184: Getting Over Severe Abuse. How to Build Relationships as an Introvert. How to Control the "Cowboy" Mentality. Chronic Complainers.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:00:18 - How to build relationships being an introvert. 0:04:28 - How to lead a person with a "Cowboy" mentality or behavior. 0:14:29 - How to handle chronic complainers. 0:23:10 - Changing your mind on important issues. 0:35:58 - How do you detach when you're being personally attacked? 0:43:50 -What if you get fired after you take ownership of mistakes? 0:51:44 - Mistakes made in the past. 1:08:54 - Are you GETTING AFTER IT too hard? 1:34:24 - How to balance a dangerous job with protecting and providing for family. 1:42:55 - Getting over sexual abuse. 1:58:30 - SUPPORT: How to stay on THE PATH. 2:14:22 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 184 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  It's been a while since we've done some Q and A and there's been a lot of questions. So let's get into it. Ready, go.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Into it. Okay. Question number one, Jaco. I'm having issues playing the game quote unquote at work. I'm quiet and friendly, but I prefer to work hard rather than stand out and talk. I found I have trouble forming more personal connections with my boss and coworkers. What are your tips?

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  So look, when I talk about playing the game, I'm not talking about the fact that you have to change your entire personality. Profile to start to connect with people. That's not what I'm saying. You don't have to go from being someone that's what they say, quiet and friendly to you don't have to become some chatty extrovert. Running around making small talk with anybody. And on top of that, there's a little bit of a statement here that says, you know, I'd rather work hard as if there's, these are mutually exclusive things, which they are certainly not. So this being forming relationships with people and playing the game does not interfere with your work at all. I'm not saying that you sit around and talk when there's work to be done.

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  But

• 1:28Jocko Willink?

  there's going to be natural breaks in whatever you're doing. There's going to be moments where skip the action pauses and you get a chance to connect with somebody. So that's fine. So, so what are some tips? That how would you do this? So I thought about this of you want to start with something small, right? But you want to engage. This is the key point. I don't just want to throw something at you. I don't want to talk at you. And besides, when it's much easier just to let someone talk about themselves. So what I'm, what my advice in this particular question is, is to tell them

• 2:08Jocko Willink?

  something about yourself, like something minor about yourself, but then that kind of ties into something that you can ask them. And then they can talk to you because most people like to talk about themselves. So you ask them a question about themselves. And then you go, so you know, something, something, maybe something slightly related to work. So it's not just some random statement that you're making, you know? You'd say, you know what? We did it yesterday at work here reminded me of something, right? It reminded me of something else and then maybe it reminded me of a movie. Hey, you know what? We were doing yesterday reminded me of this movie. Have you seen that movie?

• 2:50Jocko Willink?

  And at least you're going to get, well, no, because I don't watch a lot of movies. Or no, I haven't seen that movie. Or, oh, I've seen that movie. It's a popular movie, but chances are I've seen it. You know what I mean? And all of a sudden you've got a little bit of a conversation going. And that's all we're looking for. We're not looking to turn into like chatty catty. We're just trying to build, build relationships with people. So you know who they are, so that they know who you are. That's what we're talking about. Nothing crazy. Start small, build from there.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  Pretty straightforward.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and through that building process, what I kind of found is one, and I guess maybe this is a little tactical thing. You can kind of throw out whenever, but you know, and you know, when people give you advice or they tell you something about themselves that something, I don't know, whatever, whatever the story is, right? And maybe some strategy they used to do X, Y, Z can be super small. If you let them know that you've remembered, like in the future, later on, when you see me again, you say, I remembered what you said last week, you know? In this, yeah. And just say, oh my. And it can be the smallest.

• 3:54Jocko Willink?

  Purple belt jujitsu, mental jujitsu. I like it.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  It can be the smallest thing and it just makes you feel good. So that, that person will just essentially feel more open with you. Like, oh my gosh, I'm kind of like a little mentor.

• 4:09Jocko Willink?

  This guy really pays attention to me.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Makes him feel valuable, all that stuff, just on that small level, you know? So as far as building little relationships, I'd say that's a cool thing to kind of remember to do if you can.

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  I'd say that's a cool kind of thing to remember too.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  All right. There you go. There you go. Approved. Next question. Jocko, may I ask your advice for addressing a cowboy quote unquote mentality among teams working in dangerous environments? How would you shift the culture to kill complacency to aggressively identify and mitigate risk as a point of professional pride?

• 4:44Jocko Willink?

  Okay. This is something that we'll definitely saw in the SEAL teams, see it all the time in the civilian sector, you know, construction companies, power companies, companies where people are doing dangerous work. Right? Policing, firefighting, anything, anything that has any element of danger, you definitely see this. And like I said, certainly saw on the SEAL teams. And the answer to this is a common answer for many leadership situations is you have to explain why. So let me put it in a little context. What you have to do is you have to say, hey, let me explain to you what happens when someone gets hurt or injured on this job. Okay, first of all, we get the loss of that person on the job. The job that we're working on, the project that we're working on, it falls back.

• 5:29Jocko Willink?

  There's paperwork that has to be filed, which by the way, the paperwork hurts the progress of our project as well. Our budget's impacted because now we gotta bring someone else on board, we gotta train them. We take a reputational hit as a company. Right? What, what kind of, what kind of a company can't do a job without getting someone hurt? Right? I mean, this isn't a high bar. It's not a very high bar to say, hey, can you complete this task without getting someone injured? And all of a sudden, we gotta, we gotta, hey, you know what our company? We don't, we get a lot of people hurt. Well, what does that tell you about the company? It's a reputational hit. Who are you gonna hire? You're not gonna hire the one that's got people getting hurt all the time. So there's that.

• 6:12Jocko Willink?

  And what does that do? What does that do to your reputation in terms of everything else? Because if you're getting a bunch of people hurt, how can I expect you to keep your timelines? How can I expect you to stay on budget? So.

• 6:26Jocko Willink?

  It's those things, it's those, that kind of reputation that you get. If you are getting people hurt. And then also, what does it do? What does it say about your team if you've got people getting hurt? And again, this is, what I'm talking about is a conversation that you're having with the group, with the team. You're saying, look, what kind of a team are we if we got people getting hurt? What does that say about us? It says we're lack, lackadaisical. It says we're complacent. It says we don't pay attention. What does it say about our leadership? If we got guys getting hurt, what does that say about our leadership? It says we don't care about our people. Which by the way, it says we don't care about our people. It means, it says we don't care about our job. It says we don't care about our reputation. It says we just don't damn care.

• 7:07Jocko Willink?

  And what does it say about you, the individual? Well, you know what it says about you, an individual? If you get hurt, you know what it says about you? You're a knucklehead and you got hurt. You couldn't follow the procedures. You didn't follow the procedures. You thought you were smart and you got complacent and now you got hurt. So these are the things. When I talk about explaining why, those are where I'm going to start. And now I'm going to explain and connect the dots so that the person, the individual see that someone getting hurt is actually the least professional thing that you can do. From a leadership perspective, if I let one of my guys get hurt, um, that's just, that's just the least professional thing I can do.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  From an individual contributor perspective, if I'm getting hurt, guess what? I, I didn't follow procedures. Okay. Look, are there accidents that happened? Yes, there are. But what I'm saying is if you get a, an accident that could have been prevented, that should have been prevented, and I as an individual let it happen, that is absolutely my fault. It's like when you got a guy getting ready for an MMA fight and they get cut. They weren't wearing headgear and it's like, look, I get it, but that was dumb. And I've had that happen. I mean, I've had it happen with my fighters. I've seen it happen all kinds. It happens in the UFC all the time, right? You've got a fight coming up. You're going to fight for the title, for the UFC title. You're going to make possibly millions of dollars. You're going to be the champion of the world.

• 8:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, two weeks out, got a cut, got a cut on my head. You know, blew out my ACL doing takedown defense, right? Look, I get it, accidents happen, but what was really happening right at that moment? Was it a random accident or were we doing something that we shouldn't have been doing? So if we start to lean towards, look, having accidents is actually an unprofessional thing to do. It's a weak thing to do. It's a bad thing to do. When we let it happen, it hurts everyone, not just the individual involved. That's the attitude that we, we kind of come with. You know, I had the. In the uh, in the, in the Navy, you have like alcohol programs.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:22Jocko Willink?

  So, hey, this is our program for, you know, alcohol. Here's how we're trying to combat having people have alcohol-related incident. And when I was at Trade Ed, they had someone come in to like, give us a talk about alcohol. And then, and then when they got done, the, the guy says, okay, you know, sir, I was the guy in charge. He goes, what's your alcohol policy?

• 9:46Jocko Willink?

  And I didn't have one.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 9:48Jocko Willink?

  And I didn't have one. And I was like, okay, hey, cool. I'll come up with one. Here's the alcohol policy. If you get hurt.

• 9:57Jocko Willink?

  Or sorry, if you get drunk and you can't, if you get drunk and you get in trouble, or you get in a fight, or you get arrested, or you get a DUI, and you take time away from being deployable, you are doing Al Qaeda's job for them. There's the alcohol policy. So now all of a sudden, it's not like, hey, cool, we're, we're, we're like, yeah, rah rah. No, all of a sudden, it's, hey, man, do we want to help the enemy?

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:23Jocko Willink?

  By taking ourselves off the battlefield?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:26Jocko Willink?

  There's nothing more that Al Qaeda wants than for this SEAL to be arrested for DUI and non-deployable.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:34Jocko Willink?

  You just did Al Qaeda's job for you.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:37Jocko Willink?

  So that's the kind of thing that I'm gonna build the culture around.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:41Jocko Willink?

  And that's the same thing you can do with people that are, have that cowboy mentality. You shift it so that that cowboy mentality becomes the thing that hurts our reputation, that hurts our, that hurts the company reputation, and it hurts our individual, personal reputation.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  As a man, I couldn't even prevent my, my shift from getting, from having someone get injured.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:06Jocko Willink?

  So that's what I do.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like it feeds into their professional pride, especially when you use the word. Unprofessional.

• 11:13Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  You know, like, no one wants to be the, yeah, man, I knew you knew what you're doing on that one. And then on the flip side, if you say consummate professional, right? Oh, that's a good one. If, yeah, if you're, man, you could do, it doesn't even matter the job. You can, you can have your own lawn mowing business when you're 13 years old. If you're, someone says, hey, that guy, that kid's a consummate professional. You're like, hell, yeah. Hell, yeah.

• 11:39Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna have to push back a little bit. I don't know if there's too many, I don't know if there's too many situations where you would say a 13 year old lawn mower. Now, we know that Mark, in the way of the warrior kid, is heavily involved in lawn mowing with Mark's meticulous mowing.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, sir, he is.

• 11:54Jocko Willink?

  But even, I don't even know if I'd call him a consummate professional.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  I wouldn't either, but if you, if you were to do so, if you were to do so, Mark would feel really good if you said it.

• 12:04Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm saying is you can't be just throwing words around.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's.

• 12:07Jocko Willink?

  Okay, you can't just throw around consummate professional about lawn, mowing lawns.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:12Jocko Willink?

  Now, let's say the guy was a greenskeeper, like on a golf course.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 12:17Jocko Willink?

  Now, that person could be a consummate professional, because he's got to dial stuff in. And then, and then maybe I guess you get to a certain level of just straight landscaping where, oh, you know what? There was a water, there was a, the pipe exploded. Oh, Jaco came in, he had that whole thing re-sodded, re-seeded, took him four hours. That guy is a consummate professional. So I guess I'll take it back.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Well.

• 12:40Jocko Willink?

  I'm just saying, reserve it, don't, don't play with it, okay? Don't play with that.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Flying that thing around, yeah, exactly, right. Yeah, makes sense. What, um, the, the, man, that, that was very clever on your part.

• 12:54Jocko Willink?

  What was?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  When you said you're doing Al Qaeda's job for you, because think about it. I mean, you know.

• 12:59Jocko Willink?

  There's nothing worse for a guy in the military to hear is you are actually helping the enemy right now.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then how you say it, like you name names, you know? It's not like you said the enemy, which I get, that's good too, but it's way better to be like, you're doing, and you name the, the because JP will say that too, right? Where he'll be like, um. There was a sign or something about a sign or maybe he'll just say it'll be like your your enemy thanks you for not giving a hundred percent today.

• 13:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Right. Remember that one? And it's good. That's a good one. And it sounds cool, too. I get it. But it is real general. So you hear that 10 times or every day, whatever you like. Okay, cool. It sounds cool, but it won't really affect your professional pride all the time. Sometimes it does, but if you name the enemy, you know, like if you have some adversary, you know, and they thank you, that person, whatever, John Smith, you know, for not giving a hundred percent, you know, it might feed into you. So you saying Al Qaeda thanks you, you know, for getting arrested. So I'm like, yeah, man, think about it from the flip side, right? What if you think of like an Al Qaeda fighting team, right? And one of them gets like one of their effective fighters gets caught, I don't know,

• 14:05Speaker 01

  doing something that they don't like gambling, going to strip club, I don't know, whatever. And they say, hey, you're not allowed to fight anymore for us. So he gets like exiled or whatever. Oh, that's sweet.

• 14:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  We want them to do that. We might even send them some strip club recommendations. You see what I'm saying? So it's literally, you're literally doing that.

• 14:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Literally. Yeah, that's good. Jerk and Jocko, you clever, clever guy. All right, next question. Hi, Jocko. You answered a question about complainers and said you would listen to the because, well, it should be listen to them, right?

• 14:43Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  You said you would listen to them because you can learn what the problems are. I like it and people like to be heard, but how do you handle chronic complainers? The type of people who become cancerous. I'm a huge fan of extreme ownership. Thanks for your time.

• 15:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is the calls once again for my favorite. My favorite general remedy in in leadership situations is you take this person and you put him in charge. Put him in charge. Yeah. And this is one of those classic things where someone says, hey, why are we even doing it this way? And you say, oh, Echo, you don't like that? Cool. Why don't you come up with a plan and you go execute it however you want? Yeah. And, and that does one of two things. Either they, they say, okay. And they step up and then they have to figure out how hard the job, the task is and they have to get it done and it's, they learn from it. And they get humbled by it and they recognize the, the, the, the burden of responsibility that a leader actually has, which is all good.

• 15:43Jocko Willink?

  Or they just say, no, no, no. And they stop complaining because they don't want to get tasked with anything again. Now, uh, what, what you gotta be careful with a lot of these answers that I give. You could go like in the wrong direction. So what I mean by that is Echo says, hey, I don't like we're doing the way we're doing this. And I go, okay, well then you're in charge. Yeah. You know what I mean? I do it like that. It's a punishment. It's a punitive thing. That isn't absolutely not what I'm talking about. I say, you know what, Echo? You're pointing out some good stuff. You're pointing out some definite shortfalls in the way that this is happening. I'll tell you what, why don't you actually just take responsibility for this and you can run this task and you can make this happen. Cause I, I think, you know, just based on some of the things you've pointed out already, I'm not even calling them complaints.

• 16:28Jocko Willink?

  Based on some of the things you've pointed out already, I think you could probably improve upon our process quite a bit. You know, so you gotta be careful. I'm not talking about being a jerk to someone. Yeah. I'm talking about action. And this is the thing is like, it's like, there's, there's, there's this thing where, where, where what I'm doing, I'm not just playing the game. You ever, you ever, have I ever told this in jujitsu? I'm like, hey, if you want to set me up with the choke so that you can get my arm, you have to actually Right. do the choke. You have to actually apply the pressure. If you don't apply the pressure, I'm not defending it. My arm's not going to go where you want it. You have to actually do it. And if I don't defend it the way you expect me to, then you just choke me. Yeah. It's the same thing here. I'm not saying you just say, well, why don't you do it then?

• 17:11Jocko Willink?

  No, you have to actually say, hey, listen, I think this is what's going on. I think you have some good points. Why don't you take lead on this and, and we'll see if you can, you know, remedy the situation because I think you've got a pretty good chance of doing it. Yeah. This isn't, I'm not doing this as a punitive thing. I'm doing it because it's the best thing for the team. You've got a legitimate complaint. You've got a bunch of them. Yep. Let's get you in a position where you can sort some of those things out. Yeah. So.

• 17:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so that's that's that when you get people that are complaining, you know, first of all, hear them out and maybe that's good enough, right? Hey, listen to them and and and and once again, I'm not saying you listen to them. While your brain is elsewhere and you're not thinking, but you actually listen to what they're saying. You're engaged, you really do go for the choke. Go for it, listen to what they're saying, maybe there's some solutions you can come up with. But then if that doesn't work and even after they even after you listen to them and you explain to them why things aren't the way they want, they still want to complain it, complain about it. Cool, that's fine, awesome. Why don't you take lead on this and that way you can sort out some of these issues, appreciate it.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Kind of like life said that one time, it's kind of hard to complain about a plan when it's your plan.

• 18:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that is the truth.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, makes sense.

• 18:21Jocko Willink?

  God, I'm so stupid.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, this plan sucks that I came up with, but the yeah, the um.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Chronic complaining because you could kind of. I mean, people complain a lot, you you you. It's easy to be like, oh, they're chronic complainers, right? But if there's constantly, we'll say chronic problems. That might induce chronic complaining. I'm not saying that's the case, obviously, because I know that there is so much thing as chronic complainers. Hundred percent. But at the very least, like you say, oh, yeah, put them in charge of something or or listen to them and they'll point, you know, listen to what they're complaining about or whatever, you might actually get turned on to all these solvable problems. You know, and if you if look, if you make someone take lead in a in a situation, right? And you know how it's kind of like that's that concept of like taking extreme ownership? And then what if they do like say, yeah, it is your fault?

• 19:16Speaker 01

  And then you get all mad, you know, kind of thing, it's like, oh, you didn't really do that. It's like, so if you put someone else in charge of something, you're really putting them in charge. Like, what if they run, what if they take lead and they solve all the problems? And they don't come awesome, right? Yes, exactly right. So you don't treat this action or this discourse as like something to get back at the complain.

• 19:35Jocko Willink?

  It's not just it's not just a setup.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:38Jocko Willink?

  It's a real move.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  It's a real deal, yeah.

• 19:40Jocko Willink?

  And you know, that's you just you just made this. Point that I made, which is one of the best leadership tools that is completely overlooked by people all the time. Is very, very simple to do, and that's just to listen to what people are saying. I know it sounds crazy, but I run into all the time leaders in all kinds of levels, all kinds of situations. And the biggest problem they have is they don't even listen to anyone else. They won't listen. So when you're in a leadership position, try this, be quiet and listen to what people are saying, listen to what they're complaining about. Listen to what suggestions they have, listen to what advice they give, listen to their recommendations, listen.

• 20:24Jocko Willink?

  Just listen sometimes. You're gonna be in a much better spot.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and even like you saying that out loud sounds real obvious, you know, but it's man, it's not. Cause even a lot of times, like if you don't listen, I'm thinking of myself, like all the many trillions, trillions of times that I haven't listened when I should have. Most of the time, most of the time will say, I don't mean to not listen. I don't mean to be like, it's not like I'm like hearing noise and be like, oh, you don't know what you're talking about, you're dumb, you know, what you say doesn't mean anything. It's not that. It's more that I'm like focused so hard on what I'm thinking or my way or whatever, like I'm just so just of course, naturally it's mine. I've been thinking about it for years now, you know, kind of thing. So I'm so basically dug in to myself on my own thing that I'm not in.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  I'm just not paying attention that much, you know, I'm like working so hard down this tunnel that like, I can't look out of the tunnel kind of thing. So you don't really mean to, but when you're in the situation, it's like, it's not that easy, you know?

• 21:26Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's, and you know what it is also, it's detachment.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:31Jocko Willink?

  Right? Because when you're talking, you're talking.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:34Jocko Willink?

  You gotta step back, detach, listen to what people are saying. I do this all the time. I do this all the time. It's such a, it's such an easy move.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:42Jocko Willink?

  It's such an easy move. You just watch, you just listen, even like in jujitsu, you do this. You're like, oh, the person wants to move around a bunch. Cool. Let him move around a bunch. Let's see where they're going. I'm just gonna listen to their moves, you know?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's a good way to put it, man. Just listen to their moves, just listen. And yeah, if it's, and if you primarily focus on that listening, then like you habitually be able to do it way better. Cause like, again, like back to the, it's not like a, it's, you're not doing it. With malicious intent, you know, you're not shutting them down. It's almost like you ever eat like interrupters, right? You know, chronic interrupters, people interrupt you all the time. Some of the time, a lot of time, whatever, we'll say half of the time estimate. There, it doesn't feel like they're doing it because they don't want to hear what you have to say. Sometimes it's that for sure, but sometimes they, it's almost like, it's almost like they have this tone of like, dang, I don't think I finished my point as good as I wanted to. Almost it's like that tone for themselves because they're so committed to their message and what they've been thinking the whole time.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  And if you're not signing right onto it, it's, man, I must not have said it clear enough. You see what I'm saying?

• 22:42Jocko Willink?

  I had to like tighten up my kids on just straight. They just wouldn't let each other talk. It just interrupt, interrupt, interrupt. And I think it was, yeah, it was my son for sure. And he looked at me and he goes, he's like, uh, he says, Dad, you've been teaching us to be aggressive our whole lives and now all of a sudden you're telling us just to sit back.

• 23:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that was funny.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Did you tell him that that's the dichotomy?

• 23:06Jocko Willink?

  I said, that's the dichotomy.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  I know you did.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  All right, next question. What is, what is the most important issue you've ever changed your mind about?

• 23:21Jocko Willink?

  This is, you know, this is one of those things where I'm, I'm sure this is one of those questions where, I should have like some answer about some specific subject or something, you know what I mean? Like I can see, I know what answer is desired. I know what type of answers desired, but the reality is, you know, for me,

• 23:45Jocko Willink?

  taking ownership of things, right? This, and this, this wasn't really like I changed my mind to where what I used to say, I'm going to blame everyone. And then all of a sudden I said, you know what? That's not the right policy to have. I need to take extreme ownership. I, I didn't do that, but it was just a, a thing that built and developed inside my brain. And I think it's the most, the most important thing that I've ever sort of recognized or conclusion that I've come to. Now it's not a change, but I'm sure at some point my attitude wasn't like, I'll just take ownership of that, which it is now. But at some point, you know, I'd say, well, that's not really my responsibility. You know what I mean? Of course, you know, that's, that's a natural thing to say. And I'll tell you what.

• 24:30Jocko Willink?

  The next, and this is interesting, but the other, and this one's kind of more of a, more of a, I can pin it down a little bit closer to an answer that someone would like. And this is, once again, it's going to be a little bit, a little bit strange, but the other thing is the dichotomy of leadership. And this is the, this is the thing about the dichotomy of leadership. And I actually was thinking, I actually didn't, didn't really recognize this until the last muster. And I was, as I was thinking about the dichotomy of leadership, maybe it was off of a question, maybe, I think it was actually before, no, actually it was before we even started, I was just like reviewing notes and thinking about the dichotomy of leadership. And, and one of the most important things

• 25:14Jocko Willink?

  about the dichotomy of leadership is that the reason, the kind, the reason that I came to the conclusion, the reason that I got to the dichotomy of leadership, in getting there, let me rephrase that, in getting to a point where I said, there's a dichotomy of leadership, what I had to do was I had to admit to myself that I was wrong about everything. That's what I had to do. In order for the, for the idea of the dichotomy of leadership to, to, to escape my brain, to get out, to get to, to become a full thought, what I had to do, I, I had to admit to myself that I was actually wrong about everything. So I'll give you real easy examples.

• 25:58Jocko Willink?

  One of my things that I used to tell guys all the time, you gotta be aggressive. You gotta be aggressive, that's how you gotta be. In order for the dichotomy of leadership, I had to admit, you know what, sometimes being aggressive doesn't work. Right? I used to say, you know what, as a leader, you gotta stand up, you gotta be loud. And then I realized, you know what, there's, I see leaders that are too, I had to admit that I was wrong about that, that sometimes that was wrong. I had to admit that I was wrong about keeping things simple. Like, you know what, this is one of the most fundamental laws of combat, you gotta keep things simple. And then I had to admit that sometimes people keep things too simple. Even this fact right here, right?

• 26:42Jocko Willink?

  In order to admit that I was wrong, I had to be, I had to be humble. And I used to preach, and I still preach humility as being like the most important thing, but guess what? There are people, and there are even me, well, there's people, there's times and places where you can be too humble.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:59Jocko Willink?

  And so this idea, this idea that there's a dichotomy to everything, it's something that the, the, the original thought for me was, it came from me having one-sided opinion, and then realizing that, and I'm, I'm almost positive, I don't remember crystal clear, but I'm almost positive that the original thought that I realized there was a dichotomy to, was being aggressive. And, and again, this was, this is all kind of coming to fruition as I'm teaching guys at Trade at, and Leif was running the junior officer training course, and I used to give them this, and I remember writing, you know, I, I remember saying to myself,

• 27:40Jocko Willink?

  you know what, I gotta tell guys that they can go too far with being aggressive, and they can go too far with barking orders, and they, and I just, it like, that's where it came from.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:52Jocko Willink?

  And if I wouldn't have been able to change my mind, right? Because that's what this question was, changing my mind about something. The biggest thing probably ever in my life was understanding that just about every characteristic that a person can have, that a leader can have, can go too far and can become a negative characteristic.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 28:14Jocko Willink?

  So that's probably the biggest thing that I've changed my mind on.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, that aggressive one, that makes sense, because like, yeah, aggressive, being aggressive, like, is one of the more effective ways to straight up, quote unquote, get things done, right? Do it and it'll be done, do it, you know? Don't wait, don't hesitate.

• 28:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, there's a, there's a problem in a building? Let's sit back and wait until that problem sorts, no, like, you gotta be aggressive.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. But then if you're, and Jiu-Jitsu will teach you all kinds of lessons like this, where if you're gonna spring a trap on somebody or something, animal, person, whatever, what's the best type of, type of person that you can catch with a trap? Probably an aggressive one, you know? Like, they can set themselves up to, to get trapped if they're like aggressive, you know, like an animal who's real hungry, you know?

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Hesitating like if an animal is like hesitant, you know? Just hesitant, maybe sees things develop a little bit before they take a, you know, certain action or whatever. It'd be harder to trap.

• 29:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, and this is the thing that's, this is what makes humility important. Is it's hard to come to grips with the dichotomy of leadership. Because if you don't have the humility to sometimes say, you know what? You're right. That, you know what, I'm wrong.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:40Jocko Willink?

  This plan isn't what I thought it should be.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:43Jocko Willink?

  It's so hard to do that. That's why it's hard to really get a grip on the dichotomy of leadership. And that's what makes it so important. That's what makes it the answer to so many questions.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:52Jocko Willink?

  And sometimes people will come, like, you know, someone will come up and say, they'll have their counterpoint to what I'm saying.

• 30:01Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you right now, let's, let me think of a, of a, of a situation where you have to provide a counterpoint. If I, somebody comes to me and says, you know what? Being aggressive isn't always good. Sometimes if you're aggressive, all you do is you, you run to your death. Now, an egotistical Jaco would say, negative. You're wrong. I'm right. And I would dig in, in that position. And when you dig in a position, you can't maneuver anymore. So I'm actually stuck. So this is a classic thing to do. Also, when, when, when I'm arguing with somebody. If you come to me and you say, I think we should do this, you know, method B.

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  I say, I don't say, no, because I think we should do it method A. That's what I think. And you think we should do it method B. You come to me, I think we should do this method B. I think you're wrong. You know, you know what I say? Okay, well, I think you've got some good points on method B. Oh, all of a sudden, you know?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:00Jocko Willink?

  All of a sudden, we're, we're in a totally different scenario.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:02Jocko Willink?

  I just totally flipped the script on you. And I, you know what I say is I say, you know, some good points that you have. If you watch people debate. It's really a little slick move. But you don't see politicians do it because they're so dug in. They can never think they're wrong. Yeah. And they can never and what they also are afraid of. They're afraid if they admit they're wrong about something, they'll look bad. Yeah. Whereas if they said, you know what? That's a good point. That's actually a good point. I'm going to need consider that. I've never really thought of that viewpoint before. You know what? I'm going to assess that. But I guess I think you got, I think there's some validity to what you just said. When's the last time you heard a politician say that? I don't, yeah, I never, I don't think. And then what happens is in this day and age.

• 31:47Jocko Willink?

  The, the supporters of that politician. They, they don't, they don't, they don't recognize the valid point either. Yeah. It's just, no. Yeah. So we get people that aren't thinking. And to, and, and it's very hard to hold. Dichotomies in your head that this can be right and that can be right. There's an aggressive approach and there's a non-aggressive approach. There's a direct approach and there's an indirect approach. And both of them can be functional. It's really hard to get, get a grip on that. And yet it's the answer to so many questions. It's the answer to the person, the subordinate that comes to you. And says, we should not be doing it this way.

• 32:28Jocko Willink?

  If your reaction isn't to diametrically oppose what they're saying, but instead to. Actually take their side and say, oh, I agree with you. You've got some really good points. Let's see how this would play out. Talk me through it. Yeah. Look, you can't even, you're like, you know. You know, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like a move. It's like a jujitsu move. Yeah. And it works. Yeah.

• 32:54Jocko Willink?

  So there, there's some things I've changed, changed my mind on. About.

• 33:01Jocko Willink?

  My mind is open though. Yeah. I will change my mind if, if. New evidence presents itself, I'll change my mind in a heartbeat. Let's do it. Present me with new evidence.

• 33:13Jocko Willink?

  What about like, um?

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Well, I would think anyway, after kind of thinking about it, where, yeah, you, I think, I think generally speaking, we do kind of respect someone who can, who can change their mind. And we all see it once people's digging into their opinion, you know, and saying all kinds of weird, wacky stuff to try to defend yourself and themselves. And you're like, it's not what we're talking about kind of thing. You see it, it's clear. So like, it seems obvious like, yeah, you should change your mind when, or at least open up your mind and like how you said, um, hey, I'll give that some consideration. I'll look into it. And if you're right, shoot, I think you're right. I think that's a better way to do it or whatever, whatever the case is.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  But the, and then I guess technically there's a dichotomy too, where you can't do that too much because if you're always changing your mind with like, you know, like, like, I don't know, we'll say a politician.

• 34:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Every time the opposing view or some other view comes in, you're like, dang, I didn't look at it like that. Or I didn't, maybe I'll look back or look into that more.

• 34:09Jocko Willink?

  Well, yes.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  And again, and again, it's like, Brad, does this guy know anything?

• 34:12Jocko Willink?

  Cause guess what you're talking about?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  What?

• 34:15Jocko Willink?

  There's a dichotomy.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:17Jocko Willink?

  And if you go too far and you change your opinion all the time and then you become indecisive, and so that doesn't work.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:23Jocko Willink?

  But if you're so, if you're the other side of the spectrum and you're completely dug in and you never change your mind, that doesn't work either. What you need to do, what do you need to do? You need to balance the dichotomies, the dichotomies between being flexible and inflexible. If you become ultra flexible, where you're just going with whatever anyone's saying, that's not good.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:40Jocko Willink?

  You need to find the middle ground. That's what the dichotomy of leadership is.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:44Jocko Willink?

  But it's hard for people to comprehend that.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:47Jocko Willink?

  It's hard for people to see that where they draw that line.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:52Jocko Willink?

  Because they think, well, you know, I'll never change my opinion on this. Okay.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:58Jocko Willink?

  You just told me where you stand.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:00Jocko Willink?

  I'm not sure I like that very much.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:02Jocko Willink?

  Cause new, new information can come to light.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's where they stand, right, in that dichotomy or whatever. Because I think part of it, and it's part of it is like, yeah, they don't want to be wishy washy, you know. But the other part, or the other part of that is, I'm saying if they always change their mind, if they're so easily to be like, oh, okay, maybe we'll do it your way, whatever.

• 35:23Jocko Willink?

  Flopper.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think they come off like they don't know anything.

• 35:26Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  So if you don't know anything, should you even be in that position? Like, I don't want you to be the congressman if you don't know anything kind of thing, right? That's the feeling. So, and now with that, that's the feeling that people are trying to avoid when they dig in. They don't want to admit they're wrong, because if I admit I'm wrong, that means I didn't know, you know, kind of thing. So it's like, no, bro, you don't draw the line right there. You draw the line a couple of steps down the road. Be open a little bit.

• 35:52Jocko Willink?

  Give yourself some room to maneuver.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:54Jocko Willink?

  Don't dig in.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Room to maneuver. Next question.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  How does one detach when getting personally attacked and take extreme ownership with false claims? And what does one do when a subordinate always goes above the chain of command instead of working out issues with the coworker?

• 36:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay, this isn't the clearest question that I've ever received. I'm going to try and, I'm not sure if I completely understand it, but I'm going to try and sort of answer to the best of my ability.

• 36:26Jocko Willink?

  I think what we're talking about here is that someone is telling me that something is my fault, and that is a false claim.

• 36:34Jocko Willink?

  That's the question, right? Like, you're making a false claim and saying, like, this is your responsibility, Jaco. You were supposed to press record.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:43Jocko Willink?

  And it's false, because I wasn't supposed to press record.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:47Jocko Willink?

  Let's say.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, or maybe like, record was pressed, like, there is no issue, you know?

• 36:55Jocko Willink?

  Well, then, why would that become a personal attack?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I guess it would.

• 37:00Jocko Willink?

  So the personal attack is, Jaco, you didn't press record.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:05Jocko Willink?

  And now the question is, what do I do then? Because we both know who's in charge of pressing record here.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:10Jocko Willink?

  Who is?

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Me.

• 37:12Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you're in charge of pressing record.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:14Jocko Willink?

  If you all of a sudden, we, we are forty minutes into a, into a podcast and we haven't pressed record, the record has, button hasn't been pressed.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 37:23Jocko Willink?

  And all of a sudden it comes to light. And you say, Chaco, you didn't press record.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:29Jocko Willink?

  Now, what this person is saying, that's a false claim.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 37:33Jocko Willink?

  That's not my responsibility. It's truly not my responsibility. Now, I'm not gonna take.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Factually.

• 37:37Jocko Willink?

  Why should I be doing that?

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:39Jocko Willink?

  And you know what I'm gonna say? You know what I'm gonna say?

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I do.

• 37:42Jocko Willink?

  Which is, you know what? It is my responsibility, cuz I'm here. It's primarily my voice that's being recorded. And from now on, I will make sure that that gets recorded. It's my fault. I will take care of it from now on. By the way, now what is your job responsibilities in this whole podcast?

• 37:59Jocko Willink?

  Nothing.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 38:00Jocko Willink?

  You have nothing to do.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:02Jocko Willink?

  If you're not pressing record, you're not, nothing to do.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:05Jocko Willink?

  So how does that feel?

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it doesn't feel good.

• 38:07Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't feel good. You don't like that. But when I take away that responsibility, you're actually gonna come and claw back for me. You're gonna say, you know what? Actually, you know, it was your fault when that happened, but you know what? From now on, since you screwed it up, I'm gonna take ownership of it. And you know what I say? I say, cool. That's awesome. Yeah, good point. Since you are over there with the recorder and since you're a technical guy and I'm not, that makes a lot of sense. Why don't we go with that from now on? You own it.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:31Jocko Willink?

  I, I, I shouldn't have dropped the ball last time, you know? So that's, that's, so there we go. I own it. I fix it. If, by the way, if you don't want responsibility back, if you just say, cool, yeah, you press record from now on. Okay, cool. I will.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:45Jocko Willink?

  And then guess what? I'll start thinking about how much I need you around here.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:49Jocko Willink?

  Cuz really, what else do you bring to the table?

• 38:51Speaker 01

  And those, yeah.

• 38:53Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so that's question number one. Uh, the question number two, as far as detaching, so I don't get emotional, that's.

• 39:04Jocko Willink?

  If someone is blaming me, if someone is blaming me, if you start blaming me for something, I actually look at that right out of the gate. I see that as a psychological victory for me. Because, because you're blaming me, like you're blaming, you're not taking ownership. I already won. I already won. So there's no, I'm not getting emotional about that. That's,

• 39:24Jocko Willink?

  they're blaming me because they don't have the, the wherewithal to actually take ownership themselves. I see that as a weakness of theirs and I'm fine with it. And that, that's why I don't, I'm not gonna, I don't need to get emotional because I'm sitting there going, wow, this person just served me up on a silver platter. The fact that they don't want to take ownership and they're gonna give it to me. Are you kidding me? I'll take this all day long. Another thing is, and I've said this before,

• 39:47Jocko Willink?

  I can't be respect, I can't be disrespected by someone that doesn't even respect themselves. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You can't disrespect me. If you don't even respect yourself, if you're just, you know, like a bum in the street is where, where the thing came from. Yeah. You know, someone that's just a, you know, a drunk bum laying in his own vomit and wants to, you know, look at me and say, you look like, like a dirtbag. Yep. It's like, okay dude. Yeah. Carry on with your day. That you, you're not going to affect me. So how, in the same vein, if, how can I be disrespected by you when you tell me, when you blame me for something, when I realize what's happening right now is you don't even have enough respect for yourself to take ownership of something? Yeah. This is just a win.

• 40:33Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so that's the second part of that. And I think the third part of the question is, a subordinate that, that goes up the chain of command, instead of working, working out the issues with the coworker, that's pretty, pretty easy. I'm not going to solve those problems for you. Oh, you got a problem down the chain of command with your coworker, your peer? And you guys aren't working it out? And you want me to solve your problem? No, you go figure it out and come back to me with a solution. Now I'll do that a couple of times. If eventually they can't come up with a solution, guess what I have? I have a problem. I have a real problem and I will solve it and they're not gonna like my solution because it probably involves neither one of them being there anymore. Extreme case, but what I will do is I say, okay, come and read me the facts. You really want me to make a decision about this? Cool, I'll do it.

• 41:17Jocko Willink?

  But I always felt horrible, in fact, I don't even know if I ever did this, going to my boss to make a decision about something that I should have agreed with my peer. Because you know what? I'd rather just, for me, I'd rather say, hey, you know what? You wanna do it your way? Echo, fine. Let's go with it. It's close enough. You, oh, you wanna take the lead? Cool, you take the lead. I'll support you, no problem. That's what I'm here for. I want the team to win. I know you're concerned about you and I know, that's fine. That's fine. I'm here for the team. So, let's do it your way so that it works out. Not going to my boss and complaining. That's just ridiculous.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  And then that's, that's another one where I've been, I don't think I've ever been in a corporate scenario, but it seems like that, that's easy to see in other people, you know? Like where, you know how like a situation where, yeah, let me like, let my subordinate take lead. It seems like that could be a solid, almost obvious answer for people.

• 42:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Except myself, you know, like I don't, I don't always point that inward, you know? I'm sure there's like people out there where it's like, oh, that, this will solve probably a lot of your problems. Just look at it this way and do it and do that, you know? Let, let one of your subordinates like take lead on the stuff. And I would predict, as far as that goes, that most people would be pretty surprised, like, oh, yeah, I guess I should, I should do that.

• 42:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  You know, at this point.

• 42:45Jocko Willink?

  So you're saying that's a, it's a pretty obvious solution once you hear it?

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:49Jocko Willink?

  But you're also saying that's a difficult solution to actually execute because most people put in a situation, don't remember it.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, they don't remember to point it inwards.

• 42:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Even like, literally, you could be getting this advice, like, right now. You could be getting this advice, but hey, yeah, that sounds like good advice. And then they'll go like back to work and. It applies to everyone else, you know, it's like you don't realize it like, man, I should do that, you know, kind of thing.

• 43:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the trouble with learning.

• 43:15Jocko Willink?

  That's the trouble with learning because it's hard to apply it yourself.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:18Jocko Willink?

  Uh, once again, it's like jujitsu. You can watch, I can show you how to do it.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:23Jocko Willink?

  And then you can watch me do it and then I can move your limbs around so that you do it. And then we do a, a drill where we drill the move twenty times. And then you get into a competition and the move is there and you don't execute it. You don't execute it correctly because you haven't done it enough.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:41Jocko Willink?

  You have to do the move.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Gotta do the move.

• 43:45Jocko Willink?

  You gotta do the move.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Next question. So I'm watching Deadliest Catch, the fishing show. Wait crab, crabs, right?

• 43:58Jocko Willink?

  Crabbing crabbing show, yeah. Alaskan king crabs.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Respect. So I'm watching Deadliest Catch and a deckhand wasn't paying attention and let too many small crabs into the tank.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  This is big trouble for the captain. So the kid admits his mistake and apologizes. Captain, you're fired. I've watched you screw up for years. What's the message here?

• 44:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So it's the captain that fires, says, sees the mistake and says, the captain says, you're fired.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Okay, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 44:30Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so this is, this is, this tells me a couple of things. This tells me a few things. This tells me a lot of things, right? First of all, the boss watched the deckhand screw up for years. My assumption is that he didn't say anything. He watched someone screw up for years. How is the deckhand going to improve? If he doesn't get counseled on what his shortfalls are? Okay, so that's one, that, that could have happened, right? That's one assumption. Let's make the other assumption. The other assumption is that the, the captain did counsel the deckhand and watched him screwed up for years and told him, you better not do that, you better not do that, you better not do that. And he's now done it again. And guess what? He's getting fired.

• 45:15Jocko Willink?

  So, so that, that's understandable. So I think the question is implying kind of like, uh, you know, hey, this, yup, hey, boss, this was my fault. Uh, shouldn't have let that happen. And now the boss can say, oh, well, since you're taking ownership of that, that's no problem. We'll let it go. That's doesn't happen. So, so if you have a, if you have a concept in your brain that you think that when you, when you take ownership for something that you're immune then from the punishment of the mistake you've made, that's not true. That's absolutely not true. Taking ownership

• 45:53Jocko Willink?

  of a mistake does not relieve you of responsibility of that mistake. In fact, the opposite of true. When you take ownership of a mistake, you're taking ownership of the mistake and you are raising your hand and saying, I own the mistake. And if there's punishment to be metted out, it needs to land on me.

• 46:15Jocko Willink?

  That's what ownership is. Ownership is not a get out of jail free card.

• 46:21Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's my fault. You know, we joke about this is my bust. Hey, my bust on that one. It won't happen again. So now everyone just ignores it? No, this is a serious violation. Having the wrong size crabs is the kind of thing that gets you rolled up by the fish and game department. And all of a sudden you're getting shut down. This is a serious business. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, are at stake here. And this kid isn't doing his job correctly. So either the, the boss, the captain had mentored him and was fed up, which, which it makes him a good boss. And this was his last warning and he failed his last warning. And there you go. Hey, I've been watching you screw up. I told you you screwed up. I've written you up about screwing up and I told you not to let this happen again.

• 47:05Jocko Willink?

  And you just let it happen again. You're fired.

• 47:09Jocko Willink?

  Or maybe the boss wasn't that squared away. And he hadn't counseled him. He hadn't had the hard conversations early with him to square him away. And now, yeah, the boss leaves something to be desired. Because he's just the first offense he's, that he talks him about is, hey, you're fired.

• 47:25Jocko Willink?

  When I took ownership of the blue on blue in extreme, in extreme ownership, first chapter, I could have been fired for that. I could have been fired. My boss could have said, yeah, yeah, you're right. This is your fault. We can't have that happen out here. You're fired. And I, you know what I said? Roger that.

• 47:44Jocko Willink?

  It's not, "Hey, I own this. Please let me go."

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I took responsibility.

• 47:49Jocko Willink?

  Now here, I will say this though.

• 47:53Jocko Willink?

  If, so, so, taking extreme ownership is not a get out of jail free card, but I will tell you this, if you make excuses, it is going to be worst in 99% of the situations. "Well, you know, the, the, the, the small crabs snuck in when I wasn't looking. That's not my fault." Tactical crabs on the move, right? Then you just look like an idiot. Right? So, then another thing that this brings up is this idea of preemptive ownership, and that is taking, if you take ownership of something, you don't, you don't want to take ownership after the fact. Extreme ownership, the idea of extreme ownership

• 48:37Jocko Willink?

  in its purest and most effective form isn't, "Hey, something went wrong and I'm now taking ownership of the mistake." That's not, that's not the best extreme ownership scenario. The best extreme ownership scenario is when you take ownership prior to the mistake happening, and you realize that if, if there is going to be a mistake, you are going to own it. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna work hard to prevent that mistake from happening. That's preemptive ownership. You're taking ownership before the mistake happens. So this kid, this deckhand, could have done, put procedures in place to make sure no small crabs got in, and sorted them out properly.

• 49:17Jocko Willink?

  But instead, he thought, "Oh, you know what? It'll be no big deal. I'll just take ownership and then they'll say it's okay." Or, you know, "I'll blame someone else," or whatever his thinking in his brain. If he says, "Look, if I let small crabs in here, I am gonna own it and I am gonna get fired." Guess what? Perhaps he would have worked a little harder to prevent these small crabs from being where they weren't supposed to be. But see, when you have that out, when you think you can just blame someone else, that allows you to be slack.

• 49:46Jocko Willink?

  When you think, well, you know, this isn't really my responsibility. That's why when I work with companies, and they'll have some thing that's going wrong, some problem, some procedure that's not working correctly, some timeline that's not being met. And one of the first questions I ask, and it normally like a huge step in the right direction to to resolve the problem, is I go, okay, who's in charge of that process? And a bunch of people will be looking around at each other, and no one's raising their hand. And the minute I see that, I go, hmm, interesting. This is, this is the answer to me. Now we know why the process is ineffective because no one has ownership of it. And if no one has ownership of it, and the thing doesn't get done when it's supposed to get done, everyone just points at each other and says, yeah, well, it wasn't my fault, it was his fault, it was their fault. And then no one takes ownership and no one solves it.

• 50:31Jocko Willink?

  Whereas if you say, okay, Echo, you are in charge of this process. If it doesn't work, I'm coming after you. You know, now you can step up your game preemptively to prevent a mistake from occurring, prevent the little crabs from getting in the pot.

• 50:49Jocko Willink?

  So, taking ownership isn't a get out of jail free card.

• 50:54Jocko Willink?

  If you have a subordinate, you are actually responsible for counseling them and coaching them and mentoring them and explaining to them what the standards are so that they can meet the standards, explaining explicitly what the standards are so that they can meet those standards. And the optimal ownership takes place not only after, but more importantly, before something goes wrong. There you go.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Not to mention, you gotta take responsibility for solving the problem.

• 51:30Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you do.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Which apparently this Decan guy has not.

• 51:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he didn't take, he took ownership for the mistake. He didn't take ownership for the, for solving the problem. He, he also didn't implement a, a solution to the problem. There's all kinds of problems.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  For years, by the way.

• 51:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  So there you go. Next question. What mistakes did you make early, discussed in your live podcast, that could have progressed you further?

• 51:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think there's just some real big, obvious ones. Wasted a bunch of time. You know, you waste a bunch of time when you're young, you think you got forever and you waste time and whether it's doing stuff that's not productive, whether it's going out, getting drunk, whatever dumb things you waste time doing, whether it's just wasting time. And you know what? Look, I'm not saying don't have fun in your life because that's wrong answer too. That's too extreme. But what I am saying is I sometimes I had a little too much fun. Sometimes I wasn't focused on the right thing. So wasted time is number one, wasted money, wasted a ton of money

• 52:32Jocko Willink?

  on dumb stuff. And I'd say that both of these are wasting time, wasting money. Those are like the two biggest mistakes that I've made. But I would say the root of those mistakes is that I didn't do a good job of connecting the future to the present, right? You just don't, when you're young, I shouldn't say that. When I was young, because I don't want to put a universal blanket of being dumb on everyone, even though you're nodding your head pretty heartily over there.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  I think that's the thing.

• 53:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. We see a lot of people do this, right? A lot of us, we waste our time, we waste our money, and we don't connect what we're doing right now with what's going to happen in the future. And that is not a good policy to have. What we want to do and what I try and instill with kids, with my kids, with with kids that I talk about on the podcast, is I want to connect what decisions are being made right now with decisions that with the with the end state that you end up with in your future. So if you take advantage of your time, you're going to be in a much better place. If you save your money, you're going to be in a much better place. If you invest your money properly, you're going to be in a much better place. If you train and you treat people, if you train hard, you're going to be in a much better place. If you treat people respectfully and you build relationships, you're going to be in a much better place.

• 53:53Jocko Willink?

  If you do the opposite of those things, you're gonna be in a worse place. If you treat people like dirt, you're gonna, it'll come back to bite you. If you waste your money, you won't have it. If you waste your time, you'll run out. So I think the biggest mistake really for me was that I failed to connect the present to the future. The only ways that I succeeded in that early on was through luck.

• 54:18Jocko Willink?

  Like I joined the Navy and, and, and I'm very lucky that I did because I was immediately building my future. Even though I had no, I, it wasn't my intent. I was immediately, I bought a house. That was a great, what I wanted, what did I buy it for? I wanted a place to live. What did I end up with? An incredible investment. Enough to buy another house. That one was a little bit more intentional. Okay, wait a second. If I own another house, and I was just talking about this with a friend of mine, it was like, that I was explaining when, and he remembered when I got my second house. And I was like, in my mind, Donald J. Trump, the real estate landlord, like,

• 55:03Jocko Willink?

  master, right? Someone was gonna be paying me rent, you know? And, and I had another house that I was gonna live in. So that was a, that was when I started making this shift where I connected the present with the future.

• 55:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So what you do today is directly correlated to where you'll end up in the future. That, that is in Echo's favorite sort of thread of this entire podcast is playing the long war. And it took me too long to start fighting the long war. That's what I'll say. That, that will say the biggest mistakes from my early life.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And really in a way, I mean, they, they could be viewed as not even really mistakes. I guess this is more of just sort of, that's the way things happen. Cause people, most times we figure these things out later in life. When the long game starts to materialize. Cause when you're early in your career, the, only the short game is sort of there. And then in a way, actually no, at the end of the day, no. Because even as a little kid, you know, the long game, you're familiar with it a little bit. Cause like you ever had, you ever had to save your money for something? Like an Optimus Prime toy, you know, something like that. And they said, you gotta save your money for it.

• 56:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  And well, you save your money, you know, that's playing the long game.

• 56:24Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  As a kid, you know, it's a kid version. So it's kind of the same thing. But maybe it's not as intuitive, you know, when you're little, when you're big, when you're grown.

• 56:33Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, it's definitely not intuitive. And it's the other, the other weird thing is like,

• 56:38Jocko Willink?

  someone has to tell you, but like we just talked about, sometimes when people tell you, you still just don't listen to them.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:45Jocko Willink?

  You know, people say, hey, you should really do this. And you go, yeah, whatever. That's for you.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:49Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's for you.

• 56:52Jocko Willink?

  One of my, one of my uncle's friends won the lottery years ago, like in the seventies. And he won one of those big lotteries where he got money every year. You know, you could take the lumps on or you could take the

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:10Jocko Willink?

  The payments. The payments. He took the payments.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:13Jocko Willink?

  Well, won the lottery, right?

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Literally won the lottery.

• 57:17Jocko Willink?

  Literally won the lottery. And so the payments lasted 20 years. Well, when you're 22, that's, that's forever.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:25Jocko Willink?

  Right? That's forever.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:27Jocko Willink?

  And so my dad was talking to him, talking to this guy that won the lottery. And now he was at like the 19 year mark.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:36Jocko Willink?

  And guess what he had done with all this money?

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Spent it up.

• 57:38Jocko Willink?

  Did he invest it in real estate? Did he buy, start companies? What do you think he did with this money?

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Spent it.

• 57:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. He bought car and whatever.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  That tends to be.

• 57:48Jocko Willink?

  Girls and, you know, like, or whatever, dated girls and went to bars and went out for nice dinners and did that for a long time.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:56Jocko Willink?

  And so my, my dad says, hey, you know, they're talking about it. He says, well, you know, my, you know, this is the last year that I'm getting my monthly payments for winning the lottery. And my dad says, what, what are you gonna, what are you gonna do when the payments aren't coming anymore? And he says, I'm gonna win again. So yeah, that's planning, right? In a sense, kind of.

• 58:23Speaker 01

  And no, it's not, obviously, but man, that's one of the lot, but that tends to go like that for lottery winners.

• 58:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, apparently the lottery winning isn't a big like happiness.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  No, it's bad.

• 58:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Ends up being bad because life is a long, long game. And no matter how you play it, the long game is the one that that shakes out, you know? So if you're over here playing the short game, that's, that's why you lose in life. If you play the short game all the time.

• 58:53Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  And the people who play the long game, they just, all you gotta do is play it. You don't even have to dominate it, although I'm not recommending not trying to dominate. I'm not saying that.

• 59:01Jocko Willink?

  Try and dominate, but you don't necessarily have to.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could come in, shoot, second to last place, but if you're playing the game, you're gonna be doing good in the long game.

• 59:09Jocko Willink?

  When you, when you come in second to last place in the long game, you still just beat every single other person that's playing the short game.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:17Jocko Willink?

  You beat them all.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:18Jocko Willink?

  And they're, and they're over there looking around like, what just happened?

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, how is, oh, you're so squared away. Yeah, but it's not that complicated, you know? I mean, it's not easy, it's cause it's not easy. You're wired to play the short game.

• 59:31Jocko Willink?

  I had to go deep on this on that last Warrior Kid podcast.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, this, this, yeah.

• 59:35Jocko Willink?

  Just like, you need to get over the short term gratification.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:40Jocko Willink?

  And that is the, one of the biggest lessons a kid can learn is that my actions today will affect my future.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:48Jocko Willink?

  And it's hard to convince them of that. It seems so distant.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 59:53Jocko Willink?

  Like the future seems so distant.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:56Jocko Willink?

  When you're young.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:57Jocko Willink?

  I was having another discussion with someone the other day, a parent. And, and there was a level of frustration that, and it's the typical level of frustration from the parent, which was, you know, the kid has a lot of potential, but they're like, they're not training the way they should be and not working the way, you know, all that, all that stuff. And what I tried to explain to the parent was that the potential that you're telling your kid that he has, they do not even comprehend what that means. It is not a, it is not a, it's not something that they can understand. It's completely intangible. Like even when you say, oh, if you keep practicing this,

• 1:00:40Jocko Willink?

  you could be the champion. This means you might as well say, if you keep practicing this,

• 1:00:50Jocko Willink?

  it means nothing to them. So that's what potential is to a little kid. A little kid doesn't understand it. And so, yes, you try and convince them. You try and explain it to them. But what I recommend is instead of trying to explain to them this massive concept of what their potential is, you try and give them some short-term rewards that lead them in the right direction, that are supportive of the long game, but they're easier mental connections for the kid. And this, the same thing applies to employees as well, right? You know, or you get a young, young employee that's, you know, they're not thinking they could be the, the regional manager, right? They're just thinking, they're just happy to be here. But you're, you're looking at them going, this, you know, this is a sharp kid.

• 1:01:34Jocko Willink?

  Could be, could, so you might not say, look, one day you're going to be the regional manager in 22 years. Think about that. When you, if somebody gets hired on as whatever, and you say, one day you're, you could be the regional manager and you could make whatever, this big chunk of money. They're looking at you going, I'm going to be here, you know, I'm, I'm going to have this job for six, whatever. So what you want to do is just tie something a little bit closer to them, to their reality. Of, hey, here's where you could get, here's where the bonus program works here. Have you seen this? You can make an extra whatever. And it's going to move them in the right direction, long game, but they can comprehend it immediately. That's my recommendation.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Shoot, even just compliments and encouragement are good little micro rewards for those short-term likes. So I've been thinking with my kids.

• 1:02:21Jocko Willink?

  Once again, we can't abuse them. We can't abuse, you know, friendliness with our children.

• 1:02:28Jocko Willink?

  Or we can't abuse, that maybe that's not the right word.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  No, it's not the right word, actually.

• 1:02:31Jocko Willink?

  Abuse cheerleading, right? We can't abuse cheerleading with our kids and everything that they do is beautiful, right? No, that's just beautiful. A piece of art that you just created. What is it?

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Beautiful, whatever it is.

• 1:02:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:02:48Jocko Willink?

  It's like, that's not good.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Jocko Willink?

  That's not good.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  But you're just talking about abusing.

• 1:02:54Jocko Willink?

  And the other thing is, the other thing you have to be careful with is, you know, you're telling your kid like, "Well, you know, you're special."

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Jocko Willink?

  Or "You're, you're so perfect."

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:05Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and.

• 1:03:07Jocko Willink?

  It's like, no.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this.

• 1:03:09Jocko Willink?

  You can get better.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it gets, you know.

• 1:03:11Jocko Willink?

  You're marginal, that's it.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  No, man, no, no. Yeah, and what I mean encouragement and, and compliments, it's like if they do something good, you compliment that good thing, that's essentially it. And yeah, like anything, you can throw out too many, and you can throw out too little, really, because the, the fulfillment or satisfaction of receiving that compliment isn't big enough for the work that they just did. Be like, "Man, I don't want to do those 100." I made my daughter do 90 burpees the other day.

• 1:03:40Jocko Willink?

  Why 90? Did you just want to withhold?

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  No, I'm working.

• 1:03:43Jocko Willink?

  The century.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  I'm working her up.

• 1:03:45Jocko Willink?

  She didn't get to 90 and say, "Hey, Dad, you do whatever you want, I'm getting 10 more. Watch this."

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:03:50Jocko Willink?

  We're getting to a hundo.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Well, here's the thing, she's done that before, but not with 90. So I'm working her up. I started from like, I was like, "Hey," when she was real small.

• 1:03:58Jocko Willink?

  What was her time?

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  I didn't time it.

• 1:04:01Jocko Willink?

  How are we gonna recognize improvement?

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Because we're gonna get to the number first, then we go for time.

• 1:04:05Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  So, I mean, that's the story, I mean, it's not like, you know, my life's mission, of course. It's just a fun little thing that I do, but if.

• 1:04:13Jocko Willink?

  Sounds fun.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, one of them, sure. Uh, but so, if, if I'm like, "Hey, um, hey, you're super strong." They like that, or my kids like that, when you call them strong. So every time they do something like exercise or something like that, and they, they, they do a good workout or whatever, I'll say how strong they are, or how strong they're looking or being, or whatever. But if that feeling isn't enough to constitute that super hardware, like if I overpush them, like I, 90, given where we are with burpees, with her, um. She's not ready. She wasn't ready for ninety. At this time.

• 1:04:50Jocko Willink?

  So, did she cry?

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  She, no, she didn't cry, thankfully. She'll cry. No shame. She'll cry.

• 1:04:55Jocko Willink?

  I went for a run with my youngest daughter. This is a while ago. I don't know how old she was at the time, but I was like, okay, we're gonna start running because I wanted to improve her mile time at the school. I said, okay, you want to improve that mile time? I know how to do it. Here we go.

• 1:05:14Jocko Willink?

  So, her mile time was weak, and I said, we can get it better. So, the first run we went on, I'm not kidding, she, by the time we got one minute deep, she had tears welling up in her eyes.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:30Jocko Willink?

  And, and, you know, I said, hey, just keep going. But, the, the, the point of saying this is, my, when I try and give children, especially my children, or any children, compliments, I try and compliment their hard work.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Jocko Willink?

  As opposed to, you're strong, or you're smart. What I say is, you really worked hard for that, and look at this great result. Because what it makes them realize is that great results come from hard work, and guess what? That is the truth. Because we all know people that were incredibly smart, incredibly strong, incredibly talented, incredibly gifted, and they didn't do anything with any of those things because they didn't understand that they had to work hard. Even if you have all that skill, if you don't work hard, you're not going to get anywhere.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Dang, that's a good little addition.

• 1:06:17Jocko Willink?

  Lean towards complimenting the hard work.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Jocko Willink?

  And that's what you really want to see. Let's face it. Let me ask you this, and this is a tough question. Would you rather have someone on your team that is extremely talented, or extremely hard worker? You know, of course, it's easy. We all want to say, well, I'd take the talent because we can make the person work hard, but that's actually not true.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  No, it's, yeah, it seems hard.

• 1:06:43Jocko Willink?

  And, and the real talent, the best talent. Really is you get someone that just knows how to grind and work hard.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Jocko Willink?

  Like that's good. And that's gonna be much more valuable than hey, this person's super smart. Or hey, this person's super strong. Occasionally you get someone like GSP.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:02Jocko Willink?

  George Saint Pierre. Who was way talented in multiple modalities. And was a hard worker. You know what that person becomes? A world champion.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:16Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes you get a world champion that's just there because of hard work. Sometimes you get a world champion that's just there because of talent. Occasionally you get someone that's both and they're usually sort of a.

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  They're more dominant.

• 1:07:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like a dominant champion.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true and that's good advice there to to complement the hard work. Um, I. I personally like both. I like the white, especially with my son, like being strong and stuff. He really likes that, you know, so he'll it's to the point where like if you help him do something. He'll get mad.

• 1:07:46Jocko Willink?

  He kinda get mad.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, which I kinda like. I I don't know where that's gonna lead, you know, but I like that currently. Um, so he he has that sense of pride, you know, where being strong is a good thing.

• 1:07:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, no, that's there's nothing wrong with that.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  So, yeah, but man, if you add the hard work part of it, because being strong is essentially a result. You know?

• 1:08:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  Um, and he doesn't, obviously, he's two.

• 1:08:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's really gonna be easy connection for you to make because it's hey, you're strong and that's because you work hard.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:12Jocko Willink?

  Because the minute you say you're strong because you.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  You're just strong.

• 1:08:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cool, I'll just sit over here and be strong.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  True.

• 1:08:20Jocko Willink?

  What do you got?

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true and and when you, especially if you don't recognize the hard work part of it, you know, and you just think you're as a kid, you're just rolling around strong, you're you're basically you you've reveled in the results. For so long where it's now when it's hard work time, it's kinda like, wait, I'm not used to that part of this.

• 1:08:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they say that can happen to, they call them gazelles.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:41Jocko Willink?

  In buds, these are people that like really fast, good athletes.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:44Jocko Willink?

  And but they never lost before.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:47Jocko Willink?

  And when they start getting beat down, which you do get beat down and they lose, they can't handle it mentally.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, yeah.

• 1:08:53Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, that is, um. That's real. Next question. Jocko, my wife told me that she sees I am much more direct and less cordial. Than I used to be. I feel I've pushed too much into getting after it.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  And it makes those around me feel like I've changed to someone else.

• 1:09:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we have to be really careful, right? Because being more direct and less cordial is definitely not getting after it. In fact, it's the opposite. If you are getting after it in a correct manner, your wife should be completely stoked. Because you're gonna have more time for her because you're gonna be doing time management properly. You're gonna have, you're gonna be doing better at work, which means you're gonna be getting promoted or whatever, getting paid more or, you know, getting job stability or whatever, something like that. You're gonna be healthier because you're, you're working out, you're gonna be stronger because you're working out. You're gonna be more organized with things.

• 1:10:01Jocko Willink?

  And you're gonna be more thoughtful about building, that's what getting after is. Like your, your relationship should be improving.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:08Jocko Willink?

  Not this, and this is one of those, this is one of Echo Charles's favorite things to talk about. It's actually something that you've just brought up a bunch of times on the podcast, which is when someone says, "No, that's just how I am." Like, "You know what, Echo? I'm just gonna tell you the truth because that's just how I am." Just making an excuse for being a jerk coming out of the gate, which is not good. So if that's what you're doing with your wife, you know what? I'm just gonna get after it. "Hey, this tuna casserole sucks."

• 1:10:36Jocko Willink?

  "I'm just telling you the way it is." "That's how I roll." Like, no, you're actually rolling in the wrong direction. When you're getting after it in a good way, your wife will be stoked. I, I was getting interviewed the other day and I, I realized this. So I've written eight books. The eighth one comes out in January of 2020. It's a lot of writing.

• 1:11:00Jocko Willink?

  I wrote 90% of the words in those books while my family was asleep.

• 1:11:09Jocko Willink?

  Then it made almost no impact on the family. I'm writing these books. Editing is a little bit different because there's a timeline on editing. So sometimes my, my family would be awake while I was editing and I had to get stuff turned back in and it's a pain. But that's like a, takes a week, right? But the other 90% of getting after it was done while my family is asleep. If you contrarily are getting after it at the expense of your family and friends, that's not, that's actually being selfish.

• 1:11:47Jocko Willink?

  So that's one part. Okay. So maybe you need to check yourself there and make sure that you're got your priorities in order.

• 1:11:54Jocko Willink?

  There, there is a chance, however, that your friends don't like seeing you start to get some altitude, right? Start to be more successful, start to lead a better life. There's all kinds of groups of people that will just drag you back down. They don't want to see you win. That's sort of, I, I don't know. Is that the fundamental kind of baseline human instinct? I don't want to see you win.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  If there is an element of it to, to, I would not be surprised, put it that way, but I don't, I don't.

• 1:12:30Jocko Willink?

  There's at least a non-trivial part of the population, population that does not want to see you win.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Jocko Willink?

  There's at least a percentage, whatever that percentage is, of the people that you know, that does not want to see you win. They would rather see you fail. They would rather, and maybe fail is not the word, but they would at least rather have you stay with them.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. That makes sense.

• 1:12:59Jocko Willink?

  So there's a chance that that's going on. Is there a chance that that's going on with your wife? Hopefully not. That's a slim chance. Because if you think about it, your success, her success is predicated on your success. I mean, you are bound to each other. Both, each of your success is predicated on each other's success. So do I want my wife to be successful? Oh yeah, because I, that's my wife. And she's looking at me going, yes, go be successful. The more successful I am, the more successful she is. So there's a, there's most likely. Your, your wife, in my opinion, would be supportive of your efforts. Unless you're just getting out of control. There's a chance, I guess, that a wife could see,

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  you know, uh, someone change and you know, that's not the person that I married, right? But hold on, the person that you married was lazy.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:54Jocko Willink?

  And I'm over here getting after it.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:56Jocko Willink?

  The person that you married was making X amount of money and I'm making a lot more than that. The person that you married wasn't in good physical shape. I'm in good physical shape.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:14:06Jocko Willink?

  Most of the time, the wife would say, cool, yeah, I'm getting a better deal now. Occasionally, I think you would get a, a, a spouse, I guess it could be the, the male or the female, could happen on either side, that goes, oh, you wanna work hard and I'm really not looking to do that. I was comfortable. Right? I was comfortable, that's it.

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:23Jocko Willink?

  I'm comfortable. I don't want you getting all crazy. I'm over here being comfortable. So that could happen. I think that's unlikely. I think what's most likely is you are focused on yourself a little bit too much. Check yourself for that. That should be the first person you look at, you.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true, huh? Cause like, it, this is actually kinda common where husband, wife, whichever the scenario is where one, let's say, let's say two people, they get married, whatever, years down the road, one of the people in the couple, the relationship improves themselves a lot too. Loses a bunch of weight. They're, they're literally by their own standard. They were not very attractive when they got married, but now this is 10 years later, whatever, they become straight up attractive now. Making more money, uh, more people wanna hang out with them cause they're nicer, like all this stuff. Straight up, across the board improvement. Meanwhile, the other person in the relationship didn't do that. Still married, still all good, no infidelity, nothing like that.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Still married, but that person who didn't improve themselves will feel like they got phased out or kinda like, like the person might wanna upgrade or something like that, you know? So it's like,

• 1:15:33Jocko Willink?

  So there's a possibility they try and drag the person back down.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause you need to be back here. I need to be, feel secure. Now I'm this husband and now my wife's hot. I'm not used to a hot wife. Because when we got married, you weren't that hot. I loved you for you and you know all this stuff and you know what they say or whatever and um the and now you're I don't know well you know I don't know I'm thinking of cliche movie thing but anyway the the wife's like all good looking now people are like people at the store like complimenting her and all this stuff and the guy's not used to it and now in his mind a little thing develops where it's like oh like I'm not good enough now for this hot girl

• 1:16:11Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna buy her some Cheetos

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  yeah bring her back down so like at least have some man you know manageable amount of control this person that's you know that's not an uncommon thing in that specific scenario I guess that scenario is not very common though

• 1:16:26Jocko Willink?

  it's not a very common scenario and then it would have to be doubly uncommon for someone to actually want to drag them back down I have to throw it out there though because it is a possibility

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  yeah but for this particular question I don't think so only because this little indicator right here my wife told me that she sees I am much more direct and usually much more direct means insensitive in my experience wives don't do good generally speaking with insensitivity less cordial that's another one in my opinion in my experience because I'm married

• 1:16:58Jocko Willink?

  yeah you know you learn things I'm gonna give you an example something I learned about my wife

• 1:17:06Jocko Willink?

  if my if my wife if it isn't on the schedule it's about enough to make my wife get mad right so in other words if I said hey I'm going away for one a month from now I'm going away for six months on a work trip I'll be back when I'm done with those six months and when I'm gone and you're not gonna be able to hear from me at all she'd be like okay got it when do you leave and I'd say well I'm leaving whenever

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  yeah

• 1:17:35Jocko Willink?

  September 1st and she'd go okay she wouldn't be even remotely upset she'd be good to go if it was Friday night and I came home and said

• 1:17:51Jocko Willink?

  oh I'm I didn't tell you or Saturday night I said I didn't tell you but I'm going over to Echo's to watch the UFC

• 1:17:58Jocko Willink?

  There's a decent chance that she's mad about that.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Jocko Willink?

  Because she had in her mind that we were gonna eat whatever.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Jocko Willink?

  We were going out for dinner or whatever. But I didn't, I didn't give the pre-planned.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:11Jocko Willink?

  Situation.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  What if she didn't make a plan for that? It was just sort of, maybe we could do that.

• 1:18:16Jocko Willink?

  It, it's, it's, it's not on her. It's on me. It's on me for not informing her of what was going on. Cause it doesn't really matter. All she knew is that I was coming home.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Jocko Willink?

  And I was gonna be around and that was what was happening.

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:30Jocko Willink?

  So anything that is not, you know what's really funny? This is again with my wife and this is, this is where it became evident to me. Even if it's something that is positive for my wife. If I don't give her pre-planning cycle on, on what's gonna happen. So in other words, if I was flying home and I'd been or gone for a week. And I, you know, got home and busted through the door and said, "Hey, I'm on a tail end of a 72-hour fast. I'm starving. I'm taking you out and I made reservations for this really nice dinner. I'm gonna go get some, you know, a $200 steak right now."

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Steak, some steak.

• 1:19:12Jocko Willink?

  There's a chance. The, the, the, the percentage should be 100% she's stoked, right?

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  Oh, good.

• 1:19:20Jocko Willink?

  That should be the percentage.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:22Jocko Willink?

  However, with my wife, there's a, a 20 to 30% chance that she says, you know, "I was gonna take, you know, I was gonna take our daughter to, you know, the raffle, I don't know, to play bingo." And like, that is enough.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:41Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and I, what I don't do is I say, "Oh, cool. You know what? We'll go tomorrow." What I don't do is try and impose it.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:48Jocko Willink?

  So what you're saying is like, lack of being cordial? What I'm saying is it's not just like, that's one example of me not being cordial. So I don't, I try not to, my, I guess, I guess, I guess to sum it up, my wife doesn't really like surprises.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Jocko Willink?

  Right? She likes to have a plan.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Jocko Willink?

  She likes to know what's happening. And then she'll execute the plan.

• 1:20:11Jocko Willink?

  So that's what you gotta be careful of. What you gotta be, well, not, not what you gotta be careful of, that is one example of how these little things, they don't make sense. It doesn't make sense that some, that my wife wouldn't be super stoked to go out to a awesome steakhouse. That doesn't make sense to anyone.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  Well, you know, that, that's a superficial take.

• 1:20:32Jocko Willink?

  And let me tell you something else that makes it a little bit tricky is I'm super insensitive to like changing plans. Like people change plans with me, I'm like, whatever. It's no, it's literally no factor. Like, oh, we, oh yeah, we've been planning to do this for six months. Someone's like, oh, I can't do it. I'm like, okay, cool. You know what I mean? It's, it means nothing to me. When things change, it means nothing. It's, I, it has no impact on me. I have no emotional reaction to someone saying, hey, this, we can't do this now. And I'm like, oh, okay, cool. I'm gonna do something else.

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:04Jocko Willink?

  So I'm at the other end of the spectrum.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:07Jocko Willink?

  Which means it took me a little while to figure out that, oh, this makes you mad. Got it.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:21:14Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:21:15Speaker 01

  And it's probably, probably something like one level, like under the surface too. It's not like, hey, I had this good, you know, the raffle was, was planned in my head and that raffle's important. The raffle's not important. Neither is the dinner. It's like that part of it on, on that level's not important. It's one level deeper. It's the fact that I had this in my head. You didn't tell me this other thing. And now like what I had in my head really means nothing.

• 1:21:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  So it's kind of that.

• 1:21:41Jocko Willink?

  Here's another funny thing about my wife.

• 1:21:46Jocko Willink?

  Is she's so into the planning thing that if I plan something, it has way more value to her. So in other words, if I say, hey, when I get back this Friday,

• 1:22:00Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna do a fast and I'm gonna be super hungry. I'm gonna make reservations for this Friday.

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:22:06Jocko Willink?

  And we can go out and get an awesome steak. Tomahawk, ribeye.

• 1:22:12Jocko Willink?

  And like the fact that it was pre-planned, like I've done this before where I've taken her and I've gotten reservations. And she'll be like, did you make reservations? And I'll say, yes, I'll be like, yeah, I did. And I can see like a little smile. Like I care a little bit more that I made those reservations. Like that's what, what the spontaneity thing? No. Does no, no, no, uh, points for spontaneity. Zero, zero points for spontaneity. Only points for pre-planned fires.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  You know why?

• 1:22:45Jocko Willink?

  Why?

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  Cause it's thoughtful.

• 1:22:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know. Exactly. Yes. Yes.

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's great. That's good. That's good. That's an interesting quality right there.

• 1:22:54Jocko Willink?

  And I guess my point in saying this, this, these things is that everyone has these little personality traits. People you work with, people, your, your spouse, your children, they have these things. And if you figure out what those things are, you can actually utilize them to your advantage. And you can bypass things that will be problematic. And something that you've said too, is you say, oh, you do this stuff to me, meaning Jaco does you, I do some like leadership trick to you. And you know that I'm doing it, but it's still like it works and it still makes you feel the way that you know it's supposed to make you feel.

• 1:23:39Jocko Willink?

  That's my point. Like my wife will listen to this.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:43Jocko Willink?

  And it's, and then I'll make reservations and she'll still be happy even though that she knows that I'm doing it just because I know that it's going to be something that makes her happy.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep.

• 1:23:51Jocko Willink?

  So just because you reveal like, hey, I know this is what you're like, or even whether you reveal it or not, doesn't matter. When someone has that characteristic, then you can utilize that characteristic. I know that's not the best sounding word to talk about like manipulating my wife's uh, uh, emotions.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Jocko Willink?

  But what I want to do is manipulate her emotions to make her feel happy about something, not necessarily a bad thing.

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  Yep. It's a good thing.

• 1:24:20Jocko Willink?

  So be cognizant.

• 1:24:23Jocko Willink?

  When you're dealing with other human beings. Look for these things. You see these things if you take a step back. If you don't take a step back, you'll never see them. If you can't detach. When you tell your wife something and you you you see that it makes her mad, if you can't detach. If you're talking to an employee and you see that they're getting frustrated and you can't detach to try and figure out what that is. You are not going to make any real progress.

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, the direct thing. We like to be. Or when people are direct to us, it makes things easier for us, you know.

• 1:25:01Jocko Willink?

  Who's we? Wait, who's the we?

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  I don't know. Whoever people who like.

• 1:25:05Jocko Willink?

  Because here's the deal, man. Direct. Is a very. A very blunt force tool. And not many people wield it well. And not many people receive it well. So if you're one of these people that, you know, I just like to be direct.

• 1:25:27Jocko Willink?

  That's not good. And very seldom. Do you end up in situations where you can just be direct with people? You have to have real. Strong. Built relationships with people where you can just be that blunt and direct with them. Now, there are methodologies. Where you can be direct without being direct. You know, you can say things that are, hey, this is what we need to get done right now. You can take an edge off of it.

• 1:25:57Jocko Willink?

  You can, and the way you usually do that is by taking ownership of what it is you're trying to make happen. So what I don't say is like, Echo, you need to get this thing edited tonight. Right? I don't do that. I might say. Hey, is there any chance we could get this thing edited tonight? Because if we don't. We're gonna have a gap. In releases, which by the way, we haven't had.

• 1:26:20Jocko Willink?

  And that's kind of a thing. Yeah. Yeah. See, even you just kind of know that it's a thing. It is, isn't it? Right? And all of a sudden, we're there. And all of a sudden, you want to edit that thing. Not because I told you to, but because you want to keep the gaps from opening up. Sure. So I was, I was directly telling you, but I was indirect. So there's ways to do it, but you got to be careful with direct. Direct, it takes a long time to, to hone the scalpel of direct to where it just gets where you want it to cut. And it doesn't leave any collateral damage. Not many people are good at it. Yeah. Very few people are good at it.

• 1:27:01Jocko Willink?

  It's hard. Next question. Jocko. And you know, that makes people mad. What does? The, when you say, listen, you can't just be, you can't just, you can't just throw it at people. People, people want to say, like, there's a book, there's a book called Radical Frankness or something like that. That's not the name of the book, but it's something like that. It's like, hey, we just got to tell the total radical transparency or something like that. And it's like, we're just going to tell the truth all the time. And we, we can get there, but man, it is work. Yeah. And it's not even work that has to be, that, that necessarily

• 1:27:46Jocko Willink?

  is the best use of work. Yep. So, yeah, I, I just know, I just know, I hear people all the time, well, you know, and people, that's what people want me to say. I'll go and work with a company, they're like, you know, what we really need help with, we just need to really learn to be direct with each other. Yeah. And what, what they really should be saying is, what we need to do is, we need to learn to communicate with each other. Be open about what issues we have, how to solve those problems. And be more tactful in, in our discussions so that people are receptive. Yeah. Cause think about what I just said. If it's not just about me being direct, the more important, the only way that I can be

• 1:28:28Jocko Willink?

  direct is if I have set you up in such a way that you, or I've built you in such a way that you're receptive to my directness. Because me being direct without you being receptive, it doesn't work. And so often, that's what I see. I see, hey, I'm direct, but, but you're not receptive? It's, it's game over. So even if I'm direct, I'm only 50% of the solution, because you have to be receptive. What's easier, when I, when I go indirect, I become 90% of the solution. Because I'm gonna get it into your brain without resistance.

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  So I, it's an easier, it's easier upfront, it's me, I'll just be direct. That's easy upfront, because I just say, Echo, you need to get this stuff edited. Now, that's direct. What are the chances of you being receptive to that? 50%? You know? Whereas if I, well, let me rephrase that. In order for this to be effective, you have to be receptive to it. So I only have 50% of the solution. You have the other 50%. Whereas if I say, like I said before, you know, hey Echo, is there any chance we could get this done tonight? Because here's what's at stake. And I go indirect, and I make that idea, I make your answer. You're gonna give me the answer I want. I know it can be edited tonight, right? I know that.

• 1:29:56Jocko Willink?

  It makes sense. And so I'm gonna, you're actually gonna tell me. I'm, I'm putting it into, I'm giving you, all you have to do is just tell me. And now I'm the one that's receptive. Yes, we can? Oh, that's great. That's great. I'm glad.

• 1:30:15Jocko Willink?

  So that's something very important to talk about. If you want to talk about learning to be direct with each other, what you really have to learn is how to be receptive to directness. That's the, that's the long pole in the tent. And that's what organizations are missing out on. Being direct is easy. Being direct is the easiest thing in the world. You tell people what you think. That's easy. What's hard is setting the other person up, developing a relationship so that they're receptive to what you're saying.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:47Jocko Willink?

  Be careful.

• 1:30:48Speaker 01

  I used to play football back in the day and this new quarterback came in. What's weird is I forget his name. I'm just drawing a blank right now, but new young guy, tall, and he had a gun. If you're quarterback and you have a gun, that's impressive, you know?

• 1:31:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  Means you throw far and fast. Here's the thing though.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Especially when you're new, you know, and you have a gun, you're, you're going to show that gun, you know, you're going to be like when you're playing, you know, when you're warming up before practice and stuff like that, you're throwing it and you're throwing it hard. So this guy was throwing it hard at me. I was a receiver. And we're just, he was just standing, we're just standing there. I wasn't running routes. So he's throwing it and it's hurting my hand to the point where I couldn't catch some of them because they were coming just too fast for, you know, for that distance or whatever. And sure, I was impressed with this guy's gun, but when we'd run routes and stuff, he'd still kind of do that. I guess maybe to impress the coaches, you know, he's a young guy, whatever. And here's the thing, like people would miss his balls. They wouldn't catch them because they're coming too hard. They're hurting your hands. They're messing you up, you know?

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  So it makes it really hard. I get it. It's great practice for the receivers. Totally is. But as far as to effectively land a pass, you know, to complete a pass. Right. It doesn't work like that. And we had this other quarterback.

• 1:32:07Jocko Willink?

  Hold on Echo, let me just stop you because you may have just made like the best analogy you've ever made on this podcast. That is it.

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:32:15Jocko Willink?

  If that, if you can throw that thing direct, but if you're throwing it too hard and the person's not ready to receive it, right, right? Not even, not even to mention that you might not be ready, you might be looking in the other direction. That thing hits you in the back of the head. What good is that direct comment? It's zero good.

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  It's not good. Hurting your hands when you try to receive it.

• 1:32:34Jocko Willink?

  It hurts you. Yeah. And you don't want to hear anymore. You don't want it anymore to be thrown at you.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:32:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay, proceed.

• 1:32:40Speaker 01

  As opposed to this other quarterback who came in from Stanford.

• 1:32:43Jocko Willink?

  But your hard work is paying off.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  Thanks, I knew it would. So this other quarterback came in.

• 1:32:50Jocko Willink?

  Did that quarterback make it anywhere? Did he make it to the NFL?

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  He did not make it to the NFL, no. So, so the quarterback came in, his name is Tim Carey, came from like Stanford, I think. And he came in, he was the, kind of the opposite, actually not the opposite, because he had a guy, he could throw far and stuff, but the way he threw it was like, it was like the perfect pass, like every distance had a different velocity on it, you know, it was like that kind where the next, if it would.

• 1:33:15Jocko Willink?

  He modulated.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  So well, he modulated so well, where like.

• 1:33:19Jocko Willink?

  The volume.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  For those passes.

• 1:33:21Jocko Willink?

  Directness.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, everything. And for them to get better, he would have to physically walk it and put it in your hand, it was like that good when it'd come, you know? And when you have them side by side, oh man. I don't want that direct guy, I want the finesse guy, you know? But he did have the capability.

• 1:33:41Jocko Willink?

  Did he make it to the NFL?

• 1:33:42Speaker 01

  Um, I, maybe, I forget.

• 1:33:46Jocko Willink?

  He left Stanford to come to your college?

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  Um, I forget why, but I think we're, it was a whole thing, there was a few Stanford guys that came, yeah.

• 1:33:54Jocko Willink?

  That's interesting.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:55Jocko Willink?

  A few guys from Stanford that came to your school.

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  Played at UH, yeah, it was during a, I want to say when we changed coaching staffs.

• 1:34:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there might have been some scouts, connections.

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  Maybe like some relationships that were already there, even some of the coaches I think came from that area, I don't know, I forget, that was a long time ago. But nonetheless, yeah, that's the way it shook out. So there you go.

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  Jocko, thirteen year street cop here. My old man died when I was ten, it cut deep and I grew up with no one, having two boys of my own now, and loving to get after it on the street, I worry about the risk.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  How do I balance being the speaker with ensuring I stay around for them?

• 1:34:44Jocko Willink?

  So first of all, we have to recognize that there's no way that you can ensure that you stay around.

• 1:34:53Jocko Willink?

  And in fact, one day you will not be around. One day, none of us will be around. That's the fact. And that actually doesn't matter what your job is.

• 1:35:04Jocko Willink?

  And there's all kinds of things, regardless of your job, whether you have a car accident, whether you have a heart attack, whether you have cancer, or a plane crash, or random violence, or some random accident, there's all different kinds of ways to die. Now, you are correct that the, the death rate of cops is higher.

• 1:35:23Jocko Willink?

  It's higher than a normal civilian, but what, like, loggers, construction workers, they all have higher rates of death than a cop?

• 1:35:35Jocko Willink?

  Roofers? Roofer, if you're a roofer, you have a higher rate of death than a cop. Any drivers, anyone that drives for a living, whether they're a trucker, or whether they're literally a traveling salesman, they have a higher rate of death than being, being police. So, no matter what you do, there's a chance that you could, that you could die. And I'll tell you what, I think about this sometimes in the reverse of like, what do you, what, what scares you about what your kids do? If your kids are engaging in activity that could be dangerous, whether it's parachuting, whether it's rock climbing, whatever, like, there's things that your kids could do, that they could die.

• 1:36:19Jocko Willink?

  And what you could do is not allow them to do it, wrap them in bubble, bubble wrap, and not allow them to go anywhere. And guess what? Even if you do that, there's still a chance. And you've taken away, you know, their growth. So, you can look at it in the reverse as well. That there's some things that you're not gonna be able to control. And no matter what, you know, your kid could, you could say, "I don't want my kid to join the military." And so they go to college, and what happens in college? They get hit by a drunk driver, they, like, there's enough bad things that could happen in either one of those situations. And same thing with you and your job. You could go get a job doing something, unless you get a job that's just straight up,

• 1:37:05Jocko Willink?

  you know, in an administrative situation, with no, with very limited commute and very limited driving.

• 1:37:13Jocko Willink?

  Then that might increase your chances a little bit. But then you've, you know, then are you doing something that you actually like to do? So there's your dilemma. So what do you do in a situation like this? What you do is you train and you prepare and you vigilant and you take care of your sons, obviously. And you would explain your job to them and you explain to them why you train hard and explain to them why you're willing to make a sacrifice to keep others safe, including them. You, you work every day to keep them safe as well. And if you explain that to your sons, they will grow up with an

• 1:37:58Jocko Willink?

  understanding of service and discipline and duty and courage and honor. And by the way, if something did happen to you, the model that you set for them would have massive impact, would have massive impact on them and how they would live their lives. And I believe it would be actually a positive impact. Sure, would they miss you? Absolutely. Sure, would they wish more than anything that you could be back? Yes. But would they recognize that their dad made this sacrifice?

• 1:38:43Jocko Willink?

  Yes, they would. Would they live to honor that sacrifice? Yes, they would. So that's one thing you can do if you want to keep that profession. Now, if that, if you can't get around that, if that doesn't make sense, which it's understandable. If you look at me and say, hey, Jocko, I get it. I want my kids to be raised with honor, but I'd want to be there and that's more important to me. And if that's where.

• 1:39:12Jocko Willink?

  If that's where you end up, then what you have to do is plot out what another job, what another career is going to be. And like I said, then you have to make it doing something that legitimately gets you into a better, uh, better survival rate, which by the way, outlaws just about every outdoor job you could have. So you're, you know, if you work in construction, nope, that's not it. Working as an electrician, nope, that's not it. Working as a lineman, nope, that's not it. All those jobs, all those outdoor jobs, go look at this statistics. Go Google death rates in jobs. And there's all kinds of fishermen. No, forget

• 1:39:54Jocko Willink?

  about it. You know, there's so many jobs that have a high death rate where accidents happen. So what you're talking about going into, the life you're going into, would be going into, would be an administrative job of some kind. And, and if you think you can do that, and you think that'll be, give you the satisfaction that you want, then, then it's a possibility. Think about it. But if you look at it and you think, you know what, that's not for me, then train hard, prepare, build a great relationship with your sons, stay vigilant, don't get complacent ever. And be aggressive. I have to throw that one in there. Because

• 1:40:37Jocko Willink?

  in my opinion, when, when an individual gets scared, or gets hesitant, or gets overprotective of themselves, I believe they're in more danger, not less danger, in more danger. So if you think that having kids, having your sons is making you less aggressive and more scared, I think you're at higher risk.

• 1:41:07Jocko Willink?

  So if you're gonna do the job, you do the job. You get aggressive when you do the job. And if you can't, then

• 1:41:17Jocko Willink?

  you got, you, you might wanna look and see if there's other alternatives that are out there. The other thing I would say is this, how, how often, like you're a street cop, you've been there for 13 years. Is there another department you could go to? Is there some other way to serve? And, and stay connected, use your experience in another, in another way. Maybe one area that has a little less probability of getting killed.

• 1:41:44Jocko Willink?

  Again, you gotta look if that's something you'd really wanna do. So ultimately, and I tell this to people a lot, is there's only one person that can make this decision, and it's not me. The only person that can make this decision is you. So think through it, be thoughtful, you can even talk about it with your boys.

• 1:42:02Jocko Willink?

  Depending on how old they are. But you can talk about it with them. Explain to them. And, you know, see what they say.

• 1:42:12Jocko Willink?

  You know, obviously, there, there's one way that conversation can go. Hey, would you guys be, would you guys want me to die? Right? Of course. What are they gonna say? Oh, my gosh, quit that job immediately. We don't want you to do that. Right? So you're gonna have to think about, I don't know what the ages of your kids are. But you're gonna have to think through that one, whether, how you address it with them. But certainly, I always look at it that

• 1:42:39Jocko Willink?

  there's risk at everything you do. You might as well take risk doing something that you love doing and that you know is helping other people. And you know is setting a good example for your boys. And if that doesn't make sense, cool, find a, find a different job.

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  Next question. I was a young boy living in a foster home and was sexually assaulted by my foster father and sometimes other people over a course of a couple of years. I was eventually adopted and what had happened to me was never discussed and I never got help for it. I was afraid of everything and eventually I played sports in high school and felt less afraid. Went into the army and felt completely unafraid of anything. When I got out, I got into a long-term relationship. I told my then-girlfriend what had happened to me. She was the first person I ever told about this. She convinced me to reach out to my foster parents and I did. And it was a total disaster. They kept my room where all this bad stuff had happened

• 1:43:38Speaker 01

  exactly the same as it was 20 years ago, 20 years prior when these horrors had occurred. I had my moment to confront this monster that had done this to me and I failed. I used a word that he always said to me, which was... I used a word that he always said to me when he was assaulting me. He just said, "Sometimes people change." All of a sudden, I was a weak, young boy again. And I couldn't fight back. I left the house and had serious self-doubt. Eventually, I became a cop and then a detective and faced all types of bad people. From junkies to murderers. I even get full confessions out of child rapists. I'm sick to my stomach afterwards.

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  It's terrible, terrible to hear what these animals do. My question is this: Recently, the past has come back with a vengeance. I can't get through a short time, maybe an hour or two, without thinking about the past and my failure. The only time I have peace is when I absolutely destroy myself working out. I consider it punishing myself and feel better when I do it. How can I stop this or at least manage it better?

• 1:44:52Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:44:55Jocko Willink?

  This is, I mean, obviously horrible situation and you know, um horrible that you had to live through this and that any kid or anyone, any human would have to go through this.

• 1:45:08Jocko Willink?

  As far as. How you can manage this better. I'm, I'm gonna go a little bit here. So.

• 1:45:20Jocko Willink?

  One of the blocks of training that we go through in a SEAL platoon. Is called close quarters combat. And this is the training. You're in a thing called the kill house. It's ballistic walls. There's targets in there. You're moving around dynamically. You're shooting live fire ammunition. There's people. Six inches away from you. You're taking really close shots. There's a lot of pressure in there. There's a lot of details, a lot of standard operating procedures and safety procedures that you have to follow. There's a lot of process. It's like, do you need to go left or right? Is that a good guy or a bad guy? Cause you have to identify the targets. Should you move? Or should you stay? How do you communicate that you need to move?

• 1:46:05Jocko Willink?

  Should you shoot or should you not shoot at a target? And so there's all these things going on when you enter a room. All these things that you have to go through. All these steps that you have to take, all these procedures that you have to follow. All these decisions that you have to make and it all happens in a split second. And so in a kill house. The training cadre is actually above you. Above the, it's not a normal house. The, the, the rooms have what we call catwalks above them. So the cadre can be up above you in the catwalks and they're walking around and they're watching you very closely. It's like watching a, a football game on TV. You're seeing it from like the perfect

• 1:46:48Jocko Willink?

  view above the person and they're in the room with you, but they're not in your way at all because they're up on the catwalk. So what happens is when a room entry happens.

• 1:46:59Jocko Willink?

  There's a lot, you catch a lot of critique from the people in the catwalk.

• 1:47:06Jocko Willink?

  And they'll say, you know, you could have, you could have done this, or you could have done that, or you could have, you could have moved left, or you should have pushed forward, or there's, you know, you, it would have been better if you'd done this other thing. So there's all these different things. And when my cadre was running it, you know, that's what we do. That's what happened to me when I was cadre. That's what I would do. That's what everyone does. And at some point, I kind of realized that all that stuff is good. And I get it. Like, you've got to get people to run the procedures correctly. But at a certain point,

• 1:47:39Jocko Willink?

  what I would tell guy, like after a guy was kind of beat down, like he just couldn't get something right, or he would, you know, a bunch of people would jump on him about a decision that he made, or a movement that he made, or whatever. And I'm not talking about a safety thing, because the safety thing is, is different. I'm talking about a tactical decision. And when you walk into a room, there's a bunch of tactical decisions you can make. And, and if there's 10, if there's five different decisions that you could make when you walk into a room, there's something that, you know, there's one way of doing it that would be like really clean, one would be a little bit less, one might be just as clean as the first one, but it's a different attitude. There's just all these different decisions that you could make.

• 1:48:20Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's like, just a multitude of ways that you could react. Because that's what this question is, how you reacted in this situation. And eventually, as I would see this with an individual, I would eventually, I, what I would tell guys is, listen,

• 1:48:41Jocko Willink?

  you did what you did.

• 1:48:46Jocko Willink?

  You did what you did. That's what you did. That's the decision that you made at the time. And you know what? There's different ways you could have done it. You don't like the way you did it. I don't like the way you did it.

• 1:49:01Jocko Willink?

  Someone, one of the other cadre members doesn't like the way you did it? It doesn't, what I'm saying, it doesn't really matter. First of all, you can't take it back. You can't go back and undo it. And by the way, you don't get to rehearse these things to a point where you get to do this perfectly. Cause you won't be able to do that. If you rehearsed a move in a room that you had seen before and you rehearsed it 10 times, that's not, that's a totally different game, right? If I already know what the room consists of and I'm going to rehearse and choreograph the entire movement, that's a different game. That's not decision-making, that's just, that's just rote memorization. We're not talking about that. We're talking about how did you react? And what you did is what you did and you did it for a reason. What you saw in front of you, you made this decision for a reason.

• 1:49:48Jocko Willink?

  Maybe like, you know, you saw a threat when there wasn't one there, or you lost situational awareness, or you rushed. You went too fast, you tried to rush and all those things can kinda, can kinda trip you up. But that's what you did and you did what you did and you can't take it back. So instead of everyone sitting there saying, "You should have done this and you should have done that." Let's do this.

• 1:50:10Jocko Willink?

  Let's see what we can learn from it.

• 1:50:13Jocko Willink?

  Let's see why you did what you did. Let's see why you made that decision. Because once we know why you did something, now we have something that we can work with. We have something that we can improve upon.

• 1:50:33Jocko Willink?

  That is what I think you need to do in this situation.

• 1:50:39Jocko Willink?

  And really, when anyone makes a mistake or has a reaction that they don't like, you can't worry, you can't continue to worry about something that has already transpired. What you have to do is you have to look at it and say, "What?" Can I learn from it? What can I take from this? And, and how can I take this mistake and make me better? So you could look at this, why did you do that? Right? Maybe you did it because you didn't want to open up these old wounds. Maybe you did it because you would have, you confronting this individual would have caused more drama and that more, that drama, you, you, at that moment, you assessed and said, you know what? This drama isn't worth it.

• 1:51:24Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you protected yourself from more drama. And that was your instinct. And maybe if you would have started confronting this guy and going crazy, that, you know, who knows what could have happened? And maybe it could have taken a turn for the worse. We don't know what the outcome was. We know that you weren't happy with your decision. Understandable. But we don't even know what the other decisions would have led to. So where you're actually getting bogged down and, and distraught about something that you don't even know if it was a good decision or a bad decision. It feels like it was a bad decision, but you don't know what the outcomes of the other decisions even were. So you can't change the outcome of what happened in the past. You can't do it. But what you can do is you can grow from it.

• 1:52:09Jocko Willink?

  That's what you can do. You can learn from it. You can actually take that scenario and you can mentally replay it in your head. And you can figure out if possibly there would have been or could have been a better outcome. Or maybe that that outcome that you had wasn't that bad. Or maybe it leads somewhere else. We don't know yet. But that's, that's where you are at right now. You can't change the outcome of something that has occurred in the past. Now I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw a little dichotomy at you right now. And I'm gonna say something that's

• 1:52:53Jocko Willink?

  a little bit, might be a little bit hard to understand. I'm gonna try and talk my way through it. Because while you can't change the past, what you can change is you can absolutely change the way that the past is perceived.

• 1:53:16Jocko Willink?

  So let me give you a detached example, just another example. If you had an individual, someone gets fired from a job. They get fired from their job and when they get fired from the job, it, what it does is it, their confidence goes down and they get depressed and they decide they're not going to even apply for a new job because I don't even know if I deserve to get a new job and they sit around and eventually they, they go out and apply for kind of like a lesser job. And you know, who knows, maybe they start drinking to relieve some of their depression and now they're late and now they, they end up on a downward spiral. We would look at them being fired

• 1:53:57Jocko Willink?

  as something that destroyed them and ruined their life. That's how we would perceive it. Hey, the individual got, they, they were, they were doing fine. Then they got fired. And now they lost their confidence, they got depressed, they started drinking, they didn't apply for good jobs and now their life is totally different and it's a bad place. We would perceive that them getting fired did that to them.

• 1:54:22Jocko Willink?

  But if this, if that person, if a person got fired from their job and instead it was like a wake up call for them. And they immediately applied for a bunch of other jobs and maybe they didn't get those because they'd just been fired, but maybe they took a lesser job, a lower paying job, but they got in there and they had realized they had made a mistake and they started getting after that like they'd never gotten after it before. They started working as hard as they possibly could and got promoted and then got promoted again and just dominated in those positions and went even harder. And dominated even more and eventually took over the whole company.

• 1:55:03Jocko Willink?

  And this isn't crazy. This isn't too far fetched. This can happen. But if, if that happened, that same incident, the firing of this individual would be perceived in a totally different way. It would be perceived as a catalyst that changed their life for the better.

• 1:55:25Jocko Willink?

  And there are all kinds of examples like that in the world.

• 1:55:34Jocko Willink?

  The past can't be changed. But the past can change you for the better.

• 1:55:44Jocko Willink?

  Or it can change you for the worse. And my question is, why not make it for the better?

• 1:55:54Jocko Willink?

  Why not make the past change you for the better? You hear the term, you hear the term narrative thrown around these days. Especially like in political circles, you'll hear it on the news. That narratives, they're created in the political arena. And what the narrative does is it supports an overarching

• 1:56:19Jocko Willink?

  aim, or an overarching value, or an overarching goal. That's what, that's what, that's the way people use the term narrative right now. But I'm not talking about that type of political narrative. What I'm saying here is that you actually write the narrative of what happened in your past.

• 1:56:44Jocko Willink?

  I'm not talking about a fabrication of it. I'm talking, you get to write the narrative of where it takes you. You get to write the narrative, you get to write the reality of where you end up.

• 1:56:57Jocko Willink?

  You get to write it.

• 1:57:00Jocko Willink?

  You get to control it.

• 1:57:05Jocko Willink?

  So what I'm saying is,

• 1:57:09Jocko Willink?

  control it.

• 1:57:11Jocko Willink?

  Get control of that narrative. Take control of that narrative.

• 1:57:18Jocko Willink?

  That, that horrible story in your past ends the way that you want it to end. You control the narrative. You control that story, so make that story good.

• 1:57:33Jocko Willink?

  Make that story epic. Make that story and make the direction that your life goes, make it

• 1:57:45Jocko Willink?

  heroic.

• 1:57:53Jocko Willink?

  And that's how I think you can get control or maybe handle better some of that horrific stuff that you've been through.

• 1:58:08Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's all I've got for tonight. So Echo Charles, speaking of being heroic, speaking of controlling our own narrative of the past, of the present, of the future, what can we do to write that heroic story for ourselves?

• 1:58:36Speaker 01

  Yes, well, let's start with the path. We're stay on the path. We're gonna get on the path. We're gonna be on the path. So part of the path is jujitsu, of course, like we've said many times. You're gonna need a gi, what gi to get?

• 1:58:53Jocko Willink?

  I got interviewed the other day.

• 1:58:55Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:58:56Jocko Willink?

  And the guy kinda sets up this kinda big question.

• 1:59:02Jocko Willink?

  He says, you know, in this day and age, and I'm not gonna do him justice, he was a great question, it was a nice question, I get it. And I'm not, I'm not gonna do it as eloquently as he did it. But the question was about, you know, in this day and age, when men, and it was one of those like men, like type things, this day and age when men are, you know, can be isolated and can get depressed and don't have meaning and all this stuff, right? What do you, you know, what do you recommend to men that feel that way, that feel isolated and feel alone and feel depressed and feel like they don't have meaning in their life and feel like they can't connect with anyone? And I was like, oh, cool, yeah, go to jujitsu classes.

• 1:59:42Jocko Willink?

  And I felt bad because they wanted me to give like the big, profound thing about where to find meaning in your life. And what I said was, yeah, start training jujitsu. Cause, cause the thing that he grabbed me with is like, oh, you know, You want, you, you want to have a goal, you want to have meaning, you want to connect with people, you don't want to be alone, loneliness and all this stuff. I'm like, yeah, yeah, go train jujitsu. All those problems get solved right there. Right? All of a sudden you got people to hang out with, you got a mission, you got fitness going on, you got meaning, it's all kinds of good stuff going on.

• 2:00:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:14Jocko Willink?

  So go train some jujitsu is what I'm saying.

• 2:00:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:17Jocko Willink?

  Good place to start.

• 2:00:18Speaker 01

  That's one of those deals too with, um, like you leave jujitsu with something. Not just fitness and, and better health and stuff. You leave with like a skill that just feeds into your whole soul, especially man, the manliness thing. Oh man, the capability to defeat another man.

• 2:00:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and we'll have to see, we'll have to check in with some of our females because when I talk to our female jujitsu practitioners, they might even feel a little bit better because they get to like choke men.

• 2:00:53Speaker 01

  No doubt about it.

• 2:00:54Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, yeah. So, so what we're saying basically is try training some jujitsu. Look, is it a cure all?

• 2:01:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, kind of, kind of a little bit, yeah. For certain people, uh, uh, in certain situations, I think, yeah, I think so.

• 2:01:08Jocko Willink?

  I have a feeling when I leave jujitsu after I get done training, that I feel good.

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:01:15Jocko Willink?

  Just think about that. Just think about, think if I gave you a pill that said, oh, if you just take this pill, you'll feel good. You just, you're just roundly, you'll just feel good.

• 2:01:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:24Jocko Willink?

  But there's no, in fact, the only side effects are that you'll be a little healthier and you'll have a, you'll have a, a, a quality skill that you can utilize in the real world. Just take this pill. Would you take the pill? Who wouldn't?

• 2:01:39Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:01:41Jocko Willink?

  What I'm saying is you get to go to jujitsu.

• 2:01:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:01:44Jocko Willink?

  Is it harder than taking a pill? Sure. But is it harder to eat a steak or eat a pill?

• 2:01:50Speaker 01

  Steak, technically.

• 2:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Technically it's harder to eat a steak. Which one would you rather do?

• 2:01:54Speaker 01

  Eat a steak.

• 2:01:55Jocko Willink?

  I'd rather eat a steak and I'd rather change jujitsu than take a pill.

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 2:01:58Jocko Willink?

  So get on that train, the jujitsu train.

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Get on the jujitsu train and you're going to do gi and no gi. So what kind of gi to get? You get the best gi. Question, answer.

• 2:02:07Jocko Willink?

  I realized I like dramatically interrupting you sometimes.

• 2:02:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good. I, I dig it too sometimes. It's all good. So the gi, Origin.

• 2:02:17Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:02:18Speaker 01

  Originmain.com. This is where you can get your gi. Many different options. They come out with new ones. It's pretty cool. Pete's very creative with that stuff.

• 2:02:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:28Speaker 01

  I encourage Pete to continue that creativity and keep it on that level as well. Anyway.

• 2:02:32Jocko Willink?

  Don't encourage him.

• 2:02:34Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Encourage, all encourage and compliment as well. So, yes. Originmain.com. You can get your gi. You can get a rash guard too, if you want. Also, some shirts on there, some joggers and whatnot. Supplements as well.

• 2:02:49Jocko Willink?

  What about, just for, what if you were gonna go see a movie? Can you wear your gi to a movie?

• 2:02:53Speaker 01

  Oh, well.

• 2:02:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay, can you wear your gi to a dinner date with your wife?

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  No, I, no, you can't.

• 2:03:04Jocko Willink?

  So what do we do with Origin then?

• 2:03:06Speaker 01

  Oh, right. Yes, well, the good news is, we got some American denim.

• 2:03:12Speaker 01

  We got jeans.

• 2:03:12Jocko Willink?

  Some jeans.

• 2:03:13Speaker 01

  Yep, Origin jeans, boom. Yeah, those are good, man. Those, those came out really, really good. I think those are gonna go, go places.

• 2:03:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. This one, I will give Pete some leeway for his creativity.

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:03:29Jocko Willink?

  Because he did this thing with the yoke of the jeans. You know what the yoke is?

• 2:03:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:03:34Jocko Willink?

  It's a little piece of, it's like right below the waistband. And there's two types of different yokes you can have. Reverse yoke or, or regular yoke, I guess it's called. Anyways, it's, it makes it so that the pants fit a certain way. And then he lined up the tops of the pockets with the reverse yoke.

• 2:03:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:03:51Jocko Willink?

  Which means that they're slanted a little bit, like the old school Vietnam pockets.

• 2:03:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:03:57Jocko Willink?

  So anyways. That's cool.

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  They're legit.

• 2:04:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're, they're just like a little bit.

• 2:04:03Speaker 01

  You know what I'm gathering?

• 2:04:04Jocko Willink?

  Details going on.

• 2:04:05Speaker 01

  I'm gathering that you're starting to appreciate Pete's fashion sense. That's what I'm gathering.

• 2:04:09Jocko Willink?

  Don't get crazy. I'm saying occasionally, no, no, no, because here's the deal. The pockets, because they're at a little angle, they're, they're easier to get your hands in and out of. Which, what I'm saying is, there is a functionality. Because if it didn't, if it wasn't functional, I wouldn't be talking about it right now.

• 2:04:27Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:04:27Jocko Willink?

  Cause we don't talk about things like that.

• 2:04:29Speaker 01

  But they look dope is what I'm saying. I think you're starting to appreciate that on.

• 2:04:33Jocko Willink?

  What I'm saying is, I think, I think Pete did it not for functionality. I think Pete did it because it looked cool. And then I commend his creativity because, not because it looked cool, but because it provides a level of functionality that does not previously exist in jeans anywhere.

• 2:04:53Speaker 01

  So I agree with you. I agree with the whole deal, the whole gig and man, yeah. Yeah, those are good. American denim. By the way, all made in America.

• 2:05:02Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:05:02Speaker 01

  The cotton is made in America, grown.

• 2:05:05Jocko Willink?

  What about the things that you put, you fasten the, um, your waist with?

• 2:05:09Speaker 01

  The buttons.

• 2:05:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the buttons.

• 2:05:12Speaker 01

  Origin buttons.

• 2:05:13Jocko Willink?

  Cotton.

• 2:05:14Speaker 01

  Just look at a picture of the buttons. That's enough to be like all sold to begin with. They're pretty dope. They're very dope, actually.

• 2:05:20Jocko Willink?

  Plus we got supplements, as you were just about to say.

• 2:05:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, supplements, important supplements. Not this mega mass, what was that one, an old schooler? Mega mass something. It was a big number. Nonetheless, it's not like that. Well, I guess kinda, because milk is additional protein, way cleaner, clean protein, slow release. Brian did a really good, um.

• 2:05:41Jocko Willink?

  But let's face it, it just tastes good.

• 2:05:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:05:44Jocko Willink?

  Well, it doesn't just taste, it tastes good. That might be, uh, what's that word? That might be the number one priority or the number one benefit. The fact that it's the best protein you can actually get is awesome too.

• 2:05:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, cool. Well, you can eat a steak if you want protein as well. So there's, there's various.

• 2:06:01Jocko Willink?

  You can't always eat a steak. That's the problem. Sometimes you're like on the go. Sometimes you gotta get, sometimes it's, you got work to do.

• 2:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:09Jocko Willink?

  You don't have time to eat a steak.

• 2:06:10Speaker 01

  Sometimes you just want a dessert too. Let's face it. Come on, bro. Let's face it. So boom.

• 2:06:15Jocko Willink?

  Definitely facing it.

• 2:06:16Speaker 01

  There you go. So yeah, so milk is like that, but the joint warfare, krill oil, these are for your joints. Keep your joints in the game. If you're for real getting after it, like especially in the gym and doing jujitsu, man, those, the joint warfare and the krill oil is gonna keep you in the game big time. It's gonna help you out a lot. Huge time, as we say.

• 2:06:36Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget about the warrior kid milk as well.

• 2:06:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:38Jocko Willink?

  Which is, which is tasty and.

• 2:06:42Jocko Willink?

  Why not feed your kids something that's actually going to be good for them? Instead of feeding them literal poison?

• 2:06:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, gummy bears.

• 2:06:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, sugar.

• 2:06:53Speaker 01

  Check. And discipline as well. If you want some cognitive enhancing elements infused into your brain, get some discipline. That's a good one.

• 2:07:03Jocko Willink?

  Get yourself some Jocko White Tea as well.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:05Jocko Willink?

  That's if you want to have a massive deadlift in excess of 8,000 pounds.

• 2:07:10Speaker 01

  Check. Yeah. Also, it's certified organic. So that's something. Also, we have a store. It's called Jocko Store. You can get the tea on the store too. We have the tea on the store.

• 2:07:22Speaker 01

  But also on the store, jockostore.com, this is where you can get shirts. If you want to represent on the path, discipline equals freedom, even get after it, you know, simple stuff. I chose quality shirts over cheap quantity shirts. So when you get this shirt.

• 2:07:41Jocko Willink?

  As it should be.

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  As it should be, right? So if you get this shirt and you recognize that dang, this, this could very well be my favorite shirt just to wear, just the fit and the feel of the shirt, I won't be surprised. In fact, I'd be surprised if it's not. That's my opinion. The last is some good stuff on there. There's rash guards on there, some hats, FlexFit and Snapback Trucker Hats. Some hoodies, lightweight and heavyweight. Some good stuff on there. Anyway, if you want something, get something. It is jockostore.com.

• 2:08:11Jocko Willink?

  Also, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. If you want to go ahead and smash the subscribe button.

• 2:08:19Speaker 01

  Bro, we're not doing that anymore.

• 2:08:20Jocko Willink?

  Is that joke over?

• 2:08:22Speaker 01

  That was the last one.

• 2:08:23Jocko Willink?

  The last one? Alright, no more. So if you want to subscribe, you can click the subscribe button.

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. I guess, I guess if you're going to remind someone to do something in regards to subscribing. It'd be more on the YouTube thing to do the notification bell if they want to be notified. Cause that's not just a given when you subscribe. I don't know. Some people might not know that is what I'm saying.

• 2:08:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I'm definitely a person that did not know that.

• 2:08:48Speaker 01

  Well, there you go. So yeah, subscribe, whatever Twitter or not Twitter, sorry Stitcher, Google Play, iTunes, that kind of stuff.

• 2:08:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Also, don't forget the Warrior Kid Podcast.

• 2:08:58Jocko Willink?

  Three new releases.

• 2:08:59Speaker 01

  Yep. 24, 25, and 26.

• 2:09:02Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 2:09:02Speaker 01

  Including an interview with John Bozak, the illustrator, the drawer of pictures of all the Warrior Kid books, including Mikey and the Dragons. Anyway, yeah, very interesting on that one, especially if you're into any kind of creative thing. He kind of demonstrates it or talks about the process and the frustration. It's good. I actually liked it a lot. Also Warrior Kid Soap, Irish Oaks Ranch dot com is where you can get Jaco Soap, Trooper Soap, all made by Warrior Kid Aiden in the United States, by the way.

• 2:09:36Jocko Willink?

  Does he have some kind of motto or anything with that?

• 2:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, like it's a slogan.

• 2:09:40Jocko Willink?

  What is it?

• 2:09:40Speaker 01

  Slogan. Stay clean. Sorry, Brad. I'm saying it all like crazy like you, whatever, but best stay clean, simple, to the point, right? All good.

• 2:09:50Jocko Willink?

  I was not impressed with your

• 2:09:51Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:09:52Jocko Willink?

  Your job there.

• 2:09:54Speaker 01

  Doing the best I can, you know? Anyway, like I mentioned, we have a YouTube channel as well, Jocko Podcast YouTube channel. If you are interested in the video version of this, uh, this here situation. And some excerpts on there, some enhanced excerpts on there too. If you want to look at them, it's good.

• 2:10:11Jocko Willink?

  Psychological Warfare, it's out there. iTunes, Google Play, MP3, get it. Don't forget about the visual versions of Psychological Warfare from FlipsideCanvas.com, which is run by my brother Dakota Meyer.

• 2:10:26Jocko Willink?

  You might want to check that one out as well. Get Discipline Equals Freedom.

• 2:10:32Jocko Willink?

  Art.

• 2:10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we have posters, right, which is cool, like, you know, you hang them in your gym and whatever, but it's like one, two, maybe three levels higher than the poster is like, you know, can you hang on your wall in your home?

• 2:10:45Jocko Willink?

  You can put it up in your office, clearly, you could, you could put these things up, they are legit. And we got some Warrior Kid posters, uh, art coming as well, because they're not just posters, they're like,

• 2:10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're like, yeah, the quality. Also, Onnit, Onnit.com slash Jocko, go there, kid. Onnit, this is where you can get, what, kettlebells, like, fitness stuff. Um, so, you know, some cool supplements, some greens, some food items, you know? Uh, this is where I get my kettlebells, actually, yeah, like, pretty much all my home gym stuff, aside from like, the dumbbell sets, I get from Onnit, all of it, go on there, Onnit.com slash Jocko, get something.

• 2:11:23Jocko Willink?

  And got some books, too. I've written a bunch of them. Way of the Warrior Kid, Where There's a Will, number, that's number three of that book, that is live, so, get that for your kid.

• 2:11:36Jocko Willink?

  Also, get the Way of the Warrior Kid 1 and Way of the Warrior Kid 2, which is called Mark's Mission. These books are good, and these are the books I wish I had when I was a kid. They would have just put me on the path at a younger age. Mikey and the Dragons, you can order that one now as well. That is, for a little bit younger age, maybe three, four, five, six.

• 2:11:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:11:57Jocko Willink?

  Through seventy.

• 2:11:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would agree with that, yeah.

• 2:12:00Jocko Willink?

  Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual. All the little questions that you want to ask me about everything are answered, is answered in that book. The Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual, How to Get After It. The audio version is not on Audible, it's on iTunes, it's on Amazon Music, it's on Google Play, other MP3s. And those are questions that you might have about life, about my personal operating system. If you have questions about leadership, check out Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership. I referenced them both today, and I reference them all the time, written by me and my brother Leif Babbin, about the experiences we had overseas, and how you can take those experiences and apply them to the

• 2:12:44Jocko Willink?

  leadership in your life and world. We also have Echelon Front, which is our leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. You can go to echelonfront.com for details on that. If you want to get some additional training online, you can go to efonline.com. And that's where we have all the Echelon Front instructors, teaching classes, online, interactive classes. Check that one out if you want to go more granular. And then we have the muster, which is a conference gathering, a leadership gathering. The next one is in Denver, September 19th and 20th. And then in Sydney, Australia, December 4th and 5th.

• 2:13:29Jocko Willink?

  Check extremeownership.com for details. All of the musters have sold out, and these will too. So get there early. And of course, we have EF Overwatch, where we are taking spec ops and combat aviation leaders, and placing them into civilian companies that need leadership. EFOverwatch.com, if you want to hire someone from special operations, or you're former special operations, and you would like to work in the civilian sector, go to EFOverwatch.com, follow the instructor, and so we will hook it up. And if you feel

• 2:14:12Jocko Willink?

  like you want to cruise with us just a little bit more, you can find us both on the interwebs. On Twitter, on Instagram, and on Dvzbook. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jaco Willink. And thanks to all of you that make this podcast possible. First, those of you in the armed services who put your honor and duty above yourselves, and protect freedom around the world. And to all the police officers and law enforcement, to the firefighters, the paramedics, the EMTs, the dispatchers, the correctional officers, the border patrol,

• 2:14:52Jocko Willink?

  Secret Service, and all the other first responders. Each of you do the same. You place the welfare of others above the welfare of yourself in order to keep us safe. So thanks for what you do.

• 2:15:10Jocko Willink?

  And the rest of you that are out there, thanks for the support that you all give us. You are the fuel that keeps this train moving. Literally. We appreciate it. And also, remember this.

• 2:15:27Jocko Willink?

  No matter what happened in the past,

• 2:15:31Jocko Willink?

  you control the narrative.

• 2:15:34Jocko Willink?

  You write the story that you want to write. You give yourself the role that you want. Make your thoughts in that story filled with discipline.

• 2:15:48Jocko Willink?

  And make your actions, make them nothing short of heroic.

• 2:15:55Jocko Willink?

  And then step out into the world.

• 2:15:59Jocko Willink?

  And get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.