Jocko Underground: Being Reactive is Jamming You Up.

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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 114, and I'm sitting here with Echo Charles. Reactive versus proactive? So, you've heard these terms before? Yes, sir. And everyone says you don't want to be reactive, you want to be proactive, meaning we don't want to be on defense. We want to be on offense. Generally speaking, good rule, I like it. It's better to be proactive than it is to be reactive. It's better to be on offense than it is to be on defense.

• 0:29Jocko Willink?

  A good example of this, during my first deployment to Iraq, we were doing direct action missions where we would

• 0:37Jocko Willink?

  load up our vehicles, leave our base, we would drive between

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  15 minutes and five hours,

• 0:48Jocko Willink?

  get to a enemy location, assault that building or position, grab whatever bad guy we're looking for, do an extensive search of the area, looking for intelligence, load back up into the vehicles, drive between 15 minutes and five hours to get back home.

• 1:09Jocko Willink?

  When you think about that,

• 1:12Jocko Willink?

  initially, it sounds like you're on offense, right? Going out and you're attacking.

• 1:17Jocko Willink?

  The reality of it, and it kind of felt like that for a little while, but then the more I thought about it,

• 1:24Jocko Willink?

  that whole time when you're driving in a vehicle down a road,

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  that you're not on offense, you're on defense. And you're waiting for the enemy who has the opportunity to be on offense, to attack at the time of their choosing. So, you're on offense, yeah, when you hit the target, you're on offense to the people that are in that target building, because they didn't hear you coming up. I mean, now if they hear you, obviously, you're almost immediately on defense anyways. But if they don't hear you, which they shouldn't, and you get a good jump on them, and you keep the element of surprise, which is a critical part of any special operation, if you do that, you're going to be on offense for those four minutes that you're clearing a building. But, by the way, everyone that's now outside of that building, everyone that's in that neighborhood, in that city, in that vicinity, that's an enemy,

• 2:13Jocko Willink?

  now they can come attack you, and you're going to be on defense and they're going to be on offense. And then you've got to drive home. Now, when you're driving home, you're on defense. You're waiting to suck start in a freaking IED. So even though it felt and it it sounds, I shouldn't say it feels, it sounds like offense. A lot of it's defensive. And I've definitely felt that more and more, the longer that deployment went on. And this was in 2003, 2004, and now the enemy is getting more organized. They're starting to be better with their setting up ambushes. They're being better with their IEDs, their roadside bombs. So as they're getting better, we're now really feeling more defensive.

• 2:55Jocko Willink?

  Now, fast forward a few years to 2006, I'm over in Ramadi. And now we're doing what we did, we, look, we still did direct action missions. They still felt about the same. In fact, they felt a little bit worse because now in 2006, the enemy was really good with roadside bombs. They were really good with conducting ambushes. They were really good with combined arms. So they'd hit you with an IED and then that would stop you. And then they'd come with RPGs and then machine guns. And so it was like, they were good. So now going down the road to go do a direct action felt very defensive. And we started doing on that deployment, a lot of over watches, sniper over watches,

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  where now we're sneaking and they don't see us. We're quiet, they don't know we're there. We're seeing the enemy maneuver and they don't know we're there. And we're able to kill them without them even knowing what happened. That's real offensive operations. Like it felt a lot better. We were fighting the enemy on our terms, not on their terms. So there's just a bit of a reframing of your mind. That goes, that takes place. And I, when I came home, like I was explaining this to other SEALs when I got home, even senior SEALs, you know, senior leadership in the SEAL teams, when they would be asking about these operations, be like, we were on offense.

• 4:22Jocko Willink?

  And they were, we were direct actions on offense. No, actually think about that. Sure, it's on off, it is an offensive operation for 40, 48 seconds. And we are going and attacking the enemy, but most of the time you're on defense and it doesn't feel that good. So it's a reframing of the mind that you have to do. And this is, this is also in tune with Peter Attia, when he talks about medicine 3.0, right? We're, we're not just trying to.

• 4:51Jocko Willink?

  Attack the disease once it hits us. We're not going on offense once we're sick. No, we're doing preventive things to attack the illness before it even gets to us, before it even takes hold of our body. We're not just countering what the disease is doing. We're actually going on offense so the disease can't even get a foothold.

• 5:15Jocko Willink?

  It's an, it's an important thing to think about because again, you can have the same mindset of, well, you know, if I get sick, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna fight. It's like, whoa, what can you do prior to the fight?

• 5:27Jocko Willink?

  So I think that we can have a tendency to make this mistake in other parts of our business, in our life, what, we make the mistake of what being proactive really means. And I think what, what we need to pay attention to is what's going on.

• 5:46Jocko Willink?

  Assessing the future, assessing possible outcomes, assessing possible contingencies that can take place. And what's better than contingencies? A contingency is a reaction. Like when you do a contingency plan, it's a reaction. It's better to do a full preventative plan of what could go wrong. It's the same thing with self-defense, right? What's the best form of self-defense? Not being there. Not being there. It's the best form of self-defense. What are you gonna do if you get attacked at night? Going down a lonely, dark street? I got an answer for that. Why am I going down a lonely, dark street at night? Why am I doing that? Why am I there? Why didn't I organize things so that I wouldn't be exposed like that? And people make that mistake. Do, do we need to train with firearms?

• 6:29Jocko Willink?

  So if we do get forced into that situation, sure. Do we need to train martial arts so we can handle ourselves? Sure. However, what's optimal? We're not even there. And it's not like it's that hard in many cases to avoid those kinds of things. The other one is, and it ties into that, is situational, situational awareness. We use the term situational awareness a lot, but we talk about looking at the situation we're in.

• 6:59Jocko Willink?

  You know, so when I say echo, make sure you have good situational awareness. Now you're walking down the street alone at night and you're looking around.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:06Jocko Willink?

  Great. I'm glad you're situationally aware, but you're situationally aware of the present. This is not optimal. What's optimal is to be situationally aware of the future, of where you're going to be. Wayne Gretzky, don't skate to where the puck is, skate to where the puck is going to be. That's, that's what we need to do. And how do we, okay, so now how do we do that? Well, you've got to take time. You, you've got to take time. You've got to, you've got to detach. And we know in the military, we end up with a person. When a, when a unit gets big enough, you end up with a person that does quote future operations.

• 7:47Jocko Willink?

  Because the operations guy that's in charge of everything, he's worried about what's going on today, maybe tomorrow. He's like, yeah, we got this going on. We got this operation. You need someone that's thinking a month from now, two months from now. So when we don't always have that luxury in our lives. You know, I can't hire someone to be Jocko's future operation life guy, right? To look at, hey, man, look at your health right now. It looks like you, you know, in another six months, you're going to be in a, you know, have gone down in your number of pull-ups. You need to pay attention to that, right? I don't have somebody doing that. I don't have somebody tracking that. I don't have some, someone saying, hey, you know, hey, Jocko, just like, I'm looking at how much time you've been spending with your wife. You haven't taken your wife on a date and you haven't taken her out for dinner in, you know, four months. That might not be good. I don't have anyone doing that.

• 8:30Jocko Willink?

  So we have to kind of do it ourselves, right? We got to pay attention. How do you do that? You know, writing things down is such an incredible method of detachment. So when you start writing down, hey, earnest questions about where you're at right now.

• 8:47Jocko Willink?

  Looking at possible outcomes, looking at likely outcomes, looking at unlikely outcomes. Writing those things down so that you can then assess them. That is a positive way to gain the perspective of the future. So that you don't find yourself in a scenario that you shouldn't have been in, in the first place. This will make you proactive instead of reactive. This will allow you to be on offense instead of defense.

• 9:21Jocko Willink?

  This will make you better.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  That's what I got. That was one of the better little statements I've heard in a while.

• 9:29Jocko Willink?

  Which one was that?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Don't put yourself in a place that you shouldn't have been in in the first place.

• 9:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Or you'd want to do stuff to find yourself in a place that you shouldn't have been in the first place. Dang, that, that, uh, what was it? The gas station, the whatever analogy when you're like, yeah, I got, I got here, but I'm situationally aware. So I'm kind of saying, there's a bigger picture going on, kind of a thing.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Where

• 9:51Speaker 01

  certain places, you know how they, they call them transitional spaces, right? Where, where you, you know, you gotta be situational, even though it's, you gotta be situationally aware everywhere. But these are times where like it's kind of heightened where the, you know, increased threat or whatever, where you could keep yourself out of increased threat situations just by keeping this state of mind. Essentially, yeah, that big, bigger picture we might miss a lot of the time.

• 10:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Future operations.

• 10:16Jocko Willink?

  Yep. You could have filled up, you use gas station. I just said dark street, right? But gas station's a good one, right? You're, you're planning out a trip. Well, I'm going to be out of gas in this neighborhood. You know, it's a bad neighborhood. Fill up before that area. Why are you there? Sure, you can get out of the car and be all situational and press check your weapon before you get out and do all those things, but wouldn't it be better if you weren't there?

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:34Jocko Willink?

  Yes, it would be.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's funny because like, brother, I, I, you put these into terms, this, this idea. Because every once in a while I'll feel, I'll feel that and I'll make, make it happen. Sure, they're mundane things for the most part. So I was coming home from wherever I was coming home from the other day, you know, I was done with whatever I was done and I was driving home. I look, my gas is at quarter tank, little bit less than quarter tank, actually. And you know, that's irresponsible. So I've heard, so I'm like.

• 11:01Jocko Willink?

  Pat Mac, Pat Mac came in and said, hey, echo.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 11:05Jocko Willink?

  Basic dude stuff. Get that tank topped off.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Exactly right. So I think, ah, you know, like freaking, I'd really like to get home right now. The gas station is literally like one more minute. It's one minute out of the way at this time. And I'm thinking, wait, tomorrow I have a few things to do. I'm not in any kind of rush, but I have a few things to do. The next day I have a few things to do or whatever. It's like, right now is literally the time I should go. So, but I'm thinking days in, in advance. You see what I'm saying? Cause I could easily go tomorrow, like literally, because it's literally only one minute away. But still I'd, I'd rather do, I'd rather spend that one to two minutes now. When I can kind of spare it in a way.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  It's always better to pay now than pay later.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and because later is like it's like a dice roll, you know, like who, what if I forget? What do I get in the car? I gotta go. I'm freaking right on time. Oh, wait, my gas is too low, whatever, you know, but it's that that vision. I know I'm making it sound like a bigger deal than it is, but because this applies to bigger things is what I'm saying.

• 11:59Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles, strategic thinker, topping off that gasket.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  I'm saying if you keep this idea in mind, Brian, it'll get you just like how you said, which is again, a very good way to put it, it'll keep you out of situations that you shouldn't have been in in the first place.

• 12:14Jocko Willink?

  We did this op either 2003 or 2004 in Iraq and it's the winter time. So it's dark for a long time, right? You know, it's dark for a long time and we had an op that was like a five or six hour drive in our Humvees and we go, we drive four, five, six hours, get up to this area, link up with the conventional forces. 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 to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are

• 12:59Jocko Willink?

  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 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 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

• 13:39Jocko Willink?

  you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.