Jocko Underground: Finding No Joy and No Relief In Life. This is How You Find It.

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe How to approach life when you find no joy. Tired of upper management at my job. What do I do? Is accepting your limitations just an excuse? I want to get big and strong and also good at Jiu Jitsu. How to become for comfortable and confident with women. 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 155, sitting here with Echo Charles, and we are here to answer your questions. We've got some good ones this week. What do we got? Let's send it.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  First question, Jocko. When I was 15, a mountain biking accident before football caused me to have cognitive issues. Now during football, when I put on my helmet, I have excruciating headaches that will get worse over time. I continued to play, but things slowly got worse and worse. Now at age 19, I can't even surf without nearly blacking out. I love football, martial arts, and dreamed of being an Army Ranger, but those goals are gone. In high school, I worked different industries and started businesses, but now, as a college freshman, I struggle to find purpose. If I have hope for recovery, I'd be grateful for the mental toughness I've gained, but my condition keeps getting worse.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  How do I move forward and find good in life when nothing brings joy or relief? Should I accept a joyless life and focus on helping others, or is there a way to change my situation?

• 1:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, first of all, I would definitely, and I don't know, you don't mention any, in this question, you don't mention the efforts that you've made to figure out what is wrong, right? What is going on? So, mountain biking accident, right? I'm assuming some kind of concussion, then football, which I got a really bad concussion one time, and I was told not to spar for six months. And I didn't follow that advice. I should have, but it took me so long to where I could take a punch.

• 1:47Jocko Willink?

  Like, I used to walk, you know what I mean? Walk into punches like, just whatever, like, I don't care. After that bad concussion, it was years before I walked into punches again without, and felt confident. So, I'm wondering what's going on. I'm wondering what kind of damage happened? What kind of, you know, have you gotten CAT scans? Have you gotten somebody to, what's MRI? You know, what kind of tests have you gotten so we can figure out what's going on? Because... Do we have a lot of medical advances right now? And figure out, you know, what, what a neurologist would say? Figure out what other kind of

• 2:31Jocko Willink?

  Western and Eastern medicines to try. What can we do here? So I would make sure that I consult with multiple people with multiple opinions. Now, don't chase, sometimes people chase the easy solution.

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  You know, they, they ask for doctors and they take the one that seems like the one that they like the most. I'm not saying to do that. I'm saying get different second, third opinion. If someone tells you, oh, you're just good. We don't know what's wrong. This is, you know, you're screwed. Say, okay, thank you and go check with someone else and keep doing that until someone can help you. I've told the story before, I had dizziness. I went to a bunch of different doctors. And it was Doc Parsley. Who was like, oh, you might have this thing. And he kind of like barely remembered it. And it was benign vertigo or something, just some name for it.

• 3:30Jocko Willink?

  And he goes, do this silly thing. And I did it and it was, and it was healed after years. So I would go get a second, third, fourth, fifth opinion, find out what's going on. Did you get some kind of a concussion? Do you have some kind of a swelling? Do you look, what's happening? Is there some kind of medication you can take? Is there some kind of surgery you can get? Like what's going on? So let's find that out. Number one. In the meantime, okay, you got what you got. Like you could, you, you, you're in a situation where you can't do certain things that you like, used to like to be able to do. So I think you gotta, you gotta accept that, right? Okay, this is where I'm at. And again,

• 4:15Jocko Willink?

  I would focus on what can I, what can I do? What can I do? Not uh, the things I can't do, but what can I do? Can you play guitar? So is it top of my list, right? But can you play guitar? If you really like physical things, guitar is kind of a physical things, but, but you know, can you? What physical thing can you do? Maybe you can't take impact anymore. Maybe it's time to do some running. Maybe it's time to do some endurance running. Maybe it's time to get into endurance cycling. Maybe it's time to, you see what I'm saying? Like what can, what can you do? Oh, it's too much impact when you run. Maybe it's cycling. Oh, it's, you don't want to risk falling off a bike? Okay. Maybe it's

• 4:57Jocko Willink?

  some other form of cardiovascular effort.

• 5:03Jocko Willink?

  So I would see, I would focus on what I can do, not on what I can't do.

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  And then you talk about a joyless life and focusing on helping other people. Bro, that's actually, you're 19 years old. And this is why that feels that way. I'm going to tell you as you get older, the most joy you will have in your life won't be from winning yourself. It'll be from helping other people. So there's someone that is in way worse shape than you are. There's someone that's having a more difficult time. There's a kid that needs help. There's all kinds of things that are happening in the world, all kinds of people that you can help out.

• 5:47Jocko Willink?

  So yes, you should focus on helping other people, but no, that does not mean it will be a joyless life. You just got to find joy in different places, man. And you will, you will.

• 6:04Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 6:07Jocko Willink?

  That would be my recommendation. That would be my recommendation.

• 6:13Jocko Willink?

  It's surprising how.

• 6:17Jocko Willink?

  There's different doctors that know different things, you know, and like Doc Parsley, great, but it's not like Doc Parsley, it's not like I went to, you know, some, uh, what is it? So I didn't go to the, the senior neurologist at Harvard Medical. No. I went to the senior neurologist at Balboa Hospital. I went to the senior neurosurgeon at Balboa Hospital. I went to, I went to a bunch of people and Doc Parsley was just like, oh, it might be this. So, and I think he, you know, he just had, he'd, he'd heard about it or something. So people that are doctors, they, they have different experiences. They have different skill levels. They have different open mindedness. And I think going and seeing other people

• 7:03Jocko Willink?

  and hearing what they have to say will be very helpful in this scenario.

• 7:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  you, you know, you got what you got, man. Like it, that's the other part of it is you got, you gotta figure out what you can do. Got to figure out what you can do. Uh, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Gave a speech the other day when he was made the, uh, Secretary of Health and Human Services. And it's something that he said on this podcast as well, which is

• 7:34Jocko Willink?

  healthy people have a thousand goals, sick people have one, or sorry, dreams. Healthy people have a thousand dreams, sick people have one, one dream, and that's to be healthy. So they get focused on that one thing.

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  Now, if you got something like this where it's inhibiting your ability to do things that you want to do, you gotta expand those dreams.

• 8:01Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of where you're at.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that part that you always say, like focusing on what you can do is like that has such a, um, broad, uh, utility, if you will. So it's like, cause we, It's like you follow the stories, kind of you tell yourself, you know, like if you're like, oh my gosh, I'm, you know, I suck or it's so hard for me if you keep, if you tell yourself that like, bro, you, yeah, it'll be hard, you know? And so it's like, however, you want to frame it to yourself, whatever story you tell yourself, you know, so just like, and that was kind of the little, little trigger there when he's like a joyless life, you know? Like, should I accept a joyless life? It's like, oh, that's a broad brush you just painted on your whole thing.

• 8:43Jocko Willink?

  You might want to go tune, tune into Travis Mills.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:46Jocko Willink?

  You know, who has no arms and no legs. He has no arms and no legs. He is completely filled with joy all day, every day. Rob Jones. What does he have for legs? Nothing. He got his legs blown off. Guess what? Filled with joy. Has a good time all day, every day. So you got some cognitive issues, you, you got some issues, some headaches. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen,

• 9:23Jocko Willink?

  go to jacood underground.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

• 9:55Jocko 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 jacood underground.com. It costs eight dollars and 18 cents a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email assistance at jacood underground.com and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.