515: Discipline, Detachment, and the Power of Going From "Why" to "What". W/ Dakota Meyer

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe After 15 years away, Dakota Meyer reenlisted in the Marine Corps because, in his words, he had “more to give.” In this episode, he and Jocko talk about the lifelong duty to serve others, the cost of freedom, and the honor of carrying forward the legacy of fallen brothers. A raw, unfiltered look at sacrifice, resilience, and living for something greater than yourself. 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 515 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  When I'm out performing firefighting duties, I don't hear the alarms and ask, "Why did this fire start? Who caused it? Why did it have to happen now when I was in the middle of dinner with my family?" No. I act. I don my gear, climb into the engine, and immediately start to formulate a plan based on whatever problem I am told that I am headed into. The only questions I ask en route are solution-based. I rely upon experience, preparedness, and training rather than on anxiety and nerves. Instead of asking, "Why did this happen?", I ask, "What can I do? Or what is my role in preventing this problem from getting worse?"

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  This movement from "why" to "what" strips away our emotional thinking, eliminates hypotheticals, and empowers us with the flexibility to fix the problem rather than wait for it to snowball and become too big for us to handle. Using the "what" line of thinking is solution-based, logical, and proactive, whereas the "why" approach is emotional, abstract, and inactive.

• 1:21Jocko Willink?

  If we have a problem and we're stuck on the "why" instead of the "what", we are going to be behind the curve every single time. I don't get stuck on hypotheticals or the past. I go and I do.

• 1:39Jocko Willink?

  The more we deal with the real problems in absolutes, the more we can change.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from a book called "Why to What", written by Dakota Meyer. And if that name sounds familiar, it should. Dakota has been on this podcast before. We discussed his first book called Into the Fire, about his time in Afghanistan.

• 2:07Jocko Willink?

  His brutal battle there, the battle in which Dakota performed the heroic actions for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor. We covered that on episode 115. We talked some more on episode 277 reflecting on the battle that continues after the war. Finding the demons here at home and finding peace.

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  And Dakota has been back in the news recently because after a 15 year, 15 year break in service on April 17th, 2025, Dakota re-enlisted into the United States Marine Corps Reserve stating during his re-enlistment that he still had, and I quote, "more to give." And it's an honor to have one of my heroes and one of my friends back with us on the podcast to share his thoughts on service, leadership, and life. Dakota.

• 3:04Dakota Meyer?

  What's up, man?

• 3:05Jocko Willink?

  We're here. Just the usual, man. We've already been talking for a little over an hour before we decided to hit record. We had to get all the, uh, all the classified.

• 3:14Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:15Jocko Willink?

  All the classified material.

• 3:16Dakota Meyer?

  Out.

• 3:17Jocko Willink?

  Expunged from the conversation. Uh, yeah, man. Back in the Marine Corps. You, you asked me if I could go to that and I unfortunately had something scheduled because damn, I would have liked to be there. Although if they would have held out another Bible, I probably would have put my hand on it as well. I probably would have raised my right hand again as well. If I saw your ass getting up there, damn. 15 year break in service. What year did you get out?

• 3:41Dakota Meyer?

  I got out in 2010.

• 3:42Jocko Willink?

  The same as me, bro. See?

• 3:43Dakota Meyer?

  2010, re-enlisted.

• 3:45Jocko Willink?

  Maybe we need to talk to Sec War and see what up.

• 3:48Dakota Meyer?

  We can. Two days.

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, cool. And we got a bunch of stuff to talk about. Uh, I guess the themes, the themes to start off by covering some of the stuff in this book. When this book, this book came out, what, a year ago?

• 4:04Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it came out like, it came out like a year ago. You know, I, I, I wrote the book, self-published it. I wanted to get my blueprint down of. How I got to where I was at, I felt like I was finally in a place to be able to pass on some knowledge to other people on things they're struggling with, you know. And I finally felt like I was something to be proud of, that I could go out and then help people get there. You know, so many people are stuck at where I was stuck at probably 10 years ago. And how could I help put this blueprint in, in, in a book of really the most impactful thing that shifted everything for me and put me, took me from being a victim to being in the driver's seat of controlling my own destiny, right? And I talk about it

• 4:48Dakota Meyer?

  in the book a lot. And the number one core piece to it was, was shifting why to what? You know, I spent so many years trying to figure out why my team died, why I went through that, why I didn't get them out alive, why I lived. All of those things were, were these mindsets that kept me in this, really this powerless position. But then when I switched it, and I switched it to, okay, well, what happened to my team? What happened that day? What can I do with this? What am I supposed to do with it? And ultimately, the most, the most, the question that, that hammered me the hardest was when I said, what would my

• 5:32Dakota Meyer?

  team want me to do? And what would they want me to live out for their lives that they gave? And I think that, you know, when I was walking around talking about PTSD, depression, anxiety, and every time I was not living up to that, I think the most unbecoming thing I've ever done in my entire life was when I used to justify me not living a life worthy of their sacrifices, and I used to justify it by their deaths.

• 5:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a paradox, huh?

• 5:59Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, you know, those bracelets, I used to wear those bracelets. You remember? I had them on both wrists. And they were just handcuffs of me going out and living the best life that I could live. Because every time I looked at them, I felt guilt. And that's not, if any of us died, like, all I was doing was dishonoring their deaths. When I could be going out and using their deaths on the side of a mountain in Afghanistan and talking to people about it and living a life that people wanted to listen to that. You know, and that was like ultimately where this book came from of how did I get to where I was at?

• 6:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's even, even the, like the protocol or the immediate action drill of when stuff's going sideways. Instead of being like, why is this happening to me? Just like, what am I gonna do about it? That just that little protocol is a huge step up and will get you moving in the right direction. And it might not get you moving in the right direction, but it'll get you moving in a direction. And moving in a direction will at least give you some information here very quickly of whether it's the right direction or not. And if it's not, no big deal, you start moving back in the, you know, start moving in the right direction.

• 7:11Dakota Meyer?

  Where you start taking fire, right? Like, let's just break it down, you know, the, the most simple thing in life. I tell people all the time, gunfighting is so simple because if it wasn't simple, Marines couldn't do it. You know what I mean? Like here is, and you, you know, you, you tell me if I'm right or wrong. Gunfighting is literally this simple. People start shooting at you. You need to figure out where they're at, where you're at, and what you have to get them to stop doing what they're doing to you and your people. It's, it's that simple. It's the most creative thing that you have on, on the planet, you know, it's, it's a creative job. And, but the first thing that happens, if you're somewhere and you're getting shot at, what do they tell you to get off of?

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  Get off the X.

• 7:51Dakota Meyer?

  Get off the X. Do they say which direction?

• 7:53Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 7:53Dakota Meyer?

  Nope. So just start moving. Get off the X and then start figuring it out and start breaking it down into chunks. You know what I mean? And so, but, but what really gets in the way of us as humans is we lack emotional discipline.

• 8:10Dakota Meyer?

  And I'll tell you what I think with a lot of service members getting out and where they struggle and they get hung up, I call it on the front side of the obstacle. Is we are so young, we're physically strong, we're mentally strong, but we are emotionally immature because I think what we don't do enough of is we don't exercise our emotions. What we do is suppress them, right? Because we are so mentally strong that we, what are emotions? Weakness. Don't feel those. Don't feel those. We do everything we can to not feel those, right? And I think what happens is, is then you get out and then at some point,

• 8:50Dakota Meyer?

  these emotions get so big when so many things happen that then you can't control them and they start to control you. And while emotions are very powerful when they're anchored in logic, they're very dangerous when your logic is anchored in emotions. And I think that's what happens is, is we don't do a real good job at emotionally exercising us at a young age. And then you get out and now you've got these big emotions that we can't take away because that is what makes us human. And you know, and so I think that that's what ultimately I had to exercise out and to bounce it off logic. Well, I talk about

• 9:31Dakota Meyer?

  it a lot is I wake up sometimes and I feel, I, you know, I talk about the feelings, right? I look in, I get up in the mornings, I feel like I'm the man, but then logically I have to look in the mirror and tell myself, I'm not the man. You know what I mean? And so like, you know, and I think, I think it comes with wisdom, right? And it comes with learning. But I think that, you know, that's what I call your emotions are. They're not, they're not truth. They're feelings. Logic is truth and they have to be able to support that truth. And I think, you know, that's where I think that like I got hung up a lot of. But, you know, it became your identity.

• 10:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The, one of the things when I talk about emotions, I talk about people is like,

• 10:17Jocko Willink?

  And this is, this is something that I learned, uh, when friends of mine were killed was you're not going to be able to control your emotions sometimes, which is really weird when you're an adult because you know, when you're a little kid, you have temper tantrum, yell and scream, cry. And then people are like, hey, you, you can't do that. You have to control your emotions. You can't have a temper tantrum. You can't yell and scream. So you get to be, you know, eight or nine and you're like, okay, I'm not going to cry anymore. Your dad's like, hey, we don't cry. And so you're like, okay, we're not crying. And so you, you learn to like suppress your emotions. And then what happens is something happens in the world where your emotions overwhelm

• 10:58Jocko Willink?

  you. And I think what scares people, what certainly made me very uncomfortable was just all of a sudden, out of nowhere, not being able to control my emotions, which I was very used to doing. So a little bit, it's like a tangential theme that what you're saying is what you're saying is like, we suppress our emotions, we suppress our emotions. And I was like that, like, hey, nothing's going to ruffle my feathers. But then all of a sudden,

• 11:25Jocko Willink?

  like you have friends get killed and all of a sudden these emotions are coming that you can't control. And then you, then you think, then what I think people think is there's something wrong with me. Oh, yeah. Because I'm supposed to be able to control my emotions. And now I'm crying like a little baby in my car alone. What the hell is wrong with me? Because no one says, oh, yeah, you're even when you're a grown ass man and you've been in the SEAL teams for 15 or 18 or 20 years. Oh yeah, there's going to be some emotional things that happen where you're not going to have control anymore. And that's the way it is. And instead of being like, oh, there's something wrong with me. And I actually figured this out on the podcast with a guy named Tom

• 12:08Jocko Willink?

  Fife, who was in World War II, Korean, Vietnam, got a Purple Heart in World War II, Korean, Vietnam, and he

• 12:15Jocko Willink?

  Got emotional when he was talking about he's a battalion commander in Vietnam. He got emotional. He was talking about the soldiers that he lost. And when he got emotional after 60 years, I was like, oh. So here's a badass that was in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and he's getting emotional 60 years later. This is going to happen to me forever and there's nothing wrong with it.

• 12:36Dakota Meyer?

  No, it's actually, it's actually a good thing because emotions mean it's it's emotions, stress, all these things. They all they're all just different words, but they're the same thing. They just mean you care. People who don't get emotional, don't care. People who don't stress, don't care. And so like, you know, when you look at these things, they're very powerful. They're very normal like. But the more you feel them, the more you get used to them, right? It's like, like going out and working out the more physically or mentally like the more you've seen it. I mean, think about the first time you got shot at. You were in the red, right?

• 13:18Dakota Meyer?

  And then after you've been shot at 10 or 15 times, you ain't in the red no more. It's like, yeah, okay, whatever, right? But the new guy comes and then he's in the red. But he's standing next to a guy who's been there 10 or 15 times. And then helps him get through it the right way. And that's what we've been missing is people helping lead people through the right way and how to deal with their emotions. Because let me tell you what's happened is you've got everybody out there now. They're all identifying their trauma becomes like, like their identity. And so instead of people leading people through who are on the other side of it.

• 13:58Dakota Meyer?

  You've got a bunch of people who haven't got through it, who are bonding over what they went through, their experience. And they're never getting through it. So imagine if, if like, imagine if the SEAL teams only let the guys who didn't make it.

• 14:16Dakota Meyer?

  Deal with the guys before they were going through the SEAL teams or going through BUDs. They'd never make it. And that's what we got out there right now is you got a bunch of people who never got through it, not leading people through it, right? It's become like this PTSD, this depression, anxiety, this mental health issue that we've got going out there right now. It's, it's a, and I learned this in the fire service. Ultimately, where I learned so much about this, this, this aspect was in the fire service. Watching these guys, you know, I, I used to think going over the trauma, because it was marketed right. The trauma that we seen as, as, as service members overseas,

• 14:59Dakota Meyer?

  nobody could imagine, nobody could imagine. And man, I became a firefighter and I got to tell you something. The stuff these guys see makes the stuff I seen in combat like a Mickey Mouse clubhouse. And these guys get up and do it every single day. And, and I would arguably say that what we seen overseas, it made sense. None of us went over there not knowing what we couldn't face. These, these first responders over here,

• 15:29Dakota Meyer?

  they get on a rig and they go watch people who were driving to school in their communities. The next thing you know, they're having to cut the, I mean, it, it's like people like us, not in a war zone. And they go back and they do it again and they do it again and like, and they deal with it, you know? And obviously there's a lot of PTSD out there, but there's a lot of them who've been doing it for 20, 30 years and they get through it. And so like, I learned the most about it there. And I think what ultimately changed my mindset the most is I came home from a call. It was a CPR call. And um, it was, and it's such a weird call. It doesn't even make sense why it bothered me, but got there, it was a guy who, I'll never forget. It was in their house.

• 16:14Dakota Meyer?

  I, I was like the first or second one there. The guy had collapsed. They were going to lunch. His wife was at the front door. They were going to lunch. They'd been excited. They lived in this nice house. And you could tell that they had kind of lived the American dream and worked their asses off. And then they were at this house and like they were probably empty nesting. They were at that age, right? And they were kind of like, going to go to lunch and you could tell she loved him so much. And um, he had gone to take a shower before they were going to lunch. He had took the day off. And he had collapsed in the shower and so like I ran in there, pulled him out of the shower and got him in the bedroom and there is a suite and started doing CPR on him.

• 16:55Dakota Meyer?

  And I'd done CPR tons of times before this, like it's just a routine. And I'll never forget, she like crawled up on the bed, like the foot of the bed, we were at the foot of the bed, like doing it and she like crawled up on the foot of the bed and was watching. And I wanted to bring this guy back so bad. And like we did all of our rounds and you know, obviously protocol and you know, you hear the medics call, they say, you know, last round. It's a two minute round and you know what that means.

• 17:27Jocko Willink?

  How many rounds is it going?

• 17:29Dakota Meyer?

  Well, I mean, we had gone, so usually we go, the protocol is usually forty five minutes. And so, you know, every two minutes you do a pulse check. And so we, we were going at our last, you hear them say last round and it's like, it's like everybody knows that if you don't get a pulse, it's, they're gonna call it, you know? And

• 17:47Jocko Willink?

  They call it before you go to the hospital?

• 17:49Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, where we're at, yeah. So what we, we don't transport unless you get ROSC.

• 17:54Jocko Willink?

  What's ROSC?

• 17:54Dakota Meyer?

  Which is you get a pulse back, right? You have to have a pulse back for a certain amount of time before you even

• 17:59Jocko Willink?

  It's safer to keep working on him.

• 18:01Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, our medics, like these paramedics, if you said right now, Dakota, who do you want working on you? If you go down, a doctor or a paramedic, I'm gonna pick a paramedic all day long. And so, yeah, I mean, with the technology they have, we work them there because what it does is if you get it to a hospital, you take up so many resources, right? All the way there and then the, there's a couple pieces to it, but.

• 18:27Dakota Meyer?

  So we worked him and I heard last round and I wanted, like, gosh, you just want a pulse so bad. And obviously if you didn't get a pulse back and so then you, you clean it up and they obviously tell the family member. And dude, she crawled up on this guy and she like cried and laid there with him until they came, you know, until the, you know, the funeral home comes and gets him. And I remember going home and like, I went back and I walked in, took a shower and I just, it was the first call that I had left. And I just cried, like I cried in the shower for probably forty five minutes. And I'm like, what the fuck? Why am I doing this?

• 19:13Dakota Meyer?

  And I realized that I had to shift my mind.

• 19:17Dakota Meyer?

  And I thought about it. And you know, everybody wants to be. And I thought about it in a way of like, what an honor. Everybody wants to be. Everybody wants to be there when you're born. Everybody does. They're excited about it.

• 19:36Dakota Meyer?

  Everybody wants to be there throughout all these days of your life.

• 19:41Dakota Meyer?

  But not too many people want to be part of your death. And like any chance that I get.

• 19:49Dakota Meyer?

  Like what an honor for me to share that with that family. Those last moments, like. I had an opportunity to show her that there were people that don't even know them. They're trying so hard. To bring back, obviously, the most important part of her. That we cared about her. There were people who didn't, we didn't even know each other.

• 20:11Dakota Meyer?

  But she dialed three numbers.

• 20:14Dakota Meyer?

  And there were people just like her. Who are willing to come and spend that worst moment of her life, probably. Next to her. And then to spend the last moments of this guy's life with him. And let him know that he went out of this world. With a bunch of people trying to keep him in it. And doing everything that they could to make sure we got one last breath out of him and make sure that his heart pumped. Every beat that he could get out of every ounce of life. It's not a job that a lot of people want to do and it's a hard job, but when you start, you twist it around.

• 20:50Dakota Meyer?

  Like what an honor. Like what an honor that, that we get to be that. And it was like that moment that like I realized that, that as bad as these things are. If you shift your mindset, it's really not the things that are happening to you. It's your mindset that you're going into them and you're leaving with. Of how you're looking at it. And that shifted everything for me. From that moment on, like I just. I took the weight off of my shoulders of that it was on my responsibility to decide what happened.

• 21:24Dakota Meyer?

  But what was my responsibility was to show up and make sure.

• 21:29Dakota Meyer?

  That while I was there, that people knew. That somebody cared about them. And that was my job.

• 21:39Jocko Willink?

  The idea that you're talking about, like the ability to reframe something, that's, that's a skill that, because it's really, really hard to do that. It's really, really hard to do that yourself from inside your own head. Like you ever had a friend that's got, you know, some crazy girlfriend? And like, it's so clear that what they need to do is get rid of that girl. And it's so clear, but they can't see it themselves. Or you got a friend that's like drinking all the time? And it's so crystal clear that that's ruining their lives. And it's so clear that what they need to do, change it. And, but it's so hard

• 22:24Jocko Willink?

  to get someone to see that. So what you're talking about, what, you know, came to you that day, this like reframing of going from like, oh, I'm in this terrible, I gotta watch this over and over again, this terrible thing to like, oh, I actually get to participate and get to carry this person across the line and be with them and their family. Like that is a, that is a very difficult thing to do for people to be able to take something that's going on in their world and reframe it into something good. It's a skill. And if you can take a step back and you can detach, like when you're, when you're facing issues and you can take a step back and be like, okay. Well, let me reframe this. How, you know, for lack of a better way of saying it, how is this good?

• 23:10Jocko Willink?

  Like, how is this thing that's going on right now? Good. Because in most cases, when you reframe something, you go, yeah, okay, I'm going to benefit from this in some way. I'm going to help the world. I'm going to help people. I'm going to be tested. I'm going to get stronger. I'm going to get tougher. I'm going to get more experienced in life. Like all those things are going to happen. It's gonna suck. But there's going to be good that comes out of it. And that, that ability to reframe is, is really important. It's another like protocol to set aside for yourself. You know, this might be the protocol after you change the why to what? Cause why to what is going to work right now. But then as you, once you get home.

• 23:51Jocko Willink?

  And now you've had whatever it is, whatever bad thing has unfolded on you. And now you go, okay, I did the why to what I solved the problem, but here I am. Now it's like, the next thing to go is reframe. Okay, where, where am I at?

• 24:07Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. And, and I, I do this through a process called the dash process, right? So it's, it's, it's literally, we, we are protocol driven people. Like we are process, procedure, steps, like all that structure, right? Like, I mean, and, and, and that's why people, people perform better in that. That's why people have habits.

• 24:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That's, that's why when you parachute, you've got like, hey, this is what you do for a cutaway. Arch, look, grab, look, grab, pull, pull, check, check. Like I did that little rehearsal over and over again. I only did it once for real, but when I did it once for real, it was like second nature. And if I had to think, you know what I mean? If I had to think, I couldn't think at that moment. You have time to think. And if I tried to think, I would have been thinking like, ah, you know what I mean? Like this sucks or something like that. Instead it was like, oh yeah, that's parachute's not working. Okay. Arch, look, grab, look, grab, pull, pull, check, check. New rig. Okay. Check. And we have that with every, you know, fighter pilots. They've got, you know, I was talking with Dave Burke, talking through the little protocols that they have. It's like, this is what you're doing. You're not thinking about it.

• 25:12Jocko Willink?

  You're seeing something and you're reacting to it, following the protocol. So yes, you know, immediate action drills out in the field, contact front. We have a protocol that we're going to follow. Like we're going to, we're going to execute that protocol. And then there's gonna, by the way, the nice thing about the protocols is it gives you a baseline that you can then make deviations from, because you don't have to worry about all the little things. The little things are solved. The big things are, you can, you can make maneuvers. You can start to assess where the enemy is. You can assess whether you can take them or not. You can assess with the terrain, what you've got for training. Like there's all these decisions that you can make, but the initial protocols, like this is what we're doing. Boom.

• 25:48Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. I mean, and you think, so you know, you think about it, like, you know, we make over, there's some study out there that talks about how we make, a human being makes over 30,000 decisions a day. So majority of those are, are, are habits. They're autopilots, right? I mean, a, a lot of those decisions are. And so, you know, how many of those things though, still don't serve you, right? Like at one point they did, but they still don't. And so I think that what we don't do is we don't do an inventory enough as to, I call it intentional living, right? Like, living and doing things with intentions, you know, and, and part of that

• 26:30Dakota Meyer?

  comes down to is taking inventory and, and leading with questions, leading with questions. And so I have a process that I call it, you know, this, it's the dash process, decisions, you, you must make a decision. You have a decision without action is just an idea, right? And then you have to have support, but not like you think. And then ultimately, if you do that intentionally and you do that enough, what does that turn into a habit? And what we have is, is we have a lot of habits, and I'll give you one perfect example of a habit that crushes a lot of us is sleep, right? So what, where did staying up late start?

• 27:15Dakota Meyer?

  What started as a

• 27:16Jocko Willink?

  Electric lights, I think, right?

• 27:18Dakota Meyer?

  Well, yeah, but think, but think about this, like in your, in your, in your ecosystem, staying up late used to be a privilege when you were a kid, right? Like you wanted to do it on the weekends.

• 27:29Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 27:30Dakota Meyer?

  So then you did that, like nobody, no adult that has responsibilities, like staying up late doesn't serve them at all. There's nothing that happens late at night that they're doing that's serving or helping them or is worth their sleep, right?

• 27:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. I'm sure you heard this, like, hey, nothing good happens after midnight out in town.

• 27:49Dakota Meyer?

  It's so true.

• 27:50Jocko Willink?

  Like, you're getting in trouble. That's what's happening. Your life is not getting better when you got 14 beers in you and you're out in town after midnight. But, but no, no good things are happening. Zero.

• 28:01Dakota Meyer?

  None. No, just ask Marines. No, I'm just kidding. But, but that decision or that, that idea of staying up late meant that I was, it was, it started as a privilege or as a, as a reward.

• 28:13Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you, you mean you got psychologically programmed that it was a good thing?

• 28:17Dakota Meyer?

  Well, that, and then it became a habit. Oh, well, the older I get, the later my bedtime can be.

• 28:24Dakota Meyer?

  And then guess what happened is now people are staying up late and then they have to start getting up early. And it was just a habit that they never checked or never asked, is this serving me? So I talk to people all the time. If you set an alarm to go to bed or to wake up in the mornings, you know, what do you think the most impactful thing on your day is? How much sleep you get? And so why don't we set an alarm of when we're going to bed? To make sure that we get enough sleep to prepare for the next day. And reprogramming little habits like that, but how many of those? How many things do we do today because we've always done it? And where did that habit come from and taking inventory on that?

• 29:09Dakota Meyer?

  And so that's where I look at decisions like, hey, is this? Is this getting me closer to my goals? Or is it getting me further from it? And I realized this other piece that I talk about in there a lot before you can get to any of those is you have to know what you're trying to hit. And I realize this with my kids, right? Cause like the ultimate leadership of you and to decide if you're a good leader or not, because anybody can manage. There's a difference between those two, a manager and a leader. Anybody can manage, but, but can you lead? And if you want to watch and see how good of a leader you are, if you can't lead your kids, you can't lead anybody. And, and so what that means is, is for me, I'm, you know, Sailor came in one day and she was like, this kid,

• 29:54Dakota Meyer?

  so and so, um, she pushed me or I pushed her on the playground. She told me I was fat and I pushed her on the playground. I was like, we, that's not justified to push her on the playground. And it's easy to run around and tell our kids all the time what they're doing wrong, which is what we do a lot. And I was like, I need to give her like some tool to be able to know what my intentions are and my expectations are of her. And I said, so both my daughters know now I call it the box.

• 30:29Dakota Meyer?

  It's called the box method. And so each side, four words at a minimum of what a Meyer is. A Meyer is respectful, a Meyer is kind, strong, and is a leader. That is the four outsides of the box. And every decision and action that they take in every situation better fit in the box. So instead of me just telling them, hey, you were wrong for that. I look at her and I go, okay, so so and so said you're fat. You pushing her. Is that strong? Is that kind? Is that respectful? Is that what leaders do? Like, what if everybody looks at you as a leader and then they just start shoving each other over stuff that they don't agree with somebody said?

• 31:12Dakota Meyer?

  It's not good. Now I gave her a tool. What decision could you've made that fits in the box? Because we're not conditional Myers. We're gonna always be Myers and represent the box, no matter what everybody else does, because there's a real fine line before we become them. And we can't do that. And so, you know, she comes back to me and she goes, well, I could have told her that if she does it again, I'm not gonna be friends with her and I'm not gonna hang out with her and I'm going to just go hang out with somebody else. And I'm like, yeah, that's what leaders do. That's what being kind and respectful is. And so now I don't just tell my daughters where they're wrong. I give them something to shoot and strive for no matter what.

• 31:56Dakota Meyer?

  Even whether they see a kid that's walking by themselves.

• 32:00Dakota Meyer?

  And they don't know, you know, that kid doesn't seem like they have a friend. Well, they better go over there and they better take action to go let that person know they matter, right? Which is ultimately what matters to me. And so, most people in this world today, they can tell you what they don't like and what they hate.

• 32:18Dakota Meyer?

  But they can't even tell you what they're trying to achieve or what they're aiming at. Because we've become a society that we live off of, I call it emotional porn.

• 32:34Dakota Meyer?

  Right? And, and when you think about it, you know, you look at why I write reality TV negativity? You post something on the internet like negativity draws it, right? Because it's like eating a donut, like you eat that donut, you get that sugar high.

• 32:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, short term.

• 32:49Dakota Meyer?

  And guess what happens?

• 32:50Jocko Willink?

  Good times.

• 32:50Dakota Meyer?

  Crash. And it's why so many people have anxiety, depression. Because think about this, people come back from war and I'm not trying to put them in the same category. So let me state this upfront before everybody loses their shit. But people come back from war and because they their dopamine rushes and these chemical balances from being this excitement. They struggle with trying to find that sometimes. Well, what do you think happens when people have all this, what do you, what does negativity do? It raises your senses. It gives you the dump of this emotional tie. It gives you this, this dump of chemicals in your, in your body. Well, then that's why they're watching reality TV. They're all negative. And guess what their conversations are? Negative. Everything's contagious.

• 33:35Dakota Meyer?

  And so we've got to change that up. We've got to, and in the book I talk about how there's this process of we state the problem. We discuss the solution and then spend majority of our time on execution and reevaluation. But right now, everybody just wants to sit here and complain about problems and just discuss that. And it's like, it's literally, it's literally like emotional porn.

• 34:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, it's so much easier to break something than it is to build something. And it kind of, it kind of feels a somewhat equivalent. Like, do you ever do demo before, like on a construction site?

• 34:13Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 34:14Jocko Willink?

  It kind of feels as good to destroy something like you're smashing a concrete wall with a sledgehammer. It feels pretty good and you're, you're, you're, you're bringing something down. It kind of feels as good as building something, but building something takes skill and time and effort.

• 34:30Dakota Meyer?

  Patience.

• 34:30Jocko Willink?

  And patience and.

• 34:34Jocko Willink?

  It's so much easier to just go, I'd rather just break shit down all day. So instead of creating something, you're destroying something. And a lot of people fall into that trap. The intentionality, I've been, I've been joking about this lately. I, I've, I avoided the word intentionality and intention for a long time because it sounded like a new age yoga retreat word.

• 34:56Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 34:56Jocko Willink?

  And, but then I was talking to a group, uh, probably about six months ago. And I trapped myself. I trapped myself in a corner.

• 35:06Jocko Willink?

  And the only word I could use, the only word I could use was, I was like, you know, when you do things, you've just, you've, no matter what's happening, you have to be intentional. And I, and I said it. And then I was like, okay, well, let's think about what that means. And then I explained to them what intentional means. It's something that we did in the military all the time. In fact, everything that we did in the military was supposed to be intentional. So what does that mean? That means we plan, we execute, and then we debrief. That's what being intentional is. You come up with a plan, then you go and execute the plan, and then you get done with the plan, and you go, okay, now we debrief, how well did we do executing the plan? That right there is how you do things intentionally.

• 35:50Jocko Willink?

  As opposed to rolling into, even if I'm going to have a conversation, if you work, you work for me, and I gotta go counsel you about something that you, that didn't go right. I'm gonna go, okay, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take ownership. I'm gonna go and here's my plan. I'm gonna take ownership. I'm gonna find out what else I can do to support him. And then I'm gonna see if there's anything he needs right now. Okay, there's my plan. And then I go in, I'm like, dude, you screwed that project up, you know? Well, no, I failed at my plan. Debrief to myself, hey, you didn't take ownership of anything. You place blame on him. Okay, here's what you got. So that's what we have to do. Plan, execute, debrief. That's, that's how we do things intentionally.

• 36:23Dakota Meyer?

  But intentionally, a hundred percent, every bit of that.

• 36:29Dakota Meyer?

  Is the execution piece. But it doesn't matter if you don't have a clear objective.

• 36:36Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 36:37Dakota Meyer?

  That's the difference. People are out there. People are, people are definitely armchair quarterbacking. They're talking shit. They're, they're, they're, they're doing all these things. They're doing the three you're talking about most of the time, but most of the time they're not doing it with a clear objective of what we're trying to achieve. You know, they come into the conversation and, and they don't like the, the number one question I have to ask when I'm trying to figure out the problem. Is what are you, what are you trying to accomplish? Cause if they can't state that, you know, when, when you talk about a leadership checklist, I call it the mirror, you know, I've, I've got it on my new, um, on my new sub stack. I actually just launched today, the, the, the leadership series, leadership zero, zero, one.

• 37:20Dakota Meyer?

  Um, and I talk about leadership to people ship, the evolution of leadership. Cause leadership is like a formality, like people have kind of boxed it into these like, you know, X, Y, and Z. But, but really people ship is where is the application of leadership principles to the individual customized person and to the contextual situation of what you're doing. Right? Leadership's not a hands off game. It's a leadership is, is a, is a, it's a contact sport. And it changes and it's like, these are tools, but what we forgot is, is that these tools, no matter what, are only as good as the person that's applying them.

• 38:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, it's going back to, it's funny that you talk about what are you trying to accomplish? Because you actually have used with your kids commander's intent, decentralized command. And here's the parameters that we work with it. So you've given them the parameters like, hey, here's this box that you're going to draw. And here's the words that keep you inside this box and you've got to go out and make your decision. So it's interesting. You didn't say to your daughter, hey, next time that happens, this is what you do.

• 38:31Dakota Meyer?

  Yep.

• 38:32Jocko Willink?

  You said, hey, this, next time that happens, here's the parameters you're allowed to work with and figure out a better solution.

• 38:37Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 38:38Jocko Willink?

  And so then she's a lot, just like when you were in the Marine Corps, you didn't get told, hey, take this particular piece of terrain right here. No, it's like, hey, we want to get fire superiority over this zone. Okay, cool. Let me find a piece of terrain that works the best. Let me figure out how to make that happen. So that's decentralized command. That's a, that's, that's setting your commander's intent of like, hey, this is who we are. And then here's the parameters you're allowed to work with it. So those are, those are awesome. And then, you know, when you talk about the way that different people respond to different leadership situations. You know, I wrote about this in the book, Leadership Strategy and Tactics.

• 39:15Jocko Willink?

  I talked about woodworking. And how when you're work like, hey, leadership is like woodworking in that you've got a bunch of different tools that you can use, right? You got, you know, a saw, you've got a chisel, you've got sandpaper, you've got a drill. And all those are tools and you've got to learn how to use those tools. Then you realize that there's different types of wood. And there's a piece of pine, which is real soft. And there's a piece of oak, which is real hard. And then there's Ipe, which is like super hard. And if you use the tools the same way, they're going to react differently.

• 39:49Jocko Willink?

  So you've got to learn not just what the tools are, but then you've got to learn about the different pieces of wood. And then you realize that every single piece of wood is different. And this piece of pine over here has got a knot in it. And if I use that, you know, drill on that knot, it's going to react differently than another part of the wood. So it's, you're right. It's very, you have to learn the tools and you have to learn the materials that you're working with. And you have to recognize that, that the materials that you're working with, which are people, they're going to be different.

• 40:20Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. And you know, and you know, you see out there right now, you're, you're seeing across the board, especially going back in the Marine Corps. I mean, I, I see it. I do a ton of speaking and stuff. But if fire service is well, um, you know, but I, I keep, I'll tell you what, what's, what's really frustrating is, is, is I keep hearing this, uh, you know, that next generation.

• 40:42Dakota Meyer?

  And I'm like so tired, man, of.

• 40:46Dakota Meyer?

  Leaders blaming the fact that they suck at leading on the very people that they are trusted to lead. And I see it. I see it. And I'll tell you, like, coming back in, um, these kids today, there's more potential in the entry level service member today than there's ever been that I've known. Um, they're looking to be led. They're hungry to be led. I see a society of kids that are looking to be led. They're hungry to be led. And, but we've just got these conditional leaders. And it's, it's, it's really.

• 41:22Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean by conditional leaders?

• 41:24Dakota Meyer?

  You know, they, they only, they're, they're more like managers, right? Like they, they, they, they hate, like, the number one thing that tells me they're conditional leaders whenever they hate the word why.

• 41:38Jocko Willink?

  That's insane.

• 41:40Dakota Meyer?

  Like, when they're like, oh, you know, this is the Y generation. Like, why am I doing this? And they, and they look at it and I, and I, I get part of it of.

• 41:48Jocko Willink?

  You actually hear people say that?

• 41:50Dakota Meyer?

  Oh.

• 41:51Jocko Willink?

  I, I will occasionally, you know, I, I always make this joke that there's some people, there's some bosses, the last question they want to hear in the world is, wait, why are we doing this? And their answer is because I said so. And I always say that's the worst form of leadership. And it usually makes people laugh because, you know, I'll say, what do we say to our kids? Because I said so. That's not even the right answer with your kids. I'm here to tell you, it's not even the right answer with your kids. But they should respect me. I'm the dad. I pay for the rent. I pay for the food. They need to do what I say. Huh? Let's see how that works out for you. I'm going to tell you right now, it doesn't work out for you. There's something called psychological reactants, which means we as human beings don't like to be told what to do. We don't like it. And so when you tell whether someone's five

• 42:31Jocko Willink?

  years old, 10 years old, 20 years old, or 50 years old, when you bark orders at them, and you tell them what to do without telling them why, they're going to have a problem with it in most cases. And it's so interesting, because, you know, you look at the Marine Corps, and I've covered so many Marine Corps documents on here, and, you know, a perfect obedience to orders.

• 42:53Jocko Willink?

  But that is all overridden by the fact that Marines are supposed to think, soldiers are supposed to think. Like, that's the way it's supposed to be. And if you're giving orders that are so specific that allow no deviations, and you're removing the ability for your troopers to make decisions on their own, you're not being a good leader.

• 43:14Dakota Meyer?

  So I'm gonna toss this at you, and then I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you something to think about on this. So let me tell you why this is happening right now.

• 43:25Dakota Meyer?

  I think people were evolving at a rate that they weren't like as knowledge was, right? So like, I think that back when we were in, you know, go 10, 15 years ago, before all this technology and all this stuff. Really, you as a leader meant that you had, like, you could control the knowledge, the info, you could control the information to the people you were leading, right? And whether it was what was gonna happen, or the schedule, or all this, right? You kinda, you were the gatekeeper of that. And that was kind of your power to be able to lead. And what's happening today is, is the reality is, is, in your experience, it was going along with that, right?

• 44:10Dakota Meyer?

  So like, your experience between, between your experience level of you being in and you getting to experience things, and the information that you could be the gatekeeper of, those two things left you in a absolute place of power to where you were absolutely needed.

• 44:27Dakota Meyer?

  Today, this generation is evolving so fast because they have so much, they have so much information at their fingertips that, that literally today, somebody could enter in the military and know more about weapon systems and know more about your job than you do, technically.

• 44:47Dakota Meyer?

  And so it's made it trickier. And I think that where back in our day to be a leader, you had to be the expert in everything. Leadership has got to evolve to where I said, people ship of no longer is that going to be the case. Now you have to be authentic. You have to be an influencer. That's what leadership is going to be today of those two aspects. If you want to be effective as a leader and not as a manager. And, and so I think that that is a dynamic that's changed up. I mean, I want you to think about this.

• 45:27Dakota Meyer?

  What happens when you have to ask a team today that has all the information to go do the impossible? That they don't know that they can look at the information, they could look at the statistics, the data of what the survivability of this, the, the enemy that they're going up against. Today, if you to be a leader today, and what's going to be asked of you, it's got to be, you've got to be like, there's more asked of these leaders, and you've got to be the best in the history of leadership. If you're going to truly be a leader and not a manager today, to be able to out influence all this other information, and to be able to still motivate them. And I think we got to talk about what the difference between

• 46:09Dakota Meyer?

  managers and leaders are. Both of them are trying to get the same objective of getting somebody to do something they need them to do. That is both of their roles. But why the person that you are leading does it decides of if you're a manager or leader? If the person only does it because they're scared of the consequences and because of whatever the organization power it has given you or laws or whatever, then that's a manager. And it won't hold up. And it won't hold up. Because they'll out system you. If they do it because they understand why it's part of the overall arching objective and why it matters and why it's part of the bigger piece, and they do it because they want to do it because they respect

• 46:50Dakota Meyer?

  you and the organization, then that is what you are when you're a leader. And I think that this why thing, when people get asked why, and they get frustrated, I think that's a missed opportunity for a leader, because anytime somebody asks why, it's another opportunity to sell.

• 47:11Dakota Meyer?

  The mission to them.

• 47:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and or it's another opportunity to listen to what the troops have to say. Because you can, yeah, sure, there's a lot of access to information right now, but throughout the entire history of the military, there's always been troops on the front line that understand what's happening on the front lines better than the generals do. And so the generals that go, hold on a second, what's the feedback that we're getting right now? That that actually listen and, you know, General Patton said, however many years ago it was, the leaders on the front line are always right. And that wasn't like a hundred percent guarantee, but the the mentality is when you're in the front line, Dakota, and you call back to me and you you request something or you inform

• 47:55Jocko Willink?

  me of something, my default shouldn't be, he doesn't know what he's talking about, he's junior to me, or he doesn't know what he's talking about, he hasn't been as long as me. My default should be, okay, he's giving me information, I need to do my best to support whatever it is he's asking for, or whatever he's telling me, that's what I need to do. That's oh, that's always been like that. And a failure of leadership is when they don't listen to the information the people that on the front line had, i.e. the Vietnam War, where the people on the front line are like, hey, this doesn't seem to be working very well, maybe we should try something else. Nope, just keep going, keep going, keep going, do what we tell you to do from back here in Washington DC, and we lose.

• 48:36Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, when people ask why, one of the things that scares people, if if I'm your boss and I say, hey, Dakota, here's what we're doing, and you say, why are we doing it? And I explain it to you, and you say, but that doesn't make sense.

• 48:50Jocko Willink?

  I'm scared. I don't even want to open up that conversation, instead of saying, hey, what do you mean it doesn't make sense? And you say, well, listen, if we put all of our, if you we've put all of our heavy weapons over here and we love leave nothing over here, if the enemy shifts, we're going to be screwed with no heavy weapons on this side. And I go, huh? That's a good point. Let's, let's, let's, let's put some heavy weapons over on the, on the north end as well. And you say, cool, got it, boss. And all of a sudden we're aligned. As opposed to me being like, no, uh, uh, uh, you shut up and do what I told you to do. And now we've got one of our elements that has no heavy weapons with them. And when the enemy happens to turn in that direction, which we both know they will, they're going to get overrun and we aren't going to be able to support them. So, listening to what the team has to say, and truly listening to what they have to say, and trying to incorporate

• 49:35Jocko Willink?

  what they're saying into the plan is how you should overcome that. And listen, I, the, the guys in Vietnam, the good leaders in Vietnam, from Hackworth, when you, when you read about what Hackworth says about the draftees in Vietnam, he didn't, he loved them. He loved them. When I had General Mukuyama, who is a company commander for Hackworth in Vietnam, and I was like, well, what did you think of the draftees? He said, I didn't know which guys were draftees and which guys weren't. Think about that. So we all have this image in our mind of these hippies that were forced to join the army, and they've got a big peace sign on their helmets, and they don't want to do the job. And if they do the job, they might get killed doing it in a war they don't believe in. But the good leaders would make things happen. As a matter of fact, there's another good example of

• 50:17Jocko Willink?

  that. In the Civil War, uh, at, at the Battle of Gettysburg, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, he's moving into position on the line for the Union troops. And they deliver to him a bunch of deserters, like 50 deserters. Hey, you have to stand watch on these deserters so they can go to jail after this battle's over. And he ends up saying, well, what's going on? Why are you guys in trouble? Why are you guys, why are you guys arrested? Why are you guys under arms right now? And they start talking to him, saying, hey, listen, here's, here's what contract we signed up for. We were told we'd be done in however many long it was, 12 months, and our time was up, and we gotta go back to our homes.

• 51:00Jocko Willink?

  We got families and kids and farms and whatever. We gotta go back to our homes, and they're telling us we gotta stay. And that's not what, what we signed up for. And he's like, yeah, you know what? That doesn't make sense. I'll tell you what, if you guys want to fight. With me, we need you. And if you guys will step up and fight, I'll bring this up the chain of command and we'll get this squared away. And like something like forty eight out of the fifty guys took arms and went and fought. These were guys that were being arrested. And so totally didn't want to, you know, they were out, they were being arrested and he changed their minds and they went. And by the way, and then they did a little round top. You know what I mean? It's not like they rolled into some easy, you know, operation. They rolled into little round top.

• 51:41Jocko Willink?

  So listening to what people have to say, actually trying to figure out where they're coming from, trying to figure out where they're right. He's like, oh yeah, you guys are right. You signed a contract with the US government and the US government is now like revoking that contract? That's not cool. Cool. You guys, if you guys can help us out, we can, we can make something happen. So listening to what people have to say, not trying to impose your will on them. He didn't put them at bayonet point and say, get on the line or I'm going to kill you. No, he listened to what they had to say. So those are really good examples of throughout history, throughout history. The troops are going to know things that you don't know. If you listen to what they have to say, you might learn something.

• 52:18Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, and, and you know, these things are, these things are simple.

• 52:23Dakota Meyer?

  They're not complex. The more complex they get, it usually is a sign, the more emotional you are to being right. Instead of being effective.

• 52:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the more you're, the more your desire is on being right, the more your ego isn't, is, is being checked.

• 52:40Dakota Meyer?

  One hundred percent like, like if they give you another solution and they believe in that solution, why does it have to be your way? You've already got them sold on something. You know what I mean?

• 52:51Jocko Willink?

  That's another black belt move. I always say like, how do you get someone to buy into the plan? Let them come up with it. And how different is your plan going to be? You know, like there's only so many ways to assault the target.

• 53:02Dakota Meyer?

  But so you know, you talk about, you know, you just brought decentralized command and I, I talk about this a lot in, in the military. And I've seen it's a big difference in coming together. And I think this is something that's taken away this ability, maybe not the ability, but it's taken away opportunities for knowledge to be gained is.

• 53:20Dakota Meyer?

  There, I don't know, there's decentralized command is a lot harder today than it used to be. And I'll tell you, I'll give you in a, from a sergeant's, you know, at the sergeant level perspective. You know, used to, I had to figure things out because what would happen is, is, is we would show up to morning formation. I would come up to the company office after the staff NCOs met, they would let me know what needed to be executed that day. And then I would leave and I would have to execute it because I wouldn't see them again until possibly that night at evening formation.

• 53:54Jocko Willink?

  Or maybe the next day.

• 53:55Dakota Meyer?

  Or the next day. I couldn't just reach out and ask them. And what I see today is, is leadership. People are so unwilling to accept ownership and responsibility. It's like a responsibility hot potato. And they're doing it through these digital formations. And then it ultimately turns around and looks like micromanaging. And so it's a very, it's a very like, unique thing that I've seen and I was so not used to because of technology now. And, and, and, and it is allowing people to outsource their leadership, right? And so what do I mean by that? Well, number one is, is they're

• 54:40Dakota Meyer?

  telling people, hey, you know, go Google this, look at it on YouTube. Hey, go ask your buddy on this on, instead of getting people together and them taking the pride and teaching people how to do it. And then the other thing is, is passing off responsibility.

• 54:51Jocko Willink?

  What do they tell them to go watch on YouTube?

• 54:53Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, I mean, listen, how you're going to set up your gear or how you're going to do this, right? Like, I mean, this, this, I mean, it's, it's a, it's, it's, everything can be outsourced these days because there's so much information everywhere. Instead of us doing it together and talking about why we're doing this and passing down what we've learned. And one thing that I have seen is, is this responsibility passing off, you know, our NCOs, I think probably one of the most unique thing about the, and I realized this when the Ukraine war kicked off with Russia. I think the unique thing about us is, and what makes our military so lethal is the decisions and capabilities of our NCOs and our small unit leadership.

• 55:31Jocko Willink?

  It's the way it's supposed to be.

• 55:32Dakota Meyer?

  When you look, I mean, we're watching generals get killed from Russia. And you look, you know, so if we lose that, we've lost our secret sauce, a little bit of it, right? And, and so today though, like, these guys are able to text, hey, first, what do you think about this? And so what it's causing is, it's causing these NCOs not, there's no teaching them because they're able to just ask.

• 55:57Dakota Meyer?

  The question up here, I always said like this was always the rule of thumb that I had as a once I became NCO, which being in the Marine Corps, once you become an NCO, like corporal was the by far a bigger honor to me than ever getting a medal of honor, right? Like because of what it represented.

• 56:16Jocko Willink?

  You heard it here first.

• 56:19Jocko Willink?

  You heard it here first corporals. Get some.

• 56:21Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, being a corporal or sergeant in the United States Marine Corps is a big deal.

• 56:26Jocko Willink?

  It is.

• 56:27Dakota Meyer?

  And, um, but, but then being able to text and, and, and what I, the rule of thumb I always had when it was somebody higher ranked than me,

• 56:37Dakota Meyer?

  or it was an officer, which obviously a higher rank, um, I only ever asked them one question, anything else? I didn't ask them, like if they came to me and they said, hey, um, we need this done. Roger, that anything else?

• 56:54Dakota Meyer?

  I wasn't asking them how they wanted it done, when they wanted us to show up, what they wanted us to wear. Like, these are my guys. And you go through me, I do the executing, but I took ownership of my guys and I didn't just take ownership of the good, whatever, like they were mine. And, and, and I think one mindset we have to shift when we are in the leadership position is, is we're not in charge of people. We are responsible for people. We're responsible for their successes, their losses, their wins. We're, we're responsible for their actions. And, and for me, I think like I just had this, like I loved my, my guys I was in charge of.

• 57:34Dakota Meyer?

  And I took offense to it. Like this was the level of leadership that I, I always tried to live to. I was offended if they called 911 before they called me. Because look, I was going to come give them solutions and 911 was going to clean up what was left. And so like, we've got to have leaders that are so unconditional that it's not about when we're, when we're getting paid. It's not about when we're appreciated. It's almost, and I go back to the parent thing. Imagine if you were only going to be a good father when your kids appreciated you, when you had enough time, when you were respected, when you felt like it, when it made sense. Imagine if that was the only time you were going to be a good father. It would never work.

• 58:20Dakota Meyer?

  It's the same thing with being a leader. Once you get the position, you must always be that leader for that person in every aspect and every facet of their life. Because whatever organization you're part of, you have to understand you're leading not just an employee, you're leading a father or a mother, a son or a daughter. Your ability to impact generationally and the secondary and tertiary effects of how you lead them, but it starts with number one today. Example, you must be the example. The one thing I see different today about leadership than when I was in last time, used to there was two, two forms of it. Do as I

• 59:01Dakota Meyer?

  say, not as I do, or do as I do. The do as I say, not as I do is an absolute extinct path of leadership in today's generation because they're smart.

• 59:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they won't, they will, they'll be tracking you. But I refer to that a lot. Like when I was a young guy in the SEAL teams, new guy, I'd be watching like if my platoon commander showed up four minutes late, dude, I was tracking on that. If he didn't have a piece of gear with him he's supposed to have and someone had to go run back to the armory and grab some, I was tracking that. I noticed, I noticed all that stuff in my little logbook writing down these shortfalls. The thing that makes me nervous about what you're saying is, is if I can constantly, if you're my boss and I can constantly check back in with you and say, hey, how many, how many batteries we bring for this mission? And then you tell me, say, how much water should I bring? And you tell me, and then you say, you know, what, what, what frequencies should we use on the radios? Like if I'm having

• 59:59Jocko Willink?

  to ask you all those questions, you're really stunting my growth, my ability to grow. And when shit happens, I won't be in, I won't have been educated and trained to make decisions for myself. I'll only know how to go back. And as you pointed out, that's, that's, that's what decentralized command is not. Decentralized command is exactly what you said. Hey, Dakota, this is what I need done. Cool. Got it. Anything else? Nope. That's it. Got it. When do you need it done by? You know, 1600. Cool. Later.

• 1:00:30Dakota Meyer?

  But it's on the leader that's getting asked a question to shove that back down instead of providing the solution. And that's

• 1:00:37Jocko Willink?

  Don't be the easy button.

• 1:00:38Dakota Meyer?

  That's what we're having right now. That's what we're, it's like when your kids come to you and, and they're doing homework. And you want to get done with the homework because you don't want to help them with it.

• 1:00:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:49Dakota Meyer?

  And you just give them the answer.

• 1:00:50Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:51Dakota Meyer?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:00:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're stealing from them.

• 1:00:53Dakota Meyer?

  You're you're you are stealing opportunities.

• 1:00:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:56Dakota Meyer?

  For them to get better.

• 1:00:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:58Dakota Meyer?

  And but that's what I'm seeing the most out there. I call them digital formations. I call them digital formations.

• 1:01:03Jocko Willink?

  Well, there's, you know, I talk to young military guys now and they'll be like, oh, yeah, we're we're we're heading up to this. A this, you know, here in America, we're heading up to this place. I was like, oh, you know, what what time are you guys leaving? And they're like, oh, I don't know, around this time. And I'm like, where are you guys stopping for fuel? Oh, I don't know. It's because in the old days, bro, you were getting in the convoy. Like, we didn't have, we had to have a loss of comms plan. We had to have muster points like this is what time we're leaving. We're all leaving together. And nowadays, just like, oh, hey, we're running low on fuel comes the text, the text message thread. So they don't have to plan. And look, is that a big deal? It's not that big of a deal, but you get in that habit.

• 1:01:43Dakota Meyer?

  Habits.

• 1:01:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you get in that habit where you were talking about earlier. What you're you're you're hurting your subordinate leadership by saying, hey, I'll text you when I need this. And I'll text you when we're going to stop for fuel and I'll text you when we're gonna uh uh get lunch.

• 1:01:59Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Jocko Willink?

  I'll send a thread on that instead of saying, hey, here's where we got to get tomorrow. Let me know the plan. And when your subordinate says, well, we'll just text you. No, no, no, no, dude. Come up with a plan. This is an opportunity to learn, to lead. So go make it happen.

• 1:02:16Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, and we've got to get back to that, you know, and we've got to get back to the basics. Right? And I'm not talking about going back and and and, you know. You know, we got to shoot iron sights, right? Like, like, I think that's irrelevant in the whole sequence of all of it, right? As long as you have good positioning, right? You know, like, I hear all that, like, all these kids don't even know how to, they don't even know how to, you know, shoot iron sights anymore. Well, we didn't know how to, we didn't know how to saddle horses in case we lost our Humvees either, you know, so. But but but what I will say is, is we have to get back to the basics of discipline, right? Of of how our uniform looks.

• 1:02:56Dakota Meyer?

  Like, taking pride in that. It it sounds kind of crazy, but it's like, look, nobody's ever died from an Irish pennant. But guys have died because they missed the snail trail because attention to detail. You know, it's, it's all, you can't pick and choose where you're going to have discipline at and where you're not. Where the basics are going to matter, where they're not. They either matter all the time or they don't matter at all. And, and we've got to get some of that back, not just uniform. I don't want the uniform people to come at me and go, ah, you know, I'm an idiot, right? But, but what I'm saying is, is the leaders should be giving them clear expectations of what to meet.

• 1:03:38Dakota Meyer?

  That keeps them constantly getting better. You know, me is, as when I was a corporal, I never talked, spoke to a guy and didn't leave him with something to work on. Oh yeah. You know, and it would be like little, small stuff like, you know, hey, Corporal Meyer of so and so. I'm like, yeah, yeah, go, yeah, that, that, that sounds good. But also like, uh, you think those sleeves might be a little bit better? You know what I mean? Like it was always something of me just chipping around. And, and I think, you know, the other, other piece that I see a lot of is, is people want to be liked. And I think this has to do something with like the generation and like social media and kind of society where it's at right now. People want to be liked and they want to feel good and all this.

• 1:04:23Dakota Meyer?

  I'm seeing that a lot and, and I try to tell people, you know, it's like fraternization is a big thing inside the military. You know, I don't know if you talked to your NCOs when you were, I mean, I didn't. Like there was no way I was hanging out with these guys because they were always on my ass all the time.

• 1:04:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the SEAL teams is different for sure.

• 1:04:42Dakota Meyer?

  For sure. Different, right? But, but for us, it's like majority of the NCOs, like you, you, you avoided them because they were like, like, it's like, do you want to go hang out with your mom and dad? Like if dad comes in, like you're shutting up, you're saying the least amount as possible.

• 1:04:55Dakota Meyer?

  And I think that one of the things is leaders who are friends with the people that are leading is a big problem. It's like, do you know parents who are friends with their kids?

• 1:05:05Jocko Willink?

  I'm kind of friends with all my kids.

• 1:05:06Dakota Meyer?

  Well, now.

• 1:05:08Jocko Willink?

  I kind of always was.

• 1:05:09Dakota Meyer?

  Well, so you got a good wife.

• 1:05:11Jocko Willink?

  I do have, I do have an awesome wife.

• 1:05:13Dakota Meyer?

  But, but, but they, they respect you and there's a clear line.

• 1:05:18Jocko Willink?

  Well, so, so here's what we'd have to break down.

• 1:05:21Dakota Meyer?

  Let's break it down. This is a good one.

• 1:05:23Jocko Willink?

  I've been breaking this one down for a while. Cause for a while I've been, I was telling people for a few years, like, hey, you know, have good relationships, build good relationships, but I realized people didn't really understand what that was. And so here's what I finally broke down a relationship to be. Trust, listen, respect, influence and care. Trust, listen, respect, influence and care. So it's easier to understand that when you look at the negative. If I don't trust you and you don't trust me, do we have a relationship? No. If I don't listen to you and you don't listen to me, do we have a relationship? No. If I don't treat you with respect and you don't treat me with respect, do we have a relationship? No. If you have no influence over me and I have no influence over you, do we have a relationship? No. And if you don't care about me and I don't care about you, do we have a relationship? No. So it's easy to understand when you don't have those things, that's not a relationship.

• 1:06:06Jocko Willink?

  So when we do have those things, then it means we do have a relationship. And the stronger those things are, the better relationship we have. Now, think about each one of those components. If you want to receive those things from someone, you gotta give them to them. So if I want you to listen to me, how do I make that happen? I have to listen to you. If I want you to treat me with respect, how do I make that happen? I have to treat you with respect. I can't just demand respect. And whether I'm your dad, your sergeant, your platoon commander, if I say, hey, Sergeant Meyer, you better respect me. Does that, it doesn't work.

• 1:06:51Dakota Meyer?

  No, that's, that's manager.

• 1:06:52Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't work. If I, so trust, listen, respect, influence, care. If I want you to care about me, I gotta care about you. If I want me to be able to influence you, I better allow you to influence me. And if I do these things, we're gonna have a relationship. And by the way. We'll be friends.

• 1:07:12Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:13Jocko Willink?

  And so for me with my kids and look, this was, you know, I, I got better at this as I got a little bit older. But you know, when your kids are talking to you and it's really hard, it's really hard with your kids. What makes it so hard with your kids is like, you know, 100% like I'm, I'm not, I'm not being, uh, I'm not being like facetious here. You actually know a hundred percent what is good for your kid and what is bad.

• 1:07:37Dakota Meyer?

  Yes.

• 1:07:37Jocko Willink?

  You know it a hundred percent. So to listen to them and their stupid idea that you know is wrong. It takes so much humility to say,

• 1:07:49Jocko Willink?

  okay, if you, if you really wanna, uh, whatever, you really wanna eat that ice cream. Okay. Okay. You know, it's not good for them, but they really wanna do it and it hurts. Yeah. You know, okay. Go ahead. Yep. Go ahead and have the ice cream. Now you have to listen to them like they really want it for whatever reason. And you gotta say, well, hey, do you know about what the, you know, that's not good for you? And if you keep eating ice cream all the time, well, yeah. So that's what we have to do. We have to listen to people if we want them to listen to us. And you know, all my kids, they all, I mean, I have a great relationship with all my kids. And by the way, this was the same thing in the, when I was in the military. Like I had a great relationship. I had the same relationship with the admiral

• 1:08:33Jocko Willink?

  that I had with the new guy in a platoon. Like they both like I listen, I listened to what my new guy had to say. I treat him with respect. I cared about him. I listened to my boss, listen to the admiral, listen to what he had to say, listen to my commanding officer, listen to what they, and when I listen to them, guess what? They listen to me too.

• 1:08:49Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. And I guess the, the, but I, but I think like the, the listening piece is, I mean, that's just, that's basic human respect.

• 1:08:56Jocko Willink?

  Yes. Right. You would think so.

• 1:08:57Dakota Meyer?

  But, but my, my, the friend thing though. And maybe I'm wrong. But your kids probably aren't inviting you to go hang out with them and their friends doing whatever they do for fun.

• 1:09:09Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I got some bad news for you.

• 1:09:11Dakota Meyer?

  All the time?

• 1:09:12Jocko Willink?

  Not all the time, but also like, hey, I don't, they know.

• 1:09:16Dakota Meyer?

  But your kids are older.

• 1:09:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they are older.

• 1:09:18Dakota Meyer?

  Your kids are older.

• 1:09:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:20Dakota Meyer?

  They're not like eight, nine, seven, eight, nine.

• 1:09:22Jocko Willink?

  Your kids are definitely to go through a point where.

• 1:09:24Dakota Meyer?

  Like where you have to be the, the, the.

• 1:09:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, where you're a dorky dad, you know, they don't want your dorky dad around, just like you're talking about, you don't want the dorky NCO around. And by the way, you're right in the fact that now that I think about it, like, there was definitely times when I was in SEAL platoon, it's like, you know, hey, boss, you might want to head out for a while. The boys have got some stuff we got to handle, right? That's, that's definitely happening. So, yeah, I get it.

• 1:09:50Jocko Willink?

  But here's, here's what I, here's what I, sometimes guys think, some guys, sometimes people lean on this.

• 1:09:57Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Jocko Willink?

  Hey, I'm not here to be liked.

• 1:09:59Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Jocko Willink?

  And what that, what that then in that statement gives them permission to do is not listen to you, not treat you with respect, not be influenced by you at all. So I don't want people to use that crutch of like, hey, I'm not here to be liked. Matter of fact, there was a, there was a guy that came in to instruct when Leif was teaching the, the junior officer training course. And the guy came in and says like, it's not your job to be liked. And he said, as a matter of fact, it's your job that you're not liked. And, you know, Leif had to like, let the guy leave and then correct him. Cause if you have a bunch of junior officers going, hey, I'm here to not be likes.

• 1:10:31Dakota Meyer?

  Terrible.

• 1:10:32Jocko Willink?

  That's a freaking problem.

• 1:10:33Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. And the Marine Corps is actually, I think they, they put in this, um, they added on the JJ did tie buckle, which is the leadership traits.

• 1:10:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they tried empathy, right?

• 1:10:42Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, empathy. And it was, in my opinion, based around officers not being a dick to be a dick, right? It wasn't this coddling thing. It was, hey, don't be a dick just because you can be a dick, right? And so, um, my, my point of it is, and so I say that liked and trusted thing a lot in this book. I think you can be both, but I think only one can be your priority. So it's, it's, and I'll give you an example. Politicians are leaders that live by being liked. Do you trust them?

• 1:11:18Dakota Meyer?

  Police officers are people who live by being trusted. But do you like them? And so like, that's the difference of, of at what point you're, you know, of which one you, I think, I think you can be both. But I don't think you can, both can be your priority.

• 1:11:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and even, even the fact that, let's, let's look at respect, right? So it's an interesting thing that goes on in the military because we, you've already made like a few, it might've been before we started recording, but look, when we're enlisted guys, we talk shit about the officers, right? It's like, it's open, kind of open season. But then, when you, we, when you become a senior NCO, there's a lot of senior NCOs that all of a sudden, now they wanna flex on the, on the rank. Because now I'm a senior NCO, and now I'm gonna kind of flex that rank, but you wanna, you wait, we, so we don't have to respect the officers, but you want me to respect the senior NCO. There's a little hypocrisy there.

• 1:12:18Jocko Willink?

  Whereas for me, it's like, hey, when, when you and I work together, then you're my boss, and we respect each other, not only do I respect you as a person, but I respect the fact that you're, the whatever rank you are, I respect the fact that you're a, a captain, or you're a major, whatever. And just like you respect the fact that I'm a corporal, you respect that, you know what it took to get there. And so, the respect part of it is so important, because we actually respect each other as human beings, and we respect the rank. So if I'm with Leif Babin, and he, he's, I'm the, I'm the troop commander, and he's the platoon commander, so I outrank him, and we're sitting around back at camp, and I'm talking to him, you, guess what he calls me all day long? It's like, hey, Jocko, what do you, how you wanna do this?

• 1:13:03Jocko Willink?

  We get, and all of a sudden, we're sitting in front of a battalion commander, he'll look at me and be, hey, sir, can I make a suggestion? Because he's ma, he understands, we all understand the dynamic. Now occasionally, this is what you got, this is what maybe what you're talking about here that you're going to watch out for.

• 1:13:19Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Jocko Willink?

  I might have Dakota the knucklehead who I'm cool to you, I'm, I'm the, I'm the platoon commander and I'm cool to you while we're out in the field and then we come back and now the, the battalion commander's there and you're like, hey Jocko, that was a pretty stupid way to execute that. And all of a sudden you've let it show that there's this, there's a lack of respect that you didn't understand to tighten it up when we're around the battalion commander.

• 1:13:45Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  A good level of respect that we have for each other. You'd be like, hey, sir, uh, sorry, I made that bad call out there. Here's some things I'm going to do different next time. And all of a sudden it's like everything falls into line. But the minute I'm treating you bad, like if we're out in the field and I treat you like shit because I outrank you, bro, I, I should out openly expect that when you get the chance to freaking belittle me in front of the battalion commander, you're going to do it all day long.

• 1:14:10Dakota Meyer?

  And, and I think like, when you talk about your kids, I think like, here's the, here's the dynamic of, and, and this is just, it's a wild guess. Could be wrong again. Could be three strikes, I'm out.

• 1:14:21Dakota Meyer?

  But you and your wife and how you talk about her when she's not in the room and how you respect her, not just as your wife, but as authority of her being a commander in chief of the kids. And the same thing back, you've taught your kids and gave them an example on how this dynamic will work, right? So like, you know, when leaders, if you're standing there and you're an NCO and that officer walks out and you're talking shit about that officer to the guys.

• 1:14:50Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:14:50Dakota Meyer?

  You know what they're doing when you walk out of the room?

• 1:14:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:53Dakota Meyer?

  They're doing the same thing. So you as a, as a leader, you also, and probably the most impactful thing is, is you teach and you're showing through example. How to follow as well because whoever's above you and how you show them that you follow them is exactly how they're going to follow you.

• 1:15:15Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And that's one that can become very tricky and

• 1:15:18Dakota Meyer?

  Very tricky.

• 1:15:19Jocko Willink?

  Can become very tricky. And I've had to talk a lot of people through this and I had to live through it because I've worked for knuckleheads. I know you've worked for knuckleheads, total knuckleheads. And everybody in your platoon knows that that the boss is a knucklehead. And if you try and whitewash that, they're not going to believe it and they actually lose respect for you. So you have to figure out, okay, how am I going to convey to the guys like, hey, listen, hey, look, this is the way the boss wants this done right now. I know it sounds a little bit strange, but listen, if I'm going to earn any trust with him, we got to execute this thing the best of our ability. And that way we can get a little more leeway. And the guys go, okay, cool. We get it. And I still treat the boss with respect and I don't, I'm not clearly, I'm not going to be like, oh, the boss is an idiot. I'll say, hey, listen, the boss sees this a little bit differently than I do. I don't know if we understand

• 1:16:02Jocko Willink?

  the strategic implications of what of how this is going to land. But what we need to do right now in order to gain more trust with them is execute this to the best of our ability.

• 1:16:11Dakota Meyer?

  Yep. And ultimately come up and sell it. You're selling it to them, right? Like, and no matter what, whether a good decision or a bad decision, you can still make some type of good out of it.

• 1:16:23Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:16:24Dakota Meyer?

  Like, hey, you know what? We're going to go do this and hopefully it shows the boss that it doesn't work. But it's all on you as the leader on how you sell that decision and what you're going to need to them. If you're like, oh, this is, this is stupid. This is dumb. Like this makes no sense. Well, guess what they're all thinking?

• 1:16:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Why are we even doing it?

• 1:16:41Dakota Meyer?

  And it's like, it's almost like when we like, whether, whether, you know, it's doing an exercise with the Marines or whether it's getting on a rig with, you know, the fire service. It's like, I hate those people. And nothing is more annoying than going to a fall call at 2 o'clock in the morning. And then you got the guy that gets on there and is like, man, this is dumb, like negative the whole way there. Yeah, we all know, like no shit. We all had to wake up. We're all on this rig with you. We're all have gone here three times today with you, right? We all know it sucks like, but what are you doing? To help make this any better, right? And you as a leader, I think, I think, you know, one of the most impactful things you can do as a leader is be a conversation shifter.

• 1:17:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, for sure.

• 1:17:25Dakota Meyer?

  Right? Shifting that conversation to, yeah, but you know what? Like we get paid to ride on a big fucking truck down the road. And people call us and people need us. We still have a job. We're still getting paid. And we get, we're getting paid to care. How cool is that? Right? You know, but being that conversation shifter and it's so important because man, like you know as well as I do. Shit's contagious and negativity is contagious. Positives contagious, fear, all of it is so contagious, but we gotta be able to, um, you know, you just can't, you just can't talk shit about who you're following and, and you as a leader, no matter what has got to sell it because you prep the mindsets of the people to go perform this.

• 1:18:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And another key component, number one, if you're getting asked to do something that's immoral, illegal or unethical, you, you don't do it. So if you're a young trooper out there and you're getting asked to do something that's illegal or moral unethical, you don't sell that, you, you, you don't do it.

• 1:18:23Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:25Jocko Willink?

  Now, when your boss is telling you to do something that doesn't make sense, you need to ask some questions about why it's happening that way. Present some of those secondary and tertiary effects that your boss might not see. Cause if I'm telling you to go charge a machine gun nest and, and you look at me like, hey boss, if we go up this, towards this elevated position where there's a bunkered machine gun nest, we're all gonna die. Is that what, what the intent that you have? I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I just think we need to get rid of that machine gun nest. We can maneuver across this open area and you go, okay, cool. Let me put down a base of fire. Let me move around to the flank and let me, oh, okay, cool. Yeah. You handle it, right? So as a leader, you should want to get pushback on your ideas.

• 1:19:08Jocko Willink?

  And there's also something I call the explanation effort meter, which is when I'm trying to convince you of something, it shouldn't be. That hard, my meter shouldn't go into the red. I shouldn't have to be like, well, no Dakota but this and no Dakota but this and no Dakota but you know what? Shut up and do what I told you to do. I can't even explain anymore. I went to the red and it blew out the engine. If it's that hard for you to convey what it is and why it is you're doing something, then you might need to check yourself. And I always get, you know, I get asked a lot like, what, what, what about when the military, you got told to do things that were stupid? I'm like, well, that, first of all, that didn't happen very often. I do write about it in the dichotomy of leadership where we got told we had a minimum number of Iraqis that we had

• 1:19:53Jocko Willink?

  to take with us on every mission. And it was a ratio of how many Americans could go with Iraqis and that and for a Ramadi at the time didn't make sense. And I raised my hand, wrote an email to my boss and said, hey, boss, here's what's going on. Here's what the requirements are. Here's my request for a waiver and here's the minimum number of SEALs I want to have in the field. And he's like, thanks for that information. Makes sense. Proceed. So when you're getting told to do something that doesn't truly doesn't make sense, ask some questions. Now, look, are there going to be times where your boss might be like, hey, listen, this is what we're doing. Make it happen. Hey, I'm not sure if, hey, Dakota, this is what we're doing. Make it happen. Got it. Cool. And my interpretation of that

• 1:20:35Jocko Willink?

  is we don't, I don't have, you know, I don't have time to explain it to you. There's something that I can't explain to you right now. There's some political bullshit going on, but I need to make this happen. And you go, cool, got it. And you go and execute it to the best of your ability. Now, listen, if it's, you know, also like if, if you're going to take unnecessary casualties, then you go, hey, I just want to make sure we're going to storm this machine gun nest and I'm probably going to lose 50% of my force. Is that what you're saying? I'd be like, no, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. I just want that. So there's a whole bunch of things going on here. And again, just to tie this back into like being friends, you, you, that shouldn't be your priority. Your priority shouldn't be to be

• 1:21:17Jocko Willink?

  friends with people. And one more thing, if you want to build relationships with people, a lot of times you think, well, of, you know, I want to build, I want to, I want to build relationships with, with Dakota, you know, he's my senior NCO. And I go, hey Dakota, let's go have a beer. Hey Dakota, let's go have lunch. That's cool. That's cool. I get it. But does that show you that I trust you? Does that show you that I listen to you? Does that show you that I have, that you have influence over me? Does that show that I respect you? Does that show that I care about you? Maybe if I pay for lunch, maybe, but that's about it. So me just going to lunch with you, me just having a beer with you, doesn't actually improve our relationship. What improves our relationship is when I say, hey Dakota, here's the mission we gotta get done.

• 1:22:01Jocko Willink?

  Let me know how you want to make it happen. And then you present me a plan and I listen to you and I allow you to execute that plan. And now we start to build a real relationship. And what we end up with is what, and maybe we just have a mismatch of definition. What we end up with is you and I are friends.

• 1:22:16Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, and, and, but, but what we define friends as is ultimately it, right? Like, I, I don't surround myself with people like that. Like, I don't give a shit about going to lunch. I give a shit about getting better.

• 1:22:32Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I didn't go to lunch.

• 1:22:34Dakota Meyer?

  My friends.

• 1:22:34Jocko Willink?

  Lunch is for cowards.

• 1:22:36Dakota Meyer?

  Lunch is for cowards.

• 1:22:37Jocko Willink?

  You work through, you'll work through lunch and stay late.

• 1:22:39Dakota Meyer?

  Well, but, but then that's what I respect. That's, that's where we're going to become friends.

• 1:22:43Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:22:43Dakota Meyer?

  When we're getting after it, when we're both accomplishing this, we're going after this, you know? I, I talk about, I talk about leadership equity, right? And so like, one of the things when you're talking about somebody questioning you over and over. It's a diagnostic tool, right? It's either a diagnostic tool that you haven't sold them on why you need it or why you're doing this, which you should. You owe it to them. No, you're not ever in a position of where you don't owe them an explanation, especially people you're asking to do something for you. Or the second piece is, it's a diagnostic tool that, that you have expended all of your leadership equity. And I talk about this story of, you know, when I got to the Marines, eventually people are gonna, it's, it's gonna cross your mind, why? It's human beings' nature.

• 1:23:26Dakota Meyer?

  Like, at some point, you ask yourself, why am I doing this? You know, I mean, no matter what. And so I got to the, I got out to Hawaii. Went to Paris Island School of Infantry. And I got, and I tell you, I arrived in Hawaii and it was. I mean, I showed up to a line unit and they just came back from the Adiatha Triad. Showed up on around Thanksgiving weekend. What year is this? Two thousand six. Chuck. Yeah, and um, when I showed up, you know, the rooms that we were walking into, it was on a thing, it was like a Thanksgiving weekend. But the rooms that we showed up and walked into were of the guys that they had lost.

• 1:24:08Dakota Meyer?

  The first, the first thing I did with my, with Kilo Company was that Monday, we showed up at, together as a, as a, as part of the platoon and the company was we, we went to the chapel and did the ceremony of all the guys they lost. And um, so you could imagine what, what these guys were like. And I had a, had a squad leader. And I didn't understand, I mean, you go from, you know, school of infantry to getting to the line and like we talked about, they, they do things a little bit different.

• 1:24:50Dakota Meyer?

  And every day, I mean, we had this squad leader that was just, man, he, there was never any time off. It was twenty-four seven, you PT and you were, you know, you'd come in and you didn't, you know, you got, you learn a nine line. Like it was like every other, you know, it seemed like every other squad was not having to do shit. And we're the ones that are in there just, everybody else is hanging out, you know, skating and then we're in there just nine line, nine line. And it was like, you got a nine line now, it was like, you know, you gotta do this. And it was just, just craziness, right? And, and I didn't understand it. And after, I thought everybody hated us, right? I mean, you just, you felt like nothing. And, and you go off this high of becoming a Marine and then now you get to the fleet and you're back to, to start and you're just a boot. And um,

• 1:25:34Dakota Meyer?

  I thought everybody hated me and I'll never forget after about two weeks of being there, I called my dad and I'm like, hey dad, what's going on? He's like, man, like you're making a lot of friends out there? And I'm like, yeah, you know, I got, I think I got taped to the pull up bars because I couldn't do all the pull ups. You know what I mean? I could only do so many. I couldn't do all of them, you know?

• 1:25:56Dakota Meyer?

  And I was like, fuck, what did I sign up for? And my dad's like, well, one of your buddies, your buddies called me. I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, you know, like, said you're doing great. And I'm like, I don't know that I have a friend out here right now. And he's like, um, he's like, you know, Daniel or whatever his name was called me. And I'm like, who? And he told me, I was like, what's his last name? And he told me, I'm like, Corporal called you? I'm like, fuck, he's, he's hazing my dad too now. And, um, he's like, yeah, he, he wanted to call me and let me know that, you know, cause when you check in, you check in with these folders, or we did, and you had all your, your information on it, you know, when your check in paperwork?

• 1:26:41Dakota Meyer?

  And, and I gave it to him and, and, and my dad's like, yeah, he called me. He wanted to let me know that, that you got checked in, you live three rooms down from him, you're in a room with three other guys. He, he let me know that he just got back from Iraq. It was his, it was his, uh, first deployment, um, that he was a squad leader and he wanted to let me know that, that if I had any questions about his son, that, that he was responsible for you in every single way. And if I had any questions to pick up the phone and call him and make sure that, that he had, that I had his information. And then he promised me that he would do everything and he would not waste one second of time to make sure that you were prepared for whatever the country might ask you to do for them.

• 1:27:20Jocko Willink?

  Damn dude. Who was that Corporal?

• 1:27:24Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it was Corporal Kreiser and, um,

• 1:27:29Dakota Meyer?

  And I thought the guy hated me.

• 1:27:32Dakota Meyer?

  He would still deny it to today that he did it.

• 1:27:36Dakota Meyer?

  But you know, when you talk about leadership equity, from that point on,

• 1:27:42Dakota Meyer?

  what he asked me didn't have to make sense. I'm sure that mopping the basketball courts in the pouring down rain, I'm sure it had something to do with it. I'm sure, I'm sure that-

• 1:27:54Jocko Willink?

  There was a damn good reason for it.

• 1:27:56Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, sure. But you know what, like, do you think I ever questioned if that guy cared?

• 1:28:02Jocko Willink?

  Yep. That's why that last component of relationship is care. Cause when you, when he, when you knew that he cared about you, you, you knew you would care about him.

• 1:28:15Dakota Meyer?

  I'm telling you something right now, still to this day, I would run through a wall for that guy, right? I mean, just, just a good guy. And you know, and I had leaders like that, you know, Sergeant Major Soto Rodriguez, same thing, right? I mean, just, I had leaders like that and, and they're everywhere. And, and so, you know, but, but let me tell you something, those guys lived it. They lived for us. They didn't live for themselves. You know what I mean? And, and I'll tell you, they, they, there was never a time, when, when I look at those leaders that made such an influence, there was never a time that they ever thought they were above doing what we did.

• 1:28:57Dakota Meyer?

  So like, yeah, if there was a working party and they had something else they had to do, then they weren't there. But let me say this, they were there first and they were leaving last. And that is something that like, I have been so fortunate with of the leaders that I was raised by. But let me say this on top of it, they always demanded the most when, and I'm so thankful for it. Because, you know, when I look at the medal, I think of all, that was the easiest day of my life. You know, those guys getting up and being who I needed them to be, not who I wanted them to be, ultimately prepared me for that thing. And, and, and, and I think that like as leaders, if your biggest fear as a leader is not

• 1:29:43Dakota Meyer?

  that the person you're in charge of is going to fail because you didn't prepare them. If it's you worried about you failing. Wrong.

• 1:29:53Jocko Willink?

  Everyone will see it too.

• 1:29:54Dakota Meyer?

  Everyone will see it. And I'll tell you, that's what's different about this generation. Is they are emotionally in tune. And they can tell if somebody genuinely cares about them or not. You're not going to fake. Authenticity with this generation.

• 1:30:11Jocko Willink?

  I was watching a guy named Flynn Cochran, who is in the SEAL teams and he was working at Ashland Front and his wife works at Ashland Front. And he was on stage and he was describing me debriefing him during a training operation. And just how, you know, I was just freaking tearing him a new ass and up and down. Why the hell did you do this? And what the hell was this over there? And it's, and as he was up there telling that story, I'm kind of like, damn dude, because I'm always like, hey, you know, you need to be building relationships and. And.

• 1:30:46Jocko Willink?

  How, because that's the way. I was. And I was like, how, because I was like that for, you know, for my career of like, if someone's doing something that's messed up, like I'm going to let them know. And I was like, how come? He was okay with that because he said like, it was like, you know, this is where I learned this from. And I realized that the reason that. Guys. Listen to me was because they knew that more than anything else in the world, I cared about them.

• 1:31:16Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:16Jocko Willink?

  And I wanted to make sure that they understood their job so that they could. Come home themselves and bring their guys home. And so. That's what, as soon as you realize that. With your first, you know, squad leader.

• 1:31:30Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:30Jocko Willink?

  As soon as you realize that you're like, oh, I'll do anything for this guy.

• 1:31:33Dakota Meyer?

  Anything for him, right? And it was that way on. And that's what like I try, I take back is. Is, is giving a shit, right? Giving a shit about the people, you know, I just like, obviously I re-enlisted and I was up at, um. I was up at RTC. And I'll never forget, there was this kid up there. And when I got there, you know, they called me the old, I'm old, I'm old core, right? Um, yeah. And I had to learn, learn a little bit about, you know, way things, way things are. And, and they're, they're still the same. And I argue it's still, it's no different now than when it, when I was in. It's just about are you willing to do it and be there and, and, and hold the standard? And, um, but there was a kid, I'll never forget.

• 1:32:17Dakota Meyer?

  We were coming out to formation and so you had to run this test to pick up with the class. And you had to pass it to pick up with the class, right? And, um, this kid, we're, we're out there in formation and I'm like, hey, where's so and so? And they're like, oh, he's in his room. He's not, he doesn't want to pick up. He's fine with just dropping back to going to the line unit and going on by his way. He just, it's, it's something about him is just, it ain't, it ain't in him today. So I went up there, man. I'm like, somebody open this door. So I opened the door because we were going to chow and then we had to go do the test. And so I, I walked in there and he was still in bed. And I'm like, get up. I'm like, get up. I started asking him like, what job do you not want in the Marine Corps?

• 1:33:02Dakota Meyer?

  He's like admin. I'm like, okay, well I'm gonna make sure you get fucking admin. And I'm like, he's like, well, I'm already an infantryman. I said, okay, well I'll call your unit before you fucking get there. I said, I'm gonna tell you something, what you're gonna do right now. You might go out there and fail, but you're not gonna quit. You're not gonna quit. And I said, so get up, get your shit on. I said, I don't care what you do. I said, I will physically take you. And I'll deal with the consequences that I get. But I said, I, I'm an NCO and I'm not gonna let you not show up. And so I said, what you do, I said, you wanna get out there with all of us and you wanna, you wanna fail the run or you wanna fail the pull ups? Have at it, but that's on you. But I'll tell you what, I'll get you there. You're gonna fucking get there. And I got the message over here on my phone.

• 1:33:42Dakota Meyer?

  He wrote me because he graduated BRC. Hell yeah. And he like thanked me and his, his mom, you know, he, he introduced me to his mom. I flew out for the graduation. He introduced me to his mom. And, and that's, do you think that kid liked me in that moment? No. He hated me. Probably was saying about how he's gonna kill me.

• 1:33:59Dakota Meyer?

  But, but you know what? Like, if I had failed him and I had let him go about that route? Who knows where he would have ended up in life one day? You know what I mean?

• 1:34:09Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:34:09Dakota Meyer?

  Like, who knows?

• 1:34:10Jocko Willink?

  And this is exactly what you were talking about. If your goal, your prioritized goal was to be friends with this guy in the traditional sense of the word friend, then you'd be like, hey dude, I get it. It's not that big of a deal. A line unit's cool too. And you're not, this isn't for everyone, but that's okay. That he would have smiled and said, thanks, man. I really appreciate it. But that's not what he needed. That's not a real friend, by the way. I don't even consider that a real friend.

• 1:34:37Dakota Meyer?

  Hundred percent. And that's what the difference is today is brotherhood today is over being like, and this is where we get it mixed up. And, and the same thing with love, the word love. And I know it's a weird fucking thing for me to say.

• 1:34:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we usually don't use the L word on this podcast.

• 1:34:52Dakota Meyer?

  But, but because here's, because here's, because here's the thing about love.

• 1:34:57Dakota Meyer?

  People tie it to an emotion and it's not, it's a fucking choice. Love is a choice. It's not emotion. It's not about making me feel good. It's about putting what's in the best interest of you over everything else, over how it feels, over everything else. It's about you putting what's in the best interest of somebody else. That's what love is ultimately. And it, and 99% of the time it's hard, it sucks, it hurts, and it doesn't fucking feel good. But that's what it is. And that's what brotherhood is. Brotherhood is loving other people. And I'm like, if you're not willing to stand there and tell this kid to do what's right, or to correct them before they go get fucked up by somebody else,

• 1:35:38Dakota Meyer?

  or to beat their ass if they need to be, have their ass beat before getting out of the fucking car for drinking or whatever. You think you're really gonna go in a house when they're trapped in it or out in the middle of the road getting shot up? And you're gonna go risk your life when you could die for them? When you could die trying to help them? Nope.

• 1:35:57Jocko Willink?

  I went to one of my buddy's retirements. He did like 30 plus years in the SEAL teams. And he was giving his retirement speech and he said, you know, he's gets up, then this is like a senior enlisted master chief. Like I said, like 34, 35 years in active duty the whole time. And he says, I can sum up what the SEAL teams is in one word.

• 1:36:26Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, what the hell is he gonna, I've known this guy for a long time. I'm like, what the, I'm thinking like real quick, is he gonna say discipline? Is he gonna say, you know, it's only one word. It can't be firing maneuver. It's, you know, it can't be superior firepower. What's he gonna say? I'm sorry, for, you know, those milliseconds, I had that thought. And he goes, love. And I was like, yeah, damn dude, he's right. I'm like, yep, since everything you just said, yeah, it's like legit.

• 1:36:55Dakota Meyer?

  It is, right? And, and, yeah, I mean, and I, I, I think so much about, and obviously like the further, I think the further, you know, I think it's why I say time heals everything. The further you get away from things, you see it different, you, you see how complex and multi-dimensional things are, you know, and I talk about how, um, you know, obviously whenever I, I, I, I, I think about Ganges Gal, and that, that's by far the single day that, that transformed who I am so much, right? And I, and I think this might sound probably bad and I'll probably take some heat for it, but I'll say it anyways. I think this last year, I would say last year was the, was the first year that I was,

• 1:37:38Dakota Meyer?

  that I was thankful for my teammates deaths. And I'm not happy about it.

• 1:37:47Dakota Meyer?

  But when I thought about it, if I'm, if I'm not thankful for it, then I'm disrespectful to it. And, and it means that I don't appreciate what their deaths had meant. And, and I think about this, if, if I told you today that you could die for a cause,

• 1:38:11Dakota Meyer?

  that people would be inspired and would live off of your story for the next, it's been 16 years. Would you say that's a cause worth dying for?

• 1:38:25Dakota Meyer?

  You can inspire thousands, maybe millions. Because of your story.

• 1:38:33Dakota Meyer?

  And what you did and your sacrifice and what it meant and the lineage it left. Dude, I would jump on that in a heartbeat. And, and I think for me, like, when I shifted that mindset.

• 1:38:46Dakota Meyer?

  Like, I, I've obviously was here because I have to go, somebody has to go tell it. Because if nobody tells it. Then it's, it doesn't matter.

• 1:38:57Jocko Willink?

  I had Travis Mannion's sister Ryan on the other day and he, you know, he was killed in 2007 in Fallujah.

• 1:39:06Jocko Willink?

  And she was talking of one of his friends. And the friend basically asked that same question because, you know, he has the Travis Mannion Foundation. It's inspiring people all over the world and all over the country, helped out so many veterans, helped out so many families. And she was like. She was like, you know, he, he would. Make the choice. And she was kind of like, you know, I was like, no, I would give all this stuff away. Like if I could have my brother back. But then she was like, and I thought about it and she was like, yeah, he was right. Like Travis would do it all again. The same exact way, knowing the impact that he's going to have and knowing that he kept. A few of his Marines alive. That day, that's enough.

• 1:39:52Jocko Willink?

  And so, yeah, that's, um. That's a pretty profound way of thinking about things.

• 1:39:57Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. I mean, you look at, I mean, you look what. I mean, look, the Travis Mannion Foundation is.

• 1:40:03Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, the Mannion name. H- his lineage. And legacy of the Corps. You know, and, and, but it, but it wouldn't be that without. You know, his family. Going out and pushing this. I mean, you know, could you imagine like. Being the sister of this and having to relive it over and over, but, but like the courage it takes. To be able to go tell the story in a way that, that takes care of others, you know, and, and I think that's ultimately what. We're all going to face bad. Like, that's just life, right? Like, bad things happening or it's just life. You're never going to get away from it, no matter what, whether you sit on the couch and hide all day, you're, you're gonna, you're gonna struggle, whether you, whatever.

• 1:40:46Dakota Meyer?

  But the only way to turn bad into good and to get it out of the world is if you absorb it and you turn it in to help others. They say that evil, good and evil comes from the same place. There's somebody that has gone, people who do it, there's somebody who has gone through something bad and one goes out and hurts others because they were hurt and the other one goes out and helps others because they were hurt and they don't want that to pass on to anybody else. And you can't decide, neither one of them could decide what happened to them, but they could decide what they did with it. And that's what we all have to do.

• 1:41:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a weird, like you know, people that have, their dad was an alcoholic and some of them never drink. They're like, oh yeah, I saw what that's like. And some of them become alcoholics. You know, like same thing with abuse. Like some kids get abused, they become abusers. Some kids like, oh, I'm never gonna do that. So this, how you, I don't know what makes that shake out the way it does. That'd be good to know.

• 1:41:48Dakota Meyer?

  It's a choice.

• 1:41:49Jocko Willink?

  The choice.

• 1:41:50Dakota Meyer?

  The choice. That's where the power of life is. And the choice.

• 1:41:58Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of bad things happening, in your book, you talk about inconveniences, problems and emergencies. And properly identifying those things as to what's an inconvenience, what's a problem and what's an emergency. Talk me through those because that can help people.

• 1:42:16Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, you know, we all, you know, if everything in your life becomes an emergency, then nothing's an emergency. And how often do you hear people talk about that? You know, like, oh, you know, I got this emergency, you got this emergency, you got this emergency. So the way that, you know, when you, and really what you're tying to these is how much emotional equity you're gonna put in each one of them. It's a tie to it, right? A problem gets a little bit different level of emotions than a, you know, an inconvenience. I mean, they're just, they're literally the same thing. They're just categorized of how much emotions you're gonna tie to them. And we talked about how emotions are so important. But I think you have to identify what each, what the difference of all of them are as

• 1:42:59Dakota Meyer?

  yourself. And so I look at it like this. Look, if you can write a check for it, if you can make a decision, or you can do something to change it, it's an inconvenience, not a problem.

• 1:43:11Dakota Meyer?

  At the point that it becomes something you can't make a decision to change, it's a problem.

• 1:43:18Dakota Meyer?

  And eventually, problems will ultimately sometimes become inconveniences the longer that they go on. You know?

• 1:43:24Jocko Willink?

  You just have to accept that's the way that is now.

• 1:43:26Dakota Meyer?

  It's just the way it is, right? The longer it's there, you live with it. And then you just start, people are so, human beings are so adaptive.

• 1:43:35Jocko Willink?

  It's funny, when our gym burned down, well, it didn't burn down, but when our gym had the fire, right? People would be like, oh, my God, that's terrible. And I'd say, yeah, it is a completely devastating, massive inconvenience for me. Cause even though like, cause we, we opened up a new gym, but it's like 25 minutes away. You gotta get on a couple of highways, there's traffic, there's like, we don't have showers there. So it is like, all these little problems, but guess what? The gym caught fire, didn't burn, I'm sorry, didn't burn down. We saved the building, no one died. Uh, we're rebuilding it, we have insurance, like, so it's not that big of a deal. It's a major, major, major inconvenience for me. But you know, it is what it is.

• 1:44:19Dakota Meyer?

  But, but think about people who are like, you know, everything becomes an emergency. And an emergency is only identified as something that is happening right now. That if you don't do something, take action or make a decision, somebody's life will end. So if anybody's even listening to this podcast right now, they're not having an emergency. There's no emergencies, you know what I mean? And, and majority of things are, are inconveniences. And, and I, I remember this, I was going through this, this problem and this guy looked at me.

• 1:44:48Jocko Willink?

  I did see like a freaking video of a cop in a high-speed chase and he was listening to Jocko Podcast. He was on his, he's on his cruiser cap, somebody sent it to me, it was freaking awesome. He's like, you know, uh, lights are blaring, sirens blaring. And he's like, listening to the podcast, I'm like, oh, this is, this is pretty dope.

• 1:45:07Dakota Meyer?

  He's been doing that for a while.

• 1:45:08Jocko Willink?

  And I also saw a video of a kid gets in a crazy car accident and then like turns up ACDC. It's pretty legit.

• 1:45:16Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, you know, so, yeah, I mean, I had this like problem going on, I was, I was bitching about something. And this guy's like, he goes, you don't, you don't have any, you don't have any problems. He goes, that's an inconvenience. He goes, the day that your kid gets cancer, you got a problem. He goes, you ain't got no problems, you got inconveniences.

• 1:45:34Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:45:34Dakota Meyer?

  Make a decision.

• 1:45:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's there's always somebody else in a freaking really bad situation around you.

• 1:45:42Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it's about it's about perspective and context.

• 1:45:45Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so you got this other thing. So, you know, talking about the book, uh, but you've got this other thing that you got going that you mentioned real quick. It's a sub stack.

• 1:45:54Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:55Jocko Willink?

  And it's called the bluff, which by the way, I was chuckling because in your bluff, you've got the bluff last. Do you know that? Has anyone hassled you about that yet?

• 1:46:05Dakota Meyer?

  They've already had something. I'm so glad you brought it up.

• 1:46:08Jocko Willink?

  So bottom line upfront is the military term. And what that means is when I write you a six page email at the beginning of it, I put the bottom line up front. Hey, we need more ammo and weapons for this platoon because we've got augments.

• 1:46:22Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:23Jocko Willink?

  And then I give you six pages worth of here's who the augments are, here's when they're checking onboard, here's what weapons qualifications they have, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:46:30Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:30Jocko Willink?

  But I gave you the bottom line upfront. So that's kind of the, the, the theory behind your sub stack is like, hey, here's some things that are going on. You happen to put the bottom line in the back.

• 1:46:42Dakota Meyer?

  But you know where it's at.

• 1:46:43Jocko Willink?

  I do know.

• 1:46:45Dakota Meyer?

  If you want to, if you want to like, it really matters where I put the bottom line up front.

• 1:46:50Jocko Willink?

  I actually, I actually was like, yeah, you know what? It kind of makes sense to recap it. But now that I'm thinking about it right now, I think you should put it in the front and I'll tell you why.

• 1:47:01Dakota Meyer?

  Okay.

• 1:47:01Jocko Willink?

  Tell you my two reasons why. Number one, the people can read it and they'll get the main message of it very quickly. The other thing is, is when you like, cause I started, I read the articles and then I would reread them. And as I was rereading them that I knew what they were about, I kind of knew it kind of made it more impactful.

• 1:47:21Dakota Meyer?

  Okay.

• 1:47:22Jocko Willink?

  Because I understood what the bottom line was. And now I was getting the supporting details.

• 1:47:25Dakota Meyer?

  So then I'm gonna put them up front then?

• 1:47:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, I mean.

• 1:47:27Dakota Meyer?

  I had put them at the bottom because I didn't want to, I didn't want to keep people from reading it. So like, I didn't want them to just show up and be like, I wanted to, I, I didn't want them to read it and then be like, well, I already know that. Instead of like seeing the contextual piece of how I like laid it in there and what the lesson was from it. So. I put it at the bottom. Like, one guy let me know day one of launching it. Then I should, it should be the, the blub or something, bottom line up, but under the back, in the back or something, right? Blib or whatever. Um, I mean, I, I got it, right?

• 1:48:04Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. And I did the same thing in the book, right? The bottom line up front is in the back.

• 1:48:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the bottom line front is the back of the book.

• 1:48:10Dakota Meyer?

  But yeah, maybe I will. If I, cause I just want, what I wanted was, is everybody, everybody reads stuff differently. And I just wanted to make sure that at the end of it, they knew what the point was, right? Like, let's, let's recap before you walk away with this. I'm going to leave you with exactly what you should have took.

• 1:48:28Jocko Willink?

  Actually, you know what would be probably really good is front and back.

• 1:48:30Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:31Jocko Willink?

  You know, um, because here's the other thing, these are not excruciatingly long articles, like.

• 1:48:38Dakota Meyer?

  They're written by a marine.

• 1:48:39Jocko Willink?

  They're, they're, they're, they're not, they take three minutes to read or something like that, or four minutes at the most. So when you read it, and what I also think is, I think that the bluff is enticing. Like I, when I read, when I read the bluff, I'm like, oh, that's what, I wonder, I wonder how he came to that conclusion. Or I wonder what he means by that. So I don't know.

• 1:48:59Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, no, that's, that's some good feedback. That's some good feedback. You know, that's what, that's brotherhood.

• 1:49:06Jocko Willink?

  Maybe I shouldn't have done it in the middle of the podcast.

• 1:49:08Dakota Meyer?

  No, no, no, cause now everybody's going to go over there and look at it. They're going to be like, they're, I can't, as soon as I start getting these hammers on comments. I'm going to get changed before this thing comes out. Um, but, but they, uh, but no, so I started, I started it. I, you know, I had so much more to say and, and I think, you know, we're seeing a real time. We have an opportunity in our country, the next 48 months, 24 months, 24 months. I think 24 solid ones to really build back and get a foundational piece

• 1:49:46Dakota Meyer?

  of, of who we are as people, right? And

• 1:49:51Dakota Meyer?

  I, I'll be honest with you. I mean, I think I called you before about it, you know?

• 1:49:58Dakota Meyer?

  Speaking out and giving your opinions.

• 1:50:03Dakota Meyer?

  All of us at some point are, whether you like it or not, you're tied, you're tethered to something. It's just the reality of it. You're tethered to something, right? And, you know, for me, like, I had to ultimately make a big decision this year of, was I gonna be silent? And at the possibility, the expense of

• 1:50:32Dakota Meyer?

  everything I believed in and at the expense of my children's future?

• 1:50:38Dakota Meyer?

  Or was I going to stand up and do what I could with what I had? You know, I think, I think for a lot of us, we've tried to live the example,

• 1:50:49Dakota Meyer?

  but we have probably not used what we need to use the most right now, and that's our voice. And, and, and now it's gotta be done in a way that's effective because your voice doesn't matter if nobody listens to you.

• 1:51:06Dakota Meyer?

  And, and it's gotta be through only one anchor, and that's in the best interest of people. Right? So what you're saying has got to be, the only loyalty you can have is into the greater good. And your principles have got to be aligned. You know, and I think that's what's happened across the country is the world is,

• 1:51:28Dakota Meyer?

  you know, there, there was laws and there was policies and there was all these things to put handicaps in place to make everything equal and to protect people and things like that. But laws, rules and policies are no good if they are at the expense or they hurt the very people that they're supposed to trust. And they're only as good as the people who are enforcing them. And so I um, I came out with this Substack. I can put a longer form of my opinions on there of like, what I think, what I see, what I've experienced and try to share that knowledge across the board to people like of what I've learned, right? I mean, look, I definitely am a guy who's made more mistakes than probably most people on the face of the planet.

• 1:52:10Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I've, I've, I've struggled when it comes to mental health, like I, I, but I've also came back from it, right? And so like, you know, when I look at all this to be able to, to pass on that experience. And I think that's a thing that our generation, I mean, I'm not gonna say everybody, but I think that's a thing that our generation has not done a good job of is, is taking on the role of

• 1:52:32Dakota Meyer?

  spooling up and training the next generation. And I think we gotta do more of it, right? I think, but it's gotta be the right people.

• 1:52:39Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's why I wrote a bunch of kids books, to be honest with you.

• 1:52:42Dakota Meyer?

  Okay, I know I'm sitting here. I got it. I got it.

• 1:52:45Jocko Willink?

  That is, that is my, uh, you know, that's why I wrote them and I wrote them, you know, my, by the, I always tell the story that I wrote them because my, because they weren't good books for my kids. By the time my kid, by the time these books came out, my kids were,

• 1:53:00Jocko Willink?

  two of them were totally out of the picture as far as reading this book and being influenced by it. Maybe a little, maybe just a little bit. They got a little bit of influence. My son was, you know, he was, you know, maybe a little bit and then my youngest daughter, maybe, but really it was like, oh, these, there's a lacking of what you're saying. What, there's a lack of, hey, here's,

• 1:53:25Jocko Willink?

  here's some just broad guidance, broad tune away that you can understand, you can laugh, you can smile, you can get the, you can read a cool book, watch a cool movie, and you're gonna learn some lessons that are gonna help you.

• 1:53:39Jocko Willink?

  How do you, how do you avoid getting caught up in the freaking day to day? Like chaos of the 24 hour news cycle?

• 1:53:52Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it's tough. It's, it's tough because, you know, that, that's a tough one.

• 1:53:59Dakota Meyer?

  Because I have.

• 1:54:04Dakota Meyer?

  I refuse to do it. Like, I'm not gonna be the guy that's gonna sit back and throw eggs at the cars going by, right? I mean, cuz that's...

• 1:54:14Dakota Meyer?

  If I'm not, I don't bring up any problems that I'm not willing to be the solution to. You know, I'm only gonna speak about things that are in my wheelhouse. So like, I don't know if you noticed on my Substack, I set the expectation and the viewpoint and who I am in the first article. You know, like, my leadership piece. I've never led a Fortune 500 company. I have no clue how to talk about that, what boardrooms are. I've never gone to school. I can't tell you what you read in a book. But what I can tell you is, is I know what leadership's like whenever I've led teams in combat. I've led, you know, I've led teams in the fire service, right? Like, I do understand what leadership is when the

• 1:54:55Dakota Meyer?

  stakes are high and that not performing costs other people their lives. So I'm gonna come from that piece of it, right? If you want a high-level strategy guy, probably not gonna be me. But if you need somebody who's gonna get you results, I'll probably be your guy. And so, you know, I try to level set with that so people understand. But I am done with, and that's why I've not been getting on these news pieces, I'm done with just pointing out the problem. Like, I refuse to do that. Like, I will only point out a problem if I'm going to provide solutions. Because if that's not what you're doing, you're just bitching. It's hard, though. It's hard, but I'll say this, and I don't know

• 1:55:37Dakota Meyer?

  how you feel about this. I just think that there's a ton of people out there, there's a, the very toxic piece that's crushing us right now, and it will kill our population, is this extinctionist mindset. And I'll tell you what that is. Anybody that is categorizing, well, all men are bad, all women are bad, all marriages are bad, all this next generation, they're just weak. Anybody that's doing that and is leaving conversations where people are powerless, when they just sit there and point out the problems and they leave people powerless, which is what we're seeing in the news cycles all over, you wanna talk about, let me tell you how you kill the human spirit.

• 1:56:22Dakota Meyer?

  Is by getting them to believe that things can't get better and it's not worth doing because nobody and and they started this with these these talks. Okay. You ready for me to how this has all been a marketing campaign is it started with this one thing that everybody can relate to right now and it's absolutely untrue. Well, why go vote? My vote doesn't matter. Talk about one of the most powerful things of selecting who runs this country. And what they do is they put this ideology and they do this. I call it factual blending of of where they take a piece of the fact and then they blend it in with all this bullshit. Right? And and they they play off your emotions and they get you to believe that

• 1:57:05Dakota Meyer?

  still getting up and doing the right thing doesn't matter.

• 1:57:10Dakota Meyer?

  And what that does is it it kills the spirit. And I don't know if you've ever heard of this study. There was a study when it came to mice and these scientists, what they did, they threw these mice into this pool. And then after like five minutes, the mice started to drown. So what they did is they reached and they pulled the mice back out and they stuck them on the side of the pool or little tub or whatever, and they let them recover. And then they tossed them back in. And the mice swam for over 24 hours. Do you want to know why?

• 1:57:39Jocko Willink?

  Hope.

• 1:57:40Dakota Meyer?

  Because of hope. And if you want to kill a population of people, you kill their hope. And I and I get so sick and tired of hearing these people talk about statistics. And this is where I do think that like this data stuff is is is really getting in the way of us of statistics. You know, I stood up in um in uh and what was it? What was the city called in Massachusetts where they where the where the British marched up Concord?

• 1:58:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:58:08Dakota Meyer?

  I stood up there and I got to speak on the stage like a few days before the anniversary this year.

• 1:58:14Dakota Meyer?

  And I was like, going to give this speech and I it just hit me and it's like it hit me of what the American spirit is.

• 1:58:22Dakota Meyer?

  I said, the American spirit is, is, is not, it's not logical. It's, it's that we believe, it's the power of belief and hope. And you know, when you look at all these, these statistics and you look at these numbers and when you start putting people into, to, to numbers and, and all these like, other things, which I understand they're powerful and they matter, but,

• 1:58:46Dakota Meyer?

  I think about that day, imagine if you had told those shopkeepers, and you told those farmers, and you had told these everyday people, this computer's statistics of them being able to fight and be able to be successful and there be something that we get to live off of and enjoy. If you told them what the statistics and the odds were of them defeating the British who were marching up there that day, do you think they would have ever picked a gun up? No, and we need people who leave conversations of people that they can do something.

• 1:59:20Dakota Meyer?

  And that's what's killing us right now. So when you talk about, why do I not get, how do I stay out of that? It's, it's, it's a conscious decision.

• 1:59:30Dakota Meyer?

  But I cannot bring up things that I can't leave people better than I found them with. If I'm only going to amplify what they already know and point out what they're already seeing, we've got to be dealers of hope.

• 1:59:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I was talking to one of my buddies yesterday after I got done training jujitsu. You hear that echo, Charles?

• 1:59:51Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:51Jocko Willink?

  Training, I was training, I was training with Miha, so I was talking to Miha, and we were just talking about the fact that, you know, I was telling him this story, I was in Iraq, took down a building, he was, we were, we were talking about this topic, we're talking about like, hey, how do you make things better? And I was, I was in Iraq, we take down this building, and this building is an old building, it's probably, it's a, it's a rural building, but it's probably, thirty, forty, fifty years old, you know, an old, older building. And in the building, where we capture this bad guy, there's a, there's like the kitchen area, with the sink and a little area for like prepping food, a little counter space, and then directly to the right of that is a little hole, with a little gutter where you shit.

• 2:00:36Jocko Willink?

  And then it goes through this little gutter out through a hole in the wall into a shit pit out there. And I was like, bro, I looked at that for for point zero one seconds. And I was like, if I lived here, I would move the shit hole away from my kitchen area. I would do that the very first moment I lived there.

• 2:00:56Jocko Willink?

  And they hadn't done it. And this was a family, like, there was a lot of shit in the gut. By the way, the gutter didn't have like a steep angle of elevation. So it was like, you know, kind of just there was shit and piss in there. And their their their sink, their kitchen is four feet from it.

• 2:01:14Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, when I got to Iraq, my first deployment, we're we're living in like these tents, you know, like in GP tents, right? Just general purpose tents are big Alaskan tents or whatever. And I get in there. And like, minute three, I'm like, okay, I need to put a build a rag, get plywood and build a little rack for my gear. And then I build a little desk so I can do the paperwork bullshit I gotta do. And I put like, I'll get another cot and I elevate that thing. So like, that's within moments. We're like, how can I take the situation I'm in and make it better? And I think this is exactly what you're talking about. This is this is why America. This is why America is the land of opportunity, because when you look around, if you want to, look, it's gonna be freaking hard.

• 2:01:56Jocko Willink?

  No one's gonna cut that wood for you. No one's gonna get the plywood. No one's gonna uh move that shitter for you. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to clean that old shit out with your hands. That's the way it's gonna work. But we, when you look, and that's what I was saying to Mihal, I was like, Mihal's, he came here from another country. And he's established himself and he's built a business and he's working all the time. It's like, oh, yeah. He's not even American, but you know why he's here? Because he knows that's the American dream to make this stuff happen. And you don't, he, you know, like showed up here. And that's what that's what we do in America. We look around. So we're supposed to do in America, we look around and you go, you know what?

• 2:02:38Jocko Willink?

  I can make things a little bit better. I can make things for me and my world a little bit better. That's what I'm gonna do. And you look, you know, people like, well, what opportunity? Opportunities, bro, this is America. This is America. Like, oh, go to a trade school and learn to be an electrician. And you're gonna be in a whole nother world, a whole nother world. You learn how to be a plumber. You're gonna be home, you learn how to weld, like, there's, oh, I don't know how to program, uh, computers. We will, first of all, now you got AI, you don't need to know how to do that. You just need to think of good ideas, but you're not necessarily gonna be paid for that. But guess what you do need? To get your car worked on. So, yeah, there's so much opportunity.

• 2:03:22Jocko Willink?

  But you have to be willing to go, all right, I'm looking around, I see the situation that I'm in. And I think I I can make this better. And if you do that, it's not gonna come easy. It's gonna be hard. There's risks. And by the way, you're gonna make some business decisions that are gonna be bad. It's like, any one that's got the idea that starting a business is like the best way to do it is not necessarily. In fact, it's very, very difficult and most businesses fail. So be careful of that. But if you're a hard worker.

• 2:03:56Jocko Willink?

  And you're, and you're willing to grind it out, you can definitely make your part of the world better. And so, yeah, it's if the, if you're not sensing that hope when you're out there, that's that definitely.

• 2:04:08Dakota Meyer?

  People are killing it because there's control behind it.

• 2:04:11Jocko Willink?

  How do they kill it?

• 2:04:12Dakota Meyer?

  Well, I mean, people tell you that, you know, everything's bad. You can't do it anymore. I mean, we've got a whole generation that's not buying houses because they've been told that the world's going to shit. They're just watching the news. Everything's negative. I mean, you got a generation right now. You, I mean, you got kids that don't even think that they want to drive. You know what I mean? And it's like, because, because words matter, what they're being told and what they're seeing. And it's not worth it. It's not worth it to do this. It's not worth it to this. Why am I gonna go get a job and all I'm gonna do is pay taxes or like, I mean, like, when you look at this, like, it's a mentality out there that is just, and it's because nobody is giving them hope, right? Like, it's, it's a, we've got to be dealers of hope and we've got to get away from.

• 2:04:57Dakota Meyer?

  I see it in the, I see it in the fire service still, like, I still see in the fire service of like.

• 2:05:03Dakota Meyer?

  You know, there's no story, heroic story for sure, that made logical sense.

• 2:05:13Dakota Meyer?

  It was an emotional decision. It wasn't a logical one. Name it. Name it. You can't name one. That's a good point. When you look at it through the X's and O's and the logic of it, I mean, if you went strictly logic, you wouldn't even play, the teams wouldn't even play the game.

• 2:05:32Dakota Meyer?

  You gotta, and that's where the emotion of the human spirit matters. And that's why we've got to stay engaged in it. You know, I talk about, you know, the Medal of Honor Day. I, I didn't know what to do. I was just simply, you know, the two hardest days probably of my life is that one. And then, you know, this, um, this, this day in a, in, um, as a firefighter, we know, two different things, but both of them, what was similar was, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how I was going to do it. I wasn't prepared for either one of them.

• 2:06:08Dakota Meyer?

  I was just a guy who believed in something bigger than myself. And I believed in people and good and that people were suffering and that I had to do something about it. And I was willing to do that up into the cost of even if it was my life. I believed that much in it. You know, when you talk about courage, you talk about resiliency, whatever those things, those, those words you put with it is, they're all directly correlated in how much you believe in your cause. Courage, all those, like they are a direct reflection of how much you believe in the cause that you are part of and the, the cause you're

• 2:06:52Dakota Meyer?

  doing it for. That's direct correlation to it. They're just, they're just a secondary, they're just the action part of the, the belief of that. And, and I gotta tell you, like you have to believe in something. You have to believe in something bigger than yourself. If you're the biggest thing you believe in, then you're never going to get anywhere.

• 2:07:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, even looking at like, you know, you got this T-shirt on that says dad on it.

• 2:07:16Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:17Jocko Willink?

  And like, hey, can you make the world a little bit better for your family?

• 2:07:25Jocko Willink?

  Can we just do that?

• 2:07:26Dakota Meyer?

  Just start there, right? Like, like making a difference, man, like, and I don't know why I've gotten so into it. I mean, it's like, everybody feels better when you help somebody else. I believe that, and maybe I'm off on these numbers, but I believe that 90% of people want to be good. I even believe that majority of the people in jail wanted to be good.

• 2:07:51Dakota Meyer?

  They're just a little bit of leadership gone wrong, or the circumstances of where they're at, or how they grew up, right? And, and so I do believe that most people want to be good. And, and I do believe that most people want to be needed. They wanna, they wanna be needed and they wanna be helpful. And, and so it's how you do that. And I, I just, I have a rule that I try to live by is I try to leave every room and every person better than I found them. And all I gotta do is give somebody a compliment, like just try it, just try it. Hey, gosh, I like your shirt. Hey, like your hair. Hey, how's your day? Little things like that make a huge, huge difference and more of an impact than you'll ever know. Right? And you'd be surprised at how many people don't do that. Open the door for somebody.

• 2:08:36Dakota Meyer?

  Nobody knows what somebody's ever, everybody on the face of the planet right now is going through something.

• 2:08:42Dakota Meyer?

  So like when we choose to connect or not connect, it's a choice. It's a choice of, and I get, what I love about it is, and why I love people, is I control if we're gonna be related, like if we can relate or not on a topic. I, like, I drive that. And it's gonna be a choice of if I want to relate to you or I don't, because we are all more relatable than not. And I think that we've got to get back to that. We've got to get back to this, like, being, I call it unconditional in who we are. Like, if you want to be a good person,

• 2:09:23Dakota Meyer?

  then be it, but it can't be conditional upon how other people treat you. Because, and I realize this a lot, you know, a lot of people call me an asshole. But you know what nobody ever asked the person that calls me an asshole? Well, what did you do? They just remembered that I was the asshole. Nobody ever asked, well, what happened to get to the point to where Dakota was an asshole? So if Dakota wants to be remembered as a good person, then I have to be that no matter what. And I'm not going to be unwavering in who I want people to remember me as in that aspect of it. Does that make sense? And we've got to get back to that, man.

• 2:10:07Dakota Meyer?

  Like we're, I do believe that we can get our country back to where, where it needs to be. I do believe this next generation's better and I believe they're going to correct a lot of the, the wrongs. I think we're getting better. I think that, you know, we're, we're, we're, we just got to get united. We got to get on the same front and, and we've got to stop being so shallow when it comes to people. You know what I mean? Like, we gotta just, we, we, so, so my point back to all this is, is, is how do I just stop throwing eggs? Stop pointing out what you don't like. Like start, start talking about what you do like and start talking about what we need to do. And start having, stop being so subjective in, in your, in your, your rhetoric that you're talking about and be objective.

• 2:10:52Dakota Meyer?

  Like, hey, quit walking past problems that you could be a solution to.

• 2:10:57Dakota Meyer?

  That's the problem. If you want to fix it, stop walking past problems that you could be the solution to. It's, it's a simple phrase that I, I love. It's called if you can, you must. If you can, you must. If you can help somebody, you must help somebody because not everybody has the ability to help that person.

• 2:11:15Jocko Willink?

  I have a friend who's a veteran and great guy, definitely going through some struggles. But you know, when I, when I would talk to him, he would have these incredible plans about, you know, what to do, how to solve a problem. And he would present them to me and be very determined and very excited about them. But then, but then be like, well, and what I need is, and there was a whole bunch of things, you know, millions of dollars or, you know, uh, people, relationships with people that he didn't have relationships with, or access to people they didn't have access to, like those kinds of things. And, you know, he would get done telling me to get, you know, in, during one conversation,

• 2:11:57Jocko Willink?

  he'd get very frustrated that he wasn't able to do the things that he wanted to do.

• 2:12:03Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I'd be like, bro, you gotta just like,

• 2:12:07Jocko Willink?

  you know, start small, like start small. What can you help out? You know, who can you help out? Literally, which of your neighbors can you help out? Which of the veterans that you know right now, which three veterans that you know right now, can you help them move in the right direction? And, and, and that's like, that's what you gotta do. Like, you're not going to be able to solve the world's problems, but maybe you could help solve one of your neighbor's problems. Maybe you could help, you know, someone in your family solve their problem or someone across the street or whatever. And if you get focused on solving the world's problems or you get focused on the world. Look, there's some things that's gonna be real hard to change.

• 2:12:47Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's some policies, there's some political and global situations that are very difficult to unwind. And I'll tell you, if you focus on those things that are very difficult to unwind and that's where you spend your, your waking hours, bro, it's gonna be really, really hard for you. It's gonna be really hard for you. But if you look at, if you look at your five to 25 meters around you,

• 2:13:09Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:09Jocko Willink?

  You know, and go, hey, what's in this 25 meter zone that I can affect? What's the max effective range of your influence and your voice? And look, hopefully that grows over time and you can move to a position where you can, the max effective range of your voice and your influence increases. But if I sit here and the only thing I do is I get frustrated because the problems are beyond the max of effective capability of my weapon system.

• 2:13:38Dakota Meyer?

  Yep.

• 2:13:39Jocko Willink?

  That's, I'm not doing anything.

• 2:13:41Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:41Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, I could be using my influence and the power that I do have to solve a problem that's 80 meters away. I can be on target all day long with that and solve something as opposed to real, you know, being frustrated that there's a problem a thousand miles away that I can't, I can't do anything about this. Okay. Well, what are you gonna do? Sit there and shoot at the air? No. Focus on the problems that are a little bit closer to you and get, take, take care of those.

• 2:14:04Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. And you know, most people.

• 2:14:08Dakota Meyer?

  You know, where, where it starts though is in the mirror. You, you, you have to fix your own problems before you can go help others.

• 2:14:20Dakota Meyer?

  And I see so many people out there trying to fix everybody else's problems. As like a coping mechanism to avoid their own. Yeah. That's. And let me tell you what that's called hypocrisy. Yeah. And we've got to start there, right? And that was probably the hardest thing that I had to do was look in the mirror. You know, when I was going around, I was drinking all the time and, and, and like I had a, I had a friend that pointed it out.

• 2:14:45Dakota Meyer?

  It, it was just straight up like.

• 2:14:49Dakota Meyer?

  It, it's, it's that, that mirror, you know, it, it of. And that mirror is hard to look at sometimes and I write on my mirror every Sunday. I don't know if you've seen that. I, I did a post on it the other day, but I, I write on my mirror every Sunday. Obviously it gets cleaned once a week, but I, I rewrite it every Monday with a, a paint marker. What did you expect? So I look at that mirror every morning. I look at it every evening. What did you expect? Did somebody really get one over on you or, or did you just? Did, is this what you expected if you, oh, the decisions you were avoiding or the decisions you were making? Or the things you were allowing, like did, really? Are you surprised?

• 2:15:30Dakota Meyer?

  Like, let's ask that one first, because if you're not, and 99% of the time you're not.

• 2:15:38Dakota Meyer?

  Then you should have made a decision. You should have took action. You should have fixed it before it got there. You did this. So fix it, right? And, and I think, you know, for me, like I had to look in the mirror and I remember. Man, I remember I, I would say, and I, and I told you this before we got on here, you know? I'd say the, the, the single most life-changing moment of my life.

• 2:16:01Dakota Meyer?

  After coming back home of really taking a hard look in the mirror was when you picked me up for the first podcast here. And, um, because I think for the first time, like I'd been obviously around tons of badass people. I think for the first time in my life, in a long time, I looked at somebody that I respected and I was like, I, I want to be like him. I want to be like him. I want to treat people like him. I want to be fair like him. I want to, I want to, like that, that right there is what an example looks like of what I should be.

• 2:16:41Dakota Meyer?

  And, and then it gives me, it gave me, I had to take some self-inventory on where was I at, right? And so when I talk about support in the book, this is a real key piece, this support. And it's almost like support's kind of like nutrition, kind of like I wrap them up kind of in the same, but support of, you know, cause nutrition's supporting, fueling you. Support around you is usually fueling you, but you don't need people that just go along with what you are. You need people that hold you accountable to who you decided you wanted to be in that box initially. And I'll never forget, like, you know, getting around, had a guy look at me one time and

• 2:17:23Dakota Meyer?

  he's like, you're, you're, you're looked at as a warrior. You present yourself as a warrior. He goes, you drink every day, so what is that? Well, it's an alcoholic. You're fat, not in shape. You're not, you're, you're, who are you kidding? Like, are you lying to, like, you think you're lying to everybody else in this room that you, like, this, is this what a warrior, is this, is this a warrior that you would follow? And then you're an asshole. Like, you're just a, and he goes, and I gotta tell you, I couldn't argue that that's what my actions added up to.

• 2:18:08Dakota Meyer?

  But the cool part was that once I acknowledged the problem,

• 2:18:14Dakota Meyer?

  well, then it was time to get to work. And it was either accept and, and I just think, I think the only thing that we owe the world as human beings or other people is to be who we say we are. That's it. If I wanted to be a drunk, fat alcoholic, then I'll be it. But don't act like, and don't, don't wrap up and diminish the warrior title that other people were still out earning and doing and living. And so I think that like those things of how, the closer you can get back to truth. Because I think that when you look at people, our job as leaders is nothing more than A figuring out there's capabilities and there's intentions.

• 2:18:57Dakota Meyer?

  Capabilities and intentions. And you have to figure out the margin that's between those because leaders are the ones who are helping get those capabilities up to, as a leader, every person you come into, you have to figure out what their intentions are. Do they intend to be the best person on the team? Do they intend to be a Navy SEAL? Do they intend to be a warfighter? Because if they do, then that's a good place to start. But are they capable of meeting those intentions? And that's what you have to find out by measuring and putting them through hard things, you know? Um, and then your job after that is to help get those capabilities to match their intentions. And so for me, you know, like that was a big thing for me to get back on track was I hadn't seen what right looked like.

• 2:19:41Dakota Meyer?

  You know, because I grew up in a generation that you came back from war, you drank, you became a broken toy for the rest of your life.

• 2:19:50Dakota Meyer?

  That, I mean, that's why we got 22 a day.

• 2:19:54Dakota Meyer?

  And we got it wrong.

• 2:19:57Dakota Meyer?

  You know, we got it wrong. And we have an obligation that once we get this sacred knowledge, which is what combat is, combat, combat is sacred knowledge. Not many get it. And once you get to see that level of belief and love on a battlefield, you have an obligation to

• 2:20:21Dakota Meyer?

  live, live like you know that. And then you have to go in society, you have to pass it on to others of why it matters, because not everybody's going to get to see why it mattered. Not everybody's going to get to see the consequences of getting it wrong. You got to see it firsthand. You got to see the power of people believing in a cause bigger than themselves. And you got to see the consequences firsthand of what this job does.

• 2:20:53Dakota Meyer?

  And you have an obligation, now that you get the knowledge, to pass it on because it's going to help people. But you have to pass it on in a way that it helps people, not a way that it hurts people.

• 2:21:05Jocko Willink?

  One of the articles, you're kind of brushing up against this, but one of the articles that you wrote about in, on the Substack, The Bluff, is about mental health. And I'm just going to throw a couple of things out here from, you say, I don't, you don't, you know, you, Dakota, don't have any degrees or licenses, you haven't been to any school.

• 2:21:25Jocko Willink?

  You don't have a, any type of thing to hang on your wall from graduating from any university or anything. Then you say, you have a doctorate in traumatic, a doctorate in traumatic events, which I thought was interesting and accurate. And then you, you, you, you write that you got asked if there's anything that triggers your PTSD, and you said, no, I'll be honest, I don't have PTSD anymore. Then you say, you overcame it through Ibragaine, choices, self accountability.

• 2:21:57Jocko Willink?

  And then you say, we've turned PTSD, depression and anxiety into terminal illnesses. Bad memories don't mean you're living a bad life, just like good memories don't mean you're living a good life.

• 2:22:10Jocko Willink?

  People like begin to use, they let trauma become their identity. And, and they interestingly take pride in the label. And again, I'm just kind of giving some, some close quotes from, from what you wrote about. And listen, you and I both know that there are people like that have true um, clinical depression, true clinical anxiety, true clinical PTSD, of course. And those people, they need to get help for that.

• 2:22:42Jocko Willink?

  But there's also opportunities. And the way you say it here, no pill, no therapy session and no book can do the work for you. And then you talk about PTSD, depression, anxiety. There's solutions that aren't found in a pharmacy and then aren't found in a therapies therapist notebook. They're found in ownership.

• 2:23:02Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:03Jocko Willink?

  Ownership of your story, ownership of your choices, ownership of your healing. And you know, you and I kind of talked about this a bit before we hit record today, but I think one of the hardest things that people have to deal with coming back from combat

• 2:23:24Jocko Willink?

  is things that they did or things that they didn't do that did not or do not meet the expectations of who they wanted to be, who they want to be.

• 2:23:39Jocko Willink?

  And instead of taking ownership of those things. And an important part here that we didn't talk about before we hit record. Taking ownership of those things and forgiving yourself.

• 2:23:58Jocko Willink?

  Look, you, people, people don't always do what they intended to do in combat. Sometimes there were, you know, they might've been, they might not have performed deeds that they should've. They felt like they should've looked back and say, I, I should've done this different. I wish I would've done this. I wish I would've done that instead. And then sometimes they do things, they go, I wish I wouldn't have done that.

• 2:24:19Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:21Jocko Willink?

  Here's the thing, you, you know, you, what happens in combat, you don't, there's no way to ultimately prepare for it. Like you can get real close. You can get real close. In preparation, but you can't. You can't fully do it because it doesn't matter how intense the training is. You're, you're not going to die. Well, in, in, you can die parachuting, you can die fast rope, you can die in helicopter, but you're not statistically. Statistically, you're going to be okay. No one's trying to kill you. Let me put it that way. And even it's funny, you know, I used to, I used to talk about how with like either simunition or it kind of evens out.

• 2:25:02Jocko Willink?

  Because you know, if I'm sitting here when we're, we're playing Sam, we're training with simunition. And there's, you know, rounds coming down the hallway. Well, I might stick my weapon out, start pulling the trigger and then run across the hallway. And I think to myself, and I'd be watching guys doing this in training. I'd be like, okay, you would not have done that ever if there was real bullets. And also the guy that's shooting those bullets at you, when you stuck your, your weapon out and started firing him, he would have taken cover too. So it kind of evens out a little bit, but you can get close, but you cannot simulate fully. Combat. And so people do things that they didn't expect people, things that do that they go, I wish I would have performed differently.

• 2:25:45Jocko Willink?

  And I think the guys that have a hard time are guys that either A, don't take ownership of what they did. Or B, don't forgive themselves. That they didn't perform how they wanted to perform, or how they look back and how they wish they would have done something different. And I, and I think that's a huge, you know, I, I can tell you all kinds of things. You know, people would ask me like. Is there anything you regret? It's like, well, yeah, I didn't bring home all my guys. Were you kidding me? Like, of course I would give anything. To bring home all my guys.

• 2:26:21Jocko Willink?

  I guess I should say almost anything because what we have to do is our duty. And the only way, and it's not even a guarantee. If you go into combat or you go into a war zone and you don't do your duty, I guess you can increase your chances of not taking any casualties. There's still a chance because you can get mortared, you know, you can get, there's all kinds of bad things can happen in a war zone. But if you say, oh, you know what? I'm just not gonna do my duty.

• 2:26:59Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna have to live with that.

• 2:27:01Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, you have to, you have to live with it.

• 2:27:05Dakota Meyer?

  You have to live with everything. So for me,

• 2:27:11Dakota Meyer?

  I asked myself, how does, with thoughts, ideas and conversations? I asked myself, how is this helping me be better today?

• 2:27:26Dakota Meyer?

  And if it's not, I'm not participating in it.

• 2:27:30Dakota Meyer?

  And I'm not having it.

• 2:27:33Dakota Meyer?

  Nor am I, nor am I gonna sit here and I'm gonna entertain it. And I think what happens is, and where I used to do it a lot. A, I think you're right on the truth part, which is ultimately why I've always said I failed that day. Because that truth matters. And to ignore the truth and I feel like a fraud, it turns into all these other bullshit things.

• 2:27:59Dakota Meyer?

  And, but I, I also think that if you change one thing that happened to you in your past, it changes everything. So I think it's unbecoming for you to ever regret, like to live with regret or to ever look back and want something changed. So for example, let me ask you this, would, if you talk, because ultimately if you, if you talk to your guys,

• 2:28:28Dakota Meyer?

  and

• 2:28:30Dakota Meyer?

  let's say they lived, all of them lived.

• 2:28:34Dakota Meyer?

  And you weren't able to have the knowledge you did to help and impact the people that you have since then. Would they, would they want that? Or would you want that? Would you give that up? Would you give up the good that you've been able to do since then? With the sacred knowledge? That they gave their lives to teach you, to pass on? Would you give all that up for all the people that have wrote you, that you've helped and you've impacted in the secondary and tertiary events? Cause that's what you're saying when you say these things.

• 2:29:02Jocko Willink?

  I would give it up in a heartbeat.

• 2:29:04Dakota Meyer?

  Of course.

• 2:29:04Jocko Willink?

  But they wouldn't let me.

• 2:29:05Dakota Meyer?

  But they wouldn't let you. That, that, and that's why I started with them. Right? We ultimately, I would go back today, hands down, if you told me I could walk back in Ganges Goll today? And take all their, any, any of their spots? Dude, I would, you, heartbeat. But you think they'd let me? No chance. No chance, because you wouldn't let them. Right? So my thing of it is, is absolutely truth. That's the hardest thing to swallow, you know? No matter how it feels, no matter how it makes you feel, no matter how ugly it is. Because also my superpower is that pain I've felt by losing all my teammates.

• 2:29:51Dakota Meyer?

  You know what I mean? Like I walk in the room, Jocko? You're not going to hurt, like I am not, A, I'm not scared to die. I am, I'm not scared of what you think you might take from me, because here's what I do know. Is you can't take more from me than September 8, 2009. And I guarantee you that you, you've never felt that. And I can take a lot more from you than you'll ever be able to take from me. I can hurt you way more than I've been hurt, because I know what the depths of hell look like. And so it gives me a superpower of a concern that most people don't get, to be able to overlook and override. And, and it's helped me in multiple situations since then, right?

• 2:30:29Dakota Meyer?

  And so I, I, I think that like for me, and I think a lot of guys, it's just like we don't like, you know, it's, I call it the Uncle Rico syndrome.

• 2:30:42Dakota Meyer?

  And you can do it with good and bad. It would be me living off of

• 2:30:49Dakota Meyer?

  the regret of what happened that day is is no different than me walking around and wearing the medal and telling you that I'm a Medal of Honor recipient walking in. They're both just one day of my life. And we're all going to be remembered as the sum of the good we can do in our lives. But the hardest thing I think for people to understand and come to terms with, and you're never going to be able to live a fulfilled life until you come to terms with this one statement.

• 2:31:16Dakota Meyer?

  For something to live, something must die.

• 2:31:22Dakota Meyer?

  And if you can't stomach that,

• 2:31:25Dakota Meyer?

  you're always going to be at the hands of circumstances. But until you come to terms with that,

• 2:31:34Dakota Meyer?

  and you come to accept that in every way, shape or form, for something to live, something must die. And that's the reality of everything in life. You can't give me one scenario where it's not the case. How often do we go to a funeral and we all come back and say we need to?

• 2:31:57Dakota Meyer?

  It reminds us. We lose somebody. Look, the Travis Mannion Foundation. Look at the lives that thing's changed. You know what I mean? And it's like, everything we do,

• 2:32:11Dakota Meyer?

  for something to live, something must die. And it's a hard one to swallow. It's a hard one to to take on, but it is the reality of life.

• 2:32:24Dakota Meyer?

  And it's it's all the way down to good and evil. For good to live, evil is going to have to die. You know, for you to become the person you can become, you have to give up who you are now. For you to become anything in life, for you to to truly embrace a new idea or new mindset, that old mindset must fully die.

• 2:32:50Dakota Meyer?

  So for something to live, something must die. For something new to flourish, something must end. And it's, it's no different with every day. For night to come, the day must end. You know what I mean?

• 2:33:07Jocko Willink?

  I've got a bunch of writing that my buddy Seth Stone did before he died. And that's one of the things he's, he wrote almost those exact words, but he's basically saying that he was changing.

• 2:33:20Jocko Willink?

  And the old parts of him had to die in order for him to become who he had to become.

• 2:33:27Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. But isn't it true?

• 2:33:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:33:32Dakota Meyer?

  Isn't it true? And it's hard. It's a hard one to take because,

• 2:33:37Dakota Meyer?

  because

• 2:33:40Dakota Meyer?

  there, I think, and I think it's comfort. Like, I think, I don't know, I think it's comfort. I think it's expectations that we put on ourselves.

• 2:33:48Dakota Meyer?

  Unrealistic expectations. But again, it's a, it's a fine line because if you don't believe in the impossible, you'll never be able to perform, like, you will never achieve more than you believe.

• 2:34:01Dakota Meyer?

  You'll never achieve more than you believe. And so

• 2:34:06Dakota Meyer?

  it's a hard one because when you live by these beliefs and you have these high standards and these high expectations, when you don't meet them, it comes back and forth. And it's like, you know, I always talk about the hardest thing, I think, for me to get over was in, in the Marine Corps, every, every training event that I ever did, if you executed it the right way, and you did your job, you're successful. Right? And that's a mindset you have to have.

• 2:34:37Dakota Meyer?

  But it's not always the truth. And it's not always happening that way. Because guess what? The enemy gets a vote. Every time. And that's the difference in training versus reality. The enemy and circumstances get a vote. They get a play. You can't mimic it. And so while I don't think that we're always where we Want to be, I do think that we are all where we are supposed to be. And it's on us to figure out why we're there and what good we're gonna do while we're there. Because there's always the capability, I don't care if you're homeless on the side of the road.

• 2:35:18Dakota Meyer?

  You can do something. As long as you have air in your lungs, like you say, you can do something, right? And you must.

• 2:35:27Jocko Willink?

  Yes, indeed, you must.

• 2:35:32Jocko Willink?

  If there's air in your lungs, you must. Probably a pretty good place to wrap it up.

• 2:35:37Dakota Meyer?

  Let's do it.

• 2:35:38Jocko Willink?

  Um, what else? What are you working on right now?

• 2:35:41Dakota Meyer?

  And just my Substack, you know, I'm, I'm marinating it out, you know, I, I got to join the Marines and, and come back in and, um.

• 2:35:47Jocko Willink?

  How old are you?

• 2:35:48Dakota Meyer?

  I'm thirty seven.

• 2:35:49Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:35:50Dakota Meyer?

  Um, yeah, I go back to BRC and, uh, on, in January, so, um.

• 2:35:57Jocko Willink?

  Is there an age cutoff for BRC?

• 2:35:59Dakota Meyer?

  No.

• 2:36:00Jocko Willink?

  There's not?

• 2:36:00Dakota Meyer?

  No, it's just, it's just.

• 2:36:01Jocko Willink?

  Just get some.

• 2:36:02Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, just get some. So, um, yeah, so I'm gonna go back and, and I, and I gotta tell you, like, these kids today, um, they are the best of a generation. They're the best, like, they're, they're studs. They're incredible. And, and I, I think one of the biggest decisions that I, of me rejoining was obviously I had more to give. But, you know, at a time right now, especially like, I mean, I got my dad shirt on, right? And, um, as, as a father of daughters, for sure, you know, we're always fighting to, to figure out influence. What's gonna influence our da, our, our kids, right? I mean, you're, you're, you're fighting it. We, we all fight what's going to influence them, because something's gonna influence.

• 2:36:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:36:40Dakota Meyer?

  And I just, I always thought, you know,

• 2:36:43Dakota Meyer?

  that if my kids would either grow up reading and knowing, reading about people like the Marines, or they could grow up calling them their aunts and uncles. And, uh, I think that was probably the biggest deciding factor of me going back in was I wanted them to grow up and, and these are the people they call their aunts and uncles. And they get to grow up knowing that real people like that exist.

• 2:37:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's awesome. Um, so what do you do? Do you do like one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer times? Are you kind of like?

• 2:37:18Dakota Meyer?

  I'm all over right now. Yeah, like, like we're, you know, I'm gonna be out here this weekend. I got pre dive in two weeks. It's a week long, right? I, um, and then once I get, once I get through BRC,

• 2:37:31Dakota Meyer?

  then I got sear skull. I got a jump, free fall and dive.

• 2:37:38Jocko Willink?

  That's so freaking crazy. What's crazy about it isn't, isn't the tasks themselves, but it's just like, it's weird that you're 37 years old and you're going through those training blocks, which are kind of aimed at like 20 to 24 year olds.

• 2:37:55Dakota Meyer?

  Hey, these kids, they, uh, it's a reality check when they look at you and go, do I'm sorry, Mar? Like you're older than my mom. And, uh, you know, so it's like, uh, it's, it's a reality check. But, but it's been, you know, uh, God, you know, God forbid, you know, and, and going to the recon side of it. You know, that's the reason I joined was I, I like those guys. I mean, those guys are, I mean, they are, they're like the legends to my generation. And so like to be able to, hopefully, you know, I gotta get through BRC, but hopefully to become part of them and to be able to become part of that community. So awesome. And then, you know, um, you know, one of the agreements was, you know, cause there's this misconception out there that,

• 2:38:37Dakota Meyer?

  that a lot of people are saying, oh, you know, you're, you're not, you're not really doing anything or like things like that. Like I, I only agreed to join if they would allow me, like there's no restrictions because of the metal. No restrictions. Like that was the agreement. There's actually a policy getting put in place right now, uh, to, to back that up, um, with Sec War to make sure that it doesn't happen again. You know, cause John Basselone ended up getting killed and he really screwed things up for the rest of us. And, um, you know, so like that was my, that was my, was my piece that I wanted was, I wanted to come back in at the same rank I got out as, right? Like I didn't want to get moved up a rank because of my age and things like that,

• 2:39:22Dakota Meyer?

  or whatever. I didn't want any special treatment. And if my unit deploys, that there will be zero restrictions on me going back and deploying. With my unit or whatever I whatever I'm part of and they have they agreed it's the first time I've asked this multiple times before but this was the first time that the leadership agreed a hundred percent to all that.

• 2:39:44Jocko Willink?

  Damn dude.

• 2:39:45Dakota Meyer?

  So, look, I'm just gonna be honest with you. I if we go back to where I'm gonna send you pictures and I'm gonna make y'all just like regret that you're not part of it.

• 2:39:53Jocko Willink?

  I'm coming dude.

• 2:39:55Jocko Willink?

  I'll pick up a machine gun, bro. I'm in. Right on. People can find you. The interwebs dakota Meyer dot com. You got your Substack which is like you just go to you can just go to Dakota Meyer and you'll find it.

• 2:40:07Dakota Meyer?

  My Instagram.

• 2:40:08Jocko Willink?

  Instagram Dakota Meyer oh three seventeen and Twitter X Dakota underscore Meyer Echo. You got any questions?

• 2:40:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, real quick. Rewind back to the old you if you don't mind. So when you were off the path back in the day, what was the heaviest you got up to?

• 2:40:28Dakota Meyer?

  Probably two sixty five.

• 2:40:29Speaker 02

  Two sixty five, a solid heavyweight.

• 2:40:31Dakota Meyer?

  You seen that picture?

• 2:40:33Jocko Willink?

  Damn dude. Two sixty five? Bro. When was that?

• 2:40:38Speaker 02

  That's a dirty bulk right there.

• 2:40:40Dakota Meyer?

  You seen it?

• 2:40:41Jocko Willink?

  What was that? Was that was that post metal and you're a civilian just being the disaster?

• 2:40:45Dakota Meyer?

  About two thousand fourteen. Listen, when I show you this, you're going to pass out. I'm gonna send it to you just so you can look at it.

• 2:40:54Jocko Willink?

  I might put that on my mirror.

• 2:40:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, speaking of mirrors, you're sitting here talking about the recon guys being legend. You might occasionally want to take a look in the mirror before you roll to recognize that you're a little bit of a legend, so.

• 2:41:09Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, well, no, no, no, no, no. These guys, you know, we were running down the road and like, you know, I obviously I'm being a sergeant to these kids and I ripped this one kid for like running with his phone or something.

• 2:41:21Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I bet he's so stoked. He called his dad. Dude, Dakota Meyer freaking let me have it today.

• 2:41:26Dakota Meyer?

  Like after I chewed him out, he goes, um, he goes, Roger that sergeant. I said, you know why I don't want you running with your phone? I said, I said, I don't care if you're texting your girlfriend or not. I said, but you fall and you hit your face. I said, then you ain't gonna have any girlfriend. He's like, Roger that sergeant. And then like, I'm like, I started to walk off and he goes, um, you know, I only joined the Marine Corps because of you. I was like, great, great. Oh, it's terrible.

• 2:41:51Jocko Willink?

  That's like a. Yeah, I thought I thought you were gonna say, he said, uh, hey, Sergeant Meyer, can I get a picture with you before you leave? Oh, my God. Bro, we're looking at a picture, for those of you that can't see this right now, of a very plump. The, how tall are you?

• 2:42:08Dakota Meyer?

  Five eleven.

• 2:42:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, dude, two sixty-five.

• 2:42:13Speaker 02

  Dirty though.

• 2:42:13Jocko Willink?

  And not even, yeah, you're not even looking like you're in your powerlifting phase, you know?

• 2:42:18Speaker 02

  Nah, that's the rest between sets phase right there.

• 2:42:21Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, that was, uh, that was, uh, yeah, you know, but, but that's, you, you know, and, and, and what I want to tell, you know, we talked about the mental health piece, and I want to leave it at this. I want to say this upfront, there was, that, that guy right there, like, from the injuries I'd had, and from the things I had listened to, the system.

• 2:42:43Jocko Willink?

  Told you that's who you had to be.

• 2:42:45Dakota Meyer?

  Who I am today. That guy right there never believed it was possible. It wasn't that he didn't want to be it. It was the fact he didn't believe it was possible. Like, I remember, I, I told this guy the other day, I was, I work out at, at, on it down there sometimes with Juan and, and Eric. There was a, I remember the first time I ran an entire mile after getting out without stopping, but I never believed that I could run another mile. I didn't think it was in my books anymore. You know, they wanted to fuse my back when I got out, like, all these things. And I was on just drinking, and if it wasn't drinking, it was medications, and it was all these things that made me feel like shit. And, and all I was doing was talking to other people who were in the same position. I, I was what I was spending my time around.

• 2:43:30Dakota Meyer?

  And once I got out of that, because those people I thought were supporting me, they, they weren't. Um, what they were doing was, is we were codependent on each other. And it wasn't until, like, again, I met you, and then I got around guys that were like, that had done shit that I respected, but were still out getting after it, to show me what was possible, you know? But what I'll say to, if you're out there and you're struggling.

• 2:44:00Dakota Meyer?

  And you, you, you ever get to the mindset to where you don't think things can be better than where they are? You could be who you know you could be? Understand that that is a, a limit that's put in by your mind. It's not reality. Like that is, that is a boundary or that is a parameter. Cause I could have never imagined me running. I mean, I, I just did an Ironman a year ago. Like I'm, I got to join the Marine Corps again. Like all these things I could have never, ever, ever. There was a point in my time where I didn't believe that I would be anything more than a guy that has nightmares every single day and drinks every single day. I thought that was the best that I could be. And I truly believed it with everything I had.

• 2:44:46Dakota Meyer?

  And today I wake up every single day and I live the best day of my life, like every day. I don't know the last time I've had a nightmare. I wake up and I am thankful for what I have. I'm thankful for the moment. I'm thankful for my kids. I'm a good father, like all those things. And I wasn't always that. So where you're at right now, I promise you I've been there.

• 2:45:07Dakota Meyer?

  And what I'm telling you is, is that you can be where I'm at. And it's not going to be found by other people. It's not going to be running around and doing hunting and fishing trips all the time. It's going to be looking in the mirror. It's going to be getting up every day with intentions. And it's going to be looking at every decision and action, food you put in your body and everything you do. And you're just asking yourself, one simple question can get you there. Is this getting me closer to who I want to be or getting me further away from who I want to be? That is the ultimate question. If you just ask yourself that fucking question every day. And every decision and every step you take, where you spend your time, who you're around, the conversations you have, what you consume on your Instagram. Is it helping me get to who I want to be?

• 2:45:52Dakota Meyer?

  Or is it taking me further away from who I want to be? And then eliminate who's taken away from who you want to be. And that'll get you to where I'm at.

• 2:46:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, there you have it, man. Freaking outstanding. Uh, dude, it's always good to see you. Thanks for coming back again. Like, actually, I had not seen that picture before that you just showed me of you being fat and just like long scraggly looking hair, faces all rosy from drinking. Like, I did not, I did, I knew you went through some rough patches, but I'd never seen that physical representation. And the fact that you're sitting here right now, freaking lean, mean, like on track, dialed in. That's freaking awesome, man. It's freaking awesome. So hopefully people can listen to this. Hopefully people follow you. Check out your Substack. Learn your lessons learned. Thanks for everything you've done.

• 2:46:49Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for everything you did in the Marine Corps and thanks for everything you are continuing to do in the United States Marine Corps. Thanks for being one of my heroes and thanks for being one of my friends, brother.

• 2:47:01Speaker 02

  Thanks, man. Appreciate you.

• 2:47:02Jocko Willink?

  Appreciate it.

• 2:47:02Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 2:47:04Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Dakota has left the building. He is en route to Camp Pendleton.

• 2:47:12Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Dakota Meyer is en route to Camp Pendleton right now to go do some Marine Corps activities. Awesome. Awesome to have him here. Tell you what, that picture, crazy, right?

• 2:47:25Speaker 02

  Yes, it is.

• 2:47:26Jocko Willink?

  Pulled up that picture. Can you, can you put that on the podcast? Have him send it to you or something so people can watch it on the YouTube?

• 2:47:31Speaker 02

  Yes, I can.

• 2:47:32Jocko Willink?

  Maybe he doesn't want it out there publicly.

• 2:47:36Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, man, it's, it shows you, you know what it is, is like you realize that it's, it's, it's hard to picture his words

• 2:47:51Jocko Willink?

  and what they mean until you see where he was and where he is. It's like a visual representation of the power that we have when we start taking ownership of what's going on in the world. And when we start asking what instead of asking why.

• 2:48:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:48:11Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:48:13Jocko Willink?

  Good. And when that happens, there's going to be some physical activities. Running, lifting, sprinting.

• 2:48:21Speaker 02

  Habitually, by the way.

• 2:48:22Jocko Willink?

  Habitually doing jujitsu, training, getting effort. When that happens, guess what else you're gonna need? Guess.

• 2:48:31Speaker 02

  You want me to guess? Okay, let me guess, fuel.

• 2:48:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you need some of that. So check out Jocko Fuel, JacoFuel.com. We have pretty much kinda everything that you need to get on that path and stay on that path. So you can go to JacoFuel.com or you can go to your local store, whatever that store may be, whether it's Hy-Vee, whether it's Walmart, whether it's HEB, Meyer, Harris, Harris, whatever, wherever you live, Publix, down in the southeast, we got you covered.

• 2:49:04Speaker 02

  Is military commissaries on base?

• 2:49:07Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:49:07Speaker 02

  Is that what that is?

• 2:49:07Jocko Willink?

  Yes, they're on base, yep. And we're in pretty much all those, even those are one of the few places that you can get Jocko Fuel overseas. Like, there's overseas. So I get, I get messages from people that are overseas. We got it, little picture. So JacoFuel.com, check it out and get yourself on the path. Also check out Origin USA, OriginUSA.com. This is where you can get your training gear for the path. You need shirts, you need shorts, you need hunting gear, you need jeans, you need jacket, winters, winter's coming.

• 2:49:42Speaker 02

  You utilized one of the jackets today.

• 2:49:44Jocko Willink?

  That little lightweight, you were proven, you were proven right. One day out of the year, you are correct.

• 2:49:49Speaker 02

  We'll take it.

• 2:49:50Jocko Willink?

  One day out of the year, you're correct. It was too warm for a head, for a normal hoodie, and it was

• 2:49:58Speaker 02

  Little bit of a, little bit of a, little bit of a chilly woo.

• 2:50:01Jocko Willink?

  Little bit of a chilly woo. So I put on, I put on the stow jacket, and by the way, it felt Perfect.

• 2:50:08Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:50:09Jocko Willink?

  Perfect. Cause all that wind was cut back. The little breeze was cut back. So whatever you need, don't get something that is made by slaves. Don't get something that is made by communists. Don't get made something that is made that will steal money from our country and give it to our adversaries. Don't do that. Buy something that is a hundred percent American made from the thread to the zipper, to the cotton.

• 2:50:41Speaker 02

  Buttons.

• 2:50:41Jocko Willink?

  To the buttons.

• 2:50:42Speaker 02

  Everything. Rivets.

• 2:50:44Jocko Willink?

  Rivets.

• 2:50:44Speaker 02

  Is that a thing?

• 2:50:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, rivets on the jeans. Everything's American made. OriginUSA.com. Get yourself some communist free goods.

• 2:50:51Speaker 02

  Commie free. What, um, that's what that jacket is called. The stow away one. It's like a lightweight, yeah, stow jacket. Yeah. So.

• 2:50:58Jocko Willink?

  Clutch.

• 2:50:59Speaker 02

  See how, and you, you, you put it into words, but this is something that I've recognized the value of from many years.

• 2:51:07Speaker 02

  So one of the scenarios you want to wear that jacket is on the plane because you know, sometimes in a hot, like, you know, we went to Vegas was an example where it's hot. So they turn on the air in the plane, which I dig of course, but sometimes the thing is blowing on you a little bit, kind of obliquely, kind of defeating its own purpose, you know, so it's slightly too cold for just sitting there in the wind freaking tunnel. Right. You put on that lightweight. Right. Blocks it perfectly, perfectly. So you're just sitting there in your own perfectly calibrated heat.

• 2:51:35Jocko Willink?

  Climate.

• 2:51:36Speaker 02

  Of your own.

• 2:51:37Jocko Willink?

  Climate. Microclimate.

• 2:51:38Speaker 02

  Of your own body and the, and the, the stow jacket.

• 2:51:41Jocko Willink?

  Stow jacket. You can put that thing kind of in your pocket, like a big pocket, but like.

• 2:51:46Speaker 02

  Okay. So perfect point. That's, I forgot to add that.

• 2:51:48Jocko Willink?

  Why it's called the stow.

• 2:51:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. You just put it right. I put it in my computer bag. Doesn't even take up space. Bruh. Perfect. Perfect. Where we came up with that freaking.

• 2:51:57Jocko Willink?

  Credit.

• 2:51:58Speaker 02

  Good work. Credit. Also, speaking of credit. And good work. Jocko store.com.

• 2:52:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:52:05Speaker 02

  So you can get your apparel. This one equals freedom shirts. We got a new one out. This will, this one equals freedom 5.0.

• 2:52:12Jocko Willink?

  5.0.

• 2:52:12Speaker 02

  5.0.

• 2:52:13Jocko Willink?

  We're there.

• 2:52:14Speaker 02

  I guess it's called 005, but I guess so. It's kind of the same thing. Fifth version, fifth class, if you will. None, none of that's good one.

• 2:52:20Jocko Willink?

  Mod 5.

• 2:52:21Speaker 02

  Mod 5, 100%. Um, the good mod 3 is out. That's the most recent one. So that's a good one. Check it out there. Um, the new mod or the new design with the new mod is stand by to get some.

• 2:52:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:52:34Speaker 02

  That's a new mod, mod 2.

• 2:52:36Jocko Willink?

  Mod 2.

• 2:52:36Speaker 02

  You know, it's been years, but hey, it's gonna be out. It's gonna make keep you get it. Stay on the lookout for that. Uh, if you want to have the heads up, get, uh, put your email in the little space on the, on the front page or whatever. We'll all just email you. Relevant stuff, no spam, just only relevant stuff. It won't come every day. If you're expecting an email every day or every, even every week, bro, sorry. I don't, I don't do that kind of frequency. But when I send it, it'll count, I promise. Also, the Jocko, uh, shirt locker. New design every month. Dave Burke. Good deal, Dave. Just sent me a text while we were recording, by the way, of this month's design. He said, this is a good idea for a design. I'll show it to you later. Don't be.

• 2:53:16Jocko Willink?

  Check. Didn't you say occasionally shirts make it from the shirt locker to the public?

• 2:53:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:53:24Jocko Willink?

  And has that happened? Is this, we have one that's currently.

• 2:53:29Speaker 02

  Um, well, I.

• 2:53:30Jocko Willink?

  In the world.

• 2:53:30Speaker 02

  We are not making this a thing, but by the time this comes out, it'll have already be done, been done. But yes, the good, the good, so it doesn't have a mod, right? So I guess it'd be the mod. Whatever. I don't know what it is. Anyway, it's called good HLP. Short for high level problem. Not every problem is life and death. See what I'm saying? You're not always knocked in the dirt, you know? Sometimes it's just like, you know, Dakota Meyer's, uh, protocol. It's an inconvenience. But sometimes in this cushy world we live in, which is real, by the way. You know, it's a delicate fabric. Sometimes these inconveniences can be good. And this is just a little reminder, even in those minor inconveniences scenarios.

• 2:54:10Jocko Willink?

  There might be some good.

• 2:54:11Speaker 02

  We still gotta lean on that good philosophy. See what I'm saying? Anyway, that's what this shirt is representative. The main reason why I'm releasing it, though, to the public is because literally for the past three years, came out in 2022, by the way. For the past three years, every time someone apparently would see it, they'd email me or text me or whatever, take a picture of it, tag me and be like, where is this shirt? Where is this shirt? I said, that shirt locker. Oh, by the way, three years ago. So I'm like, all right, you know, I'll just release it to everybody. Not not for a whole bunch of time, but you know, we'll do it. Nonetheless, it's all on jocko's store.com.

• 2:54:41Jocko Willink?

  Right on. So check that out. Also, some books. Dakota Meyer latest book, Why to What? Check that one out. Also, Dave Burke, his new book, The Need to Lead. Also, Things My Brother Used to Say by Ryan Mannion. Check that one out as well. Awesome for the kids. I've written a bunch of books, too. I've written some kids books as well, so you can check those out as well if you want. Echelon Front. You're going to talk quite a bit about leadership today. All these principles, we teach them all the time. We teach the skills of leadership. And we help your company, your team, or your organization solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com.

• 2:55:21Jocko Willink?

  And we can help you. And if you want to learn some of these skills in the comfort of your own home, go to extremeownership.com. We have an online training program to teach the skills of leadership. And then also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, want to help Gold Star families, 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 AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Don't forget about Micah Fink's organization up there in Montana. Teaching people how to find their souls out in the wilderness. HeroesAndHorses.org. And finally, Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org.

• 2:56:03Jocko Willink?

  Check out RamadiReunion20.com. If you were in Ramadi with the 11AD at all. Or Gold Star Families.

• 2:56:14Jocko Willink?

  Check out Ramadi reunion 20.com January 16th and 17th 2026. We're going to be down there, meeting, mustering, getting together, sharing stories, reconnecting. If you want to connect with Dakota, check out his Substack, Substack Dakota Meyer, and then on the interwebs, dakota Meyer dot com, and he's on Facebook at Dakota Meyer, Instagram Dakota Meyer 0317, and Twitter X Dakota underscore Meyer. And for us, check out Jaco.com and then on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink, Echo is at Echo Charles. That's all I'm going to say about

• 2:56:53Jocko Willink?

  that. Once again, thanks to my brother Dakota, incredible example of heroism, of humility, and of leadership, and it is an honor to be able to call you a friend. Thanks to all of our military personnel out there, across the globe, protecting freedom, protecting our way of life. Of course, a little special shout out to United States Marine Corps, always faithful. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. We're grateful for what you do every day to keep us safe. So, thank

• 2:57:36Jocko Willink?

  you. Special shout out to those firefighters. You heard what they go through every day from Dakota. It's a rough job. Thank you for what you do. And for everyone else out there, here's one more quote from Dakota's book, Why to What. He says, quote, "When people tell me that they're in a situation or a place they can't change, I ask them to consider the mission at hand. I ask whether the place they're in and the support it lends or doesn't lend is conducive to the mission. If it's not, I ask if they're in a position to alter their place they're in. If they aren't, I ask what they could do to make a change possible. If they tell me they can't change their position, I ask them if they're bound by law. Because unless you're in prison or dead, there's no position you can't change,

• 2:58:21Jocko Willink?

  and no place you can't leave." End quote.

• 2:58:27Jocko Willink?

  And that kind of sounds like it's on you. Put yourself in the place you want to be in. Create the situation you want to have. That is ownership. And it's on you. And that's all I've got for tonight. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.