277: The War Continues at Home. Fighting Demons and Finding Peace. with Dakota Meyer.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:17:53 - Dakota Meyer 2:57:22 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:27:35 - 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 277 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  It is again impressed upon every officer and man of this command that ground once captured must under no circumstances be given up in the absence of direct, positive and formal orders to do so emanating from these headquarters. Troops occupying ground must be supported against counter attack and all gains held. It is a favorite trick of the Germans to spread confusion by calling out retire or fall back. If in action, any such command is heard, officers and men may be sure

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  that it is given by the enemy. Whoever gives such a command is a traitor and it is the duty of any officer or man who is loyal to his country and who hears such an order given to shoot the offender upon the spot. We are not going back but forward.

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  So came the order from Major General Robert Alexander on the morning of September 26, 1918. At the beginning of the Muse Argonne Offensive, World War I.

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  A few days later, October 1st, Major Charles White Whittlesy was given his orders. He was to advance north up the Argonne Ravine, go across a brook and take Charlevaux Mill. And the purpose was to get control of this mill from which a nearby road and nearby rail line could be controlled. And once they had that completed, they were to push on to Hill 198 to be to complete a flanking maneuver on the enemy. This assault started on October 2nd.

• 2:19Jocko Willink?

  The men woke up, ate breakfast and commenced to fighting. By the evening of October 2nd, Major Whittlesley got reports that his men had found a way up Hill 198. So they attacked. Got control of the hill. Got control of the hill with men from battalions of the 307th and 308th Infantry Regiments of the 154th Infantry Brigade, 77th Division. Now, once he got control of this hill, didn't receive any communication from the French unit that was supposed to be protecting his left flank and no communication from an

• 3:02Jocko Willink?

  American unit that was supposed to be protecting his right flank. And it's World War I, there's no radios or anything where the flanks had collapsed. He didn't know this, but the Germans had taken the ground. Whittlesley and his men dug in. Created a defensive position on that hill, which became known as the Pocket. At about 22:30 that night, Whittlesley realized the Germans were on Hill 205 and they were in the ravine off to his right.

• 3:43Jocko Willink?

  The morning of October 3rd, Whittlesley sent out runners to his flanks to establish communications, find out where these American and French units were. That's what you did in World War I, when you know what's happening, you didn't have radios to call, so you sent runners or you sent carrier pigeons. So he sends out the runners to the left and right flank. None of them come back. Sends carrier pigeons with various messages about their position and situations. Receives no communication back. And he comes to the realization that they must be completely surrounded.

• 4:33Jocko Willink?

  On the afternoon of October 3rd,

• 4:38Jocko Willink?

  the Germans attacked from all sides.

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  One of the American company commanders, a guy named Captain Holderman, led a breakout

• 4:49Jocko Willink?

  to try and connect with allied forces. Took massive casualties. And the breakout was stopped, so they're surrounded and stuck.

• 5:01Jocko Willink?

  And the Germans attacked with mortars to get the heads down and then got closer and attacked with grenades.

• 5:12Jocko Willink?

  Then the Americans held.

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  And as evening approached, the Germans backed off because while the Germans were assaulting, not only did they cause massive casualties, they received massive casualties.

• 5:32Jocko Willink?

  On the morning of 4 October,

• 5:36Jocko Willink?

  the Major, Major Whittlesley was worried that no one knew what his situation was. There was massive casualties.

• 5:44Jocko Willink?

  And then they begin getting shelled.

• 5:48Jocko Willink?

  But they begin getting shelled by their own artillery.

• 5:56Jocko Willink?

  And he has one last carrier pigeon left and he launches it and this last carrier pigeon arrives at headquarters. It's been shot through the breast. It's been blinded in one eye and it's got one leg hanging on by a tendon.

• 6:12Jocko Willink?

  And the message says, "We are along the road, parallel to 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven's sake, stop it."

• 6:32Jocko Willink?

  So the artillery stops.

• 6:36Jocko Willink?

  And then the Germans attack again. And they're driven back once again. And there's again mass casualties on both sides. Except for that the Americans are running low on ammunition.

• 6:52Jocko Willink?

  They don't have any food. The one water source that they had close by exposed them to German fire.

• 7:03Jocko Willink?

  And so this continues on the 5th and the 6th of October.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  Attack after attack. The wounded and the dead pile up. And on the 7th of October, the Germans send a blindfolded American POW forward carrying a white flag.

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  And he has a note with him.

• 7:31Jocko Willink?

  And the note is directed to the commanding officer of the Americans.

• 7:36Jocko Willink?

  And it says, "The suffering of your wounded men can be heard over here in the German lines. And we are appealing to your humane sentiments to stop."

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  "A white flag shown by one of your men will tell us that you agree with these conditions."

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  "Please treat Private Lowell R. Hollingshead, the bearer of this note, as an honorable man." "He's quite a soldier."

• 8:10Jocko Willink?

  "We envy you."

• 8:13Jocko Willink?

  Signed, the German commanding officer.

• 8:19Jocko Willink?

  And Major Whittlesley allegedly replied,

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  "You go to hell."

• 8:30Jocko Willink?

  So they hunkered down and they braced for more attacks. And then that night, a relief force arrived and the Germans finally retreated. And of the 554 troops that originally attacked that hill, 190 were wounded, 63 were missing, and 107 were killed. Only 194 were able to walk out. They became known as the Lost Battalion.

• 9:14Jocko Willink?

  There were seven Medals of Honor awarded for this action, including one to Major Charles W. Whittlesley, who was immediately promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. And if you are tracking the dates here, this was in October of 1918, and the war ended a little over a month later, November 11th, 1918, and this became, in America, one of the most publicized events of the war. So the war ends in November of 1918.

• 9:56Jocko Willink?

  In 1919, there's a movie came out. The movie was called The Lost Battalion. Whittlesley himself was in the film, playing himself. And it's a silent film. You can go watch it. You can see, you can see him. You can see him reenacting these events. And he tried to go back to civilian life. He's now out of the Army, and he's smart and he's educated, and he's, has a law degree from Harvard, and he had his own law partnership before the war.

• 10:44Jocko Willink?

  But, obviously, things had changed. And the one thing that had changed was, he was,

• 10:54Jocko Willink?

  you know, a movie star and a hero and there was this constant demand for speeches and there were parades for him and interviews and

• 11:06Jocko Willink?

  it started to wear on him and in November of 1921,

• 11:11Jocko Willink?

  he served as a pallbearer at the burial of the unknown soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.

• 11:25Jocko Willink?

  And a few days later, he booked a trip

• 11:30Jocko Willink?

  on a ship from New York to Havana, a ship called the SS

• 11:39Jocko Willink?

  Toloa. And he set sail on November 26th, 1921.

• 11:49Jocko Willink?

  And that night, he had dinner.

• 11:53Jocko Willink?

  He chatted with some people. About 11:30 that night, he left for his stateroom.

• 12:04Jocko Willink?

  And in the morning, the stewards knocked on his door to go into his cabin and no one answered, so they entered his cabin so they could clean.

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  And they found a note.

• 12:22Jocko Willink?

  And the note said,

• 12:25Jocko Willink?

  "To the captain of the SS Toloa,

• 12:30Jocko Willink?

  Dear sir,

• 12:33Jocko Willink?

  my name is Charles W. Whittlesy, 14 Wall Street, New York City. I'm enclosing some money and my watch.

• 12:45Jocko Willink?

  Please give $10 to each of the deck stewards, the room stewards, and the table steward.

• 12:53Jocko Willink?

  Deduct what is necessary for sending the enclosed wireless messages and send my balance to my executor John B. Prue in 2 Rector Street, New York City."

• 13:05Jocko Willink?

  Please throw my suitcases and clothes overboard.

• 13:10Jocko Willink?

  I don't want anything returned. And I'm writing my father that I'm making this request of you.

• 13:20Jocko Willink?

  Here are the messages I would very much appreciate you sending. One, Frank R. Whittlesley.

• 13:27Jocko Willink?

  38 Pomeroy Avenue, Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Your son, Charles Whittlesley, jumped overboard and was drowned yesterday. He left letters for you mailed from Havana and notifying Prue and Elisha Whittlesley. Two, John B. Prue, 2 Rector Street, New York City. Charles Whittlesley jumped overboard and was drowned yesterday. He left a letter for you that will be mailed from Havana. I am notifying his father Frank Whittlesley and his brother Elisha Whittlesley.

• 14:02Jocko Willink?

  Elisha Whittlesley, 136 East 44th Street, New York City. Your brother Charles Whittlesley jumped overboard and was drowned yesterday. He left a letter for you that will be mailed from Havana. I am notifying your father and John B. Prue.

• 14:20Jocko Willink?

  And number four, Robert F. Little, 14 Wall Street, New York City. Look in your upper left-hand drawer of my desk for memorandum of law matters that I've been attending to.

• 14:33Jocko Willink?

  I shall not return.

• 14:39Jocko Willink?

  Will you so kindly mail these letters? I am leaving. I am very sorry to bother you with these unpleasant details.

• 14:49Jocko Willink?

  Signed, Charles W. Whittlesley.

• 15:07Jocko Willink?

  His body was never recovered. And they put a stone for him in the military cemetery in Pittsfield, Massachusetts that reads "In memory of Charles W. Whittlesley, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army, World War I, 1884 to 1921." Medal of Honor.

• 15:46Jocko Willink?

  And that's that.

• 15:51Jocko Willink?

  A hero. And a tragedy, and you can't help but ask yourself, "How does this happen?" How does a story of heroism and camaraderie and courage, how does that turn into a story of despair and loneliness and loss of hope? And what can we learn from that story? How can we learn to avoid that tragedy?

• 16:27Jocko Willink?

  And move away from the darkness and move toward the light? And here, tonight, to discuss that with us, is one of the few people in the world that can have some semblance of understanding of that story, of what Colonel Whittlesley went through.

• 16:55Jocko Willink?

  His name is Dakota Meyer and if you don't know who he is then just stop listening right now and go listen to podcast number 115.

• 17:04Jocko Willink?

  Dakota Meyer is a Marine, he's a sniper, he's a father, he's a recipient of the Medal of Honor.

• 17:13Jocko Willink?

  He's one of my heroes. And most important, he's one of my friends.

• 17:21Jocko Willink?

  Dakota.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming down, man.

• 17:25Dakota Meyer?

  Thanks for having me.

• 17:28Dakota Meyer?

  Man.

• 17:31Dakota Meyer?

  That's a um.

• 17:35Dakota Meyer?

  That, you know, that hits home.

• 17:38Jocko Willink?

  You know, I was listening to the last time you were on this podcast and we, we, we basically kind of closed it out after you received the Medal of Honor. I mean, we went just a little bit past it, but

• 17:52Jocko Willink?

  you know, since then,

• 17:56Jocko Willink?

  well, you know, you and I have talked about things that are going on and what it was like after that. And, you know, as I, as I read through that story of Colonel Whittlesley, you can see there's, there's, there's definite parallels.

• 18:12Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, I mean, it's a. Yeah, I mean, like I, like while you were reading it, like I, um, I mean, like I was like tearing up because like I, like I could just, I could feel how lonely that guy was. You know, it's a.

• 18:32Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, how do you?

• 18:38Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, there's like, what do you do the rest of your life? You know, like, what do you, what do you do the rest of your life? You know, like, yeah, you can keep going and giving back, but it's also a lonely road because, you know, everybody's sitting here just, first off, you don't know why they're around you. You know, and then you don't know. And everybody loves to just, like, they just want to watch you fail. You know what I mean? So that they can in their mind make themselves feel better. And it's like, everything you do is criticized. And I just, I mean, just with how that guy did it, it's just,

• 19:17Dakota Meyer?

  he, he did it on his terms. You know, it's like, it's, it's a.

• 19:23Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, it's a lonely road. I mean, it's a lonely road and it's not just a

• 19:29Dakota Meyer?

  it's not just yeah, I mean, I'm nothing special. I don't look at myself as anything as anything special. I did what I trained to do. I did what I put hope into people to do if they were in that situation. But, you know, it's just, and it's, and honestly, I think it's even worse today with everybody being able to, to, to, to, to watch how you live your life. Like, more people have their eyes on you, right? Like, like, you know, you get a guy who goes out and deals with PTSD or whatever he's struggling that day.

• 20:05Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, I'm scared. I like, I won't even go, like, I remember when I, when I call my doctors, if I need to go talk to somebody, a therapist or something, like, I come up with a route of how I can go in the back door so nobody sees me so that they can publicize, oh, look, but there's Dakota going, like, there's something wrong with him. You know what I mean? Like, it's just a, the, the, the, the standards are not, they're not, the, the ground's not equal now. And it's just a yeah, I mean, but also like you, you, you get, you get a choice. Every day is a choice. And it's like, am I going to take this and try to give back and continue using the things that made me successful in that moment? And apply it somewhere else? You know, like, the most fulfillment I get is my daughters and

• 20:48Dakota Meyer?

  and whenever I'm trying to help people as a firefighter, like, it's been the best thing for me. Like, I, I'll, I'll never forget, I, um, there was this guy and I, I talk about in the book, there was this, it was one of the first times I felt if I felt real again, almost. And, um, I'd helped this guy and he didn't know who I was. He didn't know me for what I'd done. He didn't know my name. I was just a guy in a uniform in there when he needed help. And he like thanked me and was so appreciative. And I was like, that feels good. That feels good. He didn't have any Any assumption of who I was or how I was, you know what I mean? Like, that guy just needed that moment, and I could be there for him.

• 21:31Dakota Meyer?

  And it shows me that I still got it, that I still got it, you know? Because, I mean, you get off, and like, how long do you get out of the military? We've talked about this.

• 21:42Dakota Meyer?

  How long do you get out of the military? And you can still, you can still walk around with this, "I'm a warrior." But you haven't even had to get in the ring. How long does that credibility still give you, "I'm a warrior," today? Not, "I was a warrior," but "I am a warrior." How long do you get that credibility without getting in the ring? You know?

• 22:05Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:06Dakota Meyer?

  And it's always a struggle. That's always a struggle is, do I still have it? Could I still do it? Could I still perform at that level? Because at the day you can't, you have to say, "I was a warrior."

• 22:23Dakota Meyer?

  You know?

• 22:24Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:26Dakota Meyer?

  And it's like, I mean, you have to be tested. And that's the one thing, you talk to David Goggins, like, that guy? He tests himself all the time. He's always pushing it. But, but that's like, yeah, I mean, that's the struggle is, is like, could I still, like? And, and like, the further I get away from that day in Afghanistan? You know, like, I question myself all the time of, did I? How could I have done that that day? But like, today I don't, today I can't even, you know? Get myself to have enough discipline to go work out. What happened to me?

• 23:04Dakota Meyer?

  Do you know?

• 23:06Jocko Willink?

  So when you get, when you get done, like? How long did it take for the, for the damn ceremonies and the round of interview? I remember, I remember you and I were talking on the phone, I, I forget when, but? You were talking about, like, you were on 60 Minutes, you were on all the, like, every, what, freaking Letterman? You did everything.

• 23:28Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 23:28Jocko Willink?

  How long did that, did that last for?

• 23:32Dakota Meyer?

  You know, like I was, I was like, it was really crazy all the way, all the way up to, I got it in September fifteenth of two thousand and eleven. Through December, it was crazy. I mean, I was on The View, sixty Minutes, CBS Sunday Morning, Fox all the time. I was on,

• 23:50Dakota Meyer?

  obviously Letterman, Jay Leno, I mean, you go down, you go down, down the list. And it was, I mean, it was crazy. I mean, it was crazy. And it's still like speeches kept going, like, I mean, you still walk out places and people recognize you and, you know, everybody's coming at you and wanting you and this and that. And, and it was, it took me, like, I hated it. I was, I mean, when I hear people say, hey, I met you back in two, but anytime, I'm like, when did you meet me? If it was between two thousand and eleven and two thousand and fourteen, I apologize. First thing I say is, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was drunk the whole time. I hated it. Like, I hated it. Like, there would be times that like, so I had a whole team around me. The Marine Corps sent, like, right after they announced I was getting the medal,

• 24:36Dakota Meyer?

  the Marine Corps sent out like seven people to live with me twenty-four seven. What were they, what were they doing? I had, like, I had a security guy that stayed in my house. Like, he stayed with, I never, I wasn't anywhere by myself for probably ninety days, at least, one hundred and twenty days. And a guy live, a guy live with me, they sent in, like, there were PR people, PAO people, like, there was three of them.

• 25:09Dakota Meyer?

  And you're twenty-three years old. Twenty-three years old. I was tying steel. There's, there's, there's interviews. You go on the internet and there's interviews. So they sent divots out, right? So like the, the DOD, the Marine Corps, like, combat camera people, like, capturing this. There are images of like, I refuse. I'm like, no, it's not changing my life. And I'm literally on a skid steer, like, working under a skid steer and they're interviewing me because they had to get something and I would not stop. I'm like, no, you can follow me, but that's it. So they would get up and follow me to go work at yards and stuff all day long.

• 25:44Dakota Meyer?

  But yeah, I mean, so I had all that and

• 25:47Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, it was just like a, you know, my whole life changed and.

• 25:52Dakota Meyer?

  And then, you know, it like, everything was good. It's like they built me up. Like, I was, I couldn't do anything wrong. And it's like when they got you to the top of the mountain, it was like the pinata they raise up. And then it was just like, here came the media, just soon as you said something wrong, or, I mean, they were just, it's the gotchas. And it was like, it was like they just build you up to just try to smash you down, right? And there was always this one reporter who was there.

• 26:20Dakota Meyer?

  They just always wanted to take me to task. So it's like you just got, you had to, you just start, you take these beatings, right? And, and like it does, like people are like, oh, who cares? Who cares what they say about you?

• 26:32Dakota Meyer?

  Well, there's only one thing I've got in this life, and that's my name and reputation. That's the only, like, when I die, on my tombstone, it's not gonna have any of my awards. It's not gonna have anything but the day I was born, and the day I died, and it's gonna say Meyer at the top of it. And that's what people are gonna know. That's my brand. And, so I took it serious. Like, when I would come home and, I remember I landed one night, and, uh, I landed real late in Louisville, and I was driving home, and, uh, the Courier-Journal had released on the front page across the state, because I remember I pulled into this gas station

• 27:15Dakota Meyer?

  in my hometown, and it was across the state, and it was Medal of Dishonor, with my page on the front page of the state paper, right? And they were trying to discredit everything that I had done. And, um, it was so bad that like, my friends got up, like, they found out about it. And they got up and they went and bought all the papers out in town. And it was just always something, man. And it's just like, you, you just can't, there's no rhyme or reason to it, you know? And, and it's just, uh, yeah, I mean, you get isolated. So I get, I get what that guy said, you know, what that guy did.

• 27:57Dakota Meyer?

  Because, I mean, sometimes you just,

• 28:01Dakota Meyer?

  you know, what, if I can't help people and make a difference, what am I doing? What are you doing?

• 28:09Jocko Willink?

  So you say the like the hype train lasted from September to December. I mean, at some point, does all of a sudden those seven Marines that were there watching your every move, all of a sudden like their their duty is over. We got Meyer done with whatever he need to get done.

• 28:26Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 28:26Jocko Willink?

  And then like one day you wake up and like you're alone.

• 28:30Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, so we were supposed to go to, so we did a East Coast, West Coast, and we're supposed to Hawaii tour. So it's like a, we were like a week in in New York and then a week in California. And then we were supposed to go to Hawaii for like a week to do press and all this, right? See the bases and do the press on each coast. And we went to New York, did that. So like I got the medal, came home. And then the week after that, I was, this is when all this started. And by the time I hit California, I'm like, I'm out. Like I, on the plane to California from New York to California, I said, I can't, I'm out. I can't keep doing this. And so that was it, like they all.

• 29:14Jocko Willink?

  What was it that made you feel you could, you're like, did the people just constantly talking to you? I mean, was it just you feel like you're put up on a pedestal and we talked about this the first time you were on here? I mean, basically everyone's saying, hey, good job.

• 29:30Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, you gotta take this like, I am literally known for the biggest failure of my life. Like you, you can't change the narrative to, like, that's where people get wrong is they're like, well, like they justify stuff in their head. The facts are this, like you can't change the facts. All my team is dead. Like I didn't get them out, whether, whether it was rational or not. Somebody can say, I'm gonna do 10,000 pushups today. And they're trying to break a Guinness Book of World Record. Nobody looks at him and says, well, you, you, you did, you did 500 an hour. That's, that's good enough. They failed. I failed.

• 30:16Dakota Meyer?

  My teammates are dead. Their families has unanswered questions. There's, you know, there's, there's four kids that'll never see their dad. And I'm getting paraded around the nation. As a hero.

• 30:32Dakota Meyer?

  And it's like I look at all these other Medal of, like, all the other Medal of Honor guys and, and I, I'm away from them because, you know, I get, look, Kyle Carpenter, I couldn't imagine what that kid gone through. Like, you talk about a guy that's a warrior. That kid's a warrior. I don't have anything like that. And, but I tell these, I tell these guys that like, you guys, you guys did some badass stuff. You guys did badass stuff. And you got some guys to enjoy it with.

• 31:04Dakota Meyer?

  I come home, I ain't got anybody. And it's literally the biggest failure of my life. Now, with that, I've learned a lot. But I can't change the narrative because it doesn't feel good.

• 31:17Jocko Willink?

  And you started, you started feeling this way while you're flying from New York to California?

• 31:22Dakota Meyer?

  Well, I, I mean, I, I told the president that I couldn't accept the medal. I wanted him to break it down to Navy Cross. I told him I couldn't accept the medal because, like, he said, you're a hero. I'll never forget.

• 31:34Dakota Meyer?

  President Obama told me that I was a hero. And I said, if you think I'm such a hero, why don't you call my teammates up and get their opinion?

• 31:43Dakota Meyer?

  Go let them know I'm a hero. And I, I'm not. And that's why, like, that's why when these people are, like, trying to discredit or they're trying to say, oh, you know, whatever. I mean, I can't argue with them. I, I, you talk about getting my ass kicked? Like, I got a Medal of Honor for getting my ass kicked. And so I just, I couldn't keep living this.

• 32:08Dakota Meyer?

  In the media of like, it just, it was, it was a hard thing. Like I just wasn't there yet. Right? Now, I don't do it about me. I do it about my teammates. Right? Like, I do it to try to show these lessons of if, hey, you know, I, I come to this point to where I wasn't going to change it. I wasn't going to be able to get away from it. You know, it was like, a- and so, how do I use it to make a difference? How do I try to turn something so terrible into something good? And that's what I ended up having to do. But yeah, I got off like on the plane to, it was on the plane to LA. It was on the plane from New York to LA. And I remember looking at the girl who was running all my stuff. She was, she's a rock star. You talk about a girl who, she is a rock star. And um,

• 32:54Dakota Meyer?

  I said, I, I, we, we're done. We're done. We'll finish these interviews here, but we're not going to Hawaii. And I'm going home. And landed, we did the stuff we had doing in LA. I flew home from there and then um, I mean, I was still doing events and still doing what people wanted me to. I was, I had a scholarship fund with the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation. I had this challenge to America where we would raise a million dollars to put kids through college. So like, I was going out, speaking at events for that to like going to private dinners to where somebody would write a huge check to, to the scholarship foundation. So I was doing that and then yeah, no, I didn't have any, nobody taught me

• 33:35Dakota Meyer?

  what I should do, what I shouldn't do, you know, they, it was like a 23 years old, just thrown to this machine that, I, I mean, I didn't even have an Instagram at the time, right? Like I didn't, I didn't know what to do. And um, so yeah, I mean, I did that. I was on the speaking, like I did speaking with leading authorities.

• 33:57Dakota Meyer?

  Wrote my book with Bing West in 2012. And you know, like speeches kept going and like events and things like that. And um, but you just kind of, just kind of going with the flow of what's next, right? And yeah, I did some.

• 34:13Jocko Willink?

  Well, was the Marine Corps, when you said, hey, look, I'm not going to Hawaii. We're, I'm done. I'm done. Was the Marine Corps thinking, or did anybody say, okay, hey, maybe we need to give Dakota some like help to get through this because he's got a massive amount of guilt over what happened. Did, did anybody talk to you along those lines at all?

• 34:34Dakota Meyer?

  So the Marine Corps didn't know what to do either. Right, like I was the first living Marine since Vietnam to receive the Medal of Honor. So they weren't really schooled up on it either. And um, there was one mistake that they made, uh, and from the beginning is um, and they tried to put it together, but when they put the narrative together, this is what opened us up to the media, to the, the um, the guy who actually was the reporter that was actually the one that just was trying to discredit everything. And this was his heart, this is a piece he honed on, but like in the, in the first initial write-up they had to do, right?

• 35:20Dakota Meyer?

  They put numbers in of how many people were rescued, or say, whatever you want to call it, and how many people I killed.

• 35:31Dakota Meyer?

  Which opened it up to numbers.

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  Which A, doesn't matter, and B, opens it up, right? Cause it doesn't really matter. Did you, did you kill 28 people? Or 72 people, or 172 people? It's like, it's all, it doesn't really matter. Wait, wait. Did you save? Cause you can get a Medal of Honor for saving one person. You can get a Medal of Honor for, for killing one person.

• 35:55Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 35:55Jocko Willink?

  You can get a Medal of Honor for saving 100, or killing 100. It's, that's not what it's about. But if they open it up for that, all of a sudden they make it matter.

• 36:03Dakota Meyer?

  And that's, and that was where it messed up. And I think like there started, that the negative stuff started coming out. And that was where, but like the reporter even says in his article, there's an article out there about it, like, well, there's quite a few. But he even states, he goes, um, he was, um,

• 36:22Dakota Meyer?

  he states all these things, these discrepancies, but he goes, I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it.

• 36:28Jocko Willink?

  I actually read that article yesterday.

• 36:30Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 36:30Jocko Willink?

  He said, he says something along the lines of, not that these actions alone don't fully warrant the Medal of Honor. So what the hell are you doing?

• 36:38Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. So it's those things that like, you know, a guy like me and like you, you have, you've had to talk me down. A guy like me, all I've known my whole life, like I'm not, there's only one thing I'm good at, and it's fighting. It's all I know. Like I have been.

• 36:58Dakota Meyer?

  It's all I know. You know what I mean? Like, it's the only thing that's made me successful at anything is that I was willing to fight and I was willing to work. And you put those things in a spot where there's, there's people who are poking, it's not a good, it's not a good thing, right? And, and so like, I had to back up, you know, get myself together. I was drinking too much, like, I was just trying to deal with all of it. I mean, I mean, imagine walking into a room and everybody wants to talk to you about the worst day of your life.

• 37:33Dakota Meyer?

  Like, over and over and over. And it's like, you don't have to, it's not about going home and not dreaming about it. It's about, I'm walking into rooms and I'm sitting here literally reliving it over and over and over, which, which is, is okay. Um, but I just, I just think that like, sometimes the worst day of my life is somebody else's entertainment.

• 38:02Jocko Willink?

  I, I wish I would have pulled this quote, um, Major Whittlesley, he was at like a dinner and spoke at the dinner. He sits down with his friends and they, the friends were talking and they said something along the lines of, he said exactly what you just said. Exactly what you just said. He said something along the lines of, every time I talk about this, I go right back there and I can't get away from it.

• 38:26Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. Yeah, like, yeah, yeah. I mean, I just, I mean, look, I'm, I still today, I miss my guys. I mean, you know, I, I just seen that one of my, like, uh, one of my teammates, his, his daughter's, you know, she's about to have a baby. And you know, you just, it's just, it's crazy. You know what I mean? It's like, I, I get to sit here and enjoy my two beautiful daughters who are more than I ever deserve. I get to, I get to hang around such amazing people and I get to live a beautiful life and, and all these things and, you know, it's just, it's not, it's not a fair world, you know?

• 39:12Dakota Meyer?

  It's not. And that's, that was always the thing, you know, a struggle for me to deal with and, you know, and how do you give back? How do you continue to give back, right? Like, what, look, I mean,

• 39:23Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, how do you get back, right? So yeah, so like the Marine Corps left. They went on their own way. Honestly, they kind of separated from me. I didn't hear much from them again.

• 39:34Dakota Meyer?

  Probably two and a half, two, two and a half years. I didn't hear much from them.

• 39:37Jocko Willink?

  It was like mission complete for them.

• 39:39Dakota Meyer?

  It was like, hey, let's separate from this because I don't know if this thing is going to be a hand grenade or, you know, what's going to happen.

• 39:46Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it weird, you know, you said earlier, like for, for this guy. You said it's worse today, right? Because everyone there's, you know, word travels so fast and all this stuff. But you would think, man, like, at least people understand the concept of survivor guilt. And post-traumatic stress, like at least we understand those things.

• 40:11Jocko Willink?

  And yet, it seems like, you know, if I, when someone goes through something like this, you, you gotta like, give them some support, you know?

• 40:18Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean. Yeah, but, but you know, like, how do you do that when everybody looks at you like a hero? You, you, how many times have you been in a situation with, with a group of people? Knowing damn well that you all, you're all as scared as it gets. And, but it's like. As long as you keep your poker face on. You could literally be the thing that breaks them. Where everybody's going to be like, no, you just confirmed their fears? Or you, you are the thing that keeps them going and. And, you know. I. I just always took it as.

• 41:03Dakota Meyer?

  This is my.

• 41:07Dakota Meyer?

  I got the medal and that's my punishment.

• 41:11Dakota Meyer?

  For letting my teammates get killed. This is my punishment to be paraded in front of all the people.

• 41:19Dakota Meyer?

  As a hero, the exact opposite of what I am. And that was, that was my punishment. That was what the universe or God, whoever you want to think about it, this was. This was what I got for failing that day.

• 41:35Dakota Meyer?

  And that was, that was kinda how it was, you know? And so like anytime I got to give a speech or talk to people and tell them the realities of it, you know, I just wanted them to know that, hey, look, you can get your ass kicked and get back up from it. And that's what the story is. My story is not a story of a guy who is some high-speed, low-drag, you know? My story is a story of a guy who got his ass kicked and has had his ass kicked his whole life and has, has, who, who lives a life of success. He has found a way to make success out of a shit-ton of failures.

• 42:15Dakota Meyer?

  And that's kind of, that's kind of what it is, you know? But yeah, the Marine Corps went away and then I started hiring my own people.

• 42:22Jocko Willink?

  When you say hiring your own people, what kind of people?

• 42:24Dakota Meyer?

  So like I had, I had agents, right? So I had a book agent, a book and movie agent with ICM. Sloan, Sloan Harris was a great guy. I had, you know, obviously with the speaking agency, I had, I had security people like that I would keep on me. And not really for anything other than to protect me from myself, right? Like, cause you know, I walked in, I mean, I, I would walk in somewhere and like, we'd be drinking and somebody would say something, I would hit them. And you know what? That's a lawsuit now. You know what I mean? I had, you know, assistants, I mean, you know, people who were like kinda handled me to get me to where I needed to be.

• 43:06Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, it was, it was, it was a crazy, it was a crazy time. I mean, it was crazy. And that was all the way up until probably 2014. And then, and then it just, I kinda just, I was like, I just wanna get away from it. And I started backing off and you know, I was so fortunate that I've been with Toyota since 2011. And you know, you talk about Ed Laukas and you talk about Don Esmond and you talk about like all these, these incredible people inside of Toyota. Like these people like met me and they've mentored me the whole way. Like you talk about sticking with me through thick and thin and believing in a cause of, of, of, you know, of helping veterans and just...

• 43:49Dakota Meyer?

  Like you take them out of, out of, you know, if I hadn't have met them in two thousand, you know, two thousand twelve, there's no telling where I'd be.

• 43:57Jocko Willink?

  So those guys were kind of helping you, got, guided you through all this?

• 44:00Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 44:00Jocko Willink?

  And former Marines?

• 44:02Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, so Don Esmond was a Marine. He was in Vietnam, a pilot in Vietnam. He was a medevac pilot.

• 44:09Dakota Meyer?

  So he's got over nine hundred missions, shot down, Silver Star recipient. I mean, but he was, um, he was the, uh, I think he was the COO of Toyota. And, um, we, you know, I, I got in contact with them and they brought me on as they were, they, they got with this program called Hiring Our Heroes that I work with and, and helping veterans get back to work and, and, um, but, but it was more personal for them. It wasn't a business thing for them. Like they took me in and then Don, uh, you know, Ed Laukas, his mom and dad both were in World War Two and Marines. And so it was just like, it was crazy how I got there to them. And they, you know, gosh, you talk about two thousand eleven, two thousand

• 44:54Dakota Meyer?

  twelve Dakota? Yeah.

• 44:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Is that when you were the hand grenade that the Marine Corps was scared you were?

• 45:02Dakota Meyer?

  Yes. You, you, you, you take those people out of my life, you know, John Lisco.

• 45:09Dakota Meyer?

  And they didn't have to do it. And, you know, you just find these people.

• 45:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, I, when you say these people like helped you out, uh, there's always people that ask me, um, hey, how can we help veterans? And, you know, it's really easy to say like, give to charity, which is awesome for sure. But in terms of what, what, what is helpful? And what you're talking about is like actually form relationships with people so that you can see where you can help them and you can provide them the help and support that they need.

• 45:40Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 45:41Jocko Willink?

  There's a big difference between me writing a check and saying, okay, I feel better about myself because I wrote a check to whatever foundation, which again, that's good. But if you want to go next level, form some relationships with some people and, and look, veterans have, especially like you, like me when I was young, right? You have no, I didn't really have any experience in the world, right? I was institutionalized. It was just, I just knew the military. That's me. That's my life. So. If I would have gotten out when I was twenty-three, twenty-four years old, I wouldn't know what to do. So, someone that's a civilian, that's a little older, if you form a relationship with someone, and look, I can tell you, it's not gonna be easy.

• 46:24Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, no.

• 46:24Jocko Willink?

  I can almost guarantee that being, trying to mentor and guide twenty-three-year-old Dakota, there's gonna be challenges, like it's like having a freaking teenage boy.

• 46:34Dakota Meyer?

  Yep.

• 46:36Jocko Willink?

  That's old enough to drink and has money.

• 46:38Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, and, and, and that was it, right? Like, you know, you talk about Ed, I mean, I go back, keep talking about Ed Laukas, and like, you, you talk about a guy who just, I mean, he was like, I mean, he was like a second dad, you know what I mean? Like, he, you know, his wife Karen, just, I mean, I, actually, I just called her mom, you know, and you, you talk about it, and, and just, they went out of their way, and I was so lucky, but, you know, that's the one thing that I have to say, if, if I've ever been good at, you know, all the way growing up, I've always been able to find,

• 47:12Dakota Meyer?

  great, like, I've always had this way of, of finding great people and, and knowing who good people were, who I should try to be like. I was really good at figuring those out and, and making them believe in me, right? Like, I was, that, that's the only, that's the only power I really have is, is that I can, I, I know who I, who's, who's really good in the room, and who's, who's, who I should be like, and I find a way to get them to help get me there. And then, always having great mentors, I've had that from day one.

• 47:47Dakota Meyer?

  I've, I've been, I've been so fortunate to have that, right? And that's what's got me, I mean, even still today, even still today, that's the pieces that keep me going, and keep getting me better, and keep helping me grow and learn and develop, you know, and that's, that's been my key to, to, to success, or whatever you call it, to, to still being here, right?

• 48:08Dakota Meyer?

  Is those people, you know, I'm just a, I'm just a product of the people who, who are around me. They should get the credit for any successes I have, you know, and that's how it is.

• 48:21Jocko Willink?

  So when you, in the book Into the Fire, you, I mean, you had the lowest of low points, right? You're in your freaking truck and you're, you basically try and kill yourself, but luckily, someone pulled a round out of the, pulled a round out of the chamber. So your weapon wasn't chambered. Round wasn't chambered. Then you get the medal. Then you're on like a, there's a little lift, you're getting the medal, you're getting all this attention. Do you go back down to a low point at some point?

• 48:56Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think like if, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's always like a, it's like a roller coaster. I mean, I don't know what it causes it. You know what I mean? Like, there's some days I wake up and I'm just like, man, I don't even want to get out of bed. Like, I don't even want to get out of bed. And why, I don't know. But yeah, I mean, after I got the medal, I was in the lowest of lows. I mean, it was the lowest of lows. I mean, it was just, I would literally, like, I'll never forget this one time, he was actually going to my speaking agency. Well, you talk about the day the, the president called me to come have a beer with him. Like, I was standing, I can remember, I was standing, speaking to some Marines. I won't say where, but I was speaking to some Marines at an

• 49:41Dakota Meyer?

  event. And I, I was hammered. Like, it was probably 9:00, 10:00 AM in the morning. And I'm not talking about like buzzed, I'm talking about like Dakota was drunk. I would get up in the morning before interviews, like the 6:00, 5:00, 6:00 AM interviews, and I'd be taking shots on the way to the studio. And like, I was standing there, and I'll never forget, like, whenever they said for me to come over and have a drink, so the girl who used to take care of me, her name is Jeanette, Jeanette looked at me and like, her face like melted. She's like, I hope they don't give you sobriety tests before you go in. Like, we have to sober you up. She literally started making me pound waters

• 50:24Dakota Meyer?

  to try to get me sober enough to go into the White House. And, I mean, that was how I lived. Like, I just, I couldn't, like, I hated it. I couldn't take it, you know? And, I mean, I could, but I just, I just hated what it was about. It wasn't about the work or about the workload. It was just, I was literally just living this nightmare. And...

• 50:45Dakota Meyer?

  You know, they were rock stars and uh, but yeah, I mean, how was a shit show?

• 50:50Jocko Willink?

  So how, how, how long did you stay in that mode for?

• 50:55Dakota Meyer?

  Probably until like twenty fourteen.

• 50:57Jocko Willink?

  And then what, what happened in twenty fourteen? Did you, did you realize something? What happened?

• 51:02Dakota Meyer?

  Um, I just, I stayed like, I kinda, I kinda seen that like I needed to get my shit together. Um.

• 51:10Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I was, I was going out and I, I kinda had a turn of like I, look, I wasn't gonna be able to change it. Like I wasn't gonna be able, I, I realized I wasn't gonna be able to out drink it and um, how do I turn it into something positive, right? And I, I just, I had this dream to be able to, somebody asked me one time, they're like, what, what do you wanna do? And I'm like, I honestly, I just wanna change the world. And I know it sounds crazy, right? It sounds so crazy, but when I, when I looked real deep into, why have I done like the stuff I did in Afghanistan?

• 51:45Dakota Meyer?

  You know, like, I didn't do it for me. I didn't do it. Everything I did was ultimately down of trying to make the world that I was part of just a little bit better. Like, like anytime I handed out soccer balls to the kids or I went out in front of the gate,

• 52:06Dakota Meyer?

  you know, I was just trying to make their day a little bit better, show them a different perspective. When I was, when I was taking a shot and I was trying to take a guy out or I was going in and, and they were asking for help. And hey, we need security in this, in this village to help us out. The Taliban's doing this or that. I literally just wanted to make the world just a little bit better. And if, if that's truly my core purpose, well, I can do that here. It's no different.

• 52:33Jocko Willink?

  Well, one of the things that I've been talking about in a bunch of different ways lately is this idea of being caught in like an echo chamber in a feedback loop and, and you hear it in the social media world because if you're a super liberal person, you just see a bunch of super liberal stuff. If you're a super conservative person, you just see a bunch of conservative stuff. It happens in a leadership position because if you're in a leadership position and you have an idea and everyone just is a yes man and says, yep, yep, yeah, you're great boss. That sounds like a great idea. And you go forward, you're only hearing, you don't get any other input. And it happens to people's mentalities too. Where, you know, they have a bad day. And then they think, well, today was so bad and tonight's going to be bad too.

• 53:16Jocko Willink?

  And then tomorrow is going to be bad and I don't, they, they get caught in this echo chamber. Of, of reinforcing the same thoughts over and over again. And that's fine if they're good thoughts, but when it's a negative thought and just like, you know, when you do feedback with a microphone into an amplifier, right? It just turns into a freaking squeal and you can't get out of it. Until you either shut that thing off or you get that microphone away. So, you know, you were, it sounds like you were in that mode. But then you thought to yourself, you know, it's a pretty, what you've just said of like realizing, hey, I can't change it. Why did I do it? What can I do to move forward?

• 53:57Jocko Willink?

  Like, that's a huge step away from, well, it's, it's, it's, it takes a lot of strength to break out of this negative attitude. And what sucks is you meet people and they're freaking trapped in there. And it's, it's, I don't know, I don't know if you can actually manually, I don't know if I can manually go to you and say, hey, you're in an echo chamber right now and get you out of it. I think sometimes, I, I think it may be that the person has to do that for themselves.

• 54:34Dakota Meyer?

  Well, I always say like you, you can either like sometimes, um, sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere. And sometimes in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself. And, um, yeah, I mean, I think what's even, what's even more dangerous is when you start drinking your own Kool-Aid. Right, like, like when you're not looking at everybody else to and and kind of getting a feeling off of it. And then you surround yourself with a bunch of yes, people like, like, and then you, and then you only get that you start drinking your own Kool-Aid. I mean, what happens like, yeah, you can live off of in a survival situation, drinking your own urine. But what happens if you drink it five times over?

• 55:19Dakota Meyer?

  It's that you're dead. It's all, you know, and and I think that's dangerous.

• 55:23Jocko Willink?

  Well, actually, it's the same, it's the same mechanism. It's just a different ones, ones positive, ones negative. If you go and just positive, positive, positive, you'll spin out and you'll think you can't be stopped. And you think you can do nothing wrong. If it's negative, negative, negative, you don't think you can do anything right. And the reality is for everybody. We do some right, we do some wrong, we make some mistakes, we we have some wins, we we have some losses. We move forward, we take a couple of steps back, we move forward again. But people that think, oh, every step I take is going to move me forward and everyone's, you know, everyone's following me because I'm awesome. Or nothing I can do can move me forward. It's not, that's not the way life is, it's not one or the other, it's both.

• 56:01Jocko Willink?

  And people get stuck there in one or the other. Um, you know, I think the the negative one is the one that. Look, the positive one, it seems like you, what happens with the positive one is when you fall off that train. You at least you fall on to, you have a little distance to fall and you're going to be okay. You have like enough room to pull your reserve.

• 56:22Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 56:22Jocko Willink?

  When you're at the bottom.

• 56:24Dakota Meyer?

  You're already on your.

• 56:25Jocko Willink?

  You're you're on your reserve and you burn in.

• 56:28Dakota Meyer?

  And that's what I was on, right? Like I just, it was just, everything was negative around me, the alcohol, I mean, it was just, everything was negative, right? I mean, I'm waking up literally talk, only talking about my teammate's death. And, um, I mean, it was just, everything was negative. I mean, it was. And I, um.

• 56:45Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I. I just had to pull myself out of it. I don't, I don't know of one situation that just like boom smacked me out of it. I I will say this, like ultimately, the the one of the biggest changing points in my life was when I had my daughter.

• 57:04Dakota Meyer?

  That was, that was whenever the drinking quit. Like that was whenever I took it and I said, um.

• 57:13Dakota Meyer?

  I say, you know what, it's not about me.

• 57:18Dakota Meyer?

  I know I'm not the best person in the world and you know, I, I, but I'll tell you this, my daughter didn't choose to come in this world. She didn't choose to come in the circumstances that she came in under.

• 57:32Dakota Meyer?

  And it is my obligation to ultimately give her and wake up every day and strive to be the father that that young girl deserves. And that's it. It really is that simple. And so that was whenever the drinking just went to a halt. But then there was a whole slew of problems after that, right of now I'm not dealing with my anxiety or my issues with drinking. Now they're coming to light. So you know, now it was kind of having to face the true reality of this, not, not, not taking the Band-Aid. I mean, drinking is no different than taking anti pills. Yeah, painkiller. It's just another, it's just another form of it, right?

• 58:13Dakota Meyer?

  And so that was a whole other problem, but, but I got to look at that little girl and like, that was, that is, you know, Sailor and Atlee are by far, I need them way more than they could ever need me. You know what I mean?

• 58:34Dakota Meyer?

  And, and they changed my life for the better and they still do every day.

• 58:39Dakota Meyer?

  Cause ultimately that's what the man that I am, I, I, I have to be a good man because I want my daughters to find good men and I want them to know what a good man looks like. And I want, if they start dating shitty guys someday, it's probably because I'm a shitty guy. I want to set the example to them of hopefully what they strive to go, to go find and marry someday. And.

• 59:06Dakota Meyer?

  I have to wake up and be that.

• 59:08Jocko Willink?

  Hmm. Yeah, it's weird from a um being in the military. The perspective for me because I was, you know, a young enlisted guy. I was gonna say young dumb and yes, I was a young dumb enlisted guy. And the the more I moved up in the ranks, all of a sudden you're like responsible for people and it was there was no overnight like transition for me, you know, because I was enlisted. And then I became an officer and I was a junior officer, but I it wasn't like I wanna I'm an officer now and now I need to or I you know, I'm in charge of this training event and so I need to know it wasn't like an overnight thing. But I realized that hey, all these guys are counting on me to do do my job to to make good decisions,

• 59:53Jocko Willink?

  to give them the support that they need like that's all on me, all on me a hundred percent. And so slowly over time, I I started acting more and more like a freaking responsible human instead of like a complete freaking savage. When I was a freaking younger teen guy.

• 1:00:09Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:10Jocko Willink?

  And so I just got, you know, I just, you know, grew. And then obviously, yeah, when I had kids, it's like, oh, now there's people that also res- uh rely on me one hundred percent. For everything.

• 1:00:24Dakota Meyer?

  For everything.

• 1:00:25Jocko Willink?

  And they're looking at me as an example of how they should be acting and what they should be looking for.

• 1:00:31Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah, it's big.

• 1:00:34Jocko Willink?

  So you did you stop drinking like?

• 1:00:37Dakota Meyer?

  I yeah, I mean.

• 1:00:37Jocko Willink?

  Cold turkey?

• 1:00:38Dakota Meyer?

  I I did um when Sailor, when Sailor was born, um I pretty much, I mean, I pretty much cut it out to cold turkey. Um. Yeah, I mean, I. I mean, I was like, yeah, I mean, I was I had to, I mean, I was like, I was in a custody battle first off, so.

• 1:00:59Jocko Willink?

  Out of the gate.

• 1:01:00Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, I wasn't even, I mean, I wasn't, yeah, I mean, yeah, I wasn't there when Sailor was born. And um I got to meet her like three months later and uh so you know, with the custody battle, it was look.

• 1:01:13Dakota Meyer?

  I'll take 90% of it my fault. Me and Bristol didn't get along. She was, she went back to Alaska, what didn't work out, right? And so I wasn't there for the, the, the birth.

• 1:01:26Dakota Meyer?

  And, uh, so finally after three months of fighting and all the stuff that people do, right?

• 1:01:35Dakota Meyer?

  And I, look, I'm sure I caused my amount of it. So let me say that upfront. Um, I'm definitely not an easy person to live with.

• 1:01:43Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I finally got to meet her and man, I'll never forget, like I flew up, I flew up on an airplane. So first off, after I seen, realized that Taylor was born, I went, it was on the, it was on a 23rd, or she was born on the 23rd. And so Christmas that year was 20, Christmas Eve was on a Thursday and, um, Christmas is on Friday that year. And, um, I went up that Saturday as soon as the stores opened back up. And I, I went ahead and bought like all of her stuff to have in my house. I didn't know when I'd get to see her or anything like that. If she'd ever even get to come to Kentucky, but like I was a dad, so I was going to be a dad. And, um, I had no clue of how to change a diaper or anything. And then I went to this month long.

• 1:02:28Dakota Meyer?

  It's, it's like an online nanny school and I became a certified nanny and infant care specialist.

• 1:02:35Dakota Meyer?

  So I was like doing these classes. I was doing these classes, right? Like of, um, how to swaddle, like learning about all these things that kids do, right? And, um, I mean, I just never wanted to, it wasn't my daughter's fault. So like, I never wanted to not be what she needed.

• 1:02:53Dakota Meyer?

  If she needed it. And so like, I needed to spend my, my mindset was I needed to, you know, I'm a, I'm a dad and I need to try to, if I, even if I'm not with her, I need to be training to do something to be able to, to, to give her the life that she deserves. And, um, man, three months into it, I got to meet her. And so I, I fly up there and what I would do is I would fly to Alaska. You're like, I'm going to put this training to the test. Yeah, to the test. Like I had all this stuff, like, man, like I knew like the, the five S's of like, what, you know, how, how to get a child to like, you know, to calm down, like all this stuff. I was a mattress. I had this like little baby doll that I used to swaddle practicing, right? Crazy. I know, I know. It's nuts. Um, so, um,

• 1:03:38Dakota Meyer?

  So I fly up there and uh, so I would fly to Alaska every other weekend and I would um, raise her for four days out of a hotel room, a three month old and uh, from Kentucky. And um, so I would go up there and I got her, man. The first time I laid eyes on her, that was it. Like I got on the plane coming home after those four days and I just said, hey, I'm, I'm getting rid of everything in Kentucky and I, even if I just have to work at McDonald's, I'm going to Alaska and I'm gonna raise this kid. Um, I don't want anything else. I don't want another life. I don't want anything else. I don't care if I just, if I just have to live in a cardboard box on the side of the road. I'm gonna raise this kid and I am going to, I'm gonna be the best dad

• 1:04:20Dakota Meyer?

  that I can be. And um, that's why I started figuring out, right? I went home and literally started looking at assets of how to, how to close everything down and leave. And um, yeah, so that was kinda, that's kinda that and I just go up there. And then after that, you know, like a little ways into it, we stopped fighting and me and Bristol decided to get married and we got married and you know, had another kid and then it went to shit.

• 1:04:47Jocko Willink?

  And, and all this stuff, uh, you, you were, this is like tabloid, tabloid material.

• 1:04:53Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Jocko Willink?

  This is just tabloid material.

• 1:04:56Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:56Jocko Willink?

  So you.

• 1:04:58Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, like if you look at the tabloids now, like uh, they don't refer to me as a Medal of Honor recipient. They refer to me as Bristol Palin's ex.

• 1:05:10Jocko Willink?

  So you guys get married, which, you know, you're doing the best you can, you know, people do what they're gonna do. You're trying to figure things out.

• 1:05:19Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, we tried. Look, I mean, Bristol's not a bad person, you know, she's um, she's the mother of my children. She gave me the most beautiful things in the world. Like my kids are healthy, they're beautiful. They are, they're the best thing that I have. Um, and I owe her for that. I owe her for, for all that, you know? Um, I'm not an easy person to live with. Like, let me tell you, like I'm, I'm not. Um, so yeah, so we got, we got our beautiful kids.

• 1:05:47Jocko Willink?

  So where did you move, once you got, once you guys got married?

• 1:05:50Dakota Meyer?

  So I.

• 1:05:52Dakota Meyer?

  I, we, we got married and I literally packed up two suitcases and left for Alaska and I never came home. I just moved in with her and I would fly to the States just as I was on going to give speeches across, you know, Canada, lived up there for a year and then we moved to Austin.

• 1:06:11Jocko Willink?

  And how are you doing, like at that point, are you starting to sort of,

• 1:06:16Jocko Willink?

  process everything that happened? Are you starting to be like, okay, these people are calling me a hero, but I have an opportunity to be able to explain to them my perspective of it. Were you starting to kind of put this together in a way that was more manageable for you?

• 1:06:32Dakota Meyer?

  No, I mean, it's still not, right? Cause everybody wants to argue with me. You know, it's like, no, no, like, understand I'm a failure. Oh, no, you did everything you could. Like, shut up. You know what I mean? Like, no, it's still that way. And you know, and it's, it's just, no, it's still not, it's still not back. You know, people still, they hold me in this regard that I'm like, that I'm some,

• 1:07:00Dakota Meyer?

  that I'm something that I'm, I'm not, I'm no different than anybody else.

• 1:07:04Jocko Willink?

  You know, I was listening to something you said, you, I was listening to, your podcast, actually. And you were saying something along the lines of, hey, you know, I, I received the Medal of Honor, but I don't want to let that define me. I don't want that to be like the thing that I'm known for. And I started thinking to myself, you, you and me know how freaking completely random war is. Like, you don't know what the hell is gonna happen. There's nothing, way to predict anything. You could have done that deployment. You, that mission could have got scrubbed for 10,000 reasons that night. It could have gone and the Taliban could have not been there. There's like a million things. And, and so really there's a roll of the dice that you were in this situation, the way it went down,

• 1:07:47Jocko Willink?

  you didn't get killed, you know, like it's just, it's so random that if you did hang your hat on that one thing, it's like, that's like saying, hey, that's like, that's like, I won the Lotto.

• 1:08:00Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:00Jocko Willink?

  So you should, you know, that means I'm smart or whatever. Like, you know, it's, it, you can't really-

• 1:08:05Dakota Meyer?

  Let me pick your numbers for all your lottery tickets. You know what I mean?

• 1:08:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. So I was, I was thinking about that. Like you can't let it define you because if you do let it define you, then you're, you're, you're defining yourself on the fact, it's like, it's like defining yourself on, you know, how tall you are.

• 1:08:20Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Jocko Willink?

  It's like, hey, you know, that's just how tall you are. There's nothing you can do about that. Now, look, obviously you took actions that, that were a conscious decision to go doing what you had to do. But you're right in the fact that if you let that one thing define you, you're hanging your hat on, on something that's kind of random.

• 1:08:39Dakota Meyer?

  Well, exactly, right? But it's also, I mean, it's also like, um, like what if, what if like a fighter gets in the ring and he, he gets a win? I mean, whether like he got a knockout and it was one hit and it was a, I mean, are those hits lucky, right? I mean, you, you know what I mean? Like, like, could you, can you really walk into a ring and say you're gonna like, and, and, and knock people, you know what I mean? Like some of that is the same, right? Some of it is this guy, you, you, just he, if, if he didn't break this, or you know what I mean? Like it, that's why the games are played, right? It's why football teams are not fantasy, you know what I mean? Like that's why the game is played. And, um,

• 1:09:23Dakota Meyer?

  so like for me, it was like, yeah, that day, that, that day, I like, if it comes down to fighting, like I fought my ass off. There's, I'll say that. Um, I fought as hard as I could. Uh,

• 1:09:40Dakota Meyer?

  but that was one day of my life. What about the rest of them? You know, like that day's done, that's behind me. Well, what's next? Right? Like, I mean, I was in a gunfight four days later that I felt like was worse than that one. You know what I mean? Obviously, I lost my teammates, which sucked. But as far as like, I mean, the next one was a harder one for me to pick out than the first one, right? And nobody knows about that. I mean, I still kept fighting. We've gotten a ton of fights after that. And so like, you just can't be defined by that. You know, you're only as good as your next hit bad. And it's like, you can't, you can't let your failures define you, and you can't let your

• 1:10:25Dakota Meyer?

  successes define you. Both of them are nothing more than moments in time.

• 1:10:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, that was kind of my, I don't want to call it a setup, but like, it's one thing, right? And even though you feel like, oh, I failed that night, it's like, yeah, that was one, that was one thing.

• 1:10:44Dakota Meyer?

  I did.

• 1:10:45Jocko Willink?

  And so, to say, you don't want to define yourself by receiving this one award, it's also you can't define yourself by, by the fact that that day, you didn't win.

• 1:10:56Dakota Meyer?

  Exactly. But it still doesn't change the results of the day, right? Like, and at the end of the day, those have all taught me valuable lessons. You know, you can't, like, and hear me out on this, but like, life is nothing more than like a, you're gonna laugh when I define it, when I say this. Life is nothing more than, you know, like, you know, like at Halloween, they have those

• 1:11:28Jocko Willink?

  We're off to a good start, okay.

• 1:11:30Dakota Meyer?

  Scary houses, right? Or those, those, those whatever, those houses that

• 1:11:33Jocko Willink?

  Haunted houses.

• 1:11:34Dakota Meyer?

  Haunted houses, right?

• 1:11:35Jocko Willink?

  You can call them scary houses.

• 1:11:36Dakota Meyer?

  Whatever. So, life is like, that's life. After you've walked through that haunted house once, does it get you again? No. So that's life, right? Like, life is full of these things that are not real, that scare us because we've never seen them, or we've never seen them in that place, or whatever, right? We wasn't expecting it coming there. So it kind of shakes us for a second. But you got one or two options. After you've seen it, you can either, "Okay, I got it. You're there. You got me on that one." "But if I walk through this house again, you don't have me," right? And that, in that life, like, that's life, right?

• 1:12:18Dakota Meyer?

  And, um, you know, so like, that day, I got... The cool part is, is like, that's my, that day's my kryptonite. Um, I'm not gonna say that I could never see anything worse, because I, I, I, you know, obviously, it could always be worse. But, man, at, at twenty-one, twenty-one, I got to walk through one of the scariest damn houses that life could throw at me. I'm gonna tell you right now, I got, I got to sit here and look death right in the eyes. I never thought, I, I, I, I never thought I would make it out. I got to look at that, so I don't have to worry about it. Every day's a bonus day for me. I didn't think I was gonna live past September 8, 2009.

• 1:13:02Dakota Meyer?

  I got to sit here and see the very best of human beings. I got to see the very worst. I got to see what I would do if somebody had a gun to my head. I got all these things out of the way in one day that most people go through their whole life, wondering what they would do. You know, I got that out at twenty-one. What do I have to worry about going into the next house? You know what I mean? I got my ass beat, all of it. You're not gonna beat my ass worse than that. So I don't have to worry about it. You know, the, the most dangerous guy in the room is the guy that doesn't care to lose. And I can tell you, I don't care to lose.

• 1:13:46Dakota Meyer?

  You know, and that's, that's my kryptonite. That's like my power or whatever, right? Like, that's my... And I'm so fortunate to have gotten that out of the way at twenty-one years old, because it's allowed me to go live the life that I've lived, right? I, I get to, man, I jump out of airplanes. I fly airplanes. I fly helicopters. I, I do it, and it's like, I get to do it because, and I get to go talk to people about what it's like. I get to go tell people, "It's, it's all good. You can do this," right? And so it's kind of a, it's good. It's a good thing.

• 1:14:25Jocko Willink?

  So where does like, um, I know a while ago,

• 1:14:30Jocko Willink?

  you know, you had like anxiety.

• 1:14:33Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:34Jocko Willink?

  What even is that? What does that feel like? What happens? Where's it come from? What do you know about it?

• 1:14:41Dakota Meyer?

  So I didn't even know. I didn't even know what, I didn't even know I had anxiety. Um, I guess like you just kind of get used to feeling this way. And, um, I, it got so bad, like after I moved to Alaska, when the drinking stopped. That, like, I would, I would wake up throwing up. I would grind my teeth so hard, like, my teeth on the back are caps. And like, I would, I have veneers and I would knock my teeth off with veneer. Like, I'd knock them off by grinding my teeth. Um, I mean, I'd wake up and I'd be throwing up. I would be sweating in bed, crying my eyes out, like, just can't sit down, can't, like, I would try to run it off. I can't run it off, can't lay down, like,

• 1:15:26Dakota Meyer?

  it just, it was like, I'm like, what's wrong with me? You know what I mean? What is wrong? I don't even know what's going on. And, uh,

• 1:15:34Dakota Meyer?

  and then I find out that this is, this is an anxiety attack. And, um,

• 1:15:42Dakota Meyer?

  you know, I just, I started dealing with it. I had a real bad anxiety attack. But I didn't want to go, like, I didn't want to go to the hospital because, like, the VA gave me the option of, the VA gave me an option of, um, I call them up, okay? I call them up and I'm like, hey, I need to, like, I just need to see somebody. And they're like, what, do you have a case manager? I said, I don't, like, I, I live in Alaska, I don't. And they're like, okay. Now, I'm a Medal of Honor recipient.

• 1:16:14Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, I've got pretty high status in the VA, uh, like, as far as the statuses they have, right? Like, they have these little levels or whatever.

• 1:16:20Jocko Willink?

  I imagine you've got to be pretty high up there, yeah.

• 1:16:23Dakota Meyer?

  So like, I ask them. Um, I'm like, I just need to see somebody, like, maybe to give me, like, some blood pressure medicine or something to help me get this, just get through this. I just need to get something to get through it. I don't want any, like, I'm not asking for Xanax's or whatever, right? And they go, well, if you don't have a case manager, then we'll have to get you one of those. And then after you get in seen with a case manager, then what we'll do is that case manager will get you a doctor. And then after you meet with a doctor, then they'll get you to a psychiatrist and then you'll be able to get some help for it. I said, well, how long is that gonna be? Uh, probably four to six weeks.

• 1:16:57Dakota Meyer?

  And I said, um, I don't have four to six weeks. And she, the, the woman on the phone, she said, well, you can always come check your in, yourself into the psych ward.

• 1:17:11Dakota Meyer?

  And I was like,

• 1:17:14Dakota Meyer?

  the, I don't need that. There's no way. These are my options.

• 1:17:19Dakota Meyer?

  And, um, so I called, I called one of my buddies and he knew a doctor and you know, the doctor was like, they gave me like some blood pressure medicine that'll, that usually some people take for anxiety. Started taking it and then fortunately they sent me this thing called the AlphaStim. And, um, it clips on your ears and, uh, when they sent it to me, I wouldn't even open it. I got, I was so mad that somebody sent this to me because I was like, you really think, you really, this is what you think my level of anxiety is? You think it's a joke?

• 1:17:49Jocko Willink?

  I'm picturing the thing that, um, uh, the time travel machine that Kit puts on his head in Napoleon Dynamite, something like that.

• 1:17:59Dakota Meyer?

  So finally one day I'm sitting there and I've got anxiety and, um, and it's like, it feels like your chest is just like, so like something sitting on your chest.

• 1:18:08Jocko Willink?

  Does it come from like thoughts?

• 1:18:11Dakota Meyer?

  No, I don't know. Like,

• 1:18:13Jocko Willink?

  Is it a physical thing? Is it a mental thing?

• 1:18:15Dakota Meyer?

  Physical. It's a fit, like it's all physical. Like you'll feel like you're having a heart attack.

• 1:18:21Jocko Willink?

  And you, you could be watching the freaking cartoons with your kids.

• 1:18:24Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, I could be just sitting in my truck.

• 1:18:26Jocko Willink?

  Sitting in your truck, nothing, just, and all of a sudden you feel this.

• 1:18:30Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, you can, I can, I can feel it coming.

• 1:18:32Jocko Willink?

  Is it the same as a panic attack?

• 1:18:34Dakota Meyer?

  Same thing.

• 1:18:35Jocko Willink?

  But do you feel like you're like worried about something consciously or?

• 1:18:40Dakota Meyer?

  I think it lives in your subconscious. You know, like you can't know. I mean, I would be. I mean, I would be fine. And then like it just all of a sudden hits and it's like, it's like, oh gosh, like you can feel it coming and you just, how do I get rid of this? And it's, I think it's a subconscious piece, right? Like,

• 1:19:00Dakota Meyer?

  that's why like it comes out mostly when I'm sleeping. Cause I can't consciously control what I'm thinking about. And when I go to sleep, whatever in your brain needs to come out is coming out.

• 1:19:13Jocko Willink?

  Are you dreaming? Are you having nightmares?

• 1:19:16Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:16Jocko Willink?

  And the nightmares like trigger this and?

• 1:19:19Dakota Meyer?

  Usually.

• 1:19:22Jocko Willink?

  When the cure for it, cause you said the case advisor would send you to a doctor, the doctor would send you to a psychiatrist.

• 1:19:31Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Jocko Willink?

  So ultimately is that what they're looking to do to you is give you some kind of psychiatric medicine?

• 1:19:37Dakota Meyer?

  You know, Xanax is Clotipin.

• 1:19:41Jocko Willink?

  And these are things that like mellow you out?

• 1:19:43Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:43Jocko Willink?

  Or some allegedly?

• 1:19:44Dakota Meyer?

  They'll zombie you.

• 1:19:45Jocko Willink?

  And get you, get you addicted to them?

• 1:19:47Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, they'll zombie you.

• 1:19:48Jocko Willink?

  Cause they're gonna numb the pain. They're gonna numb the thoughts that are, that are causing this stuff.

• 1:19:52Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, and it's just, it's like you get on that. It's a slope, right? It's a slope of, of, you know, well, after you start taking that, then you know, you start getting depressed, right? Cause I mean, imagine, you know, and that was always my problem. Like if I took, if I took Clotipin or anything like that, well, you have a hangover the next day. And then I didn't feel like working out. So then I don't feel like working out. So then it's like you just, it's like a, it's like this slope of just,

• 1:20:21Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:20:21Dakota Meyer?

  Then, you know, when you, when you get depressed and you start, you know, you can't work out or you don't feel your normal self, then you're like, well, I'm broken. And it's just like this downward slope of just. It's like, hey, you know what? Like, I don't, I'm not scared to look at it. I'm not scared to look my demons in the eyes.

• 1:20:42Dakota Meyer?

  But like, when it turns into something like mentally, I can deal with it. It's when it starts coming out physically is it starts, is it starts getting you, right?

• 1:20:51Jocko Willink?

  So, so back to the ear lobe freaking machine.

• 1:20:56Dakota Meyer?

  So the AlphaStim, um, I finally put it on. And it would like melt it away. It would like melt it away.

• 1:21:07Jocko Willink?

  So you start feeling it, go hook it up?

• 1:21:09Dakota Meyer?

  I'd, I'd hook it up 20 minutes at night before I went to bed. I'd sleep better. Yeah, it was awesome. And then, um, and then I met this, I met this person.

• 1:21:22Dakota Meyer?

  She worked with the guys out at Fort Bragg.

• 1:21:28Dakota Meyer?

  I met her one and she's like, hey, you need to try this. It's called a stellaganglion block. Um, actually a seal, Sean Mulvaney, Dr. Mulvaney. I'm like, come on, everybody's promised me the world with this stuff. She's like, go do it.

• 1:21:45Jocko Willink?

  SGB.

• 1:21:46Dakota Meyer?

  SGB. And, um, so I fly out. I was, I was, I was at rock bottom again, like just, it was just, you're just frustrating that I can't operate.

• 1:21:56Jocko Willink?

  How, how often are you having these anxiety attacks?

• 1:21:59Dakota Meyer?

  Twice a week.

• 1:22:00Jocko Willink?

  And they're freaking crippling.

• 1:22:02Dakota Meyer?

  I'm talking about throwing up in the floor. Like I'm talking about.

• 1:22:05Jocko Willink?

  How long they last for?

• 1:22:08Dakota Meyer?

  An hour. Forty-five minutes.

• 1:22:10Jocko Willink?

  And you have no idea when they're gonna hit?

• 1:22:11Dakota Meyer?

  No, and there's no going back to sleep after them. Right? Like, there's no. Yeah. Um, and I'll, I'll never forget my daughter, my daughter looked at me one time. We were actually on the road, me and her traveling. And, um, so like, I would be scared, like, I never liked the kids to sleep in the bed with me because I never wanted my daughters to see me like that. And, um, and there were, there were a lot of nights that I would sleep in my car in the Best Buy parking lot.

• 1:22:38Dakota Meyer?

  Probably about three years ago, four years ago, three years ago. I would sleep in the Best Buy parking lot because I didn't want anybody to see me. See me like that if I felt like I was getting anxiety. And, um.

• 1:22:49Jocko Willink?

  And you, are you still married at this time?

• 1:22:51Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. And um.

• 1:22:54Jocko Willink?

  Is there any like, how's that going? Is it just like you guys are just trying to figure it out?

• 1:22:59Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:59Jocko Willink?

  It is what it is.

• 1:23:01Dakota Meyer?

  She can't, I mean, she doesn't, you know, she's, we got three kids and, and you know, you know, she's watching. I mean, how could you be married to somebody like that? How could you be married to somebody who, you know, you look at and, and like you don't understand their anxiety. So like, you're kind of like, what's wrong with this person? You know what I mean? Like this guy's just this weak. You know what I mean? It's like, it's not a, it's not some, it's hard to understand, you know? And um, and I'll never forget, like me and Sailor were traveling. We were actually at a marine base and I'd been speaking to a bunch of Marines and she was with me. And she was having to sleep in the bed with me at, you know, on, on the road. And um, I woke, that night I woke up and I was, I was throwing up and I was sitting on the side of the bed crying.

• 1:23:45Dakota Meyer?

  And like my, I knocked two of my teeth off my, and they came off and like she, I honestly forgot she was in the bed. And um, man, she got up and like, she like, she like patted me on the back and she said, uh,

• 1:24:05Dakota Meyer?

  it's okay daddy, like I know you're a good daddy. And uh, man, it was, that was, that was a tough one, right? You know, like it was just, uh, and so I, um, then I was like, I gotta do something different, you know, like I was getting the Stella ganglion blocks quite a bit.

• 1:24:24Jocko Willink?

  So you, I cut you off or whatever, but so how was that first one that you went and got?

• 1:24:30Dakota Meyer?

  The needle went in, so I was laying on this hot, this bed.

• 1:24:33Jocko Willink?

  So the, the process is that they stick a needle into some part of your neck, brain?

• 1:24:37Dakota Meyer?

  No, so your neck, so like they do it under ultrasound and like they stick this needle on and, and it like, um, it's a block. Um, and, and it goes on your, it goes on one of your nerves and um, it's like a reset. And man, as soon as, before the needle was even out, I remember I was looking at, I was like literally looking at the ceiling and I didn't want anybody to talk because I got, I couldn't believe that, that I could feel this way. Like there was like the, the world, the weight of the world was off my shoulders, like the anxiety was gone, like it was, like I didn't know you could feel like that. And I was just.

• 1:25:18Dakota Meyer?

  The next morning, like I was taking a shower and I was, I caught myself like laughing and singing in the shower and I was like, this is like amazing. And um, so I did that and that worked for a while.

• 1:25:30Jocko Willink?

  What's it blocking?

• 1:25:32Dakota Meyer?

  So I guess what it does is, is you have, you have, um, this is how it was explained to me was, is you have your automated, um, basically like where you automatically do things like breathing, things you don't have to think about blinking. And then you have your, um, where you have to, like your manual side of your, your nervous system. Right? Like where, okay, I want to pick this cup up. I have to think about that and do it. So fight or flight is supposed to be, I recognize you as a threat. You're a threat now, so I recognize that. Now I go into fight or flight. And what happens is, is when we've been in, in that mode for so long, your mind just starts to adapt and it puts it over into the automated side.

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Ooh.

• 1:26:18Dakota Meyer?

  And so that's where you get these guys who are automatically back in that fight or flight.

• 1:26:26Dakota Meyer?

  They automatically go back there because their brain has shoved it in that system. So, so you're kind of like a, imagine with your, your cell phone. If it's running wrong, or an app's running wrong, what do you do? You reboot it. Well, that's what this block does, is it doesn't really shut it down, but it kind of helps you reboot your system. And that's, Dr. Mulvaney was one of the first guys to ever give this for PTSD. And what he did was, is he went, he was, I guess he was at this clinic. And he was seeing all these symptoms that, uh, pregnant women were having. Um, when they were, when they were going through pregnancies and they were giving this, I guess, for some piece of it.

• 1:27:07Dakota Meyer?

  And he's like, well, this is kind of, these symptoms are, are kind of, let, let me try it for this. And like, it's been huge. I've saved so, I mean, it's saving lives. Like, a lot of, a lot of the guys get it, you know, and, um, It helped me for a long time.

• 1:27:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got, I got some people that have been reaching out to me to talk about it and maybe have some of the experts on here to kind of explain it so more people can understand it.

• 1:27:31Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:32Jocko Willink?

  And actually, when they approached me, I said, well, I got a friend that had it and I actually asked you. And I said, hey, did you get that thing? You said yep. And I said, how was it? You said it's freaking awesome.

• 1:27:40Dakota Meyer?

  Awesome.

• 1:27:40Jocko Willink?

  So that kind of opened my mind up and said, all right, you know, if I can help spread the word on this, then let's do it.

• 1:27:46Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. And you know, like all these things are like, let me say this, like, like the, the AlphaStem, it was, it was great, worked great, right? The Stellaganglion Block, like all these things, they work. Um, it's just a matter of how long they work, right? Like the AlphaStem, I'd have to use it pretty much every day, right? The Stellaganglion Block, I mean, sometimes I would go six months without getting one. Sometimes I'd have to go three months. You know, it just, it's about the longevity of how long they worked, you know? And, and honestly, none of it's going to fix it. You have to fix it yourself. Like, these are all, I call them, uh, they're kind of like flashbangs.

• 1:28:24Dakota Meyer?

  They're, they're the flashbangs of life. It's gonna, it's the, you're gonna throw that flashbang in there and it's gonna give you some time to get on the offense in, where they're on the defense, right? So you better make, you better fix it of whatever's causing it. You better get in there and start doing work as soon as, as soon as it, as soon as you get it, right? It's not a, you're not gonna sit here and take it and, and there, you know, not have to go home and work on your life and work on the way you think about things. You know, you got work to do.

• 1:28:55Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, so what's that work look like? Cause when you, I know what I do when I throw a flashbang in the room, I know what to do next. I know what that work is. What's the work when, that you're talking about?

• 1:29:05Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, I mean, look, some people want to go do some counseling, right? Go into talking to people. What I say when people go to counseling, I say, uh, I tell people, If you don't have goals, don't go to counseling. Like, don't go into counseling and think that it's gonna be somebody else fixing it for you. Um, it's kinda like calling up a trainer and thinking that you, you know, you can go to the best gym, you can have the best trainer and the best nutritionist, but you still gotta put in the work, you still gotta eat the right food, and you still gotta show up and do it, right? And, and it's kinda the same thing with counselors. Um, know what you want changed. You know, really look at a, take a hard look in the mirror and, and it starts with accountability.

• 1:29:47Dakota Meyer?

  And like, a lot of people wanna avoid accountability because as soon as you recognize, as soon as you say and look in the mirror and say, "Hey, I'm fat." Well, then you've made a conscious choice not to do something about it. And, um, so for me, like, I know that I have to get, like, usually I, I look in the mirror and I start seeing who I'm surrounded by. Like, when I start going down that road, the first thing I look at, where am I spending my time? Um, and that usually tells me the most of it, right? So I'll back off of that. And then, um, and then I just start, I start, you know, if I need to go to counseling, if I wanna talk to people, I'll talk to people. But most time for me, like, I wanna talk to, I'll call you, or I'll call, I, I call people

• 1:30:31Dakota Meyer?

  and they don't even know why I'm calling them, but I'll call them, I'll call them just to get it out.

• 1:30:38Jocko Willink?

  Whenever your freaking name pops up on my phone, I'm like, here we go. I'm like, do I have an hour? Yes, I do. We're ready to rock and roll. I don't know where we're going, but I know it's gonna be good.

• 1:30:49Dakota Meyer?

  Sometimes I get off the phone with you. I was sitting on my front porch talking to you one day. I got off the phone, I, I called you for like, five minutes and we were on the phone for an hour. And I got off the phone and I'm like, I promise you, I walked back and I'm like, I don't even know why this guy answers the phone for me.

• 1:31:05Jocko Willink?

  I remember one time we were talking and when I got off, my wife was like, who was that? I was like, it was Dakota. She goes, I have never heard you laugh so freaking hard for so long. I, I, one time, I remember I was in my kitchen and I, I had tears, literally tears were coming out of my eyes. I was laughing so freaking hard at what you were telling me. And, uh, man, and that's happened a few times. It's happened a few times. I mean.

• 1:31:36Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:38Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, I, I, I, I know when I see that, when I see Dakota pop up on my phone, I'm like, all right.

• 1:31:44Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:44Jocko Willink?

  I should freaking record those things and I could record them for counseling. I could record them for podcasts or I could record them for calming freaking relief.

• 1:31:53Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. You know, cause like you, you, you don't help it though. Like, let me say this. You, you are like the fuel of it because, because I'll say something and you'll say like a few little words. Just like, you know, like I'll, I'll be coming down and he'll just like say something else, engage. And it's like, here we go again.

• 1:32:13Jocko Willink?

  No, I remember one time you called me too, and you were like, man, you were ready to go hot.

• 1:32:17Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, I was.

• 1:32:18Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, all right, man. And actually I remember what I said. I said, okay, let's think about this strategically. Let's think about this strategically. Well, if you execute what you're talking about executing. I said, I said, where are you going to be in six months? Where are you going to be in three years? Where are you going to be in five years? Like, that was pretty much all I had to say.

• 1:32:42Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, I, yeah, I, I remember, I remember that conversation. Yeah.

• 1:32:48Dakota Meyer?

  All Jaco told me was, and he didn't say not to do it. Understand this. He didn't say not to do it. He, uh, he said, hey, he said, if you're gonna do it, um, like only do it if it's worth losing everything. That's exactly what he told me and, uh,

• 1:33:07Dakota Meyer?

  and that's what I left with. And I was walking around Lowe's and I was like, yeah, I don't think further yet.

• 1:33:14Jocko Willink?

  Working around.

• 1:33:16Dakota Meyer?

  So what were you gonna do?

• 1:33:17Jocko Willink?

  We're not talking, we're not talking about that, but we will say it was not legal.

• 1:33:24Dakota Meyer?

  In no way.

• 1:33:24Jocko Willink?

  It was no way legal.

• 1:33:26Dakota Meyer?

  But I'd already thought it.

• 1:33:27Jocko Willink?

  He had a freaking course of action brief for me. He was calling me like I was the freaking battlefield commander. He's like, hey, boss, I got a course of action. I want to run by you. See if I can get mission executed on this thing. I'm like, okay, go ahead. You know, I'm all ears, bro. What you got? Seven minutes later, you know, he's running through timelines, execution checklist. I'm like, okay.

• 1:33:46Dakota Meyer?

  Already had the cover up story ready to go, you know?

• 1:33:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:52Dakota Meyer?

  Man. But like that to me is like. Like that, like, but you know what, like, but I know who to call, right? Like, I know in that situation, I'm not gonna call some idiot. You know what I mean? Because next thing you know, they're like, we're gonna meet you. Let's do it, right? Like, I, I know, I know, like, I'm so fortunate. I got, I've got all, like, I've got quite a few just people that I just look up to so much and I trust. I trust, like, like you, like, if you tell me something, like, I, I, I know, I know it's what you would do. And so I trust that, right? Like, I know it's exactly what you believe in, what you would do. And so, like, that's why, that's why I would call you with something like that.

• 1:34:35Dakota Meyer?

  Or I would call you, and that's, for me, that's, that's my, that's how I fix myself. You know what I mean?

• 1:34:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it's, it's, uh, believe it or not, if you have people around you that can, are, are on the same wavelength as you, it's a method of actually detaching from the situation, because you're all wrapped up in it, right? You're with the emotions and all this stuff, you're all wrapped up in it. I'm not just saying you, but any human. Echo could be all wrapped up in some emotional thing and call me up and be like, hey, this, what's going on? This is what I want to do. Because we're bros, I, I'm thinking in your best interest. I'm thinking in your best interest, so I'm, but I'm not wrapped up in it. So I can say, hey, man, let's think through what you want to do right now. Let's see what the long, let's see what the long term.

• 1:35:20Dakota Meyer?

  Ain't that why, like, in fights, I mean, their coaches are in the corner.

• 1:35:23Jocko Willink?

  They're there, right?

• 1:35:23Dakota Meyer?

  The coach is in the corner, right? Like, the, the coach isn't out there necessarily, you know, engaging or necessarily having to put in the physical piece of it. But the coach is making sure the guy doesn't get too emotional, making sure to, to stay, stick to the plan.

• 1:35:37Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:35:38Dakota Meyer?

  And, and that's why it's so important in life. You know, like, even back when all this media stuff used to go on, and I would get hammered. Like, I have a few people who are very, the, one of some of the best in the media world. And, um, I'll back up and call them and you know what I make a rule. I make a rule that as soon as I pick up the phone. Like I'm not calling you for advice. Like when I call you about that, like if you say, don't, don't do this or, or hey, do this. Why listen to that? Cause I picked up the phone and I called and asked it. Like I'm not going to sit here and ask you and then go do something stupid because like, why would I even waste your time? You know, and, and that's, I think that's so important to have those people in your life.

• 1:36:24Dakota Meyer?

  To be that logic side when you get into the emotional side too much.

• 1:36:28Jocko Willink?

  You know, for sure. Alright, so we're getting the, the stellate ganglion block. And that's sort of giving you the opportunity to, to, to, to, to work some of these things out. You know, the weird thing is, I was thinking about, so one of the things that I, I know for a fact, right? So.

• 1:36:48Jocko Willink?

  You know, um, for me, I'll, I'll go and talk to a company or I'll go and talk to people. Or I'll talk on this podcast about the worst days of my life, right? When I lost guys. And

• 1:37:01Jocko Willink?

  it's, I believe it's helpful because I've like, okay, I've talked about, I've written this down. I've explained what the situation is even, even, you know, um, giving like eulogies for my friends at their, a- a- at their, uh, memorial services. Like you have to kind of think through things and you have to process them and then you write down and then you, like even that for me, it's sucks and it's freaking horrible. But at the same time, I know that it, it allows me to sort of gather together my thoughts and put them in some kind of perspective. And when you write something down, you're actually detaching from it. You're actually detaching from it. You're, you're, it's on the paper. It's, it's, it's actually on the paper.

• 1:37:46Jocko Willink?

  And then when you talk to some people about it, it's like, oh, you get to see their perspective. They get to give you some of their perspective about it. And so it's a way of,

• 1:37:57Jocko Willink?

  uh, I, I guess just working through the problem. Like it's like, almost like stretching your, when you're sore, you know, you, you stretch out, right? It's almost like that. Hey, I'm going to get some blood back in there. I'm going to think through this. And the difference for you, like in those early days is. People are just putting their perspective on you. It's like just layering it on you all the time.

• 1:38:18Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, and like, let me ask you this, so like, when you, like, what, how old, like, where, where were you at in your life, like, when you lost your guys?

• 1:38:27Jocko Willink?

  Thirty five.

• 1:38:31Dakota Meyer?

  Okay, were you married?

• 1:38:32Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:38:32Dakota Meyer?

  Okay, so like, so like.

• 1:38:36Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:38:37Dakota Meyer?

  So like.

• 1:38:37Jocko Willink?

  How old are you right now?

• 1:38:38Dakota Meyer?

  I'm thirty two. So, so my, my, my thing is, is right, is like, wha- what would have happened if, you know, you, you, you, you had, that had happened ten years before?

• 1:38:54Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:38:55Dakota Meyer?

  You know, you know what I mean? So like, I think that's what's, I think that's where you, like, that, that's, that's, that's what's awesome about, is like, you're kind of like, for, just for me, I'll talk about for me, like, you're the, um, you're, you're the, well, I can, like, you're the, you're the better side of this. Like, I can, like, you, you give hope to a guy like me, that, man, I'm, I, I can get there, I can, I can, I can be okay. Like, this ain't, this ain't, like, the realities that are in my mind sometimes, like, I understand, like, I can look at somebody and say, look, no, no, this isn't realities, like, I'm not, I, I will figure this out.

• 1:39:34Dakota Meyer?

  If I, if, if I, if I hang around people, if I hang around Jaco, and I, I take that, and I take that mentorship, I can be that someday, I can get there someday. I can literally look at, it's not an idea, your reality, and for a guy like me, that's reality, and I think that's, but, but on the backside of it, you're not giving me, you're not giving me advice. The guys, if I talk to my buddies, like, I'm taking advice from a guy who's seen it at, at twenty-three, twenty-one, my, theirselves, right? You got to see it from a perspective at an older age with a different life.

• 1:40:09Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent. My, my whole, in fact, uh, my whole experience of like being in combat was the most, the most gentle like rock, like the first operations I did were like, there was like nothing like cool. We're going outside the wire. It was like this really nice kind of ramp, slow ramp. It wasn't just like, oh, welcome to combat. You know, everything's freaking crazy. So I, you know, even, even like the, the, just the nervousness about of being like, oh, this is real. Like that was, I, I was very lucky. I got that out of my system. The first five ops I went on and nothing happened, right? I was like, okay, cool. I kind of got this, right? And then it was just a slow kind of ramp from there. And, and yes, I was old.

• 1:40:53Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I can't believe I was three years older than you are right freaking now. I mean, that's pretty crazy. And I'd spent my whole life in the military.

• 1:41:01Jocko Willink?

  And that's what, uh, you know, so the, yeah, I was a huge, I was very, very lucky in the way things unfolded for me.

• 1:41:08Dakota Meyer?

  And when things, if they got, when they got not good for you, you had a person in your life that you trusted with everything. That you knew if you were starting to get off the path, you knew you could look at her and you could have a good gauge. You had a, you had a very good gauge of the man that, that you were.

• 1:41:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I think more than that, um, in my own mind, I realized that I needed to. And I'll tell you what, I talked about this with JP when JP was on here and, um, and it, so when, when Mikey got killed, we were sending him home and he was, so we're going into like a Conex box to like say goodbye to him one at a time. And like I walk, so basically you can walk into the Conex box. You see Mike, you know, freaking give him a kiss and, and, and say goodbye and then turn around and walk back out. And, um,

• 1:42:10Jocko Willink?

  I remember just looking at JP and cause JP was like right ahead of me walking in. And as he's walking back out, like I, I see JP and JP was 22 or 23 years old.

• 1:42:25Jocko Willink?

  And this was his bro and I look at his face and he is just fucking, just absolute torment in his face. And I said to myself like, hey Jaco, you better keep your shit together right now because like you said earlier, like it's like a breaking point and people, if one person breaks and I'm the guy that's allegedly in charge. And if I break down right now, man, it's gonna be, it's gonna be a nightmare. And I, I remember seeing him, he turned around, he looked at me in the eyes and his face was just tormented and, and JP's such a passionate guy and he's so emotional. And, and, and he was young, you know, and I just remember I, I said, I better, you gotta keep your shit together right now.

• 1:43:09Jocko Willink?

  Because they, cause you know, they, they, they need you, right? They need you to act like a fucking man right now. And that's what I had to do. And I kind of felt like, you know, with, with my wife, with my family, it's the same type of thing. Like, hey, you gotta hold the line. Like you gotta, you gotta do this. And, and look, my, my wife's a freaking badass, you know? She's the one that was, you know, I didn't, I didn't go to Mikey's funeral. I was still in Iraq. I didn't go to Mark's funeral. I, I was still in Iraq. Like this was, this is, this is my wife going to those things, you know? So, and she's, by the way, she's got three kids, you know, she's getting a babysitter so she can go to my friends' funerals. So I'm not trying to sit here and say like, oh, I had to be all, all strong. She had to be strong.

• 1:43:54Jocko Willink?

  But that's what, um, I, I guess to your point, I was older. I had a little bit more life experience. Um, and you know, as you get older, you're, you're more able to handle things and put them in perspective.

• 1:44:10Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. I mean, at, at, so like at 33, that would be 12 years

• 1:44:17Dakota Meyer?

  older than what I was when it happened to me. You know, and, and I'm by no means, I'm not, I'm not saying that it's either way or the other. I'm just saying that like, The world's a little bit different then, right? And, and, and you know, like, the maturity levels of how I handled a lot of it is not the right way. You know what I mean? Like, was drinking and, and going out and, and, you know, punching people in the face, like, you know, and, and in the new book we, we have coming out, right? Like, I talk about, like, you know, just, I mean, man, I was evil. Like, I want to tell you, like, I came back and, I mean, I was mean. I was mean.

• 1:44:57Dakota Meyer?

  And the problem was, is, like, when you take mean and you take a guy who doesn't care and a guy who felt like he's already lost everything, like, that is a dangerous dude. Like, I would, it was nasty. I would say stuff, like, I hurt my family. I mean, I would say, do stuff, and it's just, you know, and, and I'm not saying, like, I just didn't handle it right. And I didn't have anybody there to, to hold the line with me. You know, like, I mean, everybody, I, I mean, my whole team was gone. Like, everybody, like, my, the, the leaders on my team were gone. And, um, yeah, I mean, it, it, and, you know, do I regret? I regret a ton of it. And maybe if I had dealt with it better and maybe I had, you know, you just never know, right?

• 1:45:42Dakota Meyer?

  And, um, but yeah, it's just, it's different. It's different.

• 1:45:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this brings me back to something you were talking about earlier, and I just wanna... So, you were talking earlier about, like, having a mentor and having people. And I, I just want to say, like, you know, if you're in a position where you can help somebody out, that maybe you've already been through the haunted house and you can give them a heads up. And, and I think people, when they hear, uh, being a mentor, this isn't like this has to be some official thing. Like, hello, Dakota, would you, would you like me to mentor you? This is not what I'm talking about. But just being, being someone that can...

• 1:46:21Jocko Willink?

  Indirectly say, "Hey, man, how's it going?" Like, "Hey, what are you doing with that?" "Hey, what do you think's gonna happen next?" Just those kind of comments. To be a mentor, you don't have to sign up and you don't have to, you don't have to freaking go through a course. You know, there's no eight-week, "What would your baby care course go?" There's no course for how to handle a 22-year-old or whatever. It doesn't exist. But just giving, sharing your experience. And the other thing is, you don't have to be perfect. I'm damn far from, I'm not even in the same ballpark, right? You don't have to be perfect to be able to say, "Hey, listen, Dakota, when this happened to me, here's what I did. Here's the actual mistakes that I made, right? Here's the things

• 1:47:04Jocko Willink?

  that I freaking completely screwed up. Watch out for these things." So it's not, "Hey, Dakota, here's what I'm doing and I was perfect." No, not even close. So maybe you might be thinking, listening to this like, "Well, oh, you know, I'm not good enough to be someone's mentor." Bullshit. Or maybe you think, "I don't want to be someone's mentor." Bullshit. Be someone's friend. Build a relationship with them and show them the freaking path through the haunted house. Tell them what they can expect. Even if you screwed it up, it's better than, it's better than letting them just, you know, get, get in a bad situation.

• 1:47:40Dakota Meyer?

  But don't try to mentor them on something you have not gone through. Don't. Say it upfront. That's gotta be your disclosure of, you know, and, and like, I'm so fortunate because like, man, I'm surrounded by people I don't deserve. Like, I've got, I, I, I mean, I'm just so fortunate to have just great people I can pick up the phone and call. "Hey, what do you think about this?" Right? And, and you know, I'll tell you the one thing that I cut out whenever I start going, you know, when I tell you I have to do that self-reflection and look around, the people who are feeding into my bullshit are the people that have to go. Like, the people who hype me up on my bullshit, like, when I call up and I'm like, "Hey, yeah, what do you think about this? Oh, you know, like, no, that's bullshit,"

• 1:48:25Dakota Meyer?

  or whatever, right? Like, that's the first people that have to go. I don't, I don't need a cheerleading squad. You know, I need people who are gonna look at me, like Tim Kennedy. Like, Tim Kennedy looking at me and saying like, you know, I'll never forget one of the, we were working out one time and, I said something, he could tell I was down, I was going through my divorce and stuff. And I looked at him and I said, man, I made like an offhanded comment, like, gosh, I'm fat. And he like, Tim stopped what he was doing and he looked at me and he said, hey, check it out. He said, you, when people hear your name, they look at you as a warrior. When you walk on stage, they expect a warrior. When you talk, they expect a warrior. When you wake up in the morning, they expect a warrior. So you know what you need to do? You need to look in the mirror and you need to start acting like one.

• 1:49:11Dakota Meyer?

  And that was it. Turn around, went back to work out, right? But that's what I need, right? Like, was that like a kick to me? A hundred percent. But like, I don't need people to feed into my bullshit. I need people who are gonna hold me accountable to standards that I can't even hold myself to. To know what I can be and hold me to that standard, hold the line when I don't even see it myself.

• 1:49:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no doubt.

• 1:49:38Dakota Meyer?

  And Tim Kennedy is one of those.

• 1:49:39Jocko Willink?

  Coming at you, coming at you live, man. When he calls me, it's always gonna, like, he calls me for like reasons. He's like, hey, this is what's going on. He's like, ready to brief me. It's freaking legit. He's like, hey, here's what's going on. I got this, this, and this. I'm like, hey, Roger that. Let me think about this. Okay, here's a move, you know, or whatever. Here's a deal, like.

• 1:49:59Dakota Meyer?

  Like, if I called Tim Kennedy up and I said, hey, man, like, if he thought I was feeling sorry for myself, I was like, hey, man, I think I'm just gonna end it today. Like, I honestly think that Tim would be like, oh, hey, just make sure you leave all your cool, like, hey, can I have your two guns? Like, he's not gonna play the simple, like, if I needed something, though, like, the dude would be like, like, hey, I killed this guy. All right, well, I'll bring the shovel. You know what I mean? Like, but I know these guys are like that.

• 1:50:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:26Dakota Meyer?

  And that's where I'm so fortunate, because I got that circle, right? Like, that circle is everything.

• 1:50:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I guess what I'm saying is, that's awesome. And everybody that's listening, you can actually be part of that circle for somebody else.

• 1:50:40Dakota Meyer?

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

• 1:50:43Jocko Willink?

  And if you do that, man, you make such a huge impact in people's lives by doing that.

• 1:50:51Jocko Willink?

  So how long was the stellate ganglion block like of the deal? Are you still getting that?

• 1:50:58Dakota Meyer?

  I don't like I um.

• 1:51:01Dakota Meyer?

  I probably did it up until 2020.

• 1:51:06Dakota Meyer?

  And then. My buddy.

• 1:51:12Dakota Meyer?

  I was struggling real bad like I was. It just well, I don't know. I was just still I was still struggling with it, right? And um.

• 1:51:21Dakota Meyer?

  He's like, you gotta you're going to Mexico.

• 1:51:25Dakota Meyer?

  And I was like, for what? He said, don't worry about it. You're going to Mexico. I. He said. Quite a few veterans are going down there. Guys, I trusted. He named off a few people that I trusted had gone to this. And I said, alright, and so I booked a trip. And flew into San Diego. And so. I was going down to do. It's a therapy with I will gain. And five MEO DMT and. Something that I. Was the furthest thing that I could. You could ever get me to be around. I was like, this is complete. Bullshit.

• 1:52:10Dakota Meyer?

  And honestly, I was gonna go and I told the doctor when I got there. I said, hey, I'm coming to this. Just so I can walk away from this and tell people that this is all this is all bullshit. And I told him that I said, as soon as this doesn't work, I'm gonna go on every podcast I can. And I'm gonna tell everybody that this is all. This is all.

• 1:52:28Jocko Willink?

  So what what were you going for? What was it?

• 1:52:31Dakota Meyer?

  It's called Ibo gain.

• 1:52:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:52:32Dakota Meyer?

  And it comes from a root.

• 1:52:34Jocko Willink?

  What was the other thing that you said?

• 1:52:35Dakota Meyer?

  Five MEO. It comes from a toad DMT.

• 1:52:39Jocko Willink?

  So this is when Mike Tyson and and Joe Rogan are talking about riding the toad. This is what they're talking about.

• 1:52:47Jocko Willink?

  And you rode the toad.

• 1:52:48Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. So I went down there and I was in a bad like I was still like my anxiety just. You know, and and for me, like, the only thing that I like, when I look back at it. Whatever what what always got me to the point of where I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna wake up tomorrow. Was anxiety. For like, the best way to describe it for you is imagine when you're underwater. And you you can't breathe. You should know very well.

• 1:53:14Jocko Willink?

  I do.

• 1:53:15Dakota Meyer?

  What will you do to get to the top to get a breath? Hmm. Whatever it takes. Yeah. Right? And that's what anxiety is. Like, if you can't get rid of it,

• 1:53:26Dakota Meyer?

  you'll get to the point to where you're like, if I have to end it for anxiety, to get rid of this feeling, I will do that. And that was the point, that was the only thing that got me there. And so, I went down there, um, the other guy I'm talking about, I won't mention his name, but he, he was struggling too. And let me tell you something, he's one of the hardest dudes I know. My team leader, you know, and this was about a year after my team leader, um, who was a marine sniper, took me through, got me to become marine sniper, went to Iraq with him, deployed with him. Then he went over, got out of the marine corps and said, forget it, I'm gonna go be a Navy SEAL, became a Navy SEAL. Um, deployed with the Navy SEALs, uh, team out in Hawaii.

• 1:54:10Dakota Meyer?

  And then, uh, one day he said, I'm done and put it, put it, put his gun to his mouth and killed himself. Uh, my, another hard guy I know. And so, you know, when people call these guys cowards, um,

• 1:54:25Dakota Meyer?

  they're not cowards. Uh, they're not cowards. These are some of the hardest men that have ever walked the face of the planet. And that's why, you know, I, you have to take it serious. And, uh, so anyways, this guy, he went down there. I get down there and, uh, you have to sound like paperwork that says you may experience that you're dying. I, I mean, it is one of the scariest things I've ever done. And after you take it, there's no, you write it to it's gone. There's no off ramp. There's no off ramp. And, um, so I took this, I, so you go there and it was like, you didn't eat all day on a Friday. I took the ibogaine at eight PM on Friday. And now you're talking about,

• 1:55:11Dakota Meyer?

  you, they were like doing this sage stuff, like hippie stuff. And I'm like, you guys are hippies. Like, I don't, I don't need any of that. Like, I, I'm nothing against hippies, but I'm just not one, right? I don't know. I can't get into this, you know?

• 1:55:25Dakota Meyer?

  Waving this stuff around or whatever and um believe whatever you want again but like I I couldn't I couldn't get in the mood and um so I'm like I take it and uh you have to write down your intentions on this piece of paper and I just wrote that um I just wanted some relief I wanted some I just wanted some relief like whatever so you go up and you lay down in this room you lay on this the bed this bed's on the floor and uh you put these blindfolds over and I didn't feel anything for a minute

• 1:56:02Speaker 02

  Wait when you take it what is that like a drink?

• 1:56:04Dakota Meyer?

  It's like like pill it's measured out so you take it

• 1:56:09Jocko Willink?

  You know uh in you and I talked a little bit before you came out here and and I I knew about some of these things that you were trying and I don't know about these things

• 1:56:19Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah

• 1:56:19Jocko Willink?

  And one of my friends Tim Ferriss is like just to to to say like when you're like oh this hippie stuff that's kind of the way I think too right and and I like want to understand it better because I know it help you look even even Rogan he told me he's like I think it will help I think it will help Dakota and you and I went back and forth I was like hey man I'm gonna ask Joe and I said hey Joe what do you think and at that point he'd met you and he'd you'd been on his podcast and he was like that was actually you actually texted me

• 1:56:58Dakota Meyer?

  I did

• 1:56:58Jocko Willink?

  You were like hey this is what I'm coming to San Diego for what do you think and I was like dude I don't freaking know let me ask Rogan so I asked him and of course what is he saying no but he but he wasn't I mean as much as Rogan is is understands this stuff and he's for it he was also like he laid out reasons

• 1:57:17Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah I'll text him and ask him a question about something and he'll be like no don't no that is not gonna help if you're trying it for this he's like nope that won't help you

• 1:57:25Jocko Willink?

  So so that's one part of it like Rogan has that level of understanding and then on the other side uh Tim Ferriss is trying to get this stuff approved medically and trying to get support there. And so I just asked him to give me a rundown of like, hey, what is all this stuff? You know, it's not just hippie stuff. And he's like, no, it's not just hippie stuff. And here's what it isn't. And like he said, I began, cause he, he was kind of talking me through this. Iba gains from some shrub in Africa. And, and he said, it's like the most powerful.

• 1:57:57Dakota Meyer?

  The most powerful there is.

• 1:57:58Jocko Willink?

  Right. He said, a lot of seals do it. Cause seals are like, you know, all right, what I'm going hard.

• 1:58:04Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:04Jocko Willink?

  What do you got? And so, so that's what Iba game is. Iba gain is. It's a lot of times they use it for opiate addiction. So.

• 1:58:15Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, but like it's so, it's so hardcore. That they put these people on it for opioid addiction and it kicks their ass to where they don't do opioids again.

• 1:58:26Jocko Willink?

  All right. So. Back to your story. So you, so you take the thing, they're waving, they're waving hippie stuff around.

• 1:58:33Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, like they're waving.

• 1:58:33Jocko Willink?

  No offense to hippies, but you ain't down.

• 1:58:35Dakota Meyer?

  No, no, no offense. No, I mean, I just, I couldn't, and I like, they laughed at me the whole time, right? They're like, I'm like, yeah, whatever. I can't get into this.

• 1:58:43Jocko Willink?

  Are these, are these Americans that are down there? Are they?

• 1:58:46Dakota Meyer?

  So there was like, uh, yeah, all of them were except for two.

• 1:58:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:58:51Dakota Meyer?

  And, uh. So we're, we're there in this house and, um, and then there's a bunch of, there's a bunch of seals there. As like. That are make sure we nothing, nobody comes in that are there to help you. Um, if you need something, but like, all I'm going to tell you, all I'm going to say is, is like, I was surrounded by seals.

• 1:59:14Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:59:14Dakota Meyer?

  Um, and so that tells me like, hey, like seals are no bullshit. Like, you know what I mean? Like, and that's, yeah. So I took it and, um. All of a sudden, like, I, it's, I feel it's starting to come. Like it's like, it was like the spinning. And, um.

• 1:59:37Dakota Meyer?

  And you were just like, it was like all re- it's like I was watching my life on a TV screen.

• 1:59:43Dakota Meyer?

  And I didn't see anything from war. And I was walking through this town and everything looked gloomy.

• 1:59:51Dakota Meyer?

  And I, I, I'll never forget, I went into this one room. And I went in this room and I, I seen like all these people, it was like this huge crowd. And, uh, but I felt like just disappointment. And, um,

• 2:00:09Dakota Meyer?

  and I got, I did my typical me of wanting to fix it, like, well, what did I do wrong? Like, how can I fix this? And I kept running up to all of them. And then it would be like flashing of people that I knew.

• 2:00:21Dakota Meyer?

  And people that like,

• 2:00:25Dakota Meyer?

  I knew I hadn't done anything to, but just did it for manipulation. And like, they were just flashing on and on. And finally, I'm just like, well, what did I do wrong? And like, I just remember feeling this, like, this feeling of just defeat. And I was in there for probably four hours. And then I came out and as I was walking down the town, like, I would look at every little gauge and it would be, like, uh, the gauge would instead, like, it, it would fill up and instead of being at full, it would say finished and it would be like this far from finished and I never finished anything. And then I would see this beautiful ball of light and I would go to it and it would be my two daughters playing.

• 2:01:04Dakota Meyer?

  And, um, this went on until 3:00 PM on Saturday afternoon.

• 2:01:13Dakota Meyer?

  And I'll never forget, there was at one point of it, I, uh,

• 2:01:20Dakota Meyer?

  like, I was just, like, I just felt like I was such a, just trash, that I was finally just like,

• 2:01:28Dakota Meyer?

  I just, I don't care anymore. Like my ego, it took my ego and just smashed it. And it's like, I don't care what anybody thinks. I don't care. I know I wake up and I'm the best me and I know I give my best. I'm not perfect. I know that, I know that I don't come off and say the right things. But I know what my intent is. I know there's, you couldn't look at me and make me question my intent. Like you can definitely question my delivery. You can criticize how I come off or how I do this or, but my intent is there and my intent is good. And I'll never forget like that, it, it broke everything. It's like got to the point where like I didn't care anymore. And like I'll never forget, I was laying there and I was like,

• 2:02:13Dakota Meyer?

  just I'd like, if this is how I die, this is how I die. And um, I just didn't care anymore. I didn't care what my mom thought of me. I didn't care what, you know, all these people that I had, I had invested in and I had gave them these titles, which when you give somebody titles, you give them authority.

• 2:02:34Dakota Meyer?

  I didn't care anymore. You're not gonna tell me what my intent is.

• 2:02:41Dakota Meyer?

  And so I come out of it, I was so pissed off. When I came out of it, like I literally looked at the doctor and I said, this is what you brought me here for. I said, I, I called up the guy who sent me there, who's a close friend. I said, this is a hundred percent bullshit. Like I was so down, like I, cause my biggest fear was opening Pandora's box. And um, he's like, wait till the next day. So the next day you do this, this five M E O D M T. And um, I'll never forget, like I, I, I, I wanted to make sure I seen the world the same. So I'm looking out this window in Mexico and we're looking out, we're right by the ocean and I look out and all I can see is, is all I can think in my head is, man, this place is a shithole. That's all I could think.

• 2:03:25Dakota Meyer?

  I go down, I do this D M T and I, I, I lay down and as soon as you go like, it's almost like it, it was like feet first. Like I was like gone, like to a tube, right?

• 2:03:36Dakota Meyer?

  And um.

• 2:03:37Jocko Willink?

  And it feels real? Or do you know that you're like, you know you're tripping?

• 2:03:42Dakota Meyer?

  You don't see anything. No, you, you know, I mean, you know, it's, it's not like it's a physical thing like when you drink, you physically feel drunk. It's like your soul, like it's, it's not a, it's not a physical reaction. It's like your soul. And um.

• 2:03:59Dakota Meyer?

  I was, it was gone and like you can't see anything. It was pure white. It was the most beautiful white that I've ever seen in my life. It was, there's no, there's no word in the English dictionary to ever describe how beautiful the white was and. All I could feel was love. Like I felt good. I felt like you could feel what good is like if you took how I feel when my daughters. Give me a hug or that, that unconditional love, like that's what the whole place felt like. It was like the perfect temperature. I didn't think about anything else. Um.

• 2:04:37Dakota Meyer?

  And all I heard were my teammates say that it was all right.

• 2:04:42Dakota Meyer?

  And um.

• 2:04:45Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. It was like.

• 2:04:49Dakota Meyer?

  It was like everything bad was gone. It was like I got like a reset in my life. And uh. When I came back too, I set up. And I just like, I started crying and I looked at these, this, these two women who were there, these two nurses. And I just couldn't believe that like there were such.

• 2:05:08Dakota Meyer?

  They were like, I had to like, I'm in Mexico and there's two people who genuinely care about me. And uh. I care about me enough to, to help me through this. And I looked out the window and I was like, gosh, this is the most beautiful place I've ever been.

• 2:05:25Dakota Meyer?

  And I didn't have any anxiety after that.

• 2:05:29Dakota Meyer?

  I went back home. The stuff that like would send me over the edge.

• 2:05:36Dakota Meyer?

  Man, I was just happy to be alive. I was just, I woke up every, like I, still, I mean, still, still, I get up and do I have bad days? Yeah, but,

• 2:05:49Dakota Meyer?

  but like,

• 2:05:52Dakota Meyer?

  I'm just happy to be here, you know, like,

• 2:05:56Dakota Meyer?

  like, you know, I, I just, it changed my whole life. Like I, I came back and my anxiety was, I mean, I get normal, there is normal anxiety. But like that, those anxiety attacks, I haven't had one since.

• 2:06:14Jocko Willink?

  How long has it been?

• 2:06:17Dakota Meyer?

  It'll be two years this November.

• 2:06:24Jocko Willink?

  You know, the, the thing that you said about intent is something that I, I, I talk about a lot from a, from a leadership perspective and that bleeds over into life because I think if you're doing the right things for the right reasons, if your intent is good, you're gonna be okay, right? If you're not trying to screw somebody over, if you're not trying to maneuver, if you're not trying to, you know, sneak one by somebody, if you're not trying to look out for your own agenda, like the military, it's a classic example. You get an officer or a senior enlisted leader that, what their intent is to get themselves promoted, or what their intent is to get themselves a freaking award or credit or accolades, if that's what their intent is, everybody can see it. And it doesn't work out good for them in the end.

• 2:07:09Jocko Willink?

  If their intent is good, that they want to get the mission done, that they want to take care of their team, that they want to, that they're putting themselves below their team and lifting their team up, like that intent is what, what makes a good leader, what makes a good person. And I think when people have bad intent, it eats them apart, it eats them up. And they can, they can have bad intent, you can cover it up, you can try and drown it out, you can pretend that it's not there, but it's there. And, and what I tell people is like, intent, you can smell people's intent. And the worst part about it is you can smell your own intent.

• 2:07:42Dakota Meyer?

  You can.

• 2:07:43Jocko Willink?

  And if you have bad intent, you have to sit in that rotten stink yourself and it will eat you apart. You can, you can put perfume all over it. You can put deodorant all over it, it's still there and you know it. So that's like a realization that you had of. My intent is good.

• 2:08:03Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, like, like, look, your intent is, is, is your foundation of your house. Your priorities are basically the, the shell of your house. They can change. You can move rooms. You can adjust on it, right?

• 2:08:27Dakota Meyer?

  But if your intent, you know, if your intent is, is, is wrong, that house is not going to stand. You can't keep building on that house. You can't keep adding on to it. You can't keep making it better. The foundation is done. It's done. And the only difference between murder and self-defense is intent.

• 2:08:48Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 2:08:49Dakota Meyer?

  And nobody can question that. No, it, it is what it is. It's, it's black and white. It is, it is an, your intent is absolute.

• 2:09:02Dakota Meyer?

  And that's ultimately, when you start digging down the root of this tree, that's ultimately what's going to decide if you're going to hold up in the bad times or not.

• 2:09:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, the, the thing is, I, I don't know if you, I don't know if I caught exactly what you said, but

• 2:09:22Jocko Willink?

  I've seen people in change their intent in their life.

• 2:09:25Dakota Meyer?

  Hundred percent.

• 2:09:26Jocko Willink?

  So, okay, so I, I, I thought you said like, oh, you can't change your intent. You can't change your intent of something that happened in the past.

• 2:09:33Jocko Willink?

  But if you've been running around looking out for yourself and stepping on people's backs and that's the way you roll, you can change that. You can actually begin to act like a good person.

• 2:09:44Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. But, but here's what I'll tell you is, is you can't be both.

• 2:09:48Jocko Willink?

  That is true.

• 2:09:49Dakota Meyer?

  You cannot. You can't.

• 2:09:54Dakota Meyer?

  You can't be selfish and selfless. You're either one or the other. And there is no, well, I'm selfish at these times, but I'm selfless at these times. No, no, no. Because then when you're selfless, you're only being selfless when you want to be selfless and that's selfish.

• 2:10:11Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:10:11Dakota Meyer?

  Right? Like, there's no being both in this life. Like, you don't get to, you don't get to skirt the line. You're either all in on one or the other. And it's obvious. And there's no.

• 2:10:24Dakota Meyer?

  There's no, there's no any, there's no, there's no excuse for that. It is what it is and you know it and you know it on everything you do. You ultimately know it.

• 2:10:35Jocko Willink?

  Is it like a one time thing?

• 2:10:39Dakota Meyer?

  I just, I've done it once and then, you know, the only, the only thing I'll do now is like a, like I'll use psilocybin if I, if I start feeling anxiety come around, right? Like, um, I'll, I'll just do a dose of psilocybin.

• 2:10:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So psilocybin is mushrooms.

• 2:10:58Dakota Meyer?

  Mushrooms, yeah.

• 2:11:00Jocko Willink?

  And, and then when you say you feel it coming, is this like, hey, tomorrow, like I'm feeling like I'm nervous about tomorrow? Or is it like, hey, I'm starting to feel nervous right now?

• 2:11:11Dakota Meyer?

  No, I start like, you know, like I came home from that I would gain experience and like, I got to see the world in a,

• 2:11:19Dakota Meyer?

  a place that I've never seen it. Like I got to see like with a relief that I had never felt. I didn't know that people could really walk around like this. And, um,

• 2:11:31Dakota Meyer?

  uh, you know, I, I mean, you gotta take, I, I grew up in chaos. Um, I mean, the only, a lot of times, you know, my, my biggest thing is, is not, like people talk about being in like the, the dark places. Well, I'm comfortable there. The problem I have is, is being in the light where there's not dark places. You know, I have the problem of being when there's no chaos. You want to talk about where I'm the best is, is you put me in the most chaotic environment and it needs to get figured out. Like, and the stakes are high. Well, that's, that's where I'm good. The problem I'm trying to learn is how to be okay when it's not chaotic.

• 2:12:15Dakota Meyer?

  And that's what I have to have, that's what I have to work on.

• 2:12:19Jocko Willink?

  How often do you feel like that anxiety is coming? And you go like, like, how often do you feel like, oh, I, I better get a little bit of, a little bit of psilocybin to help me get through this?

• 2:12:30Dakota Meyer?

  You know, once a quarter. One, like, so I'm, just me personally. Like I, I don't think, like I, I don't, none of this stuff do I look at as a recreational type of thing. Like I don't, I don't think, I think if. If you, if you're using it as a medicinal piece, as a, not as a medicinal of I'm gonna do it every night before I go to bed, you know what I mean? Like if you're using it to, to, because it's something you need, nobody questions somebody who takes blood pressure medicine. You know what I mean? Like, so, you know, for me, about once a quarter, you know, and I'll

• 2:13:12Dakota Meyer?

  do like, I'll do a big dose, like, like, like a six or, six or seven grams of psilocybin and then like, how, I'm good. It's like five hours and then I'm good.

• 2:13:33Jocko Willink?

  So, before we wrap up this little section on, uh, this is, this is, like I said, I talked to Tim and, and he just gave me a bunch of really good information because I don't understand this stuff. I don't know about it. I've never done it before. And, but I've talked to so many of my friends that have had, that it's helped them so much, you included, that I, I want, you know, I have an open mind. I want to understand it better. Um, you know, a couple of things that he said, actually, there's a few things that he said. Number one, like, because the veteran community has gone through such traumatic experiences, that's the main

• 2:14:14Jocko Willink?

  group to, to need this type of treatment. The other one is, is survivors or victims of traumatic assaults, whether that's sexual assaults or physical assaults, but people that have been through that. So it's, but, but there's no federal funding for it. So there's no federal funding for it, which means there's no, there's, there's not enough money. It's just people that are donating, donating money to try and, try and help get funding for more research.

• 2:14:46Jocko Willink?

  The thing about specifically, he said about mushrooms is they've been used for thousands of years, right? So mushrooms have been used for thousands of years.

• 2:14:57Jocko Willink?

  And, and he also said, and this was interesting to me, like, there's no, you don't, you don't want to do more.

• 2:15:05Dakota Meyer?

  No.

• 2:15:06Jocko Willink?

  He said, you do something, you're like, okay, I don't want to do more. It's not, it's not like heroin or cocaine where when you do cocaine, apparently, because I've never done it, but apparently when you do it, you just want to do more. When you do, I had, I had a neighbor that had gotten out of prison and moved in with his uncle. And I, he was, he was out of prison after seven years and he, um, he was on meth. And he said, the first, he, he said, hey, the first time I did crystal meth, it was the only thing I ever wanted to do for the rest of my life.

• 2:15:36Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:37Jocko Willink?

  So,

• 2:15:39Jocko Willink?

  and he went right down that path and stole from everybody that he knew and freaking wrecked his life and ended up in jail. Uh, but you know, what Tim was saying is like, there's, there's like an anti-addictive, like, um, because you can't, you don't want to do it every day.

• 2:15:55Dakota Meyer?

  No, I mean, like, I couldn't imagine if you thought you were going to go out and party and somebody gave you a thing of ibogaine. You know what I mean? Like, like, like, like, I couldn't imagine if you thought you were going to go out and party and you took, you know, six to eight grams of psilocybin, like, for me personally, maybe I'm weak. But I, I just, I couldn't imagine. And like, there's nothing about it. Like, it's like work. Like, if I'm taking this, like, I know I'm going in to do some work.

• 2:16:27Jocko Willink?

  The, um, the, the way he was describing it to me, and he's heard me talk about detachment, you know, wrote about leadership strategy, talking about detachment. He's like, oh yeah, here's what it is. He goes, uh, mushrooms, psilocybin is like, it is, your brain can detach and look at what is going on. And then you can find a solution for it. And you just made a face like, yes.

• 2:16:48Dakota Meyer?

  It's clarity. Okay, I get off, like, I come off of it. And I can think clearer than I've ever been able to think.

• 2:16:57Jocko Willink?

  He said, you know, I begane, definitely got to be careful. He said there's cardiac risks. Like you can have some significant problems from that. Um, whereas mushrooms. He, he said, basically, I don't think there's any like reported ODs on mushrooms.

• 2:17:11Dakota Meyer?

  You would have to do pounds of it and there's no way you could do pounds of mushrooms.

• 2:17:16Jocko Willink?

  He also said that.

• 2:17:20Jocko Willink?

  He said, look, there, there's a whole warning thing, right? There's a whole like warning thing that you need to watch out for.

• 2:17:27Jocko Willink?

  Specifically, if you've had schizophrenia in your family, it's like a big red flag. It's probably a no go. They don't win. When they're testing it, they don't test it on people that, that have had those types of problems before, but.

• 2:17:45Jocko Willink?

  Like you said, like it's like these, these things are one to two, maybe three sessions and you don't need it anymore. So some of the other warnings, look, there's legal, like there's, it's illegal.

• 2:17:57Dakota Meyer?

  Yes, it's illegal.

• 2:17:58Jocko Willink?

  It's illegal. So you can't do it.

• 2:18:01Dakota Meyer?

  You're not allowed to.

• 2:18:02Jocko Willink?

  You're not allowed to do it.

• 2:18:05Jocko Willink?

  And if you get caught with it.

• 2:18:07Dakota Meyer?

  You'll go to jail.

• 2:18:07Jocko Willink?

  You can go, you go to jail. So that's number one, right?

• 2:18:14Jocko Willink?

  The other thing that Tim said is like.

• 2:18:18Jocko Willink?

  You've got to, for him, he's like, if somebody asked me about it, he says, here's the protocol. You know, a month of preparation and the preparation that he's putting on people is like, hey, you got to meditate every day. You got to, he's got some books to read.

• 2:18:33Jocko Willink?

  You got to do that. He said, you got to look at it like if you're getting knee surgery, if you're an athlete and getting knee surgery, what do you do? You go out, you research, you find the best doctor, you do the, there's prep work to get ready to have surgery. You got to like work out a certain way and do certain exercise to get ready. Then once you get the surgery done, you got to go into re, you got to rehab. And you, and it's what you said earlier, like you got to do the work.

• 2:18:55Dakota Meyer?

  You gotta do the work and like, if you're not willing to put in that work on the front end.

• 2:19:01Dakota Meyer?

  You don't respect it enough to do it. You don't have, you don't want to get better. You don't want to use it for the intent that it needs to be used for, right? Like all these things, I, I take it very serious. Like I don't, uh, let me tell you something like I, I mean, it's even hard for me to talk about, like honestly, like it, it just upfront, like it's hard for me to even talk about in this room because it's like, this is something that I, I in this room a year ago, two years ago, would have looked at like, what are you doing? Right? And it's hard to bring that up around people that I know and trust. Because if they haven't, you, it's, it's one of those things that if you haven't done it, but then I start thinking to myself,

• 2:19:46Dakota Meyer?

  why can I drink alcohol? You know what I mean? Why, why can I do all these other things that somebody has allowed me to do? I could go to the VA right now and get prescribed Klotopin. I could get Xanax's. I could be out of my mind on all these pharmaceuticals and that's acceptable in our society.

• 2:20:08Jocko Willink?

  And addictive.

• 2:20:09Dakota Meyer?

  And addictive and bad for you, but this, this is, even if I have to think about this, even if I have to go through my life, let's say I do this once a quarter, the rest of my life. For five hours. Once a quarter. Really? People go to bars. They spend more than that in a bar drinking alcohol on the weekends.

• 2:20:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, uh, what, what for me, uh, like I said, I've got you and when you got, I text you like, well, how was it, man?

• 2:20:42Jocko Willink?

  How was, how was it? And you were like, I feel freaking awesome now. And I was like, okay. I mean, like if my friend can escape this pain and this suffering that you're in, like, I want at least other people know about it. And listen, there's like, there's all kinds of things you need to think about. It's preparation. It's making sure you understand it. It's finding the best doctor, the right place. It's, it's also having a safety net in place before you do it because, because it can uncover things that you didn't think were gonna come. You didn't think this was coming and guess what? You get hit with it.

• 2:21:16Dakota Meyer?

  And it will.

• 2:21:17Jocko Willink?

  You get ambushed. So you better have some backup. You better have some safety net. You have to assume that you're gonna need help when you're done with it.

• 2:21:25Jocko Willink?

  Get in the right environment. He, uh, Tim said, take less than you think you can handle. Everyone's like, oh, I'm just going in hard. Like dumb move. Yeah, dumb move. Uh, he, he did also mention a couple of places where there, look, there's, there's John, John Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins University is, is doing all kinds of experimentation to try and figure out how to use it properly. There's a bunch of other places that are doing it as well. There's something called maps.org, M A P S dot org, which is the multi-disciplinary association for psychedelic studies. That's, that's, this is if you want to support what we're talking about.

• 2:22:07Jocko Willink?

  If you want to try and get it so it's not underground, right? Cause if you can go get prescribed Xanax and whatever these other things that you're talking about, or you can just go down to the freaking corner store and buy a bottle of whiskey and inebriate yourself, which all it does is cover up the problems, numbs the problems. If you would like to say, hey, maybe we should take a different approach, you can go to maps.org. You can go to usona institute.org. It's just another, it's U S O N A I N S T I T U T E dot org.

• 2:22:43Jocko Willink?

  To try, you know, to, to donate or whatever you can support there. And then just universities that are out there that are doing this. He told me a couple of documentaries that are, will help you have better understanding. One of them's called Trip of Compassion. And apparently it's super intense. Apparently they show this therapy taking place and it's like, like really intense.

• 2:23:10Jocko Willink?

  And the other one is called Fantastic Fungi. Am I saying that right? Fungi? Fungi? Fungi? Which is kind of, I was kind of like, oh, that's kind of, it sounds like a, uh, whatever, almost a comedic, right? Name. And then he told me what it's about and what it's about is they've got people that are, have some kind of terminal disease. In many cases, older people, but people that are, people like you, what, what we're talking about where people that would never think about doing anything like this in their lives and they haven't for forty, sixty, eighty years. And they're, they're doing these drugs in order to overcome or be comfortable as they face death.

• 2:23:54Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:54Jocko Willink?

  And some, like he says that there's like grandmas on there that, you know, never drank in their life. And they're on there saying, this is the best thing that I've ever done. So definitely some, um, look, this again, I'm, I'm no pro, do research, but it's something that we need to start talking about because if it can help us out, if it's been helping people for a long time anyways, it's, you know, with the case of mushrooms been helping for thousands of years. If there's something, if there's a way to help people, let's freaking research it. Let's find out how to do it right and let's, let's get people to a situation where they can do it legally.

• 2:24:36Dakota Meyer?

  But, but again, doing it with the right intent.

• 2:24:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:40Dakota Meyer?

  With the right intent. And I'm telling you, drinking is way easier than going in and facing and, and, and working through what you see with this. Drinking is easier.

• 2:24:55Dakota Meyer?

  Going and, and, you know, running away from your problems is way easier. This is a, this is a, this is where it's gonna, it's gonna look you in the eyes and you're gonna, if you wanna work on it, you'll work on it. I mean, and it's so hard. It sounds like even me talking about it, it sounds so crazy just to even talk about it like that. But it's really like, for example, the last time I did, I mean, I, I, I, I sit there and looked at my teammates dead. But you know what? I looked at it in a way that I was okay with it.

• 2:25:27Dakota Meyer?

  I came out of it and I was okay with it. Yeah. Did I still feel the hurt? Yeah. Was I sad? I got to see my grandparents, which I loved more than anything.

• 2:25:37Dakota Meyer?

  But I was okay with it. Yeah, it's okay to, it's a normal reaction to, to hurt from it, to miss them. But it's not normal to let these actions dictate the rest of your life. And that was where it did. It gave me the perspective of seeing it again on my terms. And it, and hopefully what that did is it processed it. Now it's out. Check.

• 2:26:05Jocko Willink?

  Proceed with caution.

• 2:26:06Dakota Meyer?

  With caution.

• 2:26:07Jocko Willink?

  With caution.

• 2:26:11Jocko Willink?

  Let's talk about something that's a little less

• 2:26:15Jocko Willink?

  controversial, but also provides a massive amount of healing, in my humble opinion. A little something called jujitsu.

• 2:26:24Jocko Willink?

  How's the jujitsu coming along, man?

• 2:26:26Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I, I haven't, I haven't rolled much lately. Um, you know, I was rolling quite a bit whenever all the, the COVID hit, right? Everything got shut down.

• 2:26:37Dakota Meyer?

  I, I feel like I'll probably be a white belt for life.

• 2:26:42Jocko Willink?

  We're all white belts for life.

• 2:26:44Dakota Meyer?

  I, yeah, I mean, I haven't got to roll a ton lately. I think I rolled maybe like a month ago. But I just, I hadn't been able to get back around to. I mean, there's plenty of jujitsu to go on in Austin.

• 2:26:57Jocko Willink?

  Roger that. Uh, Tim Kennedy, just FYI, your brother here has not been rolling lately. I'm sure you will, uh, help remedy that situation. One of the things that, you know, for me, jujitsu is, is so important for so many reasons. And it's aligned with the reasons of like being in shape, working out, working out every day. To me, that's.

• 2:27:22Dakota Meyer?

  That's therapy.

• 2:27:23Jocko Willink?

  That's therapy, right? That's therapy for me. Um, and I know it's therapy for a lot of people. And I know, hey, give me one day for where for whatever reason, I literally can't work out. Like whatever it is, like I, I woke up at three o'clock in the morning to travel. And then when I got home, the water heater was broken and I had three clients calling me. And then my kid was sick and whatever the thing is, it just didn't happen. I, I, I can feel it, right? It's like a mental, um, um, negative emotion that's going on.

• 2:27:53Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:55Jocko Willink?

  If I, if it's like seven o'clock at night, my wife's about to serve dinner and I didn't get to work on it. I go, hey, give me 30 minutes. I'm going to go hammer one out. Man, it's like a whole, the whole world changes. The whole world changes.

• 2:28:09Dakota Meyer?

  Name a time that you've worked out and you left and you were, you were not happy that you worked out.

• 2:28:13Jocko Willink?

  Boy, I'm bummed I did that.

• 2:28:14Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, man.

• 2:28:15Jocko Willink?

  So fitness, huge thing. And I, I know that speaking of fitness, what's up with this new freaking like application you got out?

• 2:28:23Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:23Jocko Willink?

  Talk to me about this.

• 2:28:24Dakota Meyer?

  I just, uh, I just launched this new, so like, I've always wanted, look, I'm, I don't, I don't want to be a bodybuilder. Like I have no credibility. I don't have no idea how to even do it, right? Um, I don't want to be a trainer. I don't want to be any of those, right? But like, I do enjoy the therapy side of working out, of, of, of staying in shape, of being able to, you know, know that, that i- if we get a fire, I can go perform or knowing that I can get us out. You know, like, I mean, I, I, I still get on a truck to go get after it, right? Like I, I have to be a dad to my, you know, to my daughters and, and look, at some point in a few years when I'm older, they'll be dating boys and I still have to be able to kick their ass, right?

• 2:29:06Dakota Meyer?

  So I take that very serious. Um, you know, so I, I still have this, I know how to train. And, and to me, you know, I feel like the closest I became, all my, look at, look at what all my friends have in common, they all train. You know why? Because you know where we got close to our closest friends? Suffering and training together, right?

• 2:29:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:33Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, that's it.

• 2:29:33Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 2:29:34Dakota Meyer?

  And so, you know.

• 2:29:35Jocko Willink?

  That's how you build a team.

• 2:29:35Dakota Meyer?

  I launched this new app, it's on own the dash training.com and you can get on there, we got workouts on there, you can work out, same stuff I do, right? It's not about, are you going to get on there with a program to come out as a bodybuilder? No, I don't, I don't want to be that. But if you want to get on there and get after it and have a program you can follow to get after it and to be able to leave and know you did something, it's like, I call it practical fitness. It's like, you, you don't, it's not complicated. I'm a simple guy, I get it done where I can. I like to think it's efficient, you know, it's efficient. I just get in what I can with what I got. And that's what it is.

• 2:30:12Jocko Willink?

  So you real quickly like just mentioned, oh, when I'm out getting on the truck. Cause you're a firefighter.

• 2:30:18Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. Firefighter, EMT, I did that last year, I got knocked that out last year because, you know, during COVID and I was like, man, I, I really want to give back. I really want to, I really want to, I feel like I just, I have more to give. Like this country has given me so much, people have given me so much and I just, I feel like I, I have an obligation to give and I want to do it by being able to put my hands on people and being able to be there in their worst moments. And so, yeah, I went and got my certification, became an EMT, became a firefighter, I got my commission in Texas and yeah, so I, I was, I was paid for probably six months, five, four, five, six months.

• 2:31:02Dakota Meyer?

  And then just my, my speeches and stuff started coming back, so I had to get off the truck. You know, me and you talked about it, I mean, it wasn't a forever thing, it was more about getting experience and trying to just sharpen that craft. And then, you know, now I still volunteer and then I'm, hopefully I'll, I'll start doing some part-time stuff, start picking up some shifts at this, this, one of my, one of my closest mentors in, in the fire service, Sam Stacks has just been there for me the whole time and just kind of led me through like he's, he's like the, we call him the, you know, you know, the whitebeards, right? Like he's like the whitebeard of the fire service, you know, him and, and he's been their close friend. So anyways, I did that and you know, I just get out there and try to, try to help people when they need it and it's, it's awesome, man.

• 2:31:48Jocko Willink?

  I I I've talked to a lot of fire departments in the country and a lot of fire departments use the principles from extreme ownership, from dichotomy leadership, from leadership strategy and tactics. We we we work with these guys a lot and I I always feel like, hey, I I appreciate what you guys do. I know it's a hard job. I know it's like a rough job. I know that you see a lot of stuff that sucks and I know that a lot of it is like no like you, you, you, you think of firefighter, you think of like a movie like Backdraft where it's like all kind of dangerous but heroic.

• 2:32:25Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it ain't that.

• 2:32:26Jocko Willink?

  And the other part of it that I know exists is the part that's like heroic, yes, but a different kind of heroic. And man, you and I have had some conversations about that, that even upped my appreciation for firefighters and EMTs even more when you're talking about just the day to day.

• 2:32:50Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:51Jocko Willink?

  Life. I mean, it is.

• 2:32:53Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, let me tell you. First off, let's, let's talk about police and like EMS side of it, police, paramedics, EMTs. Let me tell you, they are the unsung heroes of this, this nation. The, the strain that is put on our, our them, this system that we have, the demand from them, they're overworked, they're treated like shit.

• 2:33:28Jocko Willink?

  On deployment, 365 days a year.

• 2:33:31Dakota Meyer?

  On deployment, 365 days a year. And I'm telling you, they are dealing with the, the piece of the world that we want to pretend does not exist and it is here.

• 2:33:47Dakota Meyer?

  The respect for them is if you see a cop or you see a, any of them, a first responder, you should thank them and you should thank from the bottom of your heart for what they do that you don't have to see. I had no clue. As much as I pretended like I thought I did, I had no clue. The stuff that I see, have seen by, just since I've been doing it, is, is worse than anything I've seen in Afghanistan.

• 2:34:24Jocko Willink?

  On an almost daily basis?

• 2:34:27Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, you have shifts that, nothing goes on, but you have days where it sucks. And, um, yeah, it's, and it's, what they go through is just, you, you can't, what, what I went through in Afghanistan, which I'm not gonna say is for everybody, is what everybody's gone through, but it can't touch what I've seen here in, in, in the United States. And, you know, I'll tell you where it really hit me one time, is whenever I, uh, I was working on an ambulance, uh, me and my, one of my closest friends, um, when we, when we pull

• 2:35:08Dakota Meyer?

  up and, uh, to a call where a kid hung himself. And, uh, I'll never forget, it was like a hanging, and I'll never forget, he looked at me, he's way, I mean, this dude is, you talk about solid, real, he's, he's, he's awesome. He looked at me and goes, hey, make sure when we get out, grab the bolt cutters. He's like, uh, you never know, like, if they hung themselves with something other, like, I've never even thought about that, right? Like, this guy just, and you know, you just, you walk in and you just see, you know, you can't, this is not war, this isn't somebody shooting at you because they hate you. I mean, this is a kid who was so lonely that he hung himself. And this is what happens,

• 2:35:48Dakota Meyer?

  this is happening in our world every day. Has anybody ever thought about who comes and takes care of this? You know, and it's the car wrecks. You know, the, the,

• 2:36:05Dakota Meyer?

  you know, it's, it's just, it's something that we try to pretend that doesn't exist. And you got these people who are just going out and doing this every day. I have no clue as to what they've gone through. I've seen just about this much of it, just a smidge of it. But they go out and they get up in the middle of the night to go and, and be there for when you dial nine one one. And it's like these, these people. Um, not me, but these people that I have got to work with, that I've got to see who have done this for years. Like they really are.

• 2:36:37Dakota Meyer?

  The real life Batmans, Superman. You look at it like, you know, they, when you call them, they go and answer whatever needs you need in the worst moments of your life. And they go back and they live theirs and they walk the streets among us and they don't ask for anything. And it is crazy. They are, they are really God sent.

• 2:37:09Dakota Meyer?

  And it's, it's incredible. And like, you know, the appreciation I have for them, just getting to work next to them. Um, I just, I'm honored to just be able to be around them. But it's, you talk about the world, the world right around us.

• 2:37:25Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, the houses that you walk into, you're just so sad. I mean, it's the people you see, the overdoses and, and you know, you're just like, I'm telling you right now, the one thing that I have, have been able to see is that people are hurting. People are hurting and uh, yeah. But I'll tell you this, it's a, it's been the most fulfilling thing I've done.

• 2:37:50Dakota Meyer?

  You know, how cool is it to be somebody, uh, to be the person that can show up when somebody calls nine one one because they don't know how to figure it out? How cool is that to be able to come up on a scene to where everything's chaotic and they just need somebody to help them get through that moment? And you get to be that person, right? And, and that's where I think like my perspective has changed on all this, like with my teammates or with all the people I've seen die and, and all this like. You know, what's kind of cool is man is, is I, um, for some reason I keep getting put in these positions and it's an honor. Because I get to be the person that's there with them as their soul leaves their body.

• 2:38:33Dakota Meyer?

  And how, how cool is that to be able to share that moment with somebody? Their last moments on this earth. I, I get, sometimes I get to share that with them, these people. And it's an honor. Like I walk away and, does it bother me? Of course it bothers me. But now I, I get to say, hey, you know what? It was an honor. It was an honor that you shared that moment with me. Whether you, obviously you didn't choose to, but obviously we're here for a reason. And, um, I get to do this. And it is like, it's awesome. It is awesome. It's awesome.

• 2:39:13Jocko Willink?

  I've been, uh, lucky enough to work with, uh, police departments around the country and, and what, what's interesting about what you were saying is that, like you said, it's underneath the surface, right? And I think when you see something on the news, you know, you see a shooting on the news or a suicide or an overdose, we, we have a tendency to think that it's somewhere else.

• 2:39:38Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:38Jocko Willink?

  It's someone else. And I'm telling you, small towns, big towns, cities, country, rural, north, south, east, west. You don't have to go very far, quote, beneath the surface because by the way, socio economic class doesn't matter.

• 2:39:59Dakota Meyer?

  Doesn't.

• 2:39:59Jocko Willink?

  You go to rich people's houses, you go to poor people's houses, you go to the projects. And there's, there's people that are, uh, in their worst moments, in their worst moments. And, um,

• 2:40:16Jocko Willink?

  Like you said, it's it's these first responders that are out there that they they answer that call.

• 2:40:24Dakota Meyer?

  Every time.

• 2:40:25Jocko Willink?

  Every single time.

• 2:40:26Dakota Meyer?

  Every single time. And they do it for years. They do it for years, end on end. And it is like, watching them, you know, just like literally, they prepare for the unknown. They never know what the call is gonna be. Like, they literally wake up every day to be whatever you need them to be when they need to be. And I'm telling you, a- and they do it, and they do it, they're, it's such a, like, police especially, like, police, such a thankless job, obviously, right now, right? And they're out there doing their best, and they're out there just trying to, just trying to,

• 2:41:07Dakota Meyer?

  to be what people need them to be. And at the end of the day, they're no different than you are. They're a mother, they're a sister, they're a father, they're a son. They're no different than you are. The only difference is that they chose to put a badge on to go serve other people.

• 2:41:29Dakota Meyer?

  That's it. They're not, they're not some trained robot. They're not some person who is, you know, was was born with all these mind-reading activities, or can read the future to know if someone's gonna kill them tonight. They are just like you are. They are as scared as you are. They, they don't wanna do, like, they got their own problems at home, and guess what they do? They choose to set theirs aside, and and they don't, let me tell you upfront, they don't do it for the pay. They do not do it for the pay. They, they, they don't do that.

• 2:42:05Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:42:06Dakota Meyer?

  They do it because they care about people. I don't care. Their intent? They don't stay in that job without good intent.

• 2:42:15Jocko Willink?

  It's not possible.

• 2:42:16Dakota Meyer?

  It is not possible.

• 2:42:18Jocko Willink?

  It ain't worth it.

• 2:42:20Dakota Meyer?

  It is not worth it.

• 2:42:23Dakota Meyer?

  But it's awesome, man. It's awesome. Like, it's just awesome. Like, I would get on a truck with these guys and I would just look at them in awe of just like, no matter how chaotic it got, they, they had it. And it was like, this is awesome. I want to be one of them. How often do you walk around and say that? I want to be one of them. It's badass. They're badass.

• 2:42:47Jocko Willink?

  Salute. You mentioned a couple of times today, the new book.

• 2:42:51Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:52Jocko Willink?

  The new book coming out. Tell us about the new book.

• 2:42:55Dakota Meyer?

  The Way Forward. Um, yeah, so I wrote a book, you know, me and Rob O'Neil, we speak for the same, um, speaking agency.

• 2:43:08Dakota Meyer?

  Me and Rob connected on, not necessarily about like combat stuff, but just more about the, this life, right? We both come from small towns. Um, we both are somewhere that neither one of us, you know, ever thought we would be, right? You know, and, um, we both have stuff that haunts us and that was kind of where we connected of like, how do we put a book together? Kind of talking about giving some perspective that we're no different than anybody else. You know, and that's the one thing that I always felt like a lot of these war books came back, like right after, you know, these war books came out.

• 2:43:51Dakota Meyer?

  And I feel like all the way up until Chris Kyle's movie, there wasn't really that humanization piece, right? In Chris Kyle's movie, they, they showed more of the, when he was coming back home between deployments, the struggle sometimes, right? And I think that was the first time in any of the movies that it ever really hit. And... You know, I always felt like in our books that we wrote, we, we built ourselves up to be something great, but we never showed that, we never humanized the factors of war. And, you know, that was a piece that always got me and, uh, well, kind of like when I came home. And so like, you know, in the way forward, it's just about, it's about life.

• 2:44:33Dakota Meyer?

  Like a lot of the stories I told today, you know, the Abogaine story is in there, right? Like the, you know, the, the story, I talk about my grandpa, you know, just about, you know, the, the, the circle. I talk about my circle and why I talk about Tim Kennedy, the story I told you, I, I put that in there about how like between Tim, Shane and, and Brandon, uh, my friends about how like, um, you know, you, you got the sword, the shield and the armor, right? And, and those are like that, um, that, that how each of them fit. And, you know, I talk about, you know, my struggles in Alaska. I talk about not, you know, about like my divorce. I talk, you know, I, I talk about all this and I talk about more of the human side of

• 2:45:16Dakota Meyer?

  it to humanize about who we are. And, and you know, and I think it's going to be great. It comes out in July and I think it's going to be great because at, you know, I think it's coming at a, probably a good time in the country of where people are looking for a way forward, right? And that's kind of where, where it comes around.

• 2:45:36Jocko Willink?

  So what's the layout? What's the, the, normally, as you know, I read books before people come on here, but in this case you handed it to me today and said, got a new book coming out. So, uh, what's the format of it?

• 2:45:49Dakota Meyer?

  So basically in each chapter, um, Rob tells a story and I tell a story.

• 2:45:54Jocko Willink?

  For each chapter?

• 2:45:55Dakota Meyer?

  For each chapter.

• 2:45:55Jocko Willink?

  Is there a common theme between?

• 2:45:57Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. Yeah. So like if you look at, like if you, you know, when, when you read it.

• 2:46:00Jocko Willink?

  I can't, I haven't looked at it because, uh, you know what? You didn't give it to me until today.

• 2:46:03Dakota Meyer?

  So, um.

• 2:46:05Jocko Willink?

  That's your tricky way of getting back here again.

• 2:46:07Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, you know, you like that, right? So you know, you talk about like American boys, like that's the first chapter, taking aim, find your heroes.

• 2:46:17Dakota Meyer?

  You know, drilling to open your eyes. Like, you know, I talk about, I kind of, you know, like one of the stories I talk about in here that I felt like, you know, my cousin Steven was, I mean, you talk about a guy who was always there for me, right? And especially one of my biggest cheerleaders when I went to Marine Corps. And man, when I came back and I was just in that, this dark mode.

• 2:46:42Dakota Meyer?

  You know, he had, he had had a kid and married and all this and like, he got busy, right? And, you know, he just wasn't answering the phone and I took it as, well, he's like leaving me, leaving me hanging, right? But really, now that I'm a father, I get it.

• 2:46:58Dakota Meyer?

  So me and him got into it pretty bad and like, I tell you, I

• 2:47:05Dakota Meyer?

  over it just because of ego and resentment. I invited everybody in my family except him to the Medal of Honor ceremony.

• 2:47:15Dakota Meyer?

  And you know, man, I

• 2:47:20Dakota Meyer?

  that's one of the dudes that stood by me the whole time, you know? And just, just stuff like that, like lessons of hopefully, if I can't meet somebody, that they can read this book and, and maybe it touches their life to say, hey, you know what? Maybe I'm doing this in my life right now before I go and, and mess it up even worse. You know, maybe you can look at this as, as a little bit of perspective that maybe, maybe some mentorship. You know? But yeah, it's just all stories about that, that you should be able, you know, everybody could relate to whether you served in combat or you didn't. And Rob's the same way, you know, Rob's is talking about basketball, about growing up in, you know, you, Montana. I mean, Rob has got some funny stories.

• 2:48:04Jocko Willink?

  I'm laughing because

• 2:48:07Jocko Willink?

  Rob and I were on deployment. It was like 99 or 2000. And I don't even think we had aimed, we went to the gym to work out.

• 2:48:17Jocko Willink?

  And there were some dudes playing basketball. And I played basketball. I sucked. But like I played basketball in high school, you know, when I was a point guard. So I could like dribble, add some ball handling skills. I could pass and whatnot. But I I would like get more steals in a game than I would points, right? Partially because of my position, but partially because I I and I was like I was a hustler, right? I would be I'd every game I'd leave with like skin knees and skin elbows. I'd dive on every ball. Well, well, Rob is like, uh, he played a little bit of college ball. And being from Montana, most of the time you find with people that are from the north. They're really good at shooting because you know, you can't dribble in the winter time. So you just sit out there and shoot, shoot hoops. So he could, he could, he could shoot.

• 2:48:58Jocko Willink?

  And we're like walking across, you know, in our running shoes, ready to go work out. And there's some guys, you know, playing some ball. We had one, I think we had one or two other guys with us. And you know, Rob, you know, constantly talking shit to everybody, you know, he said something like, oh, nice shot, you know? And the dudes were like, oh, you guys want some? And Rob's like, yeah. And you know, these kids were wearing, you know, Air Jordans and like they were like, they were ready to run some game on us.

• 2:49:24Dakota Meyer?

  Nike shocks.

• 2:49:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, Nike shocks and stuff. And Rob, I mean, I get, no, you, he's a little taller, right? What's he six one?

• 2:49:31Dakota Meyer?

  Pies, yeah, six foot, six one.

• 2:49:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, maybe six ones, but you're not looking at him thinking he's a baller, especially he's like, you know, a pale white dude with red hair.

• 2:49:39Dakota Meyer?

  With red hair.

• 2:49:39Jocko Willink?

  And you know, uh, so they're looking at us like, oh, these nerds. And sure enough, man, like it's a great combo because I could, I had good ball handling. And I could, I was just feeding him and he's just hitting jump shot, jump shot, outside shot, jump shot. We just destroyed him. And then we walked off with Rob still talking shit.

• 2:49:57Dakota Meyer?

  You know, like, yeah, I mean, you know, I, um, I love Rob death.

• 2:50:04Dakota Meyer?

  Great guy, um, you know, he's, he's always been, I'll tell you what, he's been one of my biggest cheerleaders.

• 2:50:11Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. And it was just, it was, we wrote this book together. I think it's, you know, it's gonna be good, you know? Hopefully it gets out there and helps people and yeah, you know, it's gonna be awesome.

• 2:50:20Jocko Willink?

  Run on. Well, I look forward to, uh, reading it now that I have a copy.

• 2:50:25Jocko Willink?

  What else? What's the future? What else you got coming up?

• 2:50:27Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I, you know, getting, you know, we're gonna do this book tour starting July. We're out there, we're pushing the discipline go, right? The best flavor there is, Dax Savage.

• 2:50:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right.

• 2:50:43Dakota Meyer?

  Just so you know, Dax Savage.

• 2:50:47Dakota Meyer?

  Dax Savage.

• 2:50:48Jocko Willink?

  So you got your own energy drink is what I'm hearing?

• 2:50:50Dakota Meyer?

  Well, I have my own flavor, yes.

• 2:50:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, it's kind of amazing yours, right?

• 2:50:54Dakota Meyer?

  Dax Savage, you know, it's a...

• 2:50:57Jocko Willink?

  When's the tour taking place? July?

• 2:50:59Dakota Meyer?

  July.

• 2:51:00Jocko Willink?

  And then what do you go, you guys are going to different cities?

• 2:51:02Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, so, you know, we're, I guess we'll see, right? I mean, we're waiting.

• 2:51:05Jocko Willink?

  Oh, because of Miss Rona?

• 2:51:06Dakota Meyer?

  Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I guess they're like, they're doing virtual book signings, so we're gonna have those going. But, but, you know, me and Rob both have talked that we want to get on the road. Like, we want to go out and see people. I want to, honestly, man, I just want to go and get around people and, and be able to fire people up. Get them excited about life again, you know, get them excited that, look, it's gonna be all right. Like, we're gonna, we're gonna get through this, you know, get out, get out of the TV. Get, get out of, get, get, turn, turn the news off, get off, get off social media. And stop believing what people tell you and just look around and believe what you see, right? And, yeah, so that, that's, that's that, you know? That's kind of, that's kind of what we're doing, crushing it.

• 2:51:45Jocko Willink?

  Well, before we jump into this support, I kind of wanted to wrap this up.

• 2:51:50Jocko Willink?

  Bringing it back to, to Colonel Charles Whittlesley. Whittlesley.

• 2:51:59Jocko Willink?

  So at his memorial service, there was a, a friend of his family, this is in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. They had a memorial service. And this family friend, who is also a judge, a guy by the name of Charles Hibbert. He, he delivered the, the eulogy.

• 2:52:23Jocko Willink?

  And this is what he said, quote, "We can sit here and say..."

• 2:52:31Jocko Willink?

  "He had so much to live for. Family, friends, and all that makes life sweet."

• 2:52:43Jocko Willink?

  But no, my friends.

• 2:52:46Jocko Willink?

  Life's span for him was measured those days in that distant forest.

• 2:52:53Jocko Willink?

  He had plumbed the depth of tragic suffering.

• 2:52:58Jocko Willink?

  He had heard the world's applause.

• 2:53:04Jocko Willink?

  He had seen and touched the great realities of life.

• 2:53:11Jocko Willink?

  And what remained was of little consequence.

• 2:53:19Jocko Willink?

  He craved rest, peace,

• 2:53:24Jocko Willink?

  and sweet forgetfulness.

• 2:53:29Jocko Willink?

  He thought it out quietly, serenely, confidently, minutely.

• 2:53:40Jocko Willink?

  He came to a decision not lightly or unadvisedly,

• 2:53:45Jocko Willink?

  and in the end,

• 2:53:47Jocko Willink?

  did what he thought was best.

• 2:53:53Jocko Willink?

  And in the comfort of that, we too must rest.

• 2:54:03Jocko Willink?

  End quote.

• 2:54:06Jocko Willink?

  And

• 2:54:10Jocko Willink?

  I disagree.

• 2:54:15Jocko Willink?

  I don't think we can rest. I don't think we should rest. I think we must not rest. What I think we should do is help.

• 2:54:24Jocko Willink?

  I think we need to help

• 2:54:28Jocko Willink?

  our veterans that are suffering and, and not just veterans, but people from all walks of life because

• 2:54:39Jocko Willink?

  life is hard.

• 2:54:46Jocko Willink?

  And no matter who you are,

• 2:54:52Jocko Willink?

  you either are facing, or you will be facing disappointment

• 2:54:59Jocko Willink?

  and despondency

• 2:55:04Jocko Willink?

  and loss.

• 2:55:10Jocko Willink?

  But don't give up.

• 2:55:15Jocko Willink?

  Just, you gotta keep fighting. You gotta get out of that echo chamber that your head is trapped in.

• 2:55:27Jocko Willink?

  You gotta build relationships with people.

• 2:55:32Jocko Willink?

  And you gotta move forward.

• 2:55:37Jocko Willink?

  Not just for yourself, but for the people around you.

• 2:55:45Jocko Willink?

  So let's not rest.

• 2:55:51Jocko Willink?

  Let's help.

• 2:56:03Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming on, man.

• 2:56:05Dakota Meyer?

  Well, thanks for having me. And, you know, like, like, with what you're saying on, you know, that, that end quote, I agree. I tell people all the time,

• 2:56:14Dakota Meyer?

  you do matter. You do. Like, the biggest lies you, biggest lies that are told are the ones you tell yourself. And, and you know what? Just as the good times, they don't all last forever, neither do the bad. And you do matter. You do matter. Somebody, somewhere, is relying on you. Somebody, somewhere. Whether you've met them yet or not,

• 2:56:42Dakota Meyer?

  they will be relying on you, and you do matter. And I'm with you. Look, it's, there's nothing weak about it. There's nothing, struggle is struggle. You know, a lot of times people, they see us as, as that, that, that, you know, we, we don't struggle, or we don't have hard days, because we don't necessarily walk around and talk about it all the time. But like, the hardest, even the hardest people on earth, they got hard. Not because of easy times. They got hard because of hard days. And they got through it. And it's a choice. And you just have to continue to choose to get through it. And it's worth it.

• 2:57:24Jocko Willink?

  Indeed.

• 2:57:27Dakota Meyer?

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:57:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, man.

• 2:57:32Jocko Willink?

  It's a freaking honor to have you on here. Echo Charles.

• 2:57:34Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:57:36Jocko Willink?

  I'm not quite 100% sure that it's an honor for me to have you on here, but it's pretty cool.

• 2:57:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:57:45Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, it's an honor for me.

• 2:57:47Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you. Thank you, Dakota Meyer.

• 2:57:49Dakota Meyer?

  It's always an honor for me to be in your presence.

• 2:57:51Speaker 02

  Yes, very, very big pleasure for you.

• 2:57:53Jocko Willink?

  We want to help ourselves. We want to help others. What do you recommend?

• 2:57:57Speaker 02

  Select.

• 2:57:58Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean?

• 2:57:58Speaker 02

  Hey, do you still love flying your helicopter?

• 2:58:01Dakota Meyer?

  I sold it, but I'm getting another one.

• 2:58:04Jocko Willink?

  Are you getting like a better one?

• 2:58:06Dakota Meyer?

  I don't know what I'm gonna get. Just a different one.

• 2:58:08Speaker 02

  Why was that one no good? Use like a better one?

• 2:58:10Dakota Meyer?

  Like they only have like, they only have like so many hours.

• 2:58:14Jocko Willink?

  Was that one getting close to the end?

• 2:58:16Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:16Speaker 02

  What do you mean? Like, like a projector light bulb kind of thing?

• 2:58:19Dakota Meyer?

  Well, like after like so many hours, they have to be rebuilt.

• 2:58:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:58:22Jocko Willink?

  What, what model was that one that you had?

• 2:58:24Dakota Meyer?

  R44 Raven II.

• 2:58:26Jocko Willink?

  And those are like very common.

• 2:58:28Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:29Jocko Willink?

  They're like the Toyota Corolla of helicopters.

• 2:58:32Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's funny is I thought of this video idea a while ago, like last year. So I, I.

• 2:58:38Dakota Meyer?

  Let's do it.

• 2:58:38Jocko Willink?

  Now he's, he's in the execution phase now. So he, he likes to, he likes.

• 2:58:42Speaker 02

  Well, it's too bad you sold it.

• 2:58:43Dakota Meyer?

  No, no, I got, I got, we get my buddies, we got like four or five of them out there. So let's do it.

• 2:58:48Speaker 02

  Well, I gained access to a 3D model of your helicopter. And I, and I saw little videos of it. So I'm like, and so I made it look like yours. So I was gonna do something, but I didn't do it yet. But, you know.

• 2:59:00Jocko Willink?

  It's, he's been incubating the idea for a year. That's what kind of, you know, activity we got going on over there.

• 2:59:08Speaker 02

  I'm still doing my research.

• 2:59:09Jocko Willink?

  Hey, the last podcast that just came out, um, it's two, I think it's two 75. Yeah, two 75 helicopter pilot from Vietnam. And.

• 2:59:19Dakota Meyer?

  They're the best.

• 2:59:20Jocko Willink?

  You, you, you usually check it out for sure. Cause he, he's just flying that Huey. And we kind of got more into the, like, um, just questions about like flying that thing and how hard it is to fly a helicopter. And there was one quote in there. His dad was a master chief in the Navy. So this guy's a freaking warrant officer, whatever, warrant officer two.

• 2:59:43Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:44Jocko Willink?

  And his dad is a master chief in the Navy, who was a master chief, became like lieutenant commander of the Navy and then goes to see him. Or no, he's stationed in Saigon. The, the dad's in Saigon, like we're doing some bureaucratic, whatever logistics thing. And the son's up freaking flying ops every day. He goes and picks up his dad and brings him up to wherever they were out in the bush and starts flying missions with his dad. His dad's on the 50 cal. His dad's like, his dad's like 45 years old, like a lieutenant commander up there just get, they get into firefights, bro. His dad's on the 50 cal. Anyways, his dad says to him like after a couple of days, he goes, you know, I, I, I work with a lot of air force guys and those air force, those jet fighter pilots, you know, they're always so positive.

• 3:00:27Jocko Willink?

  They're always having such a good time and you guys are all miserable and walking around like everything's horrible. What's up with that? And he says, well, dad, uh, air force fighter pilot is flying an aircraft that wants to fly. That, that if you don't do anything, it's kind of going to just keep flying.

• 3:00:44Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:44Jocko Willink?

  He goes, we're flying something that doesn't want to fly. It wants to crash.

• 3:00:47Dakota Meyer?

  Made to fly.

• 3:00:48Jocko Willink?

  And if we don't balance these four different things, it's going to go down. And we're close enough to down that people are shooting at us with machine guns and RPGs and everything else.

• 3:00:57Dakota Meyer?

  On top of it.

• 3:00:57Jocko Willink?

  So you want to know why we're freaking stressed? That's why. Next question.

• 3:01:01Dakota Meyer?

  Next question, dad. You talk about a father, son relationship after that.

• 3:01:07Jocko Willink?

  Dude, freaking crazy, right? It's crazy. Hey dad, I'm going to come pick you up and I'm going to take you on to run some, they did three days of operations.

• 3:01:15Dakota Meyer?

  That's crazy.

• 3:01:16Jocko Willink?

  His dad shot and look, his dad shot a 50 cal. He was shooting a 50 cal out of the, out of the Huey. That's got to move a Huey a little bit, don't you think? Like, like you're moving a little bit.

• 3:01:28Dakota Meyer?

  I don't know. I mean, no, they got so much power.

• 3:01:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:32Dakota Meyer?

  Like those things are.

• 3:01:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Damn, but the thing is like, they, they do, but it's weird talking to him. It's the first time that I really got the feeling of like,

• 3:01:44Jocko Willink?

  man, how in touch with those aircraft those guys were.

• 3:01:47Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, like you, you can't be reactive. Like it's like balancing yourself on a beach ball.

• 3:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's part of them.

• 3:01:53Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:53Jocko Willink?

  They, they flew to the point where it's part of them. And so that's why I say like when the, like there'd be like a little thing like, uh, they could tell like how much weight they had on. They're like, oh, we're a hundred pounds heavy. Like, how do you tell you're a hundred pounds heavy on a freaking helicopter, right? They could, they were just, they just knew everything and they were so in touch with those birds. It's freaking nuts, man.

• 3:02:14Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it's the power load, yeah, how much power it takes to come off, oh yeah.

• 3:02:19Jocko Willink?

  Freaking crazy.

• 3:02:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:02:20Jocko Willink?

  Um, yeah, awesome. So Echo Charles.

• 3:02:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:02:25Jocko Willink?

  Trying to get better.

• 3:02:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:02:27Jocko Willink?

  Trying to be better.

• 3:02:28Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 3:02:29Jocko Willink?

  What do you recommend?

• 3:02:30Speaker 02

  Well, well, let's start with these illustrious, healthy energy drinks. You know, we don't all have our own flavor. Maybe some of us do, some of us don't.

• 3:02:41Jocko Willink?

  Maybe some of us have one coming, Echo Charles. Some of us do, some of us don't. But either way, flavor, whichever flavor, these are good things. Tell us about, uh, it was kind of interesting. How do you, how did you end up with this? Who'd you talk to?

• 3:02:59Speaker 02

  You.

• 3:03:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it was me?

• 3:03:05Speaker 02

  You're so in touch, man.

• 3:03:06Jocko Willink?

  I don't remember, man. I don't, what'd you call me up and say, hey, should I have my own flavor?

• 3:03:11Speaker 02

  No, no, you, you said it after I, after I got Rabdo on the other energy drink.

• 3:03:19Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 3:03:19Speaker 02

  And you're like.

• 3:03:20Jocko Willink?

  I was like, oh, that's right. I remember saying, bro, you can't be drinking that stuff.

• 3:03:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:03:23Jocko Willink?

  What's in it? It's this, this, this, this. I went through everything like, bro, let me send you some real shit.

• 3:03:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then you're like, we'll make your own flavor.

• 3:03:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Then I said, what flavor do you want? What flavor do you like?

• 3:03:33Speaker 02

  Do you see? How did he forget? How are you gonna add?

• 3:03:35Jocko Willink?

  He's got a lot on his plate. I remember that now. I remember that now. Uh, but I remember saying like, what flavor do you like? And you're like, I like Dr. Pepper. And I was like, okay, all right, we can work with that. Cause that's a cult following Dr. Pepper.

• 3:03:50Speaker 02

  It is.

• 3:03:51Jocko Willink?

  People is a cult following. But who wants to drink, uh, uh, high fructose corn syrup? Who wants to drink that?

• 3:04:00Speaker 02

  Probably nobody if they knew the reality.

• 3:04:02Jocko Willink?

  Nobody wants to drink that. So what we're talking about is this drink right here. Well. His drink is called DAK Savage.

• 3:04:13Speaker 02

  DAK Savage.

• 3:04:14Jocko Willink?

  It is black cherry vanilla. It's totally healthy for you. How many did you drink? You just drank three?

• 3:04:23Speaker 02

  I drank three.

• 3:04:25Jocko Willink?

  You guys are fired up, man.

• 3:04:28Jocko Willink?

  That's cool.

• 3:04:29Speaker 02

  We have to drink three to stay on your level.

• 3:04:30Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, man. I don't know. I can't even remember that I had a conversation with you about this.

• 3:04:37Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so we got, we got these awesome drinks. If you want to get one, go to, get some, go to jockofuel.com and you can order them. You can also get them from Wawa out on the east coast. By the way, Wawa, like, put the brakes on me a little bit. They're like, hey, well, because people were like going in there and buying all of them. And we had to get our supply chain caught back up. Supply chain is caught back up.

• 3:05:01Speaker 02

  So roll on.

• 3:05:02Jocko Willink?

  Roll. Go get some. Clear those shelves.

• 3:05:07Jocko Willink?

  DAK Savage. DAK Savage is your flavor. Yeah, so there you go. What else?

• 3:05:12Speaker 02

  Interesting. These drinks is like one of those things where it's like, oh yeah, I'm trying to improve. Let me do a, I don't know, a pre-workout. We'll, we'll call it a, a traditional pre-workout, energy drink scenario. Technically, I mean, it's, that's like a short term.

• 3:05:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, very short.

• 3:05:28Speaker 02

  On the path thing with long-term detriment.

• 3:05:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, it's not just short-term, like, oh, but I feel good for a minute. No, and now I legitimately am going backwards.

• 3:05:37Speaker 02

  I'm less healthy, literally less healthy. Yeah.

• 3:05:39Jocko Willink?

  Don't do that, man.

• 3:05:40Speaker 02

  This is not like that. This is short-term and long-term, straight up.

• 3:05:43Jocko Willink?

  Straight up. Tactical and strategic victory.

• 3:05:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, you know, the, you know, those combination, ancient combination locks on those old school movies? I don't know, Indiana Jones. I don't know, one of, one of these deals.

• 3:05:57Jocko Willink?

  I've seen Indiana Jones.

• 3:05:58Speaker 02

  But, but it's impossible to do. It's actually not on Indiana Jones, I don't think. Maybe it is. Either way, it's like that. You figured out the combination. See what I'm saying?

• 3:06:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:06Speaker 02

  That's a short-term and a long-term, and it's healthy, and it tastes good.

• 3:06:11Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 3:06:11Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 3:06:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Incredible metaphor.

• 3:06:14Speaker 02

  Also, speaking of tasting good, we've got some additional protein supplementation called milk. I've been on that. I've been on the train this past week.

• 3:06:23Jocko Willink?

  I have been too, actually.

• 3:06:24Speaker 02

  Hey, is it a violation?

• 3:06:26Jocko Willink?

  And I always have, actually.

• 3:06:28Speaker 02

  Well, you know how it goes.

• 3:06:30Jocko Willink?

  Cause I got a sweet, I got a sweet tooth.

• 3:06:31Speaker 02

  Okay, is this a violation?

• 3:06:33Jocko Willink?

  Let me put it that way.

• 3:06:34Speaker 02

  You, I don't think you've done this, but this may have been done from other people other than just me. Put dark chocolate chips in the milk.

• 3:06:44Jocko Willink?

  Bruh.

• 3:06:44Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 3:06:46Jocko Willink?

  Uh, no, I haven't done that, but I've done probably something equally. What is it? Is this a violation, you think?

• 3:06:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the question, yeah.

• 3:06:54Jocko Willink?

  I don't think it's a violation, but I have put ice cream.

• 3:06:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:06:57Jocko Willink?

  Straight up into my milk.

• 3:06:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll say it's not a violation, but you're pushing it.

• 3:07:02Jocko Willink?

  Here's the thing, I did it and I was like, okay, it wasn't worth it.

• 3:07:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it kinda, yeah, the enhancement.

• 3:07:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, it's gonna be so, no. The reason for milk is because it already tastes like dessert. It's like, can you have something, can dessert taste more like dessert? Not really, in my opinion.

• 3:07:18Speaker 02

  Yes, like, like, I don't know if you like rocky road ice cream, but let's say.

• 3:07:21Jocko Willink?

  No, I like marshmallows.

• 3:07:23Speaker 02

  I'm gonna, okay, alright, cool, I dig it, man, but what if, let's say you did.

• 3:07:26Jocko Willink?

  Smores, no.

• 3:07:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:07:28Jocko Willink?

  Marshmallows, no. However, Lucky Charms back in the.

• 3:07:34Speaker 02

  See Jocko just eating the freaking mushrooms out of the Lucky Charms. You're that guy, bro.

• 3:07:38Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I take the milk and what I do is I mix water with it and I put it in a bowl in the morning. And I'll mix water with it and then I'll like make a pudding out of it and I'll put it in the, uh, I just, I do it first thing in the morning and then I'll put it in the refrigerator. And then when I come home in the evening, I eat it like that, oh.

• 3:07:54Jocko Willink?

  It's like pudding?

• 3:07:55Dakota Meyer?

  Pudding. Interesting. Hey.

• 3:07:57Jocko Willink?

  And you're just telling me this right now.

• 3:07:58Dakota Meyer?

  So basically you just like, you can't put too much water. So you just put, like, you just put like a little bit of water in there and then see if it mixes it up. And if you need just a little bit more, you put it in there until it's basically like, uh.

• 3:08:09Jocko Willink?

  Like mud.

• 3:08:10Dakota Meyer?

  Like mud, and then you stick it in the refrigerator and it is. Listen.

• 3:08:15Jocko Willink?

  What flavor do you, what flavor do you do?

• 3:08:17Dakota Meyer?

  Well, so I, I like, I mean, I love the pumpkin.

• 3:08:22Dakota Meyer?

  The pumpkin is like, it's like pumpkin pie.

• 3:08:25Jocko Willink?

  He just looked like an addict when he said that. He's like, I like the pumpkin. We talked about the toad, the D N T toad earlier. You look more excited about the pumpkin. You gotta get on the pumpkin, man. You gotta get on the pumpkin.

• 3:08:38Speaker 02

  That does make sense though, because if I don't add enough, whether it be milk, you know, when you make it in the blender, the normal way. If I put a little bit of peanut butter in it though, sometimes, so I've.

• 3:08:48Jocko Willink?

  Even in the peanut butter flavor?

• 3:08:50Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 3:08:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:08:51Speaker 02

  Sometimes.

• 3:08:51Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna O D on peanut butter, but it's all good.

• 3:08:53Speaker 02

  It's very possible. But there had been times where I didn't put enough milk or I put too many scoops in there. And yeah, after I blended it up, I was like, oh, this is kind of like, almost like a pudding.

• 3:09:03Jocko Willink?

  Now you know to throw it in the fridge.

• 3:09:05Dakota Meyer?

  So throw it in the fridge.

• 3:09:06Speaker 02

  Throw it in the fridge.

• 3:09:06Dakota Meyer?

  And oh, it's, listen, you'll call me after you do that.

• 3:09:10Jocko Willink?

  And we'll say, thank you.

• 3:09:11Speaker 02

  You're welcome.

• 3:09:12Jocko Willink?

  Praise be to Dakota.

• 3:09:14Speaker 02

  So boom, again, another, another, uh, short term, long term payoff situation right there, man.

• 3:09:20Jocko Willink?

  Tactical and strategic victory.

• 3:09:21Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes. So yes, go to Jaco Fuel. That's where you can get all this stuff. Jaco Fuel dot com.

• 3:09:26Jocko Willink?

  Vitamin shop. You can get a vitamin shop too.

• 3:09:28Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, sir.

• 3:09:29Jocko Willink?

  If you need to get it.

• 3:09:30Speaker 02

  Boom.

• 3:09:30Jocko Willink?

  Local.

• 3:09:31Speaker 02

  Yep. Also, there's some other cool supplements on there. Vitamin D three. Joint work for a super krill oil for your joints. We don't want to worry about that kind of stuff. We don't want to worry about getting sick.

• 3:09:40Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:09:40Speaker 02

  Let your immune system worry about that and you just worry about your immune system. Give it vitamin D three. You don't worry about that kind of stuff anymore. That's my point. You feel me? You see what I'm saying? Anyway, you can get this stuff also at OriginUSA.com.

• 3:09:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:54Speaker 02

  There's a lot of stuff on OriginUSA.com. By the way, aside from Jaco Fuel supplements, which is American made.

• 3:10:02Jocko Willink?

  Gies.

• 3:10:03Speaker 02

  Gies.

• 3:10:04Jocko Willink?

  Jiu Jitsu Gies. Rash cards. Jiu Jitsu Rash cards or other purposes. Do you, what do you use a rash card for?

• 3:10:11Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, so I mean, I don't usually wear a rash guard, but I wear those shorts as underwear.

• 3:10:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang.

• 3:10:17Dakota Meyer?

  Let me tell you something. Which ones?

• 3:10:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, either, which ones?

• 3:10:20Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, the, uh, I mean, the.

• 3:10:22Jocko Willink?

  Cause there's like the actual underwear.

• 3:10:25Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, like.

• 3:10:26Jocko Willink?

  Not those?

• 3:10:27Dakota Meyer?

  No, the ones like that have the, uh, the constitution on them.

• 3:10:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:10:32Dakota Meyer?

  American flag?

• 3:10:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:33Dakota Meyer?

  The jujitsu pants or the?

• 3:10:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, those are, well, yeah, those are, those are supposed to be underwear, bro.

• 3:10:38Dakota Meyer?

  Oh.

• 3:10:39Jocko Willink?

  So you're actually using them in the correct manner.

• 3:10:41Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, wearing underwear is underwear, bro. What happens when you roll it, what happens when you roll it on without underwear?

• 3:10:47Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 3:10:48Dakota Meyer?

  So let me ask you. Really?

• 3:10:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:51Dakota Meyer?

  Okay. Hey, Dakota, my.

• 3:10:53Jocko Willink?

  I don't know the answer to that, bro.

• 3:10:55Dakota Meyer?

  You do what you do, bro. I'm gonna come roll with you in mine where. Like I said.

• 3:10:58Jocko Willink?

  Bro, Dean Lester, you know Dean Lester is right.

• 3:11:00Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, he's the man.

• 3:11:01Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, that's great. I'm glad he's the man. Um, here's the deal, like in the early jujitsu days, there was like this thing in Brazil where they would wear like, it's called a sung, it's called a sunga. And then there's a lo, a longer one is called a sunga, but a shorter one's called like a sunga. It's basically a freaking pair of speedos and Dean had something like that, sort of like in between the two, like, but they're freaking basically.

• 3:11:26Dakota Meyer?

  Hot pants.

• 3:11:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, it's basically a speedo and, and he'd roll with me, you know?

• 3:11:33Dakota Meyer?

  And, and, and like, you know. I'm gonna see if I can get a pair.

• 3:11:36Jocko Willink?

  And it's just a freaking nightmare. And I'm glad that those things went out of style.

• 3:11:43Dakota Meyer?

  How was it passing the guard?

• 3:11:44Jocko Willink?

  Uh, dude, it's just awful.

• 3:11:45Dakota Meyer?

  Adventure.

• 3:11:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I tell you what, it's not as bad as North South. I'll tell you that. It's a freaking nightmare.

• 3:11:53Jocko Willink?

  Like you wanna talk about PTSD, bro.

• 3:11:55Dakota Meyer?

  Probably better.

• 3:11:56Jocko Willink?

  I got freaking a damn animal, male animal in a pair of white, tighty whities freaking all up on me.

• 3:12:05Dakota Meyer?

  North South with him on top?

• 3:12:06Jocko Willink?

  Uh, either way, bro, but at least, at least if I'm on top, I can maneuver like we're not doing, I'm going cross side, knee on belly, might even just run away.

• 3:12:19Jocko Willink?

  Nightmares. I need Iba game to freaking recover from that.

• 3:12:22Speaker 02

  Mentally scarred. I think you're right about that, by the way. Also, at Origin Main, we got some American-made denim jeans, boots, boom. Anyway, check that out. It's a good spot. Also, Jaco has a store. It's called Jaco Store. It's where you can get shirts, hats, hoodies, lightweight and regular heavy-ish weight hoodies.

• 3:12:48Speaker 02

  This one equals freedom, good, all this stuff. When you want to represent while you're on this path, boom, that's the, that's the place to get your stuff. We also have a, a subscription scenario going on. It's called the Shirt Locker. It's a good one. New shirt every month, different designs. Very interesting.

• 3:13:03Jocko Willink?

  I saw someone was hyped on social media about that.

• 3:13:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 3:13:07Jocko Willink?

  Best thing ever. They had the all your experiences of lies t-shirt.

• 3:13:11Speaker 02

  That's a good one. You came up with that. I respect you for it. But yeah, that's a good, look, look at that one. It vouchs for you. Hey, check, uh, get that. It's good. JacoStore.com.

• 3:13:23Jocko Willink?

  We also have some podcasts. What's your status with your podcast?

• 3:13:27Speaker 02

  So I'm doing, so me and Dan Holloway do the American Party Podcast.

• 3:13:32Jocko Willink?

  The American Party Podcast. So what happened to Front Toward Enemy?

• 3:13:37Speaker 02

  So when COVID hit, I just couldn't get guests in. That kind of like.

• 3:13:41Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So you're back in the game with Dan. What's it called?

• 3:13:44Speaker 02

  The American Party Podcast. So basically we just kind of talk about like what's going on in the world and we, you know, put common sense, logic.

• 3:13:54Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes those things are good.

• 3:13:56Speaker 02

  With the situations that are going on right now.

• 3:14:00Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Right on. Awesome. So check that out. How many, how many, how long have you been doing that for?

• 3:14:06Speaker 02

  Since like November.

• 3:14:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So that's right around when you stop. I think your last episode of Front Toward Enemy came out and you just rolled right into that.

• 3:14:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cause it's just like, I couldn't get into like interviewing people over Zoom.

• 3:14:20Jocko Willink?

  Zoom.

• 3:14:20Speaker 02

  And I was like, I'm out. Yeah, that's different. It's, it's hard to connect with them.

• 3:14:25Jocko Willink?

  I've done a couple of them, not for, for this one. We're trying to maintain the live situations. I've done a bunch of Zoom and look, it's Zoom is, Zoom is real close. Depending on what you're going to talk about. If people are just going to talk about, you know, whatever, some whatever, like. Not totally surface topics, but if you're not going deep, you know, we're good. I'll do Zoom.

• 3:14:47Speaker 02

  If you're, if you're doing an interview, like a maybe a standard, for lack of a better term, interview like, hey, this is going on. What do you feel about this Dakota Meyer? Then, then we wait for Dakota Meyer's answer? Oh, yeah.

• 3:14:57Dakota Meyer?

  But it's hard to have a conversation.

• 3:15:00Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 3:15:02Jocko Willink?

  So check out that podcast from Dakota. Also, we, you can subscribe to this podcast if you want. And Echo used to seem to think that there was a lot of people that were like purposely not subscribing.

• 3:15:17Jocko Willink?

  The look on your face when I, when I ascribe, when I, when I put thoughts into your head, words into your mouth.

• 3:15:23Speaker 02

  I'm trying to remember.

• 3:15:25Jocko Willink?

  Cause you look, you, you trust me. And so you got a look on your face like, wait, did I really do that? No. Okay. Anyways.

• 3:15:31Speaker 02

  That's me trying to recall when I gave you that impression.

• 3:15:35Jocko Willink?

  Trust me. You trust me that I'm, that I'm not sitting here just making things up, which I just did.

• 3:15:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. So.

• 3:15:40Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so Echo never said that.

• 3:15:42Dakota Meyer?

  Trust is broken.

• 3:15:45Jocko Willink?

  If you want to subscribe to this podcast, go ahead and do it. Leave a review or whatever. Also have a Jaco Unraveling Podcast with Daryl Cooper. New one just came out. They're, they're freaking.

• 3:15:58Jocko Willink?

  It's a good place to learn grounded podcast about Jiu Jitsu Warrior Kid Podcast. Some new episodes just dropped. So you can check that out if you want. We also have the Jaco Underground dot com. Which is a, another, it's, it's, look, what it is, it's a way for us to build a network that we don't have to rely on anybody else. We don't have to rely on platforms. We don't have to rely on any advertising, nothing like that. So if you want to help out, you want to support, you can go to Jaco Underground dot com. You can join that. And as a, as a thank you, we do another freaking podcast and answer questions. I'm, and now I'm starting to cover little topics, little.

• 3:16:37Speaker 02

  Some good topics.

• 3:16:38Jocko Willink?

  Little topics to give people some perspective because, because.

• 3:16:44Jocko Willink?

  Not everything is a Jocko podcast, right? There's a certain, first of all, you can't have a Jocko podcast, really, that's like eighteen minutes long. You could, but it wouldn't be what people are expecting. And normally, we don't like to do that. So we made this other podcast talking about different topics, educational topics, life topics. It's not all about to do with war and all that stuff. It's not all, all leadership, it's, but, but it, of course, it does include those things as well. So anyways, if you want to check that out.

• 3:17:14Speaker 02

  How's this for a topic?

• 3:17:15Jocko Willink?

  Yo.

• 3:17:16Speaker 02

  Let me see your opinion, it's my preliminary thought, I think I might have sent it to you, might not have. The fights you used to get into. Not like as an adult, but you know, like as a kid, you know, like you get into like your first fight. Like what was that? And why? And then go up through high school, I mean, I don't know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna put, I don't know what your actual experience is, but I thought of it because I was talking with my wife and she like reminded me of something, then I said it and then she was like, oh, you're this bad kid. And then I'm like, yeah, well, when you condense all the fights I ever got in, in my life, Kind of seemed like I was this bad kid, but it was kind of interesting to kind of go through those and like

• 3:17:53Jocko Willink?

  Debrief.

• 3:17:54Speaker 02

  Compare, yeah, it's like you compare your mindset like as a kid and then versus as an adult.

• 3:17:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got some.

• 3:18:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's literally the next thought I had was like, I wonder if like, because you know, you, you went through like some stuff.

• 3:18:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:09Speaker 02

  You know, with the, especially in the hardcore scene and all this stuff.

• 3:18:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:12Speaker 02

  And then it's like, it's a different, that's a different community, we'll say.

• 3:18:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's weird to look back at those days. It's very strange to look back at those days now.

• 3:18:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18:21Jocko Willink?

  Very strange.

• 3:18:22Speaker 02

  So it's like, yeah, that'd be really interesting.

• 3:18:24Jocko Willink?

  Because it's just a different, like what you were saying earlier Dakota about being just younger.

• 3:18:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18:29Jocko Willink?

  I mean, when I was like fifteen, like my whole.

• 3:18:35Dakota Meyer?

  Partially developed brain.

• 3:18:37Jocko Willink?

  Just filled with testosterone and rage.

• 3:18:43Jocko Willink?

  We got some interesting topics on there. So if you want to, it costs money, $8.18 a month. Again, this is how we're building a contingency plan. In case things go sideways, we'll still have a way to get this information out. If you can't afford that, it's all good. We got you. Just email assistance@[email protected] and we'll hook it up.

• 3:19:04Dakota Meyer?

  It's true.

• 3:19:04Jocko Willink?

  We got a YouTube channel.

• 3:19:07Jocko Willink?

  It's official.

• 3:19:08Dakota Meyer?

  Official.

• 3:19:08Jocko Willink?

  It's called Jocko Podcast. Is that what it's called? It's called Jocko Podcast and the good videos on there, I am the assistant director of. So you can check those out. Hey, Origin, also Origin has a little, has a channel. A little HD that they put out. If you want to know what's happening up at Origin as we rebuild America. And I'll tell you what, pretty soon, it looks like it could be also, if you want to see what's going on down there with Origin. Cause we want to be expanding in some other states, some other opportunities are out there. So we continue to bring back manufacturing, not just to Maine, not just to New England, but to America at large, which is what we're looking to do.

• 3:19:49Dakota Meyer?

  It's true. Also, Psychological Warfare is an album that we put out a few years ago, by the way. Still doing well. What it does is, what you do is you listen to these tracks of Jaco letting you know how to get past these moments of weakness if they come about.

• 3:20:04Jocko Willink?

  Which it probably will.

• 3:20:05Dakota Meyer?

  They will from time to time, for sure.

• 3:20:06Jocko Willink?

  And if you might want a visual representation of maybe how to overcome some weakness, you can go to flipsidecanvas.com.

• 3:20:16Dakota Meyer?

  That's right. Flipside Canvas, where you can get all your motivation you need to hang up anywhere. You can, you can do canvas prints. We have infused metal.

• 3:20:28Dakota Meyer?

  We have, or you can just get a, you know, like a poster, like a

• 3:20:33Dakota Meyer?

  it's all the motivation you need. Who owns that company?

• 3:20:38Dakota Meyer?

  I know them.

• 3:20:40Jocko Willink?

  Hey, Dakota has a company, you hear me talk about it every episode. Flipsidecanvas.com. Where'd you come up with the name Flipside?

• 3:20:49Dakota Meyer?

  You know, the last thing that my, uh, that Kenneth Fick said to me, um, when he kicked off that morning, he said, uh, Meyer, I'll see you on the flip side. And, um, that's where the name came from, you know, Flipside Canvas, just trying to do, do another little part of changing the world, the same thing that he stepped off to do that day. And, um, yeah, that's where it comes from, to motivate, to be able to inspire people, you know? Um, you know, I, I figured out like, when we look at something, you know, when we, when we view something, it, it makes us feel a certain way. It's connected, you know, our eyes are connected right to our soul. And then, um, you know, so that's where the art came from of like, how do we put things out to where

• 3:21:30Dakota Meyer?

  people see this and feel something that inspires them? And that's, that's where Flipside comes from.

• 3:21:36Jocko Willink?

  And also on top of all that, once again, bringing manufacturing back to America, because it's all made.

• 3:21:41Dakota Meyer?

  All made in America. It's Austin, Texas.

• 3:21:44Jocko Willink?

  Made in Austin, Texas. Go to flipsidecanvas.com, check out all the cool designs and stuff that you can hang on there on your wall. Got a bunch of books, obviously Into the Fire, which was Dakota's first book. His new book, along, along with Rob O'Neill, it's called The Way Forward. So you can preorder that thing right now. That way you can get your first edition.

• 3:22:04Dakota Meyer?

  Edition.

• 3:22:06Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you can get my novel. What'd Jaco write a novel about? Oh, you write about some war thing? No, he wrote it about a laundromat. He wrote it about a 1982 Buick Century wagon. He wrote it about a big box store. And he wrote it about brotherhood.

• 3:22:25Dakota Meyer?

  Brotherhood.

• 3:22:26Jocko Willink?

  So if you want to check that out, check that out. It's coming out in November. And by the way, if you preorder it, you'll get a first edition. If you don't, you're not getting first edition. Cause there's no way that my publisher thinks that people are gonna buy this. They're like, oh, you know, he's a, who's this guy? He's a, he wrote a, uh, hey, right?

• 3:22:46Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:22:46Jocko Willink?

  Who's gonna buy a novel? He's a knuckle dragger. Cool. You keep thinking that.

• 3:22:53Jocko Willink?

  If you want to get that first edition, order up. Final spin. Otherwise, when you approach me with your second, third edition. It is brutal. Guess what? It's not getting signed. Approach me with a bowed head, I'll sign it. But bow your head. Bow your head in shame. Don't watch me while I sign this. Yeah, bow your head in shame because you didn't get in the game early enough. The book is called Final Spin. Laundry mats, station wagons.

• 3:23:19Jocko Willink?

  And Brotherhood. Sacrifice.

• 3:23:24Jocko Willink?

  It's a poem, possibly. I just had to, I just did the final edits. Oh damn, okay. I gotta start reading little chunks of that thing on here. Get it. Get people. All right. Leadership Strategy and Tactics. Field Manual Code Evaluations Protocol Discipline vs Freedom Field Manual. Way the Warrior Kid 1, 2, 3, and 4. Mikey and the Dragons. About Face by Colonel David Hackworth. I wrote the foreword on the new edition. Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy Leadership, the OG. Of Jaco Books that I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. We got Echelon Front. Leadership Consultancy. Where we solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. We got EF Online. Just coming at you.

• 3:24:07Jocko Willink?

  Got a bunch of new courses that we just put up. That, that get granular on the leadership principles we talk about all the time. We got the musters. We are executing the muster. Orlando. May 25th and 26th. Phoenix, August 17th and 18th. Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. Everything that we've ever done has sold out. So if you want to come, you gotta, you gotta register early. Extremeownership.com to check those out. We got EF Battlefield coming up. If you want to walk the hallowed grounds at the Battle of Gettysburg and learn the lessons from history. That came from that battle.

• 3:24:50Jocko Willink?

  Go to echelonfront.com/events and register. It's like 30 people or 35 people. We sold out the first one. We opened up another one. It's battlefield, walk the battlefield. We have dinner, we have lunch, we have Q and A, face to face. It's like you want to come and, and you want to come and squeeze my brain for info? Come to that thing. And then if you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, you can check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org. If you want more of my bona fide blathering,

• 3:25:35Jocko Willink?

  or you need more of Echo's cumbersome communications, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, Instagram, which Echo only refers to as the Gram, and Facebook. Echo's at Echo Charles. I'm at a Jocko Willink. Dakota, first of all, you have a website, which is dakotameyer.com. How do we get the app? Uh, go to own the dash training.com. Can you search for it on a Apple Store or whatever? Uh, you have to go, you had to go through on the dash training. Okay. Send you an email. You'll get all of it. Go to on the dash, own the dash training.com. Also, you are on Facebook, at Dakota Meyer. You're on the Gram. The Gram.

• 3:26:20Jocko Willink?

  At Dakota Meyer. Oh, three seventeen. And you're on Twitter at Dakota underscore Meyer. Echo, anything else?

• 3:26:31Speaker 02

  That's it. Good to see you again. That's always.

• 3:26:33Jocko Willink?

  So good to see you.

• 3:26:36Jocko Willink?

  That was, damn, that even hurt me over here.

• 3:26:39Speaker 02

  Well, you know, he's a genuine guy. I like it. Good, good energy.

• 3:26:42Jocko Willink?

  The intent of that was really rough. As he holds that knife there, yeah, kinda odd. Dakota, anything else? Any closing, closing thoughts? Thank you for having me on. It's always good to see you. Yeah, man, for sure. Uh, thanks for coming back. And thanks for coming back and thanks for continuing to try and help make all of us a little bit better. I know every time I, every time I hear you, every time I talk to you, I feel like you're making me a little bit better. And, you know, more important, thanks for your, for your service and, and thanks for setting the example for the next generation, the next generation.

• 3:27:17Dakota Meyer?

  I appreciate it. I appreciate you. I appreciate you answering the calls. Appreciate you answering the phone.

• 3:27:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:27:23Dakota Meyer?

  I appreciate it.

• 3:27:24Jocko Willink?

  It's an honor. It makes me nervous, but it's an honor. Um, you know, but the, the next generation of sailors, soldiers, airmen, marines, they need to have people to look, look to. And you're, you're that guy. And, um, to tho- to those that are out there right now, that are protecting us on the front lines around the world, protecting our most sacred gift, which is freedom itself. Thanks for holding the line and, and to our people in uniform here at home. And we know who those are. That's police and law enforcement. That's firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers

• 3:28:05Jocko Willink?

  and border patrol and secret service, all the first responders. Thank you for being there when we call 911. And everyone else out there, remember that life is hard and no matter who you are, you're going to face challenges. You're going to face vicious challenges at some point. You're going to be let down and you're going to let people down. You're going to have failures and then you're going to have more failures. You're going to be uncomfortable and you're going to be alone and every one of you out there, all of us,

• 3:28:47Jocko Willink?

  we're going to lose somebody that we love. That's the way life is. That's what life is. And through all of that, just remember that you have to get up. Remember to give thanks for what you do have. Remember to give thanks for what you can do. And remember that your worst day is someone else's dream.

• 3:29:20Jocko Willink?

  And like Dakota says,

• 3:29:23Jocko Willink?

  "Our last living legacy is a tombstone."

• 3:29:30Jocko Willink?

  And that tombstone has your name, and it states the day you were born, and it states the day you died. But what really matters is that little dash in between.

• 3:29:43Jocko Willink?

  That's your life.

• 3:29:48Jocko Willink?

  That is your life. So go out there,

• 3:29:53Jocko Willink?

  and live it.

• 3:29:57Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Dakota Meyer, and Echo, and Jaco. Out.