Jocko Underground: Your Life Is Here To Live... Don't F**k It Up. Opportunity, Attitude, and Gratitude. Don't F**k It Up.

Simple Message: Don't fuck it up. Making the best of it. Is it your business? Family member's way of raising his kids. Leading a team with no objective. 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 the Jocko Underground Podcast number 15 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. Also joining us tonight, Daryl Cooper. Good evening, Daryl. Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  So, I'm in Task Unit Bruiser and I am the commander of Task Unit Bruiser, which is a, sounds like a real arrogant thing to say, but I was the guy that was in charge and we deployed, we did a workup, we deployed, we came back. When we came back, Leif, so there's two platoon commanders, Leif and Seth. Leif, when we got back, he went to the junior officer training course and he started running that. I moved into the training detachment and started running the training for SEALs, getting ready to, for the SEAL platoons and task units, getting ready to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan.

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  And then Seth actually stepped up and took my job as task unit commander. And so he took over Task Unit Bruiser in a way, but actually in a way he didn't because, because they, they, they split up Task Unit Bruiser. When we got back, they, they took all those, as many guys as they could and they spread them into other task units because it was just too, it was just too much. It was too much like force to have all these guys. So, you know, Seth kept some of the guys, but it was mostly new guys. So that they didn't even really call themselves Task Unit Bruiser. There's

• 1:40Jocko Willink?

  a, maybe a little semblance left over, but Seth took my job. So in the SEAL teams, we have this thing, I don't want to make it like it's that big of a thing, but we had this thing called a, we called the Ouija board is what we called it. And what it is, is it's a, it's basically a magnet board. And there's one at the whole command and then the whole command they have on this magnet board of everyone that's at the command, they have a little magnet that has your picture on it, your name, your rank, and maybe what qualifications you have. And there's one of those in the master chief's office that's, you know, huge, like a big blackboard in school with whatever, 200 people on it. But then in a task unit, you'll have one too. And so we had one in the task unit. We had the Ouija board.

• 2:27Jocko Willink?

  And oh, when I was the task unit commander, when we got home, I, I was the top of the, I was the top of the Ouija board. And then when Seth stepped up and became the task unit commander, well, he moved up to the top. And but he didn't take me off. What he did with me was he kind of slid my picture over to the right. He was actually put it above him and then he put a little, he put like a little cartoon. I think they call a little cartoon call out. So it looked like I was saying, so there was words coming out of my mouth. Just had me giving him some simple instruction and that simple instruction was,

• 3:10Jocko Willink?

  don't fuck it up. And it was something that I had said to him, you know, he was, he was going out while he was working for me. When I was the task unit commander, he was working for me and he was going out. We were doing some training and he had like a, a smaller mission to go out on pretty early on. And it was something that was, it was like going to be a challenge, but it was pretty simple and pretty straightforward. And he looked like he was, you know, maybe could use a little confidence boost. And I was like, dude, this is no factor. You got this. And then he, he kind of like had, in a, in a split second, had a little overconfident look in his face. And so I said, don't fuck it up.

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  And you brought him back down and he went and did it. You know, we laughed about it. But it's true. It's actually, it's actually true. And it was true on the Ouija board and he knew that it was true on the Ouija board. And he, the Ouija board is lit, is literally sitting in front of his desk. So when he would look up from his desk, he sees the Ouija board, he sees all of his troops and he sees me and, and that little call out saying, don't fuck it up. And he knew it was the truth. Because it's the best job in the world. Best job in the world. Being in a SEAL platoon or being in a SEAL task unit and being in a leadership role is an honor to be in that situation. You got all these, you got all these guys that are actually relying on you to do a good job.

• 4:36Jocko Willink?

  And make the right decisions and to not fuck it up.

• 4:46Jocko Willink?

  And he didn't, he didn't. He did a great job as a, as a task unit commander and when he went overseas, another interesting thing was, you know, he was pretty. The, the, the deployment to Ramadi was freaking hard and he did, I don't know how many operations, but it was a shit ton. And. You know, had a bunch of guys wounded right before we came home, you know, he had, he had Mikey killed.

• 5:15Jocko Willink?

  And it was rough. And so when he was getting ready to, when, when we got back, he wasn't quite sure what he was gonna do. And I said, listen, man, do the task unit commander, I go. That things are chilling out, you'll go over there, it's not gonna be a big deal. I'm in charge of training, it'll be fun. And, you know, once you get overseas, you know, it'll just be no factor. There's not, the, the war's gonna be settled down. It's a year and a half away. Well, sure enough, he gets over there expecting to have this Mellow deployment and.

• 5:47Jocko Willink?

  When some of the army leadership found out that there was guys from task unit Bruiser back in country, they sent out. A request for forces, but it was very specific. It was like, we would like to have approximately this many SEALs with this kind of experience. And they might as well have said, you know, six foot one blonde hair shaved head, blue eyed commander of that unit, like wanting stoner.

• 6:15Jocko Willink?

  So, but that's what happened and they, they put together a crew and went into. Executed a bunch of operations in Sotter City in Baghdad that were, that was. They were extremely effective operations and the insurgent leadership inside Sotter City, Sotter City had been a total disaster for. The entire war up until that was 2008. So for five straight years, Sotter City had been. Really horrible and. His task unit rolled in there and, and they killed a lot of bad guys and the. Insurgent leaders, I think it was about six weeks of operations that they did, they killed hundreds of bad guys.

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  And then the insurgent leadership in there surrendered. They basically surrendered, said, all right, we're good. So that was it. So then he finished that. Eventually came home and, you know, he continued on with his career. I retired and, and.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a few years.

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  Actually, you fast forward from 2008 to 2017, so almost a decade. And Seth got killed in a, in a parachute accident.

• 7:28Jocko Willink?

  And.

• 7:33Jocko Willink?

  And so I no longer, you know, have the ability to offer him any advice or anything like that. And I don't have the opportunity to tell him to not fuck things up.

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  But it's, it's interesting because I was thinking about this the other day and it's like the roles have been reversed and now I think probably Seth is looking down on me. And he sees me, he sees my life, he sees the freedom that, that I have, that we have, the opportunity that we all have. The opportunity to do more and, and make ourselves better and help more people and, and have an impact on the world. And I can, I can imagine, and I do imagine that he's sitting there looking down on me. And he's saying the same thing.

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  He's telling me the same thing that I told him. Which is, don't fuck it up.

• 8:45Jocko Willink?

  And why am I saying this? Why am I, why am I, why am I reciting this story?

• 8:53Jocko Willink?

  It's because it's actually really good advice. It's actually really good advice for us all to take. It's, it's simple, it's straightforward, and it actually makes sense when you are making decisions. If you think through what you're doing.

• 9:12Jocko Willink?

  And you overlay the simple principle.

• 9:18Jocko Willink?

  Of not fucking it up, you will see that life's filled with all kinds of opportunities and chances and things are gonna get hard and there's

• 9:27Jocko Willink?

  So, that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to JacoUnderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is, free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you

• 10:08Jocko Willink?

  more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now. Where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's JacoUnderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.