Jocko Underground: A Tendency to Do Nothing or Remain Unchanged

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe A Tendency to Do Nothing or Remain Unchanged. Inertia. Starting Jiu Jitsu with Knee injuries. Feeling beat down, hurt, bruised ego, and no motivation. Jiu Jitsu? Or Krav Maga? Should you be more social? Would it improve your life? Overcome self-sabotage. 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 101, sitting here with Echo Charles. I got a word for you.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  The word is inertia. In this word, the definition is a tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged. Unchanged. In physics, I had to get the physics definition, is a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless that state is changed by external forces.

• 0:36Jocko Willink?

  So this is us.

• 0:39Jocko Willink?

  This is our lives.

• 0:42Jocko Willink?

  If we don't make an effort, if we don't apply force, we don't change. Our lives will just continue as they are.

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're up against. And it's not easy.

• 1:01Jocko Willink?

  It takes effort because

• 1:04Jocko Willink?

  nature doesn't want to change. It just wants to keep going in that same path that it's been going on. Your nature, your nature, Echo Charles, my nature, doesn't want to change.

• 1:16Jocko Willink?

  It would rather just kind of conserve energy and just continue doing what it's doing. What we would rather continue doing what we're doing. Just that easy path. Let things stay the same. Just keep doing what we're doing. That's what we have to fight against.

• 1:36Jocko Willink?

  Because if we don't take action, if you don't take action, then nothing's going to change.

• 1:44Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, this is why I use the term default aggressive. Because that's what you're up against. So in a combat situation, you've got someone that there's a hazard, there's a danger, there's a problem that needs to be dealt with. And get these young SEAL leaders, their attitude is like, they look at the problem, but they just kind of want to keep doing what they're doing. You can see, it's interesting to watch, you can see things start to go sideways. Like you can see things start to go off the rails, off the track. And you've got to get over there and get them back on the track.

• 2:22Jocko Willink?

  But you have to go and make that happen. You can't just, it doesn't happen by itself. So you, you gotta be default aggressive. That's gotta be your mode. It's like, oh, there's a problem. I'm gonna go fix it. I don't like the direction that things are going in. I'm gonna go point them in the right direction. Otherwise, they're just gonna go and they're just gonna fall apart. Everything's gonna turn into mayhem.

• 2:43Jocko Willink?

  But that's what we have. That's what we're up against. We're up against our habits. We're up against our routines. We're up against our comfort. Comfort is strong. People don't think comfort is strong. Comfort's strong. It's got power. It's got force. And think about, you've told stories like this before. I've told stories like this before. Remember I told the story about like, I have an RV and I had the mint chocolate chip ice cream in my RV, not in my house, but in my RV. And it was too much. I wanted to have some mint chocolate chip ice cream. But the inertia was holding me in the house. It's like too much of a pain to go all the way up to the RV, which by the way is like 30 yards away.

• 3:28Jocko Willink?

  I mean, this is not a far distance. But I was gonna have to put my, you know, put my flip flops on. They were over on the other side of the room. Now I'm gonna go up there, open the door, pull down the stairs, like walk in, like just that right there.

• 3:43Jocko Willink?

  To get, to get an immediate gratification reward of ice cream. And I was, I didn't do it, dude. I want to talk about the power of inertia and the power of laziness.

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  So you're up against that. You're up against your comfort. Your comfort is strong. You're up against the fear of the unknown because you think, what if I get off this, you know, this, this comfort that I'm in right now? There's a risk. Any change risks my comfort that I'm in right now.

• 4:07Jocko Willink?

  Any change that I make risks the comfort that I'm in right now. You, plus you have a little emotional attachment to what's going on. You're used to it. If you've ever known those people that they go out with some girl or some girl goes out with some guy, they don't even like each other anymore. But they're still going out.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:26Jocko Willink?

  Why is that? Well, they just have a, a, an emotional attachment, not to the person, but just to the situation.

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  That's what you're up against. Just think about that. A young man or a young woman is staying with some other person that they're sick of. Out of habit, out of comfort, out of emotional attachment to the situation. They're taking themselves off the table for all the other opportunities that are out there. Cause they got that comfort.

• 4:54Jocko Willink?

  So you see some risk in leaving and you say, no, I'm not going to leave. I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing.

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  You're up against your, your lack of awareness. Cause sometimes you don't even see that the path you're on is, is going in the wrong direction. We can always see it from the outside. You know, somebody, you know, somebody that's on that path. You're like, what are they doing? They don't see it. So they don't have self-awareness to know what's going on. So you're up against that. You're up against the understanding of the situation that you're in. If you don't understand what's going on around you.

• 5:30Jocko Willink?

  You don't get to elevate. You know, this is the classic, when you're a kid and, and someone to tell you like, you don't want to get mixed up with the wrong crowd.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:38Jocko Willink?

  Right? You don't want to get mixed up with the wrong crowd. Why is that? It's because once you're, and by the way, it's not just, oh, this is the crowd that's over there doing vandalism, or this is the crowd that's over there doing drugs. You could just be in a crowd that just isn't doing anything.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:52Jocko Willink?

  But your friends, you're just not doing anything. They don't have any goals. You get caught up in a crowd that's like, excited about doing stuff and making things happen. You remember that group in school? They were, they were, they had a plan.

• 6:08Jocko Willink?

  So you don't even understand that you don't even have a plan and you don't see it. Cause everyone around you is in that same zone.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  And then you have past experience and you have negative lesson learns. Cause you remember that one time Echo Charles, where you decided to step out of your comfort zone? You got smacked down? You got rejected from a new job. You got rejected by some girl. You competed, but you lost. You hurt your bicep. Like all those things happened. So you got some negative experience. Every time you stepped outside, the comfort zone, you got smashed. People like, oh, you gotta get outside your comfort zone. People like, oh, well, last time I went outside my comfort zone, I got my head ripped off.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  I'm not going outside of that thinking. So you have to fight against that. That's all part of inertia.

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  And all those things are all ganging up on you. They're all trying to stop you.

• 7:02Jocko Willink?

  They're all trying to stop you. And what's weird about inertia, like you're walking around today. Echo Charles, you're walking around today. How, how many times a day did you think about gravity?

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Gravity, actual gravity?

• 7:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Zero.

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you're walking around, you've been awake for 10 hours, 12 hours, whatever. You haven't thought about gravity all day. And yet it is the primary force impacting your whole existence right now. You didn't think about it one time.

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  That's the same thing with inertia. It's just there. It's just there. And it's just holding on to you. And it's keeping you in the same spot.

• 7:44Jocko Willink?

  And just like it takes force to break gravity, you gotta like jump off the ground. It takes force to break inertia.

• 7:55Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't recognize that, you're not gonna make any progress, you're not gonna make any change, and you're not gonna be

• 8:04Jocko Willink?

  who you could be

• 8:07Jocko Willink?

  and who you should be.

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  So that's what I got.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's like a massive like wake up call, you know?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  You know, and that's so true about the comfort zone where it's like, uh, well, even I think it was Jordan Peterson, not. Uh, yeah, yeah, I think it was when he's like, the devil you know is, is, I don't know, something. He just is the devil you know. You know, it's like, it's more, it's less scary than the-

• 8:33Jocko Willink?

  Well, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. Is, is the common saying.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, yeah. And it's, it's kinda true. It feels, that feels correct, you know? At least I know how to deal with this mentally, emotionally, whatever. I know how to deal with fricking being a slacker. I know how to deal with that. I don't know how to deal with what's-

• 8:52Speaker 01

  It's a case maybe. But, you know, I don't know what lies on the other side of that other stuff. I don't care how excellent you, you say it might be or whatever, like, bro, I don't, I don't know. It's unfamiliar. It's the unknown. It's a dark room as far as I'm concerned. I'd way rather be in this light room where I can see them coming. You see what I'm saying? All the things or whatever. So yeah, but it makes sense.

• 9:12Jocko Willink?

  You, you know, th- this also.

• 9:17Jocko Willink?

  You've got to know who your enemy is. That's why I'm talking about this. You've gotta know, if it's like they literally say and when they're teaching you about. So, that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen,

• 9:37Jocko Willink?

  go to jockounderground.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

• 10:09Jocko 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 jockounderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month and if you can't afford to support us,

• 10:35Jocko Willink?

  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.