. Those guys, he'd say, okay, they're good to go and I'll go see him, you know, in a week or so. If they said they were crushing it, he'd say, yeah, I'm gonna come out and see you guys tomorrow.

• 13:25Jocko Willink?

  And then when they get out there, he'd say, what's going on? I'd say, yeah, it's not good.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:28Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, that attitude of we're crushing it is generally an indicator of you're probably not doing the best job.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:37Jocko Willink?

  So, stay humble.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  That's the indicator of how they're gonna move forward too, you know, like their attitude. We're crushing it. I'm doing great.

• 13:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's, yeah, you're not. You're not doing great. None of us are. At a minimum, we can do better.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:54Jocko Willink?

  So the minute you say, I'm doing great, going backwards.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Next question. How long did it take you to get promoted to a blue belt? And how often were you training during that time?

• 14:07Jocko Willink?

  So, real simple question. It took me, I think about nine or 10 months to get my blue belchi.

• 14:16Jocko Willink?

  And when I was at that time, I, I was at SEAL Team One. I was in the training department. And I had a lot of opportunity to train. At that time,

• 14:31Jocko Willink?

  Clinton years, not a lot of money to, to train in the SEAL teams. So, less trips, shorter trips, less travel. So, we were staying around a little bit more. No war going on, on top of all that. So, we were, we were home a little bit more. And so, I trained all the time. I would go to lunch. At lunch, I would zip over to Fabio Santos.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 14:54Jocko Willink?

  And train the lunchtime class. And then I'd zip back and do work. And then we'd get done, I'd go back. And I would do the beginner class, and then I would do the advanced class. And then I would roll with Dean and Higgs and James Nielsen and Craig and the rest of the guys that were there at Fabio's at the time. And we, and Fabio used to kick Dean and I off the mat at like nine o'clock at night.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, taking too long.

• 15:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and he'd say, why don't you guys get a life? What are you doing? And we'd say We're just training the jujitsu.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  You say, we gotta like, it's right here.

• 15:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  I'm living it.

• 15:27Jocko Willink?

  This is it.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  And so it was mostly at Fabio's, like, you know how you said you'd like, train with your, you know, your guys who weren't trained or whatever? Was there that going on?

• 15:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Anybody that wanted to roll with me, I have the same policy that I have right now. You want to roll? Cool.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:43Jocko Willink?

  Let's roll. Well, I have my gear. It's in my bag right now. If you want to train, we'll train. Oh, it's, you know, Thursday afternoon and it's two o'clock and we don't have any work to do. And you want to train? Cool. We'll train. So, yeah, I was doing that all the time. And I, the thing is, once I got blue belt, because I think I got blue belt pretty, pretty quickly. And, but I was a blue belt for a long timey. Because, because I, right as I was probably getting close to getting my purple belt, I left. I left California and I went to Virginia Beach. Once I got to Virginia Beach, stepped into a new dojo with Gustavo Machado. And, you know, started training with Gustavo. And, and I'm just a blue belt, right?

• 16:26Jocko Willink?

  And so he's got to know, learn me, figure out what my personality's like, see what my potential is as a person. And I trained really hard there, but I was also gone a lot traveling. And that's when I was traveling a lot on the road and I would train with guys on the road. And I went on deployment, trained with guys on deployment. And then it would come back into town. And so I didn't get consistent enough with him, eyes with him, where he said, hey, this guy's ready for his purple belt. So, by the time I might have been close to him thinking, okay, you know what? I need to start looking at him for a purple belt? Went back to San Diego. Got back to San Diego and now, now I checked back into Fabio's. Well, it's been two years, bro. You need to, you know, you need to prove yourself again.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:11Jocko Willink?

  So it was almost like I was at the bottom of the, of the pecking order in terms of time and reign, even though I'd been a blue belt for a long time. So I ended up being a blue belt for a long, I want to say it was a blue belt for maybe like, Five years?

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's.

• 17:28Jocko Willink?

  And I was a good blue belt, don't get me wrong.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Sure, of course you were.

• 17:31Jocko Willink?

  And, but, you know, it was a long time. You, you, when you, when you jump around from school to school and the instructor doesn't know you well enough, and doesn't see you on a regular basis and can't assess your improvement, because that's the thing with jujitsu. In my opinion, you're, you, you don't get your belt. There's not a level playing field for every person. So, in other words, it's not, hey, these are the skills required for a blue belt, and now you get your blue belt. And then you've learned these other four, you know, these other 127 other moves, and now you get your purple belt. Now there's 310 moves to get your, it's not like that at all.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:10Jocko Willink?

  And in fact, it's also not, hey, how do you as a blue belt do against this other group of blue belts? What it is, and I know this sounds a little bit cliche, but it's, it's really, how good are you against you? Right? Because if somebody, you know, let's say you get somebody that starts jujitsu when they're older. You know, maybe they're 55 years old. They're gonna go, and they train until they're 62. Or, or they're training and training and training. Their skill level, they're getting injured, they're having issues, they gotta work, they gotta, they get about to do a bunch of other things and they can't, they're, they're a hobbyist, right? They're not focused and they can only train so much. They learn the moves, they get better, 10 years go by, there's a chance that they're gonna be a black belt.

• 18:55Jocko Willink?

  Based on the fact that, hey, as a 55-year-old person that came in here and started training and the moves that you've learned and how you've applied them, according to your athletic ability and your physical capability at the time, hey, it's been 10 years, which is a pretty rough number for like, you know, for getting your black belt.

• 19:13Jocko Willink?

  So that's acceptable, but you might get a kid that's a really good athlete, that in two years can destroy that guy.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:22Jocko Willink?

  And he's not getting his black belt because you're saying what is your potential? How good can you be as a black belt? That's the question. So really it's almost a compliment. The longer it takes you to get your belts. That means in my opinion, that means the better you're gonna, that means the better that your instructor thinks you're gonna be.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:41Jocko Willink?

  That's my, that's my thought and not everyone does it like that. You know, some people think, oh, if, if this purple belt can beat that purple belt, you know, this purple belt's better.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:49Jocko Willink?

  And if this purple belt can beat the brown belt, then I need to give him his brown belt. Hmm, not too many think people think that way. You know who thinks that way? The purple belt. I can beat the brown belt. I should be a brown belt. No, no, wrong. Would, yeah, so.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  So true and there's so many, um, there's so many of those little things like the reason an instructor might be influenced to give someone. I mean, typically they're not going to give someone a belt based solely on the fact that he taps out that, you know, brown belt. So, but it is influenced by that.

• 20:21Jocko Willink?

  It is.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  And oh, there's all these weird things. There's stuff like.

• 20:23Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes I'm watching like two blue belts and they'll see that I'm watching and it turns into a death match. Cause none of them wants to tap.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Uh, actually, you know what?

• 20:31Jocko Willink?

  Dang, I just saw a video of a guy with a Camira. I think you put it on, on social media.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  I saw that live.

• 20:36Jocko Willink?

  What, what kind injured his elbow, you think? Cause it looked like his elbow.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe like.

• 20:40Jocko Willink?

  Crack. Yeah, didn't tap to the Camira. The Camira is a beast, man. The Camira is a beast. You know, you cannot tap to a foot lock. You cannot tap to, you can even not tap to a heel hook.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:52Jocko Willink?

  Heel hook can go really sideways, but you don't tap to a Camira. You're probably gonna have some issues.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so terrible to watch. Like I've seen guys like get their, you know, their knee and stuff in a heel hook. And it's like, oh dang that, yeah, but man, the Camira, when you see the guy's arm just bend that way. Man, and I, I didn't post that video. Someone else posted it. I would never post videos like that. In fact, I don't like to watch that. I saw it live.

• 21:18Jocko Willink?

  Is that what I did to your shoulder according to the success magazine?

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Almost.

• 21:22Jocko Willink?

  Almost separated your shoulder.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Separated it.

• 21:25Jocko Willink?

  I did not, people. I did not do that. I know it sounded nice and dramatic, but it didn't happen.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think you've ever almost separated my shoulder.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, but as far as as far as people getting instructors getting influenced on why to give guys belts or a higher belt. Like some instructors, for example, they'll be influenced now by to give a guy higher belt because I want to have more black belts under me. You know, we have a team of black belts and typically that'll have a lot to do with sales, you know, like where I can be like, hey, I have, you know, a team of. Yeah. And I've heard the sales pitch, you know, where it's like, hey, we have seven, seven black belts on the mat, three world champ, you know, that's good. That's good. So people might be influenced by that. And then they'll be like, okay, maybe I'll give these two guys their belt because so now we have four black belts or whatever.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  There's that. And then there if that's the reason, you know, I mean, it is good to have 10 black belts in your association. Yeah, that is good. If it's legit, yeah, for sure. And but then there's the opposite too, where guys will be like, if they're, and this typically happens if they're competing. So if a coach is like, hey, I got these five brown belts, they're obviously on the level of black belt knowledge, performance, all this stuff, but when they go in the tournament in the brown belt level, they're killing. We got gold medals, gold team medals every time. So then there's that. Sandbagging. Sandbagging, exactly right. So there's, yeah, there's all those things. In regards to the belt, I said this before, I'm going to say it again.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  The belt really doesn't have to do with how good you think you are or how good even you know you are. If you're like, hey, I'm tapping, you know, I'm a white belt, for example, I'm white belt and I'm hanging with the purple belt. I'm tapping blue belts and brown belts are getting, I'm giving them a hard time. So I should be a blue belt. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. And, and you know, it sounds like an exaggeration. It doesn't matter at all. It matters a little bit. You think, no, it doesn't. Your skill is evaluated by your instructor. That's the reason why you can be at a certain level, leave. Come back and still not because you're your instructor, you can be going dominating everywhere. The instructor has to evaluate you.

• 23:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's so, that's exactly what happened with me and it wasn't a negative thing. It was like, hey, you've been gone for two years. We gotta see where you're at, Jocko.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's not a one day thing either.

• 23:44Jocko Willink?

  Back in here and get your purple belt just because you've been training for two straight years.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:48Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't matter.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:49Jocko Willink?

  And you know what's interesting too is this, obviously this applies to people in the business world, people trying to get promoted. And, and the more you're thinking, hey, I, I'm better at this job than this guy I should get. There's something else going on. There's something you look at and the more frustrated you get about not getting that promotion, not getting taken care of, not getting noticed. Just do your job, work hard, you know, that don't worry about the promotion and the promotion promotion's gonna come.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:16Jocko Willink?

  In most cases.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:19Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  I would almost, I would even frame it where I would say in all cases, there are exceptions like everything else, but in, in all cases, that, that is the situation, I think. And think about this too, when you, when you, in regards to like your belt, right? Jiu Jitsu belt. If I'm a white belt, Jocko, you're my instructor. And I'm like, hey, I'm winning all these tournaments, all of them, gold, not a point score, all by submission. I'm tapping up blue belts and purple belts sometimes. Hey, Jocko, give me my blue belt. I can't do that. You, you like, it's not up to me. Even if I beg you, I go on the internet, I post this petition, it's not up to me.

• 24:58Jocko Willink?

  See, this is, this is the thing. You know, when you hear in martial arts, like old traditional martial arts, like you will learn humility.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:06Jocko Willink?

  And you will learn discipline and they would teach it, you know, by teaching it, by talking about it. In Jiu Jitsu, it's real.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:14Jocko Willink?

  Like you will be humble.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:16Jocko Willink?

  And when you flare up and say, where's my belt? That's you not being humble. That's you not, you know, just saying, hey, I need to work harder. I need to keep getting after it.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:26Jocko Willink?

  And so you're learning that lesson right there.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  That's part of the lesson, that's part of the whole deal.

• 25:30Jocko Willink?

  Be, you know, and again, I, I, I've mentioned this before on the podcast, just because someone is a Jiu Jitsu person, just because they're a black belt, doesn't mean they have the same. It doesn't mean they have like the best morals and values. It doesn't mean that at all. There could be people selling belts. There's people that sell belts. Oh, you you you gotta take ten privates with me at a thousand dollars each and then then you'll that's how you get the black belt. Okay, cool. No, not cool. So there's a bunch of things like that too. You know, oh, I want you to go open a pilot school for me somewhere. So I'm gonna give you your black belt, even though you're not that good. So that way you can you can give me my, you know,

• 26:05Jocko Willink?

  twelve percent of your annual earnings. You know, there's things like that happen. And there's, you know, even worse things that happen. But the the bottom line is, in a pure jujitsu sense, you should be working hard in getting promoted as it comes from your instructor.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. So essentially the promote.

• 26:24Jocko Willink?

  Is this sort of like an indirect way of you talking to me about your belt?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  No, not at all. Actually, actually, if it does apply to me, I'd say.

• 26:32Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't matter. You don't even care.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  It will. Less than anyone cares or doesn't care. Of course, I think everyone cares in one way or another. But I'd say the approach, it more has to do with the approach. Like, just like how you said, focus on getting better. Focus on the learning. That's it. The belt is just a symptom of your learning. It's a it's an eventuality, essentially. Same thing, or back to the fact that it doesn't have anything to do with the person, only the instructor. On the flip side of what I said about, you know, if I think I'm I think I'm a blue belt and I'm not getting my blue belt, what's up? It's not up to me. It's up to the instructor, no matter what. Same thing as if

• 27:07Speaker 01

  you you're like, hey, promotion time. Hey, Echo, here's your blue belt. And I'm like, I'm not ready for this blue belt. I'm I suck. I'm I can't even do this. Well, I can't give the belt back. I can't like take it off and then put it, you know. I mean, I'm sure there's some kind of excitement. There was that thing that happened a long time ago with um with Ensign.

• 27:25Jocko Willink?

  That wasn't that long ago. It was like a year ago.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a long time ago.

• 27:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  But nonetheless, you know, I can't give it back to you.

• 27:32Jocko Willink?

  When you get promoted, you're ready for it. So put your belt on and start getting after it.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Right. Has nothing to do with your opinion. That's the point there. So yeah, it's your instructor.

• 27:41Jocko Willink?

  And then keep training.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:42Jocko Willink?

  Because sometimes people get their belts and they stop training.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's an idiot. Here's the thing. I'll admit, there was a point in my life where I was like concerned about that. I'm like, oh, I'm, you know, better than this guy. I'm not gonna say when, which belt. It was not recently, mind you, but.

• 27:56Jocko Willink?

  So it was like three weeks ago.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  I guess I shouldn't have said. But man, I remember, and when I think about that time, man, I wasn't learning that much at all. I was just focusing on like, whoa, good I do. So like, you know, your game kind of is closed off. You don't learn much. You're concerned about, you know, all this stuff.

• 28:12Jocko Willink?

  Who's tapping who?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Exactly right.

• 28:14Jocko Willink?

  Taking any risks.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Not learning. Yes, exactly right. And it just messes up your whole jujitsu experience because you have that added element of stress. It's not good. Don't do that. Don't even ask about belts. I think that's a good.

• 28:28Jocko Willink?

  It's a great policy. That is a great policy.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:31Jocko Willink?

  That's the best policy for belts. Don't ask them, train hard, and you'll get what's coming to you eventually.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  But sometimes people will ask you, hey, when are you gonna get your blue belt? Or, you know, people will ask you that.

• 28:41Jocko Willink?

  Whenever.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  I don't know. Yeah, whenever my instructor.

• 28:44Jocko Willink?

  A lot of times people ask me when I'm gonna get the red and black belt sheet. I'm just kidding. No one asks me that.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Choco with a red and black. A coral belt. Interesting. Yep.

• 28:55Jocko Willink?

  Good. Next question.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  What's the best approach to managing people that outperform you?

• 29:04Jocko Willink?

  I think this is a simple question as well. What you do in this situation is you give them all the support you can and let them run. I'm happy if someone's outperforming me. That's great. You know what else I'll do? Try and learn from them. See what they're doing. Try and spread the word. If I'm in a leadership position and someone's doing, outperforming everyone, great. How can we take that? How can we teach it to everyone else? How can I give them support so they can run even faster? This is no factor to me. I love it. You should be surrounding. The more people you can bring on your team that outperform you, the better you're gonna do.

• 29:36Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Easy money, next question.

• 29:37Jocko Willink?

  Next question.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of times it's hard though, you know, and I know you're gonna say.

• 29:43Jocko Willink?

  You touch your ego, err. Oh, am I gonna say it in that voice? Is it not true? We know it's your ego. It's a hundred percent ego. When you can't support somebody that's doing better than you. It's a hundred percent ego. Why else would you not support them? They're helping the team win.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  I know.

• 29:56Jocko Willink?

  They're helping everyone do better.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:58Jocko Willink?

  Why would you not support them? Because your ego, because you're like, ooh, that hurts.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. I wanna be the guy.

• 30:03Jocko Willink?

  And you know what you look like then? You look like a jealous.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Baby.

• 30:06Jocko Willink?

  Little baby. Word of the day, baby. You're a little jealous little baby. Because you're trying to hold them back and everyone can see it and everyone can tell.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:15Jocko Willink?

  It just don't be that person.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, bro, that's a good point right there. Everyone can tell, bro.

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  Everyone can tell.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  What's going on.

• 30:21Jocko Willink?

  It's one of those dichotomies is, is that people can be so ignorant to things.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:30Jocko Willink?

  And yet so perceptive to things.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:32Jocko Willink?

  So, and the things like that, they're so perceptive too.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:36Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Echo doesn't like to see Jocko outshine him.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:39Jocko Willink?

  That's why he's trying to hold him back. Oh, he's not sending him on that trip.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:42Jocko Willink?

  Where he's gonna, where he can win that deal. Oh, he's gonna go instead.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:46Jocko Willink?

  Hey, I won the deal, guys. Yeah, I'm great. No, wrong.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  And even down to the smallest little things like, you know, hey, um, you know, I don't know. We'll say, John is the guy's your subordinate, right? You're jealous of him because he's, because he's dope. And when someone gives John a compliment about how good he did, just the little looking on your face, so obvious, you don't know. And you know how you say that some people are, or people are so like ignorant of some things and so perceptive? They're ignorant about the stuff when it applies to them.

• 31:15Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Somebody else, it's like, oh, yeah, you know, I'll point those out all day.

• 31:19Jocko Willink?

  Good point.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Like when people, I got this from Sam Harris. He point, he had this example where name dropping, when you're, you know, when you, when you do some name dropping, not everyone, but most people, it's like, it's easier to recognize it when other people name drop than when they do themselves, you know? So funny, so true.

• 31:38Jocko Willink?

  And there's, if I name drop, I immediately feel like a.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:42Jocko Willink?

  Flush of just disgust.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh my God, I just did that.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:46Jocko Willink?

  That's so bad.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's true.

• 31:49Jocko Willink?

  So bad.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  But it's hard to kind of not to, you know?

• 31:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, speaking of that, I was just texting back and forth with, uh, Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan the other day.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Name job.

• 31:56Jocko Willink?

  I'm just kidding, I wasn't.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  That's how you know, that's a, that's a um excessive name drop when you say their first and their last name. That's it, you know, and then.

• 32:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, I don't know, what's worse like, hey, you know, I was just texting, I just got a text from Tim, he was like, you know.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right.

• 32:11Jocko Willink?

  Tim who? Oh, Tim Ferriss, my boy. Joe Hogan, my boy. Right, we were kicking it old school.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's like um, like pseudo advanced name dropping where, where uh, you say the first name like that. But like, like amateur name dropping is first and last name.

• 32:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so I was actually black belt name dropping, just did the first name, first name base.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually more like a one straight white belt. You know, it's just a little bit more advanced. It's still name dropping.

• 32:37Jocko Willink?

  Is, what's the high, is there a way to appropriately name drop somehow? How do you do that?

• 32:42Speaker 01

  I, I'm sure there is.

• 32:43Jocko Willink?

  Say their name? I was talking to someone the other day, so this is a similar situation. I was talking, you know, I met some people the other day and, and, and the girl says, you, you know, I, oh yeah, she, we were talking about the east coast and she's, oh yeah, I went to, I went to college in Cambridge. And it was, you know, it's, it's a good place. And I was thinking to myself, I didn't, I, you know, oh, where'd you go to school? No. We'll leave it at that. But that was sort of a high level name drop. I lived in Cambridge, that's where I went to college.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:11Jocko Willink?

  Only one frigging college, you talk about going to up there, right? Right? So I'm, you know, huh, was that a high level? Was it? Or was that just an honest conversation?

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:21Jocko Willink?

  Might have been just, might have been just her not wanting to sound like, you know, hey, ah, you know.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Right, she didn't wanna, she didn't essentially wanna name drop for the reason that people normally name drop. But here's, I think there is a way to, like, effectively and like legitimately, if for lack of a better term, name drop. And that's like, if you, if you, cause name dropping typically, it's like, you know, it's almost like a weak attempt at breezing over, you know, I'm texting with Joe Rogan, you know? Or they'll like, say their little credentials, uh, you know, but I think if you say, you know, I was texting with my friend and it was actually Joe Rogan. You know, that, and you make it like a point to emphasize like that, that, not, this wasn't just anyone, it was Joe Rogan.

• 34:10Jocko Willink?

  Excited about it.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yes, you know, exactly. So that, I think that's an effective way, cause it kinda, kinda can maintain your humility there. But you know, when people are like, you know, I'm just texting with my boy Joe Rogan, whatever, kinda thing, or like, I'm just, just, no big deal.

• 34:23Jocko Willink?

  NBD.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yo, NBD, bro. Anyway.

• 34:30Jocko Willink?

  Cool. We, we.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  I digress.

• 34:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Alright.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Next question. What would be a good approach to effectively?

• 34:41Speaker 01

  What would be a good approach to effectively leading a team where instead of taking ownership of their responsibilities and working towards team goals, each team member is just trying to be the boss?

• 34:53Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so, a couple of things here. You, you want to let them be the boss of their tasks, right? That's what you're trying to do, so that, that makes sense. And one of the ways, if they're, if they want to be the boss of everything, maybe you give them a little bit more, as much decision-making process as you can as to what task or what projects they're in charge of, so that makes them feel a little bit like they're empowered. And I shouldn't say makes them feel like they're empowered. You actually are empowered, you know what I mean? So there's a, there's a pretty significant distinction, because once again, people will recognize, if you're just letting them do it to make them feel good about it, they're gonna know that.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay, Jocko, thanks for the decision. You gave me a choice of one thing, thank you.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  The color of pens.

• 35:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, so, you know, maybe let them really express their authority and leadership on owning what it is that they're owning. And, and, but the question says, they're not taking ownership of their responsibilities. So, let's make sure first that we're not, that, that we're giving them full reign and full ownership of their responsibilities, and we're not micromanaging in there. Now, if that, if we're beyond that, and, and we got people that just want to be in charge of the whole thing, well, cool. That's, that's actually awesome. You want to be in charge of everything? If Echo is, is in our team, and he wants to be in charge of everything, hey, guys, check it out. Right now, this next, you know, project that we're working, Echo's gonna run it.

• 36:15Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna sit back, and by the way, next project, Bill, you're running. And next project, Fred, you're running. Now, we're all gonna get to actually get in the hot seat. And I'll tell you what you're gonna see. Number one, you're gonna see some people like, ah, yeah, ah. They wanted to sit in the back and chirp, but they don't actually want to be responsible for anything. So that puts them to rest right away. You're also, what's gonna happen with everybody is they're all gonna see that this thing that looks so easy from the back of the room is a lot harder than they think. That's what it's like running a SEAL mission. The guy in the back that's never been in charge before is like, "We should just do it like this."

• 36:51Jocko Willink?

  And that guy, you say, "Okay, here, you run this." And then, you know, in six hours, they come up and say, "Hey, uh, can you give me a hand with how we're supposed to contact and de-conflict with these other units?" Okay, it's a little trickier than you thought, maybe, isn't it? But you actually put people in charge of things. If they want to be in charge of things, put them in charge of things. It's great. And, you know, don't let them fall on their face. Don't let them get anyone killed. Don't let them, you know, get anyone injured or lose any strategic ground. We're not gonna do that. But we're gonna let them have the opportunity to step up and lead. If they do a good job, sweet. Sweet. Now you've got them. You can rely on them. You can actually put them in charge of projects. Now you don't have to micromanage. You don't have to watch over them.

• 37:33Jocko Willink?

  This is a, this is a no lose situation. This happened, actually, one of my, one of my platoons going through training and one of the platoon commanders came up to me. We were just putting the platoon through training and he comes up and he's, "Oh, my platoon chief wants to run everything." And I said, "Good. Let him run everything. Let him run everything. That's perfect. Then you can focus on, you know, other things. Don't worry about it." But ego, right? "We want to be running everything. We want the, I'm the guy in charge." No. Let him run it. And it's just, it's, it's, it's, the, the reason, the thing that holds people back from letting other people run things is insecurity. If I think Echo is gonna do a better job than me, or I think you're gonna do a really good job and you're gonna shine,

• 38:17Jocko Willink?

  and I don't feel like I do a good job, I'm gonna hold you back as the best of my ability. We'll be like, "No, Echo, uh, you go ahead. You go ahead and just stay in your lane there, buddy. I've got this over here." No. But if I, if I, if I know if I'm secure in my leadership,

• 38:32Jocko Willink?

  Man, Echo, oh, you wanna run this? Dude, awesome. Here you go. Here's the plan. I want you, you know, here's the, here's the portfolio. Why don't you put the plan together? I'm gonna be over here looking down the road on our next project, looking for our next thing down the road, going out and getting another client to bring into the game. We're gonna make this happen. No factor.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems like.

• 38:51Jocko Willink?

  Counterintuitive, isn't it?

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is.

• 38:53Jocko Willink?

  You wanna, you want me to say, here's how you keep the people in their lanes?

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 38:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, let me tell you what you do. Let them out of their lanes. Let them into your lane. Let them run some stuff. Build a new leader. It's a beautiful thing.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  When you, you know, when you're insecure, you want, you don't want them to outshine you, you know? You can tell that where, I think it's natural though, you know, when people may be a little insecure, you know, or if you're not as good as maybe you hope or what, I think it's natural to be a little bit insecure.

• 39:25Jocko Willink?

  Of course.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Here's how, here's how, in my experience anyway, where I could tell where, oh, I'm being insecure. Where if someone's performing a certain thing and you're kinda like, you can feel it consciously, you kinda hope that they don't do that good.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  But man, I know, that's bad. It's bad, but that's how you can tell.

• 39:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a good indicator of that. If you have that feeling, ugh, you should, you should definitely, if you have that feeling, check yourself. You go, God, you know what? Here I am, hoping that my own team member doesn't do a good job.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's bad.

• 39:57Jocko Willink?

  That's a bad situation.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Real bad.

• 39:58Jocko Willink?

  You wanna hope everyone's doing great.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:01Jocko Willink?

  And you know, this happened on deployment, and I talk about it in the book, Extreme Ownership, was, you know, the Delta Platoon commander, he was worried that this element that had come into work in his AO, he was worried that they were gonna be better than him and take his job. And he told me that, and I said, hey, bro, if they take your job, good, I'll find a new job for you. There's so much work, we got work to do. Don't worry about it. Help them. Help them take your job. And I'll find you a new job. It turns out that their egos were too big and they couldn't let that happen. But that's the same situation. You got somebody that thinks gonna take your job and do better than you. Help them, and then find new work. Cause, cause we're trying to help the team, right? There's a mission, there's an overall mission, and if Echo can do something better than me,

• 40:45Jocko Willink?

  hey, here's the turnover, here's the lessons I learned, you're better at this than I am, you keep running with it, I'm gonna go find something that I'm good at, or an area that I can help. That's just supporting the whole team.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  That's a win right there.

• 40:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, and you know what, sitting in the podcast studio, it's so easy to talk about that. But it's so hard for people to do that. It really is. Really is.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's one of those things where you're dealing with your actual feelings in the situation. We're not dealing with our actual feelings in the situation right now. But which, but it doesn't that mean that it's, that's good? You know, you're giving a fresh like view.

• 41:23Jocko Willink?

  You are, yeah.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  You are detached.

• 41:25Jocko Willink?

  I am detached right now.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Accurate advice.

• 41:27Jocko Willink?

  And the more detached, and you pointed out some red flags, right? If I'm hoping that these guys go on the mission and fail, that's a red flag that you're being selfish and insecure about your job and what you're doing. And if someone can do a job better than you, let them do it. That's gonna help the whole team.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's like you're us in the podcast room. Where like, you know, if you get a guy in the maze, the maze of emotions. And we're outside of the maze on top, we can see the whole maze. We're not in the maze of emotions. We're on top, we can look at the whole scenario, the whole maze. So we can tell that guy what to do effectively.

• 42:03Jocko Willink?

  Yes. Echo, you just described detachment.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 42:07Jocko Willink?

  That's what detachment is like. That's what, that's what, that's what it's like for me. I can see the maze. And I remember learning how to step back and step above and look at the maze. I remember it. Remember learning that and going, oh, that's all you gotta do. And then I remember taking it from the training ground, the battlefield, and then realizing that that's what you need to do in the everyday interactions with people. And especially once I got in the business world that I, the thing that was cool about when we started Echelon Front, now I would be witnessing, like we, I'd go into a meeting and I would be detached. I would be up above the maze of emotions and turmoil. And so now I would get to see it. And then I would start bringing the leadership and saying, look at what this looks like to me.

• 42:52Jocko Willink?

  And they'd go, ooh.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  I don't like that.

• 42:55Jocko Willink?

  I don't like that.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Going to the videotape.

• 42:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, going to the video. And, and so then, that's how you learn. We go to the video, look what it looks like from up above the maze, and now you see, you see what you were doing here in your meeting? You had everybody so intimidated that no one said anything. You just gave a fifteen minute meeting, no one responded in any way to anything you said. Do you think everyone in that room agreed with everything you said? Not a chance. They didn't say a word. Why is that? You intimidated them, you bullied them, and now you're not getting any feedback. And they're gonna execute the plan that they don't believe in. And that's probably less effective than the one that they have coming from the field.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, congratulations.

• 43:29Jocko Willink?

  Congratulations. No, not congratulations. Let's get this fixed.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  The opposite of congratulations. Like, you know, so I was in the, in traffic, and something to think about.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  I was in traffic and you know how you have the two lanes, right? So I'm gonna turn left on the light.

• 43:47Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  And the lane next to me, they're going straight. So whoever, the person in front of the person that was next to me, both going straight, they were taking too long. So the lady next to me, she's honking the horn, all crazy, like, oh, going like this, all crazy. So of course I look over at her and she's going crazy. She looks over at me, she's like, like, do you believe this? Kind of thing, all going nuts. Meanwhile, I'm looking at myself, you know, other people around me, they're just like, well, this lady's going nuts, you know? So that's an example of being on the outside looking in. Her, she thought it was justifiable, honking the horn, looking nuts. But meanwhile, we're on the outside looking at her like, bro, you know how you look?

• 44:27Jocko Willink?

  And you know what that situation is? You didn't have anywhere to be, and she did.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Well, I was at a red light, she was, you know.

• 44:35Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying, though? She's a person that hadn't left for work late, and she was gonna be in trouble and blah, blah, blah. And that, that thirty sec, that, that ten sec, that eight seconds.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was probably like three.

• 44:47Jocko Willink?

  Was an eternity for her.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:49Jocko Willink?

  She's just going nuts, just like I was talking about in the airport. If I'm running late for the flight, TSA takes five minutes, it could be no factor, or it could drive me completely insane.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Yep, and that's, that was her.

• 45:01Jocko Willink?

  And you know what? These days, when I screw something up, I don't get frustrated like that. You know, that's what we're talking about, the first question. Oh my god, I look at myself and go, I can't believe I left late to do this. I'm, I'm an idiot.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:13Jocko Willink?

  I won't let that happen again. I said that in nineteen ninety-six and I haven't let it happen since.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Boom. Damn, bruh. See, I mean, I was outside the maze of emotion. Here's the thing, I know, I know how she's feeling. Are these guys not going? Go, green light, go. It's time to go.

• 45:29Jocko Willink?

  Universal.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I understand the feeling, but look how you look from the outside, you know?

• 45:34Jocko Willink?

  Did she check herself at all?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:36Jocko Willink?

  When she saw you?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  No. She looked at me for some emotional support.

• 45:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  As if you believe this guy, you know, get crazy with me kind of thing. That was the look.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. So I dig it. That's, I think that's another, uh, understand the difference between feeling and behavior as well, you know? Like, I feel, I know, that's a frustrating thing. It can be, but don't behave like that. Calm down, person. Next question.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  What have you learned about yourself or learned in general over the course of the last seventy-plus podcasts?

• 46:12Jocko Willink?

  So, the, the biggest thing that I learned, have learned in the past seventy podcasts is that I have a lot more to learn. That's what I learned. And the amount of information out there that will help us get better and smarter and more effective as humans, the amount of information is, is pretty boundless. And also, you also see the repetitive themes that we see over and over again, that constantly come up and reinforce themselves. Now, with that, I, I think that seeing these repetitive themes, but each with its own little angle,

• 46:54Jocko Willink?

  give, have given me a better, I don't wanna say a better understanding, but I guess, I don't know what other word to use. A more granular understanding of, of human nature and of leadership and of war and of life.

• 47:11Jocko Willink?

  Because you get to, nothing teaches better than experience, but you can't experience a thousand years of life in reality, but through reading and understanding and seeing what other people have gone through, you do get some level of experience. And I know you just went to, you just did the FTX with Echelon Front. You went to shoot some video with Leif and JP. And for those of you that don't know, Echelon Front, we do leadership and management consulting, and sometimes we do field training exercises where we take people out and we teach them how to shoot, and then we teach them some fundamental tactics of fire maneuver, and then we give them missions to accomplish. And so, you know,

• 47:56Jocko Willink?

  I know you just went out to do your first one, and when you got back, you know, you said, "I kind of felt a little bit of what it's like to be in a firefight." And then you kind of backed off. You're like, "Well, no, I didn't, I didn't, you know, I'm not trying to say that." And I said, "No, actually, you did feel a little bit of what it is like to be in a firefight, because you saw people maneuvering, and you were getting hit with plastic rounds that hurt, and you knew you needed to get down, and you saw the people getting frustrated, and you saw people getting flustered." That is, is it exactly like combat? No. And there's also, you know, the step up to real combat is huge, because now you're going to die if you screw up. But there is a glimpse, and there is a, there is a certain

• 48:37Jocko Willink?

  level of understanding that you absolutely gain from those scenarios that you're put into. And it's the same thing when you read a book, and you read it the right way, and you gather the information from it, you, you don't have the experience itself, but there's no doubt you can learn from it. So I think for me, that's, that's the biggest thing, is really reading with a lot of intent to pull lessons out, seeing the multiple lessons, seeing the different things from different angles. And I've talked about this before, you know, when you learn an arm lock from seven different instructors, they each teach you something a little bit different, and something that works, and some detail that you didn't see. And then on top of that, when you learn an arm lock from the bottom and from the top-

• 49:20Jocko Willink?

  And from the garden, from the closed garden, from the open garden, from this cross side and from the mount. Every one of those different angles that you learn it from, you get better, you get it. Each one of those angles makes you better at the other angles too. So I think that's the biggest thing for me is just learning how much I didn't know. And then taking what I can bring on board and assimilating it into my view and understanding. Like I said, my view and understanding of the world, of human nature, of war and of life.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:54Jocko Willink?

  Been, it's been fun for me and educational.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. I think, I mean, obviously I approached this thing from a different position, but. You know, the no complaining thing where people would be like, no complaining. I think that really got reinforced in me. It's one of those things where, what is it? Who said it? Yoda. Where he says, either do or do not, there is no try. So a little bit different is see either you do it. Yeah, Yoda, Yoda said that.

• 50:23Jocko Willink?

  Oh, from the Star Wars series.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  Empire Strikes Back, yeah.

• 50:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Do or do not, there is no try.

• 50:28Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  He said a lot of other cool shit, but nonetheless, when, um, you know, when you're tasked with something or your, I don't know, wife asks you to do something or whatever. You either do it or you don't do it. Don't do it and complain about it the whole time. You know, where the, and that's a common thing where it's like, all right, I'll do it and then they'll do it. Then they'll complain about while they're doing it or after they do it. Or before they do, or before, during and after that, you know? So it's one of those things where, and don't even complain in your, this is, I'm just saying, this is what I've kind of learned. Overall, and it's, it's weird because this wasn't necessarily a specific lesson. But it's just, it kind of just gets incorporated into your brain where you just kind of.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Don't even complain in your own head, you know, you know, when you, when you, I don't know, sweep the floor. I don't know. You're like, I can't believe I'm sweeping the floor. What about all this, all this stuff that I do and all this stuff? Don't even do that. Be like, okay, I'm tasked with, just like how you, it was, you regard, you compared it to, um. Doing paperwork. You're like, yeah, yeah, good. You don't want to do paperwork.

• 51:28Jocko Willink?

  No one in the world wants to do paperwork.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Do paperwork. Yeah, but you do the paperwork and you do that, you crush it, as you say, you do that paperwork the best you can.

• 51:36Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna crush this paperwork.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So man, if I gotta sweep the floor, I gotta, you know, wash dishes, I gotta whatever. Watch, I'm gonna do this the best I can. In fact, take pride in that, you know, take pride, not necessarily even in washing of the dishes. I say, yeah, take pride in that, but not necessarily just that. Take pride in the fact that you're the guy who can wash the dishes that good. You know, depending on me, hell yeah, I can do that. Give me more stuff, I'll do it more. Maybe not say that last part because you have other things to do sometimes, but I'm saying anything your tasked with do it the best you can. For I mean, that even sounds kind of cliche like, oh, I've heard that just do everything best you can. But to really have that happen kind of in your mind where you regard it all your tasks, whether you like them or not,

• 52:21Speaker 01

  that way where you're gonna do them the best you can, it's, man, that's, that's a life improving situation.

• 52:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. And going back to what I was, I just thought this while you were talking. General Mattis, he, he said the other day, there was an article about him because he's extremely well read. And he has a personal library of 7,000 books. Very smart, very well educated, very well read. But what he said is very similar to what I said. He said, you know, I wouldn't get, I'm not gonna get surprised. Because what I'm gonna face on the battlefield, someone else has faced before. And he made a couple comparisons. I can't think of them off the top of my head, but you know, when I saw this, when he, you know, he said, when I saw this for the first time, I remembered this historical situation. When I saw that for the first time, I remembered this historical situation.

• 53:10Jocko Willink?

  So I never was surprised by what I was seeing because I had seen it before. Maybe only in a book, but at least you have a heads up.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:21Jocko Willink?

  And that's what you're looking for. And what's cool is if you extrapolate the war, which is what we're doing on this podcast, taking the war piece of it and extrapolating the human nature piece of it, and that's gonna give you a broad look at the way people act. The way humans act and interact. And that's what I think has been. Really good for me to just really, the other thing is when you, you know, when you teach a jujitsu move? And you get better at it? Just by teaching it?

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:51Jocko Willink?

  Understand it more? Well, for me, by writing the notes and putting them in the podcast and then thinking about which direction I'm gonna go and what I'm gonna talk about? I've learned it better.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, I've become, things that used to, things that I may have known instinctively before and done for 10 years, just like when we wrote Extreme Ownership. There was things in there that I said, you know, as I was writing, what happened? I'm like, oh yeah, I did it here. I used to do it there. This is where I learned it, but I never really thought about it. Until, and, and even going be before that, when I took over the training for the West Coast SEAL Teams. I would, well, the first time I wrote down the laws of combat. The four fundamental laws of combat.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:31Jocko Willink?

  I had known those, I had, I had acted that, I had performed them for years. I had never written them down until I took over training and saw a platoon and said, these guys aren't doing these things that would make them successful. Boom, I wrote them down. That was it.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  And once I wrote them down and started to talk about them and show guys, they made even more sense. And I saw them even easier when people would make a mistake. So it's, I think it's, that's what's been good for me is it's been a real great mental exercise.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:02Jocko Willink?

  So thanks everyone for listening and making me do this podcast once a week, whether I like it or not.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And actually, yeah, and that's another thing. Where.

• 55:13Jocko Willink?

  You know, we almost went to one podcast every two weeks. And, and so I was just talking to a buddy of mine that's in a company that. I was talking about, he was one of the few guys when we, I kinda was thinking about this idea of, of, you know, going to one podcast every two weeks. And we were driving, same as Mike, and great guy, great leader, and we're driving. And I, and I said, hey, you know, I'm just, we were driving to go do some work, was working with this company. And I said, you know, I'm, I'm thinking about, you know, maybe doing the podcast once every two weeks instead of once a week. And he was driving and I was just the passenger and all of a sudden, you know, he just kinda,

• 55:53Jocko Willink?

  he said, hey, you know, I just, I, I, I, I don't, I don't think that's a good idea. And I was, oh my God, you know, and he was really, he said, look, you know, you can't do that. You, you know, we're, we're, we're listening to the podcast. We, we expect it to come out on Wednesday. It's gotta come out on Wednesday. And then he was like, okay. And he compromised a little. He says, look, if you're gonna do it, then you need to, you know, you need to give us a more, like a six month warning so people can start to get used to it. And that was one of the things that swayed me to say, you know what, I need to start to keep, hold the line on the podcast. That was the other thing. What? It was hard. Okay. Yeah. Hey, Jocko, Mr. Sitting around saying, hey, if it's hard, do it anyways. And here I was, it was kinda hard, so I was gonna stop doing it. Yeah, no. Hold the line, Jocko. I'm talking to you, Jocko.

• 56:39Jocko Willink?

  Practice what you preach. You know what I mean?

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:41Jocko Willink?

  It's hard. You gotta read a book and you gotta underline, take some, oh, so what? Do it anyways.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  There it is.

• 56:47Jocko Willink?

  Bring it.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  All right.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  It, it, it's true.

• 56:51Jocko Willink?

  And thank Mike for the podcast continually coming out on once a week.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Yep, every week. Thanks, Mike. But it, um, it, one of the other things, kinda like what you're saying a second ago, is, um, you kinda, either do it and get it done. Like, this is what, personally, in my experience, I'm speaking from experience where, you know, like, you're asked about, about something like, hey, what's the status on this or that? So it's either done or it's not done. Like, where you can be, oh, you know, I would have done that, but, you know, I did all this stuff, all that stuff. After you said, I would have done that, but, like, that doesn't matter at all. Either you did it or you didn't do it. Either you were like, you know, kinda like how life says, you're either effective or you're ineffective kinda thing. And the more, and I think it's, has a lot to do with just hanging around you more, where...

• 57:39Speaker 01

  I'd tell you about something and you'd be like, okay, is this done or whatever? Is this about to be done or where are we on this? And then I'll say, oh yeah, it's done. Then it's like, okay, you have this kind of look of, okay, like solid, like thumbs up kind of thing. What if I say, no, not yet because of this, right? When I go into because you have this kind of weird haze that goes over you. Like you don't care. You're nice, you're nice. Well, and you're not like, whoa, whoa, what do you mean? You're not like that at all, but I can see the little haze go over you. Like you don't care at all about these excuses that I'm about to say or these justifications that I'm about to make.

• 58:09Jocko Willink?

  Quite well.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, and that was early on. Now I just know it's automatic. It's like either the answer is yes or no. And if it's no, and it should have been done, then next time I see it should be done. And that applies to everything. And I make the analogy where, nothing, the story where my brother be like, hey, buy me some wine. I'm like, wine? You ever been into wine section? Bro, it's, it's huge. Hey, give me this wine. It's called this, it's called this, you know, it's the Cabernet. I don't know, whatever you call them.

• 58:36Jocko Willink?

  That should be like the beef jerky section. That's how big the beef jerky section should be.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, bro. Yeah, it should be, but no, as of now, it's wine. And if you go in there and he wants some specific wine, it's easy to go in there and be like, you know what? This wine section is too vast. I'm either gonna grab any wine I see and that's it, or I'm not, I'm not gonna get it. Don't task me with this big task. I'm just going in here to get some lettuce.

• 59:00Jocko Willink?

  The struggle is real.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  And you know, you got me treasure hunting in the wine section. And so I'm not gonna do that, but I had it in my mind that I'm like, no, I mean, you want some wine? You want this one? All right, well, I'm gonna get it. So, cause when I come home.

• 59:14Jocko Willink?

  You're not playing around.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, when I come home, either I got the wine or I didn't get the wine. And you don't wanna be the guy who didn't get the wine. No matter what your excuse is. I'm telling you, bruh, apply that to everything. Apply that to something important, you know?

• 59:27Jocko Willink?

  Jade's wine is important, by the way.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  So unimportant. Jeez. Nonetheless, yeah, all good things we got from this podcast, I think.

• 59:38Jocko Willink?

  I would concur.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 59:42Jocko Willink?

  Does the. You know what else is cool about this podcast?

• 59:44Speaker 01

  What?

• 59:44Jocko Willink?

  Is people that hearing from people. That have done made some awesome progress.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:52Jocko Willink?

  And that's awesome. That that's that's that is actually the best thing about the podcast.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:56Jocko Willink?

  Is hearing from people out in the field that got promoted, got a new job, moved to a leadership position. Lost seventy two pounds, gained twelve pounds of lead muscle mass. You know, what, whatever those. Whatever the achievement was, I talked to a guy the other day.

• 1:00:17Jocko Willink?

  That that stopped biting his nails. Right? Like, you don't think much of it.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Jocko Willink?

  But he said he bit his nails for, you know, thirty four straight years. And tried the little nail polish that goes on there and you know, you you go to a hypnotist and you go to all these different things. No. And you know what? You know what he finally said? I'm not gonna bite my nails anymore.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:38Jocko Willink?

  Not gonna do it. I'm gonna impose my will.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:42Jocko Willink?

  Switched. And boom, done.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Jocko Willink?

  So hearing everybody that does that kind of thing is awesome. That that's definitely the most that. So I guess I'm going into not what I learned.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:51Jocko Willink?

  But this, the general overall reward of the podcast.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:56Jocko Willink?

  Is to talk to people that have made some significant. Progress in their life and they attribute that progress to listening to podcasts, which I always reattribute when they comment about it back to them. Because I didn't stop biting your nails. You did. I didn't lose seventy two pounds. You did. I didn't get promoted. You did.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:18Jocko Willink?

  That's you. That's not me. That's you.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 1:01:21Jocko Willink?

  It's and so it's cool that you got a little.

• 1:01:26Jocko Willink?

  Little, little boost.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:01:28Jocko Willink?

  From the podcast. Maybe you saw something a little bit differently. That's awesome. But you know, you out there in the field, you're the one that's making it happen.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:35Jocko Willink?

  We're sitting back here, maybe providing a little cover fire, a little cover move going on. But the thing that's cool about that, too, is.

• 1:01:44Jocko Willink?

  It's, it proves what we talk about on here all the time, which is the human will is so strong.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:51Jocko Willink?

  But people, sometimes people go through their life, they didn't know that they had it.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:54Jocko Willink?

  And so they just gotta get recognized that, hey, you've got this strong will that you can, you can, you can use. I was, I was, I was listening to an interview with Jack Black of Tenacious D. And he was talking about when he first discovered that he had a good singing voice. And he was in high school and he tried out for some school play and then he was supposed to sing this part and he hit that note. And when he did, he, he said to himself like, wow, you know, I've got this thing. I've got this Lamborghini. I didn't know I had this. I got this extra gear that I can kick into. And that's exactly what he says, by the way. He says, I've got this extra gear.

• 1:02:36Jocko Willink?

  That's what I think people listen to podcasts. They all of a sudden realize they got this extra gear. They got this thing that they didn't know they had because they never had it tested before, never talked about it. No one ever showed it to them. They didn't recognize it for whatever reason. And all of a sudden they realize, oh, I got this human will that is stronger than my weakness. And I'm just going to engage it. Watch this. Nail biting, no more.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, nope.

• 1:02:58Jocko Willink?

  Jelly donuts, not happening. Getting, getting outworked at work, not gonna happen.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's, I think it's surprising because I'm one of those people, straight up, where I was surprised how much, how little actual will it took to make these little changes, you know? Cause and, and it's good because it does, like these books and stuff, it puts it into perspective where these guys are really exercising their will. You know, with these crazy things. And all that is, is an illustration. That's it. That it, it didn't even take me hearing that to understand that, oh, it doesn't take much will to do a workout when I didn't feel like it. It didn't, it didn't take that for me to recognize it. That's, that's just an illustration. It took me actually doing it and being like, that wasn't hard at all. It seems hard and here's another reason why people don't realize it, I think.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  I was one of those people who didn't, because everywhere you look, you're always seeing like the, the, the four, uh, helpful tips to stop biting your nails or the four, all these like external things, you know, they, hey, go into, go to a hypnotist, you know, go do something outside of yourself kind of thing.

• 1:04:01Jocko Willink?

  Put some nasty tasting nail polish on your fingers.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it makes you not want to bite, all this stuff where. Really, all you have to do, just how you always say, all you have to do is do it. You know, you don't, you want to stop biting your nails? Okay, stop biting your nails. And if you really look at it like that, where like if you would have said to me, oh, you don't feel like working out? Go work out. If I would have been, okay, I don't feel like working out, so I'm gonna go work out. And you just keep it that simple. That's all you gotta do. Right, you'd be like, whoa, whoa. And you're done with the workout, you're like, dang, that was easy, I'm gonna do that next time. You almost kind of look forward to doing it every once in a while.

• 1:04:35Jocko Willink?

  You like, you look forward to exercising your will.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  Your will, you know?

• 1:04:38Jocko Willink?

  Just like you get, look forward to certain workouts sometimes, not always.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:42Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes I'm like, oh, I got squats today and I don't want to do it. But sometimes you're like, squats, I'm gonna get some. So you can get the same feel about, about mobilizing your will.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like that, yeah, exactly right. That's exactly what it is. That's actually one of the reasons, I was listening to, you know, Brady guys, they have that, the Trooper Project podcast. I was listening to one with, with Arbelle, Arb, either Arbelle or Abril.

• 1:05:05Jocko Willink?

  I don't know how you say it.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Arbelle, yeah.

• 1:05:07Jocko Willink?

  I just know him from, I just know him from, yeah, but I just know him from Twitter.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:11Jocko Willink?

  So I've never heard his name pronounced, so I don't know.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  Savage, big, you know?

• 1:05:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, beast.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  And they were, they were talking about, you know, what music you listen to in the, in the, you know, when you work out and stuff to get nuts. And, bro, I don't listen to any music. And that's one of the reasons where, well, that's why I did it. I was like, I'm always trying to distract myself from the pain, you know? And let me listen to this music to get me fired up or to make me feel good kind of mentally and so I can get through the pain of, you know, I don't know, Met Cons or whatever. But I'm like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna listen to no music. But it turns out I like that better now. Cause you just feel more in touch with like what you're doing. But, oh, here's a, here's one. So I'll do a, what are they called? They're kind of like front squats, but you hold the two kettlebells like this.

• 1:05:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  They're like, I forget what they're called, but, so I'll do 25 reps of 25, so it's hard. So when you get to about 12, You're like, oh, you gotta, you know, you kinda start to hit a certain type of wall. And then when you get up to like sixteen, eighteen, you're like, oh, you know. So what as a result of that, I would play little numbers games in my mind. So I'd count backwards from six, six, five, four, you know what I mean? So you just kinda like, oh, I'm approaching the end, it'll be done soon kinda thing. But what I started doing is like, nope, I'm gonna count them. One, two, three, four, five. And you'll, and in the beginning, I started to feel like dang, when I'm getting up to twelve, I'm like, oh, my gosh, the pain is coming. And it comes and you're like, dang. And then instead of playing more mental games, like, let's just count down from here.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  Cause so the end is, you know, in sight, nope, I'm gonna count up now. And when you count up, the numbers going up, give you this weird mental picture, like the pain is coming more now. Cause you're, you're deeper into this thing, you know? And it's like this, it's almost like mental abuse you're doing to yourself. But after a while, you kinda look forward to that, you kinda look forward to those higher numbers, you know? It's like bring it kinda thing. And it gets you, it essentially gets you even more fired up.

• 1:07:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's good.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm telling you, embrace the, the, the pain.

• 1:07:12Jocko Willink?

  I agree.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Does the inability of the average person to defend themselves make them more susceptible to fear generally in life? And can jujitsu, Brazilian Jitsu, reduce societal fear?

• 1:07:26Jocko Willink?

  I think it's, it's a pretty obvious answer. But yeah, I mean, obviously if you can defend yourself, it's gonna give you more confidence in the world. And if you don't know how to defend yourself, you're gonna have more fear in the world. That's just the way it is. And I know that jujitsu definitely gave me a lot of confidence in the world. Because when you're looking at someone, you, you, you at least know you're not a pushover at a minimum. You know, I'm not gonna go out easy. So yeah, I think if you don't know how to. Defend yourself at all, I think you're definitely gonna be more susceptible to fear. That's kinda common sense.

• 1:08:10Jocko Willink?

  And also, the, the thing with not knowing, when you don't know about things, you, you are more scared of them. You've been in confrontations, cuz you're on the, on the jujitsu mat, you're in confrontations all the time. And if you do an occasion, you know, occasionally you should put on boxing gloves and box and even strike during jujitsu. You should do that stuff, so you recognize what it's like to be in a fight. And then you have, you'll be less afraid of the unknown, cuz it's known. We're always afraid of the unknown, well now this is known. Now, the other thing is, the better you are with jujitsu and the better you are at fighting, the less apt, the less likely you are to have to use it.

• 1:08:51Jocko Willink?

  Because, because people will know that by the way you're acting, that you're probably not a person that should be messed with. And the other thing is, I think when people actually know how to fight,

• 1:09:06Jocko Willink?

  they put up less of a front about who they are, about trying to act like a tough guy. Because, hey man, I'm feeling pretty good, you know, I got no problem saying hi to you. I can, I can say hi to you in the street, like, hey, how's it going? No big deal, I'm not feeling like you're gonna take advantage of me now, cuz I know how to fight. That's why a lot of jujitsu guys are super nice guys, you know, cuz they're not trying to prove how tough they are, cuz you actually know how tough they are. Yeah. So, I, I think that's pretty obvious, you know, uh, uh, that's the, the many benefits of jujitsu from a personal level. And then for, as far as societal fear, I would also say, yes, it's, it's helpful. Because if you can handle yourself on a personal level, right? Then you can handle yourself in other dynamic situations.

• 1:09:49Jocko Willink?

  And you're more aware of things and you are better at staying calm, right? Jujitsu teaches you how to stay calm. Oh, yeah. You get in a bad situation, if you panic, you're going down. So, and you get in bad situations all the time, so you get used to it and you realize that you needed to detach and you needed to get out of your head and can't panic and can't get claustrophobic. You used to get claustrophobic, and you don't really get claustrophobic too much anymore. Allegedly. Straight up. And, and also, with jujitsu.

• 1:10:19Jocko Willink?

  And you know, mixed martial arts, training, boxing, Muay Thai, wrestling, you overcome adversity. You know, you overcome adversity. You have to. And so when you know how to overcome adversity on the mat or in the cage or in the ring, that's going to help you in real life. Overcome adversity. So I think that those are real simple reasons why Jiu Jitsu is good. If you didn't think I thought Jiu Jitsu is good, I do think it's good. I think it's good for, good for everyone.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Right. Update, right?

• 1:10:50Jocko Willink?

  And really, there's a lot of martial arts you could put in there. I'm talking about Jiu Jitsu, but it's the same with boxing. It's the same with, with Muay Thai. It's the same with wrestling. It's the same with Judo. Sometimes I forget to mention Judo. I shouldn't. Judo is also very effective martial art. So I think all those things are very helpful for personal, overcoming personal fear and giving people confidence and thereby overcoming societal fears as well.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is kind of a side note with, with Jiu Jitsu for us. Let's say, and this more applies to

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  this concept kind of has been coming up recently where, you know, your first day in Jiu Jitsu, where you, I think you and me and kind of

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  our time where we started Jiu Jitsu, we didn't look at it in terms of like pulling guard.

• 1:11:37Jocko Willink?

  I didn't even know you started Jiu Jitsu in 1992.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, from 92 all the way to about, I don't know.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  I don't know the date, but I'm saying if you like old school Jiu Jitsu where you probably started Jiu Jitsu because of Hoist Gracie. If you're one of these people, one of us, that's why I started Jiu Jitsu, Hoist Gracie, One UFC, one, you know, where we looked at Jiu Jitsu as, okay, if I get in a fight with someone, I want to be able to win the fight, even if he's bigger than me. It wasn't because, oh, I want to be the next world champion, you know, concerned about how to effectively hold, you know, the most points over somebody.

• 1:12:11Jocko Willink?

  Points in this.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or when I pull guard, like the coolest like flip move I can do or whatever. And I'm not saying like that's what it is. And I'm not saying that, but there, that is in the game now. So sometimes as a result of this, sometimes you can go with no Jiu Jitsu experience. You don't know about Hoist Gracie necessarily. You haven't, you know, that isn't what compelled you to learn Jiu Jitsu. You just hear great things like, you know, from Daco or whoever, and you're like, hey, I want to go. Learn Jiu-Jitsu. This is the best fighting thing according to Jocko. I'm gonna go see, I'm gonna go see what up. And then they go in there and then, let's say the first day, they'll learn, um, you know, just an arm lock from the bottom or, you know, something that if you don't go in with the full context of what Jiu-Jitsu is, it won't translate. You know, you, you'll learn a move and you'll be like, wait, how, how am I gonna go win a fight now?

• 1:12:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  It's like, cool, that's a cool move. It's kinda like, you know, a guy, hey, let me show you, when you're a kid, let me show you this finger lock. And you're like, that's cool, but-

• 1:13:04Jocko Willink?

  How you gonna get my finger, boy?

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  Exactly. You know, like, all this day, it just doesn't apply to a fight.

• 1:13:07Jocko Willink?

  So, so, so just to answer your question, I just did a little, like, tiny, uh, instructional thing for some people that hadn't trained before. And it was to support a charity, and so it's all good. But, you know, these people have never done Jiu-Jitsu before, and I taught them, you know, the mountain escape, right? And, and, and immediately, you know, one of the guys, hey, you know, what happens when they do this? Cause he's doing this right here. Yep. Okay, so bring it back in, everyone. And, and basically, you know, after this happened a couple times, I said, here's the deal, I'm teaching you a new language.

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:40Jocko Willink?

  So far, I've taught you the word "the."

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:13:44Jocko Willink?

  That's the only word I've taught you, "the."

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:46Jocko Willink?

  I haven't even taught you "I" cause that would, that would be a context of self-awareness, which you don't have any.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  Right, we don't have any.

• 1:13:53Jocko Willink?

  You only know "the." That's it. That's it, that's all you know. And actually, I shouldn't have even, I should've said, I just taught you the word "purple."

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:02Jocko Willink?

  Because y- y- y- you can't, "the" actually can apply to different things. This, when you just learn one thing, i- it's, it's not meaningless, but it's only, it's almost, if you walk into a foreign country and the only word you knew how to say was "purple"

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:17Jocko Willink?

  In their language, it's not gonna get you very far, at all, right? It's not.

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:14:21Jocko Willink?

  And that's the same thing. So, you're right. In the context of like a singular move, Jiu-Jitsu is worthless.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:29Jocko Willink?

  Now, back in the day, when I learned five moves and knew the rear naked choke, the arm lock, the kamura, and no one else knew anything,

• 1:14:38Jocko Willink?

  when, when you can say five different words in a world where no one can speak,

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:43Jocko Willink?

  you have power. And that's the way it used to be. Now, it's not like that anymore. Everybody, everybody watches UFC.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:49Jocko Willink?

  Everybody watches UFC. And so they, everyone's seen an arm lock before. Everyone's seen a rear naked choke. They, you can watch a rear naked choke and see, that's a simple move. You can see how you put that on somebody.

• 1:14:59Jocko Willink?

  So yes, you are correct, but if you got it, you gotta do more than just the context of like a singular move because that's not gonna be very useful to you.

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so when you, I remember watching UFC and there was a guy who would commentate, right? Kind of a dirty guy, but he, he kinda knew, apparently he took jiu-jitsu, so he would kinda call it, he'd be like, okay, so now Hoist Gracie, he wants to get on top right now, establish his position, um, he can't get the takedown, so now he's pulling guard kinda thing, and then, or he'll be like, okay, he's establishing position with a mount, and he's gonna, he's gonna punch him until he turns over, and then he's gonna choke him, and he's calling it, and he does it, right? So I remember thinking, okay, that mount position, very, it's very powerful, or if he's on the bottom, you want guard kinda thing, you can see, you know, because you can explain, so when I first started jiu-jitsu, like an actual class, I knew what guard was, I knew what mount was, I knew those positions and why they're important, where, you know,

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  like if you're, if someone's mounted on you, where Hoist Gracie would always be mounted on the person, it's like, it's really hard to get out, he's gonna struggle, and, and if you turn over, you're even worse situation, you know, so I kinda knew that, so I knew the actual context, and a lot of people, when they go in jiu-jitsu, just because they hear about how cool it is, they don't have that, that, that foundation going in, so I think, man, I think that, I don't know if they'd ask for it, or what, but I think when, when, when instructors, when a new person, a brand new person, don't know, zero days of jiu-jitsu, if, if they teach that, like, this is the mount, this is why it's important, you know, just like how you did at the muster, where you're like, you know, I can, you know, I can hit you, you can't hit, just like that, and then, that'll provide context, and then at the end, how you taught a move, you know, of submission, or whatever,

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  then it's like, okay, in mount, this is one of the many things you can do, and it's like, oh.

• 1:16:38Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, when I say many, I mean infinite.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes, yeah, so, yeah, I think that if you, and I guess this goes out to like anyone who, who goes into their jiu-jitsu class and learned, just happened to be on the day where you learned like some kinda arbitrary move, given the fact that you don't know the foundation, it- With the foundation, any move is gonna make a lot more sense. As long as you have that foundation, the importance of mount, the importance of guard, the importance of, you know, all these other things. Of course, we all wanna learn the submission. What's cool submission, who can I get this guy in who wants to fight me?

• 1:17:11Jocko Willink?

  Get this guy?

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:13Jocko Willink?

  Another thing that people ask is, you know, well, they're, he keeps pulling my hand away. I go, yeah, it's a fight. You're fighting another person. It's not, jiu-jitsu is not magic. I say jiu-jitsu is magic, but it's not magic. It's not magic.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  It's an actual.

• 1:17:24Jocko Willink?

  It's a fight. The person's gonna resist. You have to have moves.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:27Jocko Willink?

  I didn't, it doesn't turn into magic until you have it all together.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:33Jocko Willink?

  And it turns into magic.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  And then you bestow it upon someone who doesn't, you know?

• 1:17:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  It is like magic, right? Man, I used to train with this little guy, George. He's a purple belt, now he's a white belt. And man, he's, he's the one who taught me butterfly guard. He was small, too. And he would be flying me around, doing butterfly guard sweeps and like straight arm locks and stuff, like from the bottom.

• 1:17:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  I'm like, bro, what is this guy doing?

• 1:17:56Jocko Willink?

  Magic.

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And one time, he's like, someone at, while we're, you know how like, when you're rolling, you can kinda talk to people while you're rolling, you know? Especially if you're rolling with a guy who's advanced as well, cuz you don't have to focus on what you're doing kinda thing. So this was an introduction of that concept. Where I'm rolling with George, he's carrying on a conversation with this guy, not inappropriate, like, hey, what'd you do last weekend? It wasn't that. It was, someone was asking him, like, hey, like, how do you, how did you do that kinda thing? He's like, well, this is what he's doing. And while we're rolling, he's kinda commentating his rolling and he's like, so, and this sets up the sweep, which I'm about to get him with, and it, yeah. And he gets me with the sweep and keep in mind, this is a small guy.

• 1:18:29Jocko Willink?

  That's why it is, that's why it is kinda magic, because

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  It seems like magic.

• 1:18:33Jocko Willink?

  If I could make this coin disappear, if I could actually do that, that would be magic.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:43Jocko Willink?

  If I can take your arm against your will and straighten it out, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:49Jocko Willink?

  It's kinda magic, too.

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:51Jocko Willink?

  In some way.

• 1:18:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. See, I mean, that is what magic is though, right? When, when you make, make it appear, it's like illusion, right? Where you make it appear.

• 1:18:59Jocko Willink?

  But I'm not talking about, I'm talking about actual.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:02Jocko Willink?

  Actual magic.

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, no such thing.

• 1:19:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, yeah, I know, except for jiu-jitsu.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  But it does seem that way when they don't know, when they don't know how you did that.

• 1:19:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, how did that happen?

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  Yet it.

• 1:19:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I see what you're saying.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 1:19:15Jocko Willink?

  So it's similar to making the coin disappear, but it really just went behind.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:19Jocko Willink?

  Knuckle or whatever.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  It's impossible. I outweigh you by fifty pounds.

• 1:19:23Jocko Willink?

  Do it again.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  Let me see how you did that.

• 1:19:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, watch this.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Do it again. I still don't got it. Do it again.

• 1:19:30Jocko Willink?

  Good.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  Next question. Hi, Jocko. I've been listening to you ever since I first heard you with Tim Ferriss. I've been considering jujitsu.

• 1:19:39Jocko Willink?

  Man, jujitsu day.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  Same thing, yeah. Ever since hearing you guys talk about it so passionately. However, I've had a shoulder, I've had shoulder surgery, labral tear in the past and some issues with bicep tendonitis. And I'm worried that grappling sport, that a grappling sport might make me prone to injury again. Would you recommend jujitsu for someone like me? Thanks in advance for taking the time and providing your advice.

• 1:20:05Jocko Willink?

  So there's another form of jujitsu, actually, that I don't talk about very much, but it's definitely a feasible thing for a situation like this. And that's the learning jujitsu.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:14Jocko Willink?

  Right? Learning jujitsu, learning the moves, drilling them, gaining the understanding of how they all fit together. And then only sparring in like a really controlled environment. And by that, I mean highly skilled instructor that isn't going to hurt you or let you get hurt doing something stupid. And that will provide you with enough resistance so that you know moves are gonna work, but not taking it to full on level twenty seven. You know, bloodbath battle. And unfortunately, this situation is kind of, is very likely, and I've seen this before, I'm sure you have too. Where you get somebody that maybe they had an injury or maybe they're, they're in some job where they can't get hurt, you know?

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  Oh, right, right.

• 1:21:00Jocko Willink?

  And so.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  Surgeon or something.

• 1:21:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, or an older person that doesn't want to get hurt because they're in the middle. So I've seen this, people do this before. What they do is they basically take jujitsu, they take private jujitsu classes. And they only roll with the instructor and they learn moves and they learn how to put it together. That's. That's one way to do it is you just find a good now you I've heard nightmare stories about this too where the jujitsu instructor feels the need to prove himself which is just pathetic.

• 1:21:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Jocko Willink?

  There's no way when you go in and you tell an instructor hey I've got a bad shoulder I've got a bad knee I've got a bad neck I've got a bad back whatever you tell them and you say look I just want to I just want to learn the techniques and and learn how to apply them in a very fundamental way I'm not here to compete I have no ego and I don't want to prove anything I just want to be more knowledgeable the jujitsu instructor should be more than happy to take you on board and and and let this you know do this you can also do it if you I mean because jujitsu private instruction is very expensive you can also do it in a group setting but what you have to do you have to keep your ego completely in check unlike anything you've ever tried before

• 1:22:09Jocko Willink?

  because every idiot and by every idiot I mean every human being on earth all of them you take that person if I take a person that weighs 145 pounds who's never trained any jujitsu or wrestling before and I say okay you know you want me to teach you jujitsu here I'm gonna put this arm lock on you and I take their arm and I say okay so this is what it feels like when you get arm locked their instinct is well you how are you getting my arm there you won't be able to do that and they're gonna fight it they're gonna fight it always gonna fight it so everyone's ego gets involved so you have to just completely put your ego in check because you think oh I'm

• 1:22:52Jocko Willink?

  gonna roll with this guy over here but I'm gonna think of a little bit stronger than and you just get hurt that's how you get hurt especially if you have pre-existing injuries so you have to do that you have to find the right training partners that are completely mellow and have nothing to prove and are very relaxed and and experienced in jujitsu so if they do catch something that's gonna be a little bit awkward they say oh yeah man I just let you go no big deal no big deal at all and and and you do that and then you slowly very slowly escalate over time once you know and understand jujitsu you start to go a little bit harder still keeping your ego in check and all that now if you do that you should be able to get into jujitsu over I'm not a doctor I don't

• 1:23:32Jocko Willink?

  know the condition of your labral tear so I I don't have the authority or the or the

• 1:23:40Jocko Willink?

  What the proper

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  Credentials?

• 1:23:43Jocko Willink?

  Credentials to, to give you the go ahead. But if you do what I just said, there's, you should be okay. Now, the problem is that it's hard to do what I just said. It's hard for everybody because everybody's competitive and jujitsu is a very competitive thing. And when I say competitive, it's mentally competitive. It just makes you think, I want, I want, I had these guys in the other day. These guys are, you know, senior executives, learning jujitsu for the first time, didn't know anything. And I taught them, you know, how, I taught them the open the elbow escape to, to escape them out. I, I, I told them to go through them, like just to practice the move on each other. They do, they do six minutes of it. They come, I call them back in the middle, they're sweating, you know? Some of the pairs are sweating because they were having a level seven battle.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:29Jocko Willink?

  And those, and these were, again, forty-five, fifty, fifty-five year old executive type people. But you try and teach them a move and they want to fight.

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:24:42Jocko Willink?

  So that's what you gotta be careful of. And, you know, you don't want to get, you know, you don't want to worsen your injuries. You don't want to do other, you don't want to have other sports impacted. You know, you might enjoy surfing or whatever, playing another sport, basketball, and you ruin it. And now you can't play because you did jujitsu. I don't want that to happen to you. But you can do jujitsu in a controlled way that you shouldn't need to get hurt. But you need to keep your damn ego in check.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah. And, and another thing that, that seems obvious, I think, but apparently is not as obvious. Like, you know how you have, you know, labral tear, especially if you had surgery? I've had, yeah, if you had surgery and bicep tendonitis, these are all things that like, if you do a, a, yeah, okay. You gotta do a separate program, but. You do rehab, like you'll improve that. Where and that's really the main thing with these injuries. You know how people whether have back or their shoulders, stuff that they get surgery, they get it fixed. And then, but it's still, you know what? You're just gonna have that for the rest of your life, kind of thing. Bro, if you focus on rehab, like it's a straight up workout. Where, I mean, don't push it because that's not what rehab is.

• 1:25:51Jocko Willink?

  You rehab it.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  You rehab it, but you, I tell you, focus on that like it's an actual program, like a workout program. Take it seriously. Bro, you can, a lot of times you can get rid of these things fully, especially like tendonitis, bicep tendonitis. Like I had surgery on my bicep, straight up, torn off the bone surgery. So of course I'm going to be prone to tendonitis. But you just, man, you gotta treat it like it's like, that's another thing of your body that you gotta develop, you know?

• 1:26:14Jocko Willink?

  Gotta focus on it.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  The tendonitis, you know? So, ah, man, I would recommend that big time. Where, and you'll be more compelled to do it when you find out how fun jujitsu is and you're like, shoot, I could be like getting after it, rolling way better if my shoulder like just felt better. And man, you go do some extra stuff, like all these little rotator movements for your shoulder. Cause I had shoulder too, Sarge, like during the demonstration, you know, Sarge gets nuts sometimes. During a demonstration pulls my shoulder out, which was kind of hurt from like the day before from, remember Ryan Gillespie?

• 1:26:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he hurt my shoulder, then Sarge hurt it the next day. Anyway, so I was jacked, couldn't do any pressing, whatever. Do those little bent, like you use those rubber band things. And I would use the cables at the gym at 24 Fitness and man, it brings it back. And tendonitis, same thing, you can get therapy and stuff like that. Do that, man, and it'll help it. So if you didn't do any kind of rehab and then you just jump into jujitsu, it's like, yeah, you're gonna be way more prone.

• 1:27:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you know, the, the disclaimer here is like, it's jujitsu. It's a contact sport and you're gonna get twisted up. And if you're scared of getting twisted up and you are a. You know, concert pianist.

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:27Jocko Willink?

  Or you're a surgeon.

• 1:27:28Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:27:29Jocko Willink?

  You you need to accept the fact that this is the, this is a full contact sport and you can definitely get hurt. You know, and we have, we have, we have an actual surgeon, you know? We got several doctors, but we have an actual hand surgeon.

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:44Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, Dr. Luke trains, gee, no gee, does it all.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  Full speed.

• 1:27:49Jocko Willink?

  In full, all the time.

• 1:27:50Speaker 01

  Black belt, by the way.

• 1:27:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, black belt, by the way, MMA fighter too, but, but yeah, he knows the risks, he's cautious, he tapes his finger, you know, he just.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, take the precaution.

• 1:27:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you take the precautions and then you accept that there is a level of risk. You know, I trained for twenty, whatever, five years and I hurt my finger, you know? Like, whatever, a couple of weeks ago.

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  Dang.

• 1:28:13Jocko Willink?

  And and and I just hurt the, another finger, you know, these things happen. So, what are you gonna do? You're gonna not train? That's a, that's, that's a possible.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  Kind of an option, I guess.

• 1:28:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's kind of an option, but you can train in a method that you are a lot less likely to get hurt. And you can go so far in the spectrum of not getting hurt that you, that you could really get that possibly of getting hurt to an absolute minimum.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:40Jocko Willink?

  You know, and that's what I said, if you're training with a black belt instructor and you're just doing privates and you guys have a really good understanding, your chances of getting hurt are pretty small.

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, fully.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  But yeah, if you, if you let that keep you from doing it, I think you're doing yourself more harm than good. And that goes for anything, really, it's like, dang, if you have to go to the post office, but you're scared of the statistics of car crashes. And you can, so what do you do, not go to the post office? Bro, you gotta mail that thing, you know?

• 1:29:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Gotta get it done.

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  True statement.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 1:29:12Jocko Willink?

  You gotta mail that thing, Echo.

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  Or whatever, you know, whatever the case may be.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  When you're stepping into a leadership role and you have someone on your staff who's not a team player, creates cliques, goes over me and straight to my bosses when there's a problem. And whenever, whenever has concerns, voices them among teammates and not directly to me. How do I continue in my role? How do I assess myself and how do I tackle this problem?

• 1:29:42Jocko Willink?

  Biggest thing we gotta do is build a relationship with that person. You know, you gotta get in that person's head, you gotta find out what's going on, you gotta find out, you gotta, you gotta talk to them, you gotta build that relationship, you gotta talk to them about why they're going over your head. Then, then you know what? When they say, well, I'm going over your head because this happens, you go, oh, I didn't know that. You know, I'm gonna get that fixed. And you build up a little trust. And then they say some other problem and you get that one fixed. And then you say, hey, man, you know, it's, you know, it's kinda hurts the team is when you're telling the team things that are negative. And if we could work together to, you know, you tell me what's going on that's negative and then we solve the problem, we're gonna do better as a team. And that's, that's my goal is just to do better as a team.

• 1:30:25Jocko Willink?

  And I see that you're a leader because people listen to you. And when you start saying negative things, they start thinking negatively because you're just an influential person. And, and I, and the influence you have over people is something that is gonna be, can be very beneficial to what we're doing. If you want it to be. I want you to want it to be. But, you know, I'm not you. You have that, I don't. So, let's work. If you could, help me move this in a positive direction so our team can be more successful. That's the kinda thing I would do here. And, and the other thing is, you know, ask them straight up, hey, what am I doing wrong as leader? What can I do better? Where can I become, where can I make more things happen?

• 1:31:10Jocko Willink?

  So that way, and what you're doing is you're letting down your guard, you're letting them, given the opportunity to hopefully be honest with you about what you're doing wrong and then you can give them, you know, you can correct those measures. Now, there is a possibility that this person is a jerk. And when you say, what am I doing wrong? They go back and say, hey, this guy doesn't even know what he's doing. He's, so that's why you need to take it slowly and feel the situation out and, and make an assessment of how they're gonna react to these things and build a little bit of, a little bit of leadership capital with that person before you go and say, what am I screwing up? Because then it's, dude, Jocko doesn't even know what he's doing. He's asking me what he should be doing. So don't, if the person's a jerk, you have to watch out for that. So that's where we're gonna build a relationship first.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  It's like building a relationship. Seems like a very.

• 1:31:59Jocko Willink?

  Common theme.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  Far stretching solution.

• 1:32:01Jocko Willink?

  It is very much so. You know, you take the extreme example of I'm a hostage taker and you're my hostage. And I'm threatening to kill you. What are you supposed to do? Build a relationship with me. You want to get me to see you as a human. That's what we're talking about. It's the same thing. That's an extreme example.

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:20Jocko Willink?

  But there's the same thing going on here.

• 1:32:22Speaker 01

  It's a real example, by the way. I heard this story. It was on the news. I forget how old the girl was. He was a kid, though. A girl, a kid. And she'd, all she did was blab to this guy who kidnapped her and he wound up letting her go.

• 1:32:34Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  Cause she, she built that relationship with him.

• 1:32:36Jocko Willink?

  So this team member that's creating cliques and doing all this negative stuff, it's because he doesn't know you.

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:42Jocko Willink?

  And he's, he's just going, I don't know, you know, Jocko is a mystery to me. He doesn't hang out. I don't know. He's, he's bad. Don't, I just, there's a separation.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:51Jocko Willink?

  So I'm gonna close that separation. I'm gonna blab to him. I'm gonna build a relationship and we're gonna let that little kid go.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I remember working in the nightclub where, you know, you have different bosses, different managers. They work different shifts or whatever. So. One guy.

• 1:33:09Speaker 01

  His name is Matt Gilmore, tall, tall guy. I love that guy. He was real, I don't know, for whatever reason, I should, I should, I could just relate to him, you know? He was just real nice and, I don't know, the way he talked was kinda, not funny like a comedian, but just kinda, you know how some people when they talk, it's just kinda entertaining? You know, every time, every once in a while, they'll use certain words that's just kinda unique to them. It's like, I like that. Anyway, really liked him. And so I was hoping, and he would usually work on Friday, Saturdays, right? He was, cause he was kinda high up. And then there was this other guy. I'm not gonna say his name. Nonetheless, it was this other guy. And this guy, he was like the full on kind where. He had this air about him where he I'm the manager of this club kind of thing. And on off times, if he'd be at like a party or something that we're cruising or whatever.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  And he'd talk about how, yeah, you know, I'm in the office doing these sexual things with this person and just, you know, real, real douchey, for lack of a better term, real douchey kind of guy. And one time he was, um, there was this rule, this is a long time ago. There's this rule, you can't go upstairs. There was like three levels in this club. So you can't go upstairs, like this high end kind of lounge. You can't wear jeans upstairs. It's just, there's a dress code.

• 1:34:18Jocko Willink?

  I hadn't been to that.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, you would not be welcome.

• 1:34:22Jocko Willink?

  Flip flops and shorts or?

• 1:34:23Speaker 01

  No, you won't even get in the front door, apparently. Um, so one day on my off night, I had jeans on. I went upstairs real quick just to talk to one of my friends, Cake Nuts. And, cause he was up there and so I was talking to him and this guy, this manager, the one I didn't like, he was up there and he'd be like, he was like, hey, the rules apply to everyone, you know, go downstairs. So I'm like, oh, you know, I'm just, I will, I'm just gonna talk to him. He's like, the rules apply to everyone, go downstairs, like not be nice about it at all. So I'm like, all right, whatever, that's just an example, one experience. The next week, he comes in on his night off, jeans, upstairs or whatever. And as a joke, not being a dick, as a joke, I was like, hey, you have jeans on, I was working.

• 1:35:06Speaker 01

  And he's like, he goes, he's, oh, yeah, well, my title has a bit more letters than yours does.

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what he said to me. So.

• 1:35:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, I'm not sure where we're going with this.

• 1:35:17Speaker 01

  No, that, I was gonna say, that's an example of him not building a relationship with me.

• 1:35:23Jocko Willink?

  He certainly did not.

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  Matt Gilmore wouldn't have said that.

• 1:35:26Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  He would have either not, he would have either compromised with me the first night. Or he would have, he would have laughed at my joke and be like, ha, ha, good point, whatever. Or both, he probably would have done both.

• 1:35:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  Still friends with Matt Gilmour, by the way. Okay, next question. In light of recent events, what is the best course of action when confronted by an obvious abuse of authority resulting in personal injury due to an innocent person?

• 1:35:54Jocko Willink?

  To an innocent person?

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  Oh, to an innocent, yeah, to an innocent person that that occurs in one's presence.

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  At what point is it acceptable to physically engage with the assailant even though the assailant has some kind of authority? Sorry, that's two questions. Wait, what what's the recent event?

• 1:36:12Jocko Willink?

  Recent event is the person on the airplane getting dragged off and injured.

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:19Jocko Willink?

  Because the it was overbooked and all that.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  United?

• 1:36:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Overbooked flight.

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:24Jocko Willink?

  So, and you know, obviously, I guess you could put more recent events is, you know, if you if you could have a police officer.

• 1:36:33Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:36:33Jocko Willink?

  That's doing something. You could have a bouncer. You know, I'm sure you have plenty of stories about your nightclub days besides just wearing jeans in the wrong area.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:36:43Jocko Willink?

  Which, you know, is a big violation.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  (laughing)

• 1:36:46Jocko Willink?

  So, so here's what here's here's my answer to this. What do you do when one of those things happen? First of all, the people that are in the situation are wrapped up in the situation. They're they're emotionally, mentally wrapped up in the situation. The situation has escalated. They're caught in a storm. And you're not in the storm. You're outside the storm. So what do most people do when they see that storm going on? What do most people do? Tell me.

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  Panic?

• 1:37:10Jocko Willink?

  No, they pull out their iPhones and they start recording the situation. That's what they do. That's what everyone does. Hey, oh, there's a fight going on. World Star, let's video it. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:37:21Speaker 01

  I'm impressed that you know about World Star.

• 1:37:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, they have a lot of good fights on there that you have to watch. So...

• 1:37:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, because you learn from you see the way people act. You see some human nature in in videos. So that's what people do. So what you actually want to do, instead of pulling out your video, is you want to try and get them out of that moment emotionally. You want to talk to them like a normal person, engage with them, you know? Hey, hey, sir, you need to calm down. That's just a police officer. He doesn't mean any harm. Hey, hey, you know, officer. That that guy's not a threat to you right now, you know, just take a step back. It looks like he's trying to relax. You know, you want to talk to them, disengage them, get their heads out of those bad scenarios. Yeah. And, you know, be in a calm voice, say some things, like I said, say something, hey,

• 1:38:08Jocko Willink?

  officer, there's a lot of people that are videoing this right now, you know, just, a lot of people saw what happened, so let's, it's, it's, you don't have to do anything else. You, let's, let's get this person under control. I can give you a hand, whatever, you know, you just want to, you, and, and of course, what is, what is their initial reaction to be back at you? Just back away, or, you know, shut up, or, you know, you don't know. And, and so you need to absorb that, right? Say, hey, look, I'm not, I'm not giving you any threats at all, I'm just here to help out. I don't want to see any trouble, don't want you to get in trouble. You just want to talk to people and get them to, get them out of that emotional storm that they're in. Both sides, both sides, because it's a really nasty situation.

• 1:38:52Jocko Willink?

  You know, when you don't listen to me, when, when I start to hurt you, when I grab your, your wrist, let's say like one of those, like, uh, police pain compliance type moves, I grab your wrist and I start to twist it. You, as a human being, the natural instinct, some people might have the instinct to comply, but a lot of people have the instinct, if you grab me and start hurting me, I'm going to pull away. Yeah. Okay, you're resisting. Yeah. Now you're resisting, so what I need to do, I need to go harder. Well, the harder I go, the more you resist. Right. And you see where this is going. Next thing you know, I'm beating you in the head. Cause I don't know how to use a chokehold, unfortunately, because in some areas, chokeholds are illegal. Hmm. So, again, as the outsider, you want to pull them out of that, you want to talk

• 1:39:36Jocko Willink?

  to them, you want to get them to see that outside of this emotional storm that they're in, both sides, both sides are an emotional storm.

• 1:39:48Jocko Willink?

  Physical intervention, you know, now we are talking like this is a serious step. You start stepping into these scenarios. You don't, you want to be very, very careful about stepping into these, one of these situations. And even that physical escalation should be, or physical intervention should be just with the sole purpose of, of de-escalating, right? You're not walking over and, you know, grabbing a guy. No, hey, you know, it's like a hand on the shoulder, hey, sir. A officer, hey, you know, TSA agent or whoever you are. Hey, let's just calm down. You want me to give you a hand getting this person under control? You know, you, you don't want to get these people to where now you become, because as soon as you do that, you just entered the storm.

• 1:40:33Jocko Willink?

  You, you're part of the storm now.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:35Jocko Willink?

  Even though you're trying not to be, you're, you're, you're entering the storm. So you gotta be very, very cautious about what you're doing there. And, you know, what would I do in a situation where I saw someone getting, you know, beat to death? You know, I'm gonna do what I just said, you know? Now, might I go a little bit further because I have a lot of experience and maybe I can handle a situation and de-escalate it physically? Yeah. And, you know, you see this sometimes where something will be escalating and innocent civilians will come and help an officer, secure a person. So those, there's ways to do it.

• 1:41:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:11Jocko Willink?

  You just gotta be very, very cautious when you do those, when you do that. Because the, the other piece of this is, and, and again, you see this on, on YouTube. You don't know what happened to get to this point. You don't know who that person is, who the perpetrator is, right? The perpetrator might look totally innocent, but you don't know any background. So when you start stepping in there, you might be stepping in there to defend a person that just shot a person or a person that just, you know, got caught doing something or a person that really did resist the cops hard and do, do some damage. So I, I don't, I don't know. And I'm generally gonna side with, with a police officer, right? I mean, the police officer, I'm, I'm respecting that they, that they're doing the right thing.

• 1:41:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:52Jocko Willink?

  And so to step in there and start making something happen is, is not gonna generally work out in a good way. Maybe you can help them get the perpetrator under control. But, um, yeah, to, to make the assumption that because a cop has escalated to a point of violence, that the cop is an out of control, crazy cop. It's not an accurate assumption. Most likely. That's the wrong assumption.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:17Jocko Willink?

  You know, cops are not walking around waiting to, to, to beat the crap out of people. That's not what they're doing. They don't want to do that.

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:24Jocko Willink?

  When it happens, it, it's something, something has generally led up to it. When we see it in a case that isn't like that, that's why we see it. Cause it's now news.

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:42:33Jocko Willink?

  It's now news.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:35Jocko Willink?

  So be very, very careful about that again. You know, most of the time, you know, just try and de-escalate it verbally. Ask if they need any assistance. Ask if you can call 911 for them and get more assistance for them. Ask if they need any help. Talk to that, you know, do that. Take that approach. If you have to physically intervene, especially if you have some experience. You know, let them know what you're doing. Do you need any help? Do you need any assistance? That type of thing. And I'm sure we'll get some feedback from, from some cops on this one. And it'll be good.

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I feel like when, when I was back to the bouncer situation, when guys would, you know, a fight would break out. So in a club, when a fight break, breaks out is more chaotic than, you know, in the street when you see two guys fighting. So. It's a little bit more dangerous when you jump into the fight to try to break it up. Because if you just jump in and grab the guy. The guy doesn't know if you're trying to break up the fight or if you're a guy.

• 1:43:29Jocko Willink?

  You're just another attacker.

• 1:43:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. So he's going to start swinging or whatever. Um, and that's not to mention any of that guy's friends who sees you do that in the dark. You know, all this, you know, the dark nightclub lights, whatever. So he might hit you, whatever. And then, you know, bottles can be, it, it can be dangerous. So if you jump in there with, before you even touch the person, you, you're already saying. Break it. What I would always say is either break it up or, or calm down. Like calm down guys, break it up, break it up. Before you even touch them and they hear that. So when they feel you, they don't feel a punch.

• 1:44:04Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:44:04Speaker 01

  It's like calm down, calm down. And they feel you kind of, it's more of a light given, uh, compared to the, the guy who he's fighting with. It's not a punch. It's not a wrestling move. It's nothing like that. It's like, you're breaking it up.

• 1:44:14Jocko Willink?

  And you just gave me a good reminder too. If you're on the outside and you see something like this going on, like if you're on that plane and you see this, this, uh, this passenger getting roughed up. You know, hey, hey, hey passenger. Just calm down, do what they're telling you to do. Just do what they're, just comply with what they're doing to do. You know, just relax, let them cuff you, just relax. You know, you can take, you know, I definitely heard cops say this. Actually, I heard the guy that was on Sam Harris's podcast, like, if you want to got an issue with what a cop's doing to you, bring it to the court, let your lawyers handle it, don't handle it right there. Cause you're gonna lose, you're gonna lose that situation, you're gonna end up hurt, you're gonna end up injured, it's gonna be a bad scenario. So same thing, tell them, tell, you know, if you see someone getting, getting roughed up, then hey,

• 1:44:59Jocko Willink?

  hey, man, we're all watching, just comply, just do what they're telling you to do, and take it up to, with a lawyer later, just try and get that person to calm down, cause that's, you know, chances are, you know, the police officer, he's arrested thousands of people, put his hands on thousands of people. That person that's getting roughed up, they haven't, they've not been arrested. You know, I can guarantee you that United passenger probably never been arrested in his life. So here he is, and like I said, you start to pull me, I'm gonna resist. I don't, people don't pull me, nope, don't pull me, boom, boom, now all of a sudden we got an incident going on. So instead of someone saying, hey, listen, just listen to what they're telling you, you need to just calm down, you don't want this to get any worse, that type of thing. Talk to people and get them to detach a little bit.

• 1:45:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and obviously the United situation isn't, isn't this real linear situation where it's like, hey, that's the passenger's fault, he should have just went with him, kind of thing, you know, I mean, there's all, there's.

• 1:45:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I honestly, all I know about, I don't know anything about it, other than, I saw the guy getting dragged out of the plane, that's what, that's the only part I saw, guy getting dragged out of the plane, and I saw the good Gracie, the Gracie breakdown of that, of how to defend yourself in that situation.

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, he was, um, he was, it's, it's just a long story, he was, there was, that does apply. You know, if you're getting arrested, or, or, or taken off the plane or whatever, and you choose to fight for your rights right then and there, amen, that's a battle that you're gonna, you gotta do that, you know, and there's consequences to that.

• 1:46:28Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean, you gotta do that?

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  It's like, you ever heard the expression, if you want to be a gangster, you gotta do gangster stuff?

• 1:46:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:46:34Speaker 01

  It's actually gangster shit, but.

• 1:46:35Jocko Willink?

  But, but, but you're not, you're not advising?

• 1:46:38Speaker 01

  I'm saying, if you want that beef, then you're gonna get that beef, is what I'm saying, yeah, so. So yeah, do it. But like I said, especially with like the cops, if they're arresting you and you're like, hey, you violated my rights. So I'm gonna fight you right now for my rights. Yeah, if you want that beef, okay, but it's you're gonna be more, you're gonna be safer first off and more effective. If you fight for your rights administratively later.

• 1:47:01Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:47:02Speaker 01

  And so nonetheless, uh, kind of on a tangent there, but um, the, oh, the cop, uh, when you're helping the cops or whatever. It's the same way as if you're a bouncer, you kind of identify yourself kind of thing, just like how you're saying. And it is easy, I think, to, and they call it availability bias, right? It's easy to be like, oh, these cops are beating this guy up. And I see this on YouTube all the time where the cops just beat up these guys, you know? So these are bad cops or whatever, but it's like anything where when you, how you say, it made the news because it's this bad cop situation. It's in your mind, you know, all the good cops and the legit arrests, all that.

• 1:47:43Jocko Willink?

  They're not on YouTube.

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  Millions of, they're not on YouTube. Yeah.

• 1:47:46Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:47:46Speaker 01

  And even if they were, that doesn't stick in your mind.

• 1:47:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they wouldn't have any views.

• 1:47:51Speaker 01

  Business as usual, you know, like, yeah, okay, whatever.

• 1:47:53Jocko Willink?

  Exciting video of a police officer doing his job.

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:56Jocko Willink?

  No one wants to watch that. They want to see somebody screwing up.

• 1:47:58Speaker 01

  And they forget about it. It's totally not in their mind. So yeah, anything screw, you know, being screwed up or anything that just has this emotional impact on their mind. They're gonna think is like way more common than it really is. So I think it's important to kind of keep that in mind always, you know?

• 1:48:13Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  If you have a subordinate that hasn't improved after talks and instruction, but can't, but you can't fire them because of a union.

• 1:48:28Speaker 01

  What do you do?

• 1:48:30Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna find something that they're good at and I'm gonna get them to focus on that. And you know, as a leader, that's what you're trying to do. As a leader, you gotta make your team members, if you've got team members that you, that you can't get rid of for whatever reason, and they're not quite doing what they should be doing, or they're not up to speed, what can they do? What can they offer to the team? When I find out what you can offer to the team, I'm gonna have you focus on that. It's the way it is. If that causes some kind of disruption because, you know, Echo can only move 10 bricks a day, and everyone else is moving 200, and so now everyone's all mad because Echo's not working and not carrying his load, well, I'm gonna, you know, number one, I'm gonna look for a job for him where he's, no one sees him not carrying bricks, right?

• 1:49:13Jocko Willink?

  Hey, instead of doing that, you're gonna organize the bricks over here. You're gonna count, you're gonna count bricks, because you're weak.

• 1:49:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:19Jocko Willink?

  So you're gonna be the brick counter. So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna change it up, and find out what they can do. That's what, that's what you have to do as a leader. And by the way, I'm not gonna give up on him. I might not, I might not invest a ton of time, but I'm gonna keep saying, hey, you know, if you wanna move from counting bricks to moving bricks, this is what you gotta do. Here's what you gotta do. You gotta keep working, you gotta keep getting stronger to work on your deadlift. Work, you know, get a little bit stronger so you can carry more bricks. So, it's, you know, and that happens, it doesn't just happen because of unions, it happens for all different kinds. It happens in the military. You can't, you get a guy that he's in a situation where, yep, he's not gonna get, we're not gonna let him go. You know, we've gotta keep X amount of people in country. Okay, so this guy's one of the people in country, we're not allowed to get rid of him. Okay, cool.

• 1:50:02Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:50:03Jocko Willink?

  Well, what can he do? Maybe he can count bricks, you know, have him be the best brick counter we got.

• 1:50:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:11Jocko Willink?

  You might have to do a little isolation too, you know what I mean? You might have to isolate him a little bit. Again, because you don't want people thinking, oh, Echo's over there, you know, in the air condition, and he doesn't do, doing, carrying his load, and so that can cause problems.

• 1:50:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Jocko's just letting it happen.

• 1:50:26Jocko Willink?

  Jocko's letting it happen, you know, so you might have, you gotta, you gotta figure this out. How do you isolate them a little bit? How do you make sure that they're working, you know? Maybe you can only count bricks, but if you were working more hours, you know, or doing some other thing to make up for your slack in the brick carrying category.

• 1:50:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:50:45Jocko Willink?

  Bottom line, as a leader, when you get somebody that doesn't quite do what they need to do, and you can't get rid of them, find out what they can do and take advantage of it using to the best of their ability for supporting the team.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it kind of seems like, I mean, given what you just said, that, I mean, this might dumb it down too much, but it's a situation where you are making the best of it, right?

• 1:51:11Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:51:11Speaker 01

  And what I found in life, when you make the best of something, you don't get plagued with all, because let's say the two scenarios. One, you're making the best of it, two, you're not. So when you're not, it's going to be burdening, burdening you every day. Echo's only moving 10 bricks, that's going to bother me every day. It doesn't have to, by the way. You're still going to move the same amount of bricks. We're going to get the same amount of work done. 10 bricks, 100 bricks, 200 bricks, whatever. But meanwhile, you're getting tortured all day. Because you're that, the fact that Echo's not moving as many bricks or he's in the air-conditioned room, whatever, that's bothering me every single day. But if you understand that we're making the best of this situation, that's not going to bother you. We're making the best of it. It's the best situation.

• 1:51:51Jocko Willink?

  Very true. Better attitude.

• 1:51:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Make the best of the sitch. Next question. Ego is the enemy. Can you take that too far? I can joke about myself all day and be okay, but also I don't want coworkers not to take me seriously.

• 1:52:13Jocko Willink?

  So that's actually kind of two questions. It's talking about ego and then it's talking about joking around, right? Those are, those are two different things, a little bit.

• 1:52:20Speaker 01

  Like self-deprecating.

• 1:52:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so can you, can you be too humble and put your ego in so much check that it hurts you? Yes, actually you can, you know? Hey Echo, how's it going? I'm in charge. I'm really horrible at this. I just don't know what I'm doing, right? That's not good. You know, it's like I said to the Marine Lieutenant, right? Am I telling them to go in, into check-in and say, hey, guys, I, you know, I just don't, I just got here, just got out of the basic school. I don't know anything, really. Do you want to follow that guy? No. No, that's not what I'm talking about. So can you be overly humble? Yes. Like I said, it's okay to admit that you don't know everything, but that doesn't mean don't be well-prepared.

• 1:53:02Jocko Willink?

  That doesn't mean don't be confident that you can figure things out. That doesn't mean you can't ask good questions, right? It doesn't mean that you don't report in. Without knowing the nomenclature and the fundamentals, right? That's gonna, you know, hey, Jocko just checked in, but he knows what our mission's been. He knows what our mission statement is. He knows how our basic process is. He already looked at all that. He knows everyone's name. Yeah, I'm prepared. I'm prepared. So that's what you want to be. That's not saying, I have no idea what I'm doing right now. I just got here. No. No, that's not what we're talking about. So don't be overly humble. Most people.

• 1:53:46Jocko Willink?

  The reason I talk about the other one of be humble all the time is because most people tend towards letting their ego be inflated. That's what most people tend towards. So I tend to talk more about, hey, keep your ego in check when you are checking. Because most people are so scared of looking bad, they say, well, I know how to do this. Right. Never seen it before. I know how to do that. Never seen it before. You're gonna look stupid. Hey, guys. Hey, I've been put in charge of this. I know you guys have been doing it for a while. Looking forward to learning from you and how you execute it and, and driving forward and keeping kicking ass in this mission. Does anyone get mad at that? No. It, that's a lot different than, hey, guys, I have no idea what's happening. That's too much. Yeah. So don't go there.

• 1:54:28Jocko Willink?

  Be humble, but not, not passive. Put your ego in check, but don't turn into a baby. Word of the day.

• 1:54:37Jocko Willink?

  Uh, the second part of this is a question about joking around too much. And that's, you know, that's different from too much ego and absolutely you can joke around too much. Now, of course, and we've talked about this, a good team and a good leader, they're having fun. They're having fun with everything that you're doing and I always had fun. I always had fun. I still have fun. All the time. I'm having fun.

• 1:55:02Jocko Willink?

  But if all you do is joke around all the time, then when it comes time for the joke to be over, people won't take you seriously. So that will be problematic. You know, I had a rule.

• 1:55:12Jocko Willink?

  That was no joking on the radios. Right? So if you were on a radio, you weren't allowed to make jokes. No joking on the radio. And what's cool about the, because you know, in tasking a bruiser, when I was a platoon commander, when I was assistant platoon commander, we had fun all the time. We laughed, we joked, we had a blast with everything we did. No joking on the radio. You see what I'm saying? That was a law. No joking on the radio. And what was good about it was as I think back to that, what that translated to was we're not joking around in the field. And that expanded like when we're briefing, we're not joking around. It was a very clear distinction. Of course, did people have, did things happen out in the field? Sometimes we're like, oh my God,

• 1:55:53Jocko Willink?

  this is hilarious. Of course that happened. But the general 99% of the time, 95% of the time was, hey, we're in the field, we're working, we are serious. That's the priority. Did we have fun in the field? Yes. Did I laugh in the field? Yes. But the priority and this norm was we are going, we are serious and we are, that's the priority. So don't joke so much that you don't get taken seriously. One time I was with a senior ranking officer, a flag officer, meaning an officer with stars. And we went to go brief, I wasn't attached this unit, but they went to go brief this unit.

• 1:56:33Jocko Willink?

  Or we went to go receive a brief from a unit. And in the brief, in a PowerPoint slide, these guys had put a slide in that was an inappropriate slide and it was a crude joke. And it was really funny. I thought it was really funny, you know? I was like, oh, that's pretty funny that these guys did that. You know, I saw the slide, they had it up there. And it was completely inappropriate and vulgar, right? That's what it was. They didn't know this general at all. And he was a very straight laced guy. And didn't appreciate that kind of humor. And they, they, they had like the welcome slide. The next slide that came up was this inappropriate vulgar slide.

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  What was it? What was it?

• 1:57:16Jocko Willink?

  It was, it was, it was, it was inappropriate. I'll leave it at that. And

• 1:57:25Jocko Willink?

  And you know, it was like there was a chuckle in the room.

• 1:57:28Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:57:29Jocko Willink?

  And at the same time, there was nothing but silence in the room. And you could feel the discomfort and and since I like I said, I thought it was funny. And I knew it wasn't gonna go over well. As soon as I saw it, I said, oh, this is not good. And the reason I'm telling this big, long story is because I have another rule. Don't put jokes into your slides in PowerPoint. No jokes, because you can you can articulate the joke because you can feel the room out. You can see what's going on. You can get it. Get a taste. You can get a feel for them. If you if you walk in, if if they would have had a chance, if I could have said, freeze the first slides up. You've you've you've met the general here for for five minutes.

• 1:58:10Jocko Willink?

  Do you want to remove that slide? They'd be like, oh, absolutely. Let's get it out of there because they could see that he was a serious guy and and not, you know, one to be that that wants to be seen, that kind of thing. It didn't take wasn't hard. It was a pretty easy book to read. But you don't have that opportunity. There was no hold on. We're gonna delete this slide. No, there it was. Boom. Welcome. It was the it was after the slide of, you know, this is where we are. It was the welcome slide. And I said, oh, so no joking on the radio, no joking in your slides. Keep your slides clean. And and the the risk benefit, you tell a good joke. Hey, that's great. You get, you know, two credits.

• 1:58:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:58:50Jocko Willink?

  If your joke is bad and considered inappropriate, it's negative thirty nine.

• 1:58:54Speaker 01

  I know, bro.

• 1:58:55Jocko Willink?

  So it's not worth it. Yeah, it's not worth it.

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:58Jocko Willink?

  And again, I'm all about, you know, you you want to have fun. When you're briefing, you want people to be entertained and have fun. But you don't want to have inappropriate stuff. No.

• 1:59:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:06Jocko Willink?

  So that's that. For both these. For both these things, am I joking too much or am I being too serious? Am I, you know, is my ego too big or am I being too humble? It's a balance. It's a dichotomy leadership and you gotta find the right spot in the middle and you gotta check yourself and you gotta, you know, if your team is joking when they shouldn't be joking, guess what? You're leading them the wrong direction.

• 1:59:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:29Jocko Willink?

  If your team is somber and doesn't have any spirit, you're not having good enough time. So you gotta find the balance there. Same thing with ego, you know, are people talking with you and communicating with you? And being open with you? And telling you when they disagree with things or is no one talking to you? Cause if that's the case, your ego is so big that they don't want to talk to you. So find the dichotomy leadership, find the balance between those two.

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  Dang, that's a good one. If they're, if they're not talking to you, you know, cause you know how at work? You're talking with your friends, you know, and then somebody comes, that person comes who you're like, oh, you know, for whatever reason, you're not necessarily talking about them or nothing, but they come in, you're, you gotta stop your conversation, you know?

• 2:00:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:15Speaker 01

  That's like a little indicator, you know, if you roll up to, you see people across the room talking. And you're like, hey, that looks like a cool conversation or whatever. Or I'm gonna go say hi to Paul, whatever. And you go and they stop talking and they stop like laughing. They just stop talking and they give you like small talk or whatever. That's an indicator.

• 2:00:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. It's an indicator. It could be actually either one of those two. If people are having a good time and you walk in and they stop laughing. All of a sudden you say, okay. And if you, you walk in and they're having a conversation that they don't, they just, you know, don't want to talk to you, you're, they're probably, they probably don't like your big ego. That's slapping them in the face.

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  Something.

• 2:00:51Jocko Willink?

  Put your ego in check.

• 2:00:54Jocko Willink?

  We got time for one more.

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  One more.

• 2:00:59Speaker 01

  Jocko, do you ever get worn down by everything you're trying to do? And the things going wrong and things not working and having to work so hard only to come up short?

• 2:01:10Speaker 01

  What do you do then?

• 2:01:13Jocko Willink?

  Of course.

• 2:01:16Jocko Willink?

  I mean, of course, of course. I get worn down. Of course I get frustrated with stuff. Of course things don't always go my way.

• 2:01:27Jocko Willink?

  And of course. I come up short. Sometimes. Of course.

• 2:01:37Jocko Willink?

  But what do I do when those things happen?

• 2:01:45Jocko Willink?

  I keep going.

• 2:01:48Jocko Willink?

  It's it's really that simple. I put one foot in front of the other. I move forward another inch, another centimeter.

• 2:02:02Jocko Willink?

  I write one more sentence. I, I place one more brick on the wall. I gut through one more workout.

• 2:02:14Jocko Willink?

  I step out onto the mat one more time.

• 2:02:20Jocko Willink?

  Because

• 2:02:22Jocko Willink?

  because worn down

• 2:02:26Jocko Willink?

  isn't beaten.

• 2:02:30Jocko Willink?

  And frustration is not gonna kill me.

• 2:02:36Jocko Willink?

  And the things that don't go my way, they just turn into targets that I'm going to attack harder.

• 2:02:46Jocko Willink?

  And when I do come up short,

• 2:02:53Jocko Willink?

  it's okay, cuz I just learned one more thing that's gonna get me over the top.

• 2:03:04Jocko Willink?

  So

• 2:03:06Jocko Willink?

  at those moments, at those low points, those times when it seems

• 2:03:14Jocko Willink?

  that defeat

• 2:03:17Jocko Willink?

  is starting to get the upper hand, you don't need some grand plan. And you don't need a pep talk.

• 2:03:29Jocko Willink?

  And you don't need a miracle.

• 2:03:35Jocko Willink?

  You just need to keep going.

• 2:03:43Jocko Willink?

  Keep going, just keep going and don't stop regardless of what you are hit with.

• 2:03:54Jocko Willink?

  Because if you don't stop yourself,

• 2:04:00Jocko Willink?

  then nothing else can and nothing else will.

• 2:04:11Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's all I've got for tonight. So Echo, why don't you go ahead and talk about how we can support this podcast? If we want to.

• 2:04:26Speaker 01

  If we want to. And support yourself if we want to, which we do by the way. So we talk about on it, on it, supplements. Physical and mental by the way. So I think, you know, I don't know if we failed to mention this or we've just been mentioning it a little bit less. Which is AlphaBrain.

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  We haven't talked about, I feel like we haven't talked about AlphaBrain that much recently. Been taking it by the way, but not talking about it. Um, this is good. Okay. So it's a new, they call it nootropic or nootropic.

• 2:05:00Jocko Willink?

  Something like that.

• 2:05:01Speaker 01

  Something like that helps your brain, nutrients to your brain, boom, directly. So two forms, the instant, it's like powder, you mix it up with your Gatorade or whatever, whatever.

• 2:05:11Jocko Willink?

  No, you don't need to mix it with Gatorade. It doesn't, you can mix it on its own.

• 2:05:16Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:05:16Jocko Willink?

  There's two flavors, by the way. Yeah. There's peach and then there's natural spice. And the two flavors taste exactly like what they sound, what they're named. Peach tastes like peach and natural spice, a little natural spice kick to it, but it's also, it's got a little peach, but it's got a little natural spice.

• 2:05:36Speaker 01

  Right. Dang, I didn't know there's two flavors.

• 2:05:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I have both.

• 2:05:41Speaker 01

  What is this one? This one is, oh, this one is natural spice.

• 2:05:44Jocko Willink?

  That's natural spice, yeah.

• 2:05:45Speaker 01

  Dig it.

• 2:05:46Jocko Willink?

  But they have, they, they, they taste sweet.

• 2:05:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:05:49Jocko Willink?

  So you don't need to mix it with Gatorade and you shouldn't be having Gatorade anyways, because it's just a bunch of sugar in water.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  Maybe not a bunch, but we'll see some. Some electrolytes in there. Nonetheless, mix it with whatever you want, man. Um, or just pour it into your mind. It's powder. That's the thing compared to the capsules.

• 2:06:08Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:06:08Speaker 01

  Whatever you like, you know, the, the powder one is called instant. So it goes to your brain quick quicker. That's just an assumption. Nonetheless, here, this is what it does, which is cool. So you know how like, you know how you're talking to somebody and you blank out on some, something like somebody's name?

• 2:06:23Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:06:24Speaker 01

  Whatever.

• 2:06:25Jocko Willink?

  It already happened today. It happened today because you gave me a word.

• 2:06:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:28Jocko Willink?

  I don't think that's happened before.

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  Wait, oh, before we were recording.

• 2:06:31Jocko Willink?

  No, no, while we were recording live.

• 2:06:33Speaker 01

  Acquaintance.

• 2:06:34Jocko Willink?

  Yes, acquaintance. I didn't have enough alpha brain.

• 2:06:37Speaker 01

  No, that was before we were recording, I think.

• 2:06:39Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:06:39Speaker 01

  All right. Well, there it is. Either way, that's what it does.

• 2:06:42Jocko Willink?

  You need more alpha brain now.

• 2:06:43Speaker 01

  No, I think you do. I think I'm, I'm right because I took two of these and I think that, that I'm correct. Nonetheless, doesn't even matter. Because what it does is it makes you do that like way like actually you don't even do it. And I'm, I don't, I mean, maybe that's a deficient, something about some kind of deficiency when that happens, you know, when they call them brain farts. I'm having a brain fart, you know, you don't get brain.

• 2:07:04Jocko Willink?

  It's a cosmic shame.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  It's like gas X for your brain, essentially. You know how like gas X, you know what that does, right? So you don't, you don't do that. You don't have to think of words anymore. They just come boom, for real.

• 2:07:18Jocko Willink?

  Now, I don't want, I kind of don't want to bring this up, but I will anyways, because I don't want to give people bias. What I don't, you can tell me what cognitive bias this is. But if you heard people like your brother Jade, who says when he takes alpha brain, his dreams get all crazy.

• 2:07:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:34Jocko Willink?

  So that's another thing that I, and I've, I've seen, I've talked to other people that, that get more vivid dreams.

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:07:41Jocko Willink?

  With the alpha brainy.

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:42Jocko Willink?

  So that's another thing just to be aware of.

• 2:07:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:46Jocko Willink?

  Now, just, I wa, I don't want to, what kind of cognitive bias is that?

• 2:07:49Speaker 01

  That's not a cognitive.

• 2:07:50Jocko Willink?

  Of availability bias? Because I said it and now you're waiting for it. And so now you have a vivid dream and you think it's the alpha brain? That's what I mean.

• 2:07:56Speaker 01

  Right, right. That's like, that's a placebo effect.

• 2:07:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I guess, but you're attributing it to something. You're attributing it to alpha brain.

• 2:08:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, huh?

• 2:08:05Jocko Willink?

  So anyways.

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  That is a bias.

• 2:08:07Jocko Willink?

  You may notice that your dreams become more vivid. I don't notice it, but I've heard some people say it. I think I heard Joe Rogan talking about it.

• 2:08:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I heard it Monday and Jade is one of those people who said it. He said it before I even heard anyone else say it. He was like, oh, that's like a good thing. He did. It wasn't a complaint, too. That's the thing.

• 2:08:26Jocko Willink?

  Lucid dreaming.

• 2:08:27Speaker 01

  Lucid dreaming. But yeah, I like.

• 2:08:30Jocko Willink?

  I don't have lucid dreams. I have savage nightmares is what I have. And I wake up in a pool of sweat and it's just to get some.

• 2:08:37Speaker 01

  An alpha brain fueled savage nightmare.

• 2:08:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, don't need that.

• 2:08:41Speaker 01

  We're not gonna visit that one. Hopefully that doesn't happen to you, but the benefit that I am going to claim and this and it's proven too, by the way, in a double-blind placebo test, official alpha brain helps with your like recall, like your memory and all that stuff, which that's essentially what it is when you think about it. When you forget little that one word, boom, that recall, boom, boom, boom, it's just firing. That's how alpha brain. So yeah, if you're about to do something where you gotta think and talk a lot, which is everything. Get on that alpha brain, man. You'd be glad you did. I I took what I used to do a lot. So before I before I knew how to switch to manual mode regardless, I would take a pre-workout and alpha brain.

• 2:09:23Speaker 01

  And it helped. It was money. Yeah. Actually got one of my better workouts on that little formula. So I just kept doing it. But you know how you do something over and over again, whether physiologically or otherwise, you just you tend to lose that.

• 2:09:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like if you take caffeine all the time.

• 2:09:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:38Jocko Willink?

  I guess.

• 2:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, in a way, it's the same thing.

• 2:09:40Jocko Willink?

  They say alpha brain is like take it all the time. Take it on the regular. Let it be in the blood.

• 2:09:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. So mine more less had to do with like the the direct effect of alpha brain in my memory and recall. It was more about the kind of workout I got, you know?

• 2:09:52Jocko Willink?

  That's placebo, by the way.

• 2:09:54Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe not, though. That's the thing. Or maybe I was just thinking of more cool stuff, you know? So it was more enjoyable workout. Could have been that.

• 2:10:01Jocko Willink?

  Perhaps.

• 2:10:02Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe not. Nonetheless, we can stick to the evidence and the proof, you'll recall stuff better. Memorize things better.

• 2:10:13Jocko Willink?

  It's good.

• 2:10:13Speaker 01

  All day, every day. Um, also I got that strong bone. Remember a few weeks back?

• 2:10:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:19Speaker 01

  Hey, what the strong bone?

• 2:10:21Jocko Willink?

  Now you have the facts.

• 2:10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, the facts. Strontium. It's one of those things. Here's the thing too. You read the thing. So calcium is, that's the, that's the flagship element. Mineral, element, whatever. Calcium, that's the one that gets all the credit for your bones. It's like, you know, the strontium is like the stepchild, like as far as recognition, but strontium is super important and you lose that, you know? When you get old and whatever, but that's what, that's what strong bone is.

• 2:10:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:49Speaker 01

  You think.

• 2:10:49Jocko Willink?

  Strontium.

• 2:10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. You think it's strong bone, makes your bones strong, which I think that's on purpose too. It's like a little play on words.

• 2:10:57Jocko Willink?

  You think so?

• 2:10:58Speaker 01

  I think so, you know? Aubrey, he's smart like that. Anyway, I take that strong bone. I, I did it cause as you know, I had a bicep surgery. Tendon of my bicep ripped off my bone.

• 2:11:10Speaker 01

  So if I'm still lifting, I still do curls, whatever I said it.

• 2:11:14Speaker 01

  I don't need that thing ripping off. I don't need tendonitis. I don't need problems. I don't need issues. Got on that strong bone. Also I take krill oil. Jocko, do you take krill oil?

• 2:11:23Jocko Willink?

  Affirmative.

• 2:11:24Speaker 01

  I think you've been taking krill oil longer than I have.

• 2:11:26Jocko Willink?

  Decades.

• 2:11:27Speaker 01

  And when I say I think, it means I know.

• 2:11:29Jocko Willink?

  Long time.

• 2:11:30Speaker 01

  Even though I've been hearing about great things about krill oil.

• 2:11:34Speaker 01

  From day one. So anyway, on the krill oil, that helps with joints. It gives you this feeling, I said this before, I will say it again. It gives you this feeling where, and this physically, it's not emotionally.

• 2:11:46Jocko Willink?

  Feelings are emotional, just FYI.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. No feeling though. If I flick your finger, you're gonna feel that.

• 2:11:53Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 2:11:53Speaker 01

  So this is.

• 2:11:54Jocko Willink?

  I stand corrected.

• 2:11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, no, all good, all good. You feel like, like if you're sitting down for a long time.

• 2:12:01Jocko Willink?

  Like right now?

• 2:12:01Speaker 01

  Stand up, yeah.

• 2:12:02Jocko Willink?

  While you talk about on it?

• 2:12:03Speaker 01

  When I stand.

• 2:12:07Speaker 01

  Bro, when I stand up, well, you're on krill oil, so this applies to you too. When we stand up, if Greg Train was here, like we were like a few weeks ago, if Greg Train was like, he wasn't on the krill oil, we all stand up after the same amount of time, two hours ish.

• 2:12:24Speaker 01

  He will be compelled to be like, oh, make that sound, not crazy, but he'll be compelled to make that sound, whether he makes it or not, he's gonna feel like making it. Me, I won't. You, you won't. Krill oil makes your joints young again, for lack of a better term. Anyway, it helps though. Yes, but if, in all seriousness, if you are like lifting weights, going hard.

• 2:12:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, take krill oil.

• 2:12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, take the krill oil. It'll, I mean.

• 2:12:50Jocko Willink?

  Where would one get it?

• 2:12:51Speaker 01

  Do that on it.com. If you want 10% off, you go on it.com slash Jocko. It's the best krill oil too, that's the thing. You can get lame krill oil anywhere. Maybe not anywhere, but in other places, we'll say, but the real deal, the good stuff is on it.

• 2:13:09Jocko Willink?

  You don't want to get lame krill oil from lame krill.

• 2:13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:13Jocko Willink?

  You want the hardcore krill.

• 2:13:15Speaker 01

  It's true. Do you know how like, um, like acai berries?

• 2:13:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:18Speaker 01

  You know, like, you know, you, you can get junk acai, like the reject acai and paid like cheaper. Actually, this, the krill oil is actually a super good price anyway, and you get 10% off from on.com slash Jocko, that's the 10% off. Nonetheless, back to the acai berries, you can get the junk kind and try to taste junk acai berries and then taste good acai berries. Bro, the difference is like, you can tell the difference big time. It's like night and day. Same thing with the krill oil. Take the good one, man. Forget the lame one. It's just my opinion. Anyway, good, another good way to support podcasts, Amazon click through. All you do, before you do any of your Amazon shopping, click through the website, jacospodcast.com.

• 2:14:01Jocko Willink?

  I got a little hint from

• 2:14:06Jocko Willink?

  somebody in the field that said, hey, when you tell people to do Amazon click through, what you should tell them is to tell their significant other to click through. For instance, in my case, my wife buys more things on Amazon than I do. I'm in the game. I'm supporting the podcast.

• 2:14:25Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:14:25Jocko Willink?

  But what if my wife doesn't know about the click through?

• 2:14:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:14:28Jocko Willink?

  She needs to get in the game.

• 2:14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, double the support right there.

• 2:14:31Jocko Willink?

  Don't just you do it. Get your family, get your wife, get your, your husband. They're not in the game, get them in the game.

• 2:14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, huh.

• 2:14:41Jocko Willink?

  Cause a lot of times, yeah, a lot of times the, the other spouse is buying the stuff on Amazon.

• 2:14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:46Jocko Willink?

  And they don't know how to support you.

• 2:14:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:14:49Jocko Willink?

  They don't know about that website.

• 2:14:50Speaker 01

  Or they're just less compelled, or they forgot.

• 2:14:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:52Speaker 01

  And you don't really, technically, you don't know if they forgot or not, you know?

• 2:14:57Speaker 01

  If you're clever. Heard this from Sam Harris.

• 2:15:02Speaker 01

  I knew this already, I'm be honest, but I heard it to reinforce it, where some people, they will click through. And before they do shopping, they get that little URL, boom, save it to favorites, save it to, to, what do you call it? Bookmarks, the tab on the top. So boom, it's, it's there, it's, it's in the front of your head now. It's a good way to support. Small action takes what, three seconds?

• 2:15:22Jocko Willink?

  If that.

• 2:15:23Speaker 01

  If that, yeah. And huge support, it's like huge reinforcements. Enforcements, actually. That's how strong support it is. Small action, big reaction.

• 2:15:35Speaker 01

  Yep, like sodium when you throw it in water. Anyway. Subscribe to the podcast.

• 2:15:41Speaker 01

  If you want. iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play. Bro, it's the best example you can think of, really.

• 2:15:48Jocko Willink?

  You don't need to say anything else, man, you said it. We're good. Over here.

• 2:15:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't think of a better one.

• 2:15:55Speaker 01

  Subscribe if you want iTunes Stitcher Google Play all these podcasting providing platforms. And you know you'll get on the list, you know, you click on my podcast boom automatic it'll be it'll be there the new one updated every week. So you can just click play. You don't gotta do the search anymore. You know, when you do that, you go on there and you hey, let me see this podcast. You gotta search podcast. You gotta type it in on your little phone.

• 2:16:23Speaker 01

  It's actually not that big of a deal, but it'd be even less of a big deal if you subscribe. You just click on my podcast boom updated automatically right there. So subscribe to the podcast. That's a good way to support. Leave a review if you're in the mood. Jocko said something extra dope. You're like, hey, I liked that. Leave a review. Feel free. Like I don't want, what do you call that muzzle? Like what you put on the dogs to stop them from yeah. We're not trying to muzzle anybody.

• 2:16:50Jocko Willink?

  I was thinking about a muzzle over here for some reason.

• 2:16:54Speaker 01

  See, and it's good that you exercise a no muzzle policy and I think that policy should extend to anyone who's listening and want to support this podcast. That's what I think. And apparently that's what you think too. And I like that.

• 2:17:05Jocko Willink?

  Obviously.

• 2:17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So subscribe. Also subscribe to YouTube. Yeah, we have a YouTube channel. I know I say it every week. I'm gonna say it again. I'm saying it this week. We have a YouTube channel. Video version of this podcast is on the YouTube channel, which is cool, obvious, right? But with strong recommendations from Jocko from others. Online. They recommended that you cut out little excerpts, put them on YouTube, even make a playlist, which I did and did. I did all of that stuff. So there's excerpts on there. If you want to listen to three minutes of Jocko's opinion on what gym, what home gym, what, what? Equipment makes a good home gym. You want to listen to that? Boom. It's available right there. How should I approach college?

• 2:17:49Speaker 01

  Boom. Jocko's advice right there. So these excerpts, I think they're actually the more I kind of look at them and stuff, I think this is a valuable situation. You can share them easy and people are way more likely to listen to little excerpts and the whole thing. If you're trying to get one, you know, element of the podcast. So yeah, YouTube subscribe to that. Good way to support. Good way to support.

• 2:18:10Speaker 01

  Also, Jocko has a store called Jocko's Store if.

• 2:18:15Speaker 01

  You want to wear t-shirts and represent? We've got some new ones. We've got a new one on there. Um, but regardless of new ones, old ones, whichever, just go in there, see if you like one. Get one. Good way to support and boom, t-shirt. Also hoodies, rash guards.

• 2:18:33Speaker 01

  Which are not my words, other people's words. They're pretty dope.

• 2:18:39Speaker 01

  So you know, if you're into activity that you like range of motion. Um, and you want to represent and you want to support, get a rash guard. Those are good. I did them for jujitsu. Originally, but bam, if you, if you surf, if you, you know, do CrossFit, Metcons, whatnot, cycling. Run marathons. I'm listing all the things that people send me pictures of them doing in their rash guards. So that's why I'm going down this list. Other stuff. If you do all that, perfect for that too. Very perfect. Can something be very perfect? It's either perfect or not, right? Yep. I think, yeah, either way. There's women's stuff on there. Uh, some patches, Velcro. Regulation size and color. Um, hoodies as well. Also.

• 2:19:26Speaker 01

  Maybe the travel mugs are on there? Maybe not. Nonetheless, I'll talk more about the travel mugs later, next time. Also. Oh, jockostore.com. I think I said that, but you know, there it is. A reminder, jockostore.com is the website.

• 2:19:43Speaker 01

  Okay. Good way to support and support yourself. Psychological Warfare. What Psychological Warfare is, I know, I said it before, I'm gonna say it again. Psychological Warfare is an album with tracks. Not music tracks, Jocko tracks.

• 2:19:58Speaker 01

  And if you are, you know, I'm starting to not like the word self-improvement. I already don't like that word. Right? Yeah, it kinda like- Never mind starting to. Yeah, you know, it's kinda- I already don't like it. Yeah, and I'm to the point, I'm like midway through not liking it. You know, the phases is like, boom, boom, you hear something, you're like, okay, that's cool and acceptable. Mid-phase is like, that's cool, but I don't like how it sounds when I say it. And then the last phase is you don't, you just don't want to hear it. I'm in mid-phase, so, but I'm gonna use it, you know, for, just for the greater good. If you're on a self-improvement path, journey, journey is another one of those words.

• 2:20:38Speaker 01

  That you know, you're waking up early, you're doing workouts now consistently, you're consistently consistently eating good.

• 2:20:47Jocko Willink?

  What about studying and reading and getting smarter too?

• 2:20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:49Jocko Willink?

  Get those.

• 2:20:50Speaker 01

  Studying, reading, um, you know, writing, even anything creative, you know, man, when you that and that's the thing that jams people up when they're like, hey, I should do this. I should write my ebook or I should, I should do a journal every day or whatever, you know? And they'll do it one day and then they just won't do it anymore, you know? That's the thing. So anyway, you've been regardless of what you're doing, these tracks, psychological these tracks will help you through this at times of weakness.

• 2:21:20Speaker 01

  If you're trying to get up in the morning and it's that day, you know, you had a long night and a hard workout that morning that you're looking forward to or not looking forward to, and you're like, you know what? I'm just gonna snooze or I'm gonna skip the workout. You listen to a certain one or two or three of these tracks. It's Jocko and he'll get you through that moment of weakness and you will work out, you will wake up early. Hundred percent probability with very few, if any, exceptions.

• 2:21:48Jocko Willink?

  Also, on Amazon, while you're clicking through, you can get um, some Jocko white tea, which has some pretty good effects. I just pulled a couple of reviews out. This one here says, drinking Jocko's white tea has had the following effects on my life. Getting after it up 55%. Extreme ownership up 92%.

• 2:22:12Jocko Willink?

  And also, by the way, cruising.

• 2:22:14Speaker 01

  Oh dang.

• 2:22:14Jocko Willink?

  Up 108%. So that's important. Also, deadlift went from 325 to 555. 20 pull-ups instead of sets of five. Solid, that's good improvement. I don't think anyone would brush that aside.

• 2:22:30Speaker 01

  Oh, 20 in a row instead of.

• 2:22:31Jocko Willink?

  Instead of five.

• 2:22:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's good. There's another person that drank the tea and I thought that this was important because it could happen to other people. Okay, so this person bought some Jocko white tea for myself and my next workout was so aggressive, I got a strongly worded letter from the UN to cease hostilities. So. I don't, I don't like seeing you at involvement on our workouts, but if you're not careful, it might happen. And also, there's another person, I hadn't talked about front squatting. But you know, one person that has been drinking Jocka White Tea is now front squatting about 2,000 pounds. So again, just Jocka White Tea, no big deal. Double, triple, quadruple, placebo, ultimate tested.

• 2:23:17Jocko Willink?

  Flawless.

• 2:23:19Speaker 01

  He read numbers.

• 2:23:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So yeah, Jocka White Tea, man, tastes good and it is good. Also, right now, Way of the Warrior Kid, it's out. We've been waiting for it. I've been waiting for it. Boom. Thanks, everyone, for picking it up, getting a copy. If you haven't gotten it yet, get it. You know what? You probably don't, you probably wonder if you need it. Maybe you think you don't need it. So, little excerpt, little excerpt for you. Now, this is Young Mark, he couldn't do any pull-ups. He couldn't do any pull-ups. He's in 5th grade, couldn't do any pull-ups. Getting made fun of. People are laughing at him because he can't do any pull-ups.

• 2:24:01Jocko Willink?

  His uncle, Uncle Jake, he stays with him for the summer. Uncle Jake's in the SEAL Teams. Uncle Jake gets him on the workout program, what you and I commonly refer to as "the program." Gets him on the program, and it's been a few weeks now, and Uncle Jake realizes that Mark, he's been doing negatives, and he's been doing assisted pull-ups, and he's been doing the pyramids, but just hanging on the bar, doing all those things, getting ready. And Uncle Jake realizes now he's ready to do his first pull-up. So he says to him, you know, "Okay, you're gonna get on, you're gonna do your first pull-up today." And we'll go to the back to the book. There you go. He said, "Giddy up, get on the bar."

• 2:24:47Jocko Willink?

  And here's young Mark. I was filled with fear. Every time I had tried in the past, no matter how hard I pulled, I could never get my chin over the bar. Now with Uncle Jake standing right here, after all the work he has done with me, I just didn't think I'd be able to do it.

• 2:25:05Jocko Willink?

  I stood there looking up at the bar. "Well, what are you waiting for?" said Uncle Jake. I slowly stepped up on the box and reached up for the bar. The bar was cool in my hands. And I noticed something that I hadn't thought about, my grip. In the past, my grip always felt like it was gonna slip off the bar. My grip felt different now. It felt strong.

• 2:25:31Jocko Willink?

  I concentrated, and then after taking a big breath, I pulled. And I went up. And up. And up. And soon my chin cleared the top of the bar. Yes, I had done it! I let myself down slowly and dropped off the bar. I looked at my uncle. He had a big smile on his face, a big smile. He was happy, and I was even happier. It felt so good! I looked at Uncle Jake and yelled, "Yeah!" As I curled both my fists towards my shoulder like I'd seen weightlifters do in magazines. And I could actually tell, for the first time in my life, I was starting to get some muscles.

• 2:26:13Jocko Willink?

  Nothing huge, but they were certainly there. "Muscle Man Mark!" I shouted as proud as I could be. Then I saw Uncle Jake's smile disappear. "Hold on there, Muscle Man," said Uncle Jake. I didn't know what was wrong, but something was. "I think it's a bit early for a celebration." "Early? I just did the first pull-up of my life. I think it's the perfect time for a celebration," I told Uncle Jake.

• 2:26:42Jocko Willink?

  "That's a problem," Uncle Jake said. "A problem? Why is a pull-up a problem?" "Not the pull-up, Mark, the celebration. It is way too early for celebrating." "But I just did my first pull-up, ever!" "But your goal isn't one pull-up. Your goal is 10 pull-ups. You did one. Sure, you have a reason to be happy. One pull-up is better than zero, but it's a long way from 10." No matter what you're doing in life, you can't take your eyes off the long-term goal, especially to celebrate. You can assess, you can try and figure out some lessons learned from what you did right

• 2:27:24Jocko Willink?

  and what you did wrong. You can even do a little celebrating for the small victories. But don't go overboard.

• 2:27:32Jocko Willink?

  You need to keep your head in the game. So come over here, give me a high five and then get back over there and start doing more work on the pull-up bar. This is only the beginning. I walked over to Uncle Jake, who brought his hand up in the air. I slapped it hard and he said, "Solid work. Now get back over there and get after it."

• 2:27:56Jocko Willink?

  "Yes, sir," I told him.

• 2:27:59Jocko Willink?

  "Just another little lesson from Uncle Jake. You can't get cocky when you make the little achievements. You gotta keep your eye on the ball." So, that's it.

• 2:28:09Jocko Willink?

  Check out that book. Order it. Way the Warrior Kid. It's a kid's book. That's what they're telling me. I think we all learned a little something from it. I know I learned from writing it. You can also preorder a book called Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. And we're dialing it in right now. It's gonna come out October 17th. It isn't a workout book. It isn't a philosophy book. It isn't a photography book. It isn't a diet book.

• 2:28:41Jocko Willink?

  It's got all those things in there, but how do you categorize it? Where are you gonna put it? In the bookstore? Where's it gonna be? Where's it gonna be on Amazon? You know where it's gonna be?

• 2:28:51Speaker 01

  Where?

• 2:28:52Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna be in the "Get After It" category. And you know what? It's gonna be the only book in there. So, you can order that one. You can also order Extreme Ownership, of course, if you want to lead and win. You can get that book for you and your team.

• 2:29:08Jocko Willink?

  If you need some leadership training live, you can contact our company, Echelon Front. Echelon Front is a leadership and management consulting business.

• 2:29:17Jocko Willink?

  We teach your company to lead with the same principles of leadership that we learned in combat. So if you want to get us in the game with you, email [email protected]. We have the muster 002 coming up at the Marriott Grand Marquis, May 4th and 5th.

• 2:29:42Jocko Willink?

  Leadership, strategy, tactics. If you don't make that one, guess what? That's okay. Texas, July 13th and 14th at the Omni Barton Creek Resort and Spa. I'm gonna tell you right up, straight up, don't come for the spa. You're not gonna see the spa.

• 2:30:01Jocko Willink?

  If you can't make the one in Texas, San Diego, September 14th and 15th. Follow-on operation. We've been there once, we're coming back again. Come get your leadership game on, improve yourself as a leader and as a person. We'll see you at one of those musters. Look forward to it. When we're not at the musters, we can be found on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and we gonna be relaxing on that fizzy book.

• 2:30:39Jocko Willink?

  Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to everybody for listening and for supporting and for asking these questions and for helping us do what we do to the military personnel overseas.

• 2:30:57Jocko Willink?

  All of you, our deepest thanks and appreciation for your service and sacrifice. Stay safe. The best way to stay safe is to stay aggressive.

• 2:31:11Jocko Willink?

  To the police, firefighters, EMTs, first responders, thanks for staying sharp, training hard and standing watch for us here at home.

• 2:31:23Jocko Willink?

  And to everybody listening.

• 2:31:28Jocko Willink?

  Life isn't easy. And it's not supposed to be. Sure, there's victories and there's triumphs, but there's also losses and setbacks.

• 2:31:44Jocko Willink?

  But those losses and setbacks only win if you let them.

• 2:31:53Jocko Willink?

  So don't let them.

• 2:31:55Jocko Willink?

  Don't let them win, no matter what happens.

• 2:32:01Jocko Willink?

  Keep going.

• 2:32:04Jocko Willink?

  Keep getting after it.

• 2:32:07Jocko Willink?

  So until next time. This is Echo and Jocko. Out.