Jocko Underground: When You're Ready For a New Chapter | Battling Fatigue In Life

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< https://app.redcircle.com/shows/64a89f88-a245-4098-8d8d-496325ec4f74/exclusive-content 00:00:00 – When You're Ready For a New Chapter? 00:06:33 – Struggling with chronic fatigue syndrome? 00:13:32 – Are leaders born with natural leadership abilities, or can leadership be learned? 00:24:00 – How do I choose between multiple job offers, and what advice do you have for starting my career? 00:43:28 – How do I recognize that I'm not good enough and need to improve without constantly beating myself up? Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 232, sitting here with Echo Charles. We have some questions from the front lines, from the trenches. And we will provide answers and/or courses of actions that you can take to navigate through this little maze of life. Let's get to it.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  All right, first question. Jocko, I'm 28 and have served 10 years in the military. Recently promoted to E7. I'm married, own a home, debt-free, financially secure, and proud to be a first-generation American who served. But I feel ready for a new chapter. Everyone says leaving before retirement would be foolish, but part of me wants to bet on myself. I'm considering becoming a state trooper or a physical therapist's assistant. Staying offers security and retirement, but at 28, I wonder, do I follow the safe path or start over while I'm still young?

• 0:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, first of all, in this type of situation, you are the only person that knows the answer, right? You know the answer to this question, and you're gonna have to do some soul searching to figure that out. That being said, here's some things to think about.

• 1:12Jocko Willink?

  The military and military retirement is kind of awesome. You have healthcare for life, you have family healthcare for life, you have benefits for life, you have a paycheck for life, you have stability for life. So it's a pretty awesome thing, and I have known many people that got out at 10 years, 12 years, 14 years, man, they look back and say, I wish I would have stayed.

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  It's a long list of positives.

• 1:38Jocko Willink?

  That being said, if you are not passionate about it, we only have one life to live, right? And you may want to take some risk. Now, listen, if you've made E7 in 10 years, which is squared away, and you already own a house, and you're debt-free, and you're financially secure, that means you're squared away, to me. You're a squared away human, right? You don't have a bunch of debt. You got, you're squared away. So you're probably gonna win regardless of what you do, to be quite honest with you. Now, that being said, look, there's people that lose all the time in the civilian sector. But you're squared away, so you have a better chance of winning in the civilian sector. But here's the, here's the deal.

• 2:22Jocko Willink?

  I don't think you need to make a black or white choice. I think you can take an iterative step, right? You can start going to whatever schooling you would need to become a physical therapist. Like, start that out, figure what that's all about. Start the application process to become a state trooper, see what kind of qualifications you need, see what the cutoff date is. Go, see what those things are like in real life, because the grass is always greener on the other side, right? You think, you know, there's so much bullshit we have to put up in the military. Believe me, there's bullshit as a physical therapist, and there's bullshit as a state trooper. There's bullshit everywhere. I don't care where you work, I don't care if you work at Google or on a construction site, there's bullshit to put up with. So, grass often looks greener, but if you do the schooling and you start the application

• 3:06Jocko Willink?

  process, and then you talk to as many people as you possibly can that are in those roles, they're gonna give you some indications of what that job is actually like in real life. Not that just the grass is greener for you, but what is it really like in real life? And ask for the rough stuff, ask for like, the real, the real deal. Now, while you are doing all that, you can also start to look at what the reserves are like for whatever branch of the military you're in. Right? Whatever branch you're in, they're gonna have some kind of a reserve component. And usually, you can stay in the reserves for as long as you want, really. So you could keep on active duty, do the application process, get some of the schooling, figure out what's going on with the reserves, and then if you still feel like, oh, being

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  a state trooper is gonna be awesome, cool, you can stay in the reserves, go become a state trooper. Or you can stay in the reserves and become a physical therapist.

• 4:00Jocko Willink?

  And you can continue to pursue those goals and those, those careers, whichever one you decide on, and it turns out great, and great, and, you know, you look up in 20 more years and you get your retirement from being a reservist, and you still have your job career that you pursued.

• 4:14Jocko Willink?

  But if you don't like, if you end up not liking those jobs, you stayed in the reserves, you roll back into active duty, you're good to go. GTG.

• 4:23Jocko Willink?

  So I think that's a pretty straightforward course of action. Learn more, educate yourself. If everything looks good, go into the reserves. While you're in the reserves, pursue which one of those careers you decide on. If it goes great, great. If it doesn't go great, roll back into active duty. That would be my recommendation.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  So if he goes in the reserves, he can keep his retirement?

• 4:45Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, you get it in a longer time. There's like, some kind of calculus that they do. A year of reserves counts as such and such amount of time here, but more important, it keeps you in the game.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you don't lose it.

• 4:55Jocko Willink?

  You don't lose, you don't have to do the whole boot camp again, like, you're kind of, what would be the equivalent to in sports? It's like coming out of the game, for, like, going to the bench, as opposed to getting ejected from the game. You don't wanna get ejected from the game.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  So in college, there's a thing called a red shirt?

• 5:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Usually, it's a freshman, you know, just to kind of prepare, but you could take a red shirt year, because you're eligible to be on the team for five years. You can only play four. You can, but you can take one for like, so maybe something like that, is that?

• 5:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty close.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I was gonna, my answer, or, you know, I read these questions, and I'm thinking, what if I was in this situation, what'd I do? Mine's slightly more black and white, so yours is better, best of both worlds, I'd say. Where I would be like, I would just look at it like, hey, if I, if I switch careers now, will I be glad that I did that? Or what is it, what's the probability is that I'm gonna feel, I'm gonna be happy that I did that in 10 years, 20 years, 30?

• 5:52Jocko Willink?

  You're 100% right, and that's not a great answer, because you don't actually know what that career, you're like, yeah, I'll be a state trooper, I'll have all these benefits, I'll be home all, no, no, it's like, you find out being a state trooper, it doesn't have the pay that you want, you find out that you're deployed more, like, so you gotta do research.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, and, and that's correct, and that's where, kind of where my mind was at. I was leaning towards staying it, only because, hey, you'll stay in, it's a job you know, you're, you know, you have some proficiency in all the tasks and stuff like this, and then, uh, you do, you get your retirement, and then you can go be whatever else you wanna be, assuming, you know, you still wanna do that kind of a thing.

• 6:26Jocko Willink?

  With no risk.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah, that best of both worlds approach to me seems like a way better answer, so.

• 6:33Jocko Willink?

  Sure, go with it.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Go with it. All right, next question. Jocko, I've struggled with fatigue since I was 18, I'm now 35, and have recently been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. After listening to the podcast, I started training jujitsu last year, hell yeah, and absolutely love it. I see the benefits, but the fatigue hits hard and can last for days. I started training three times a week, then two, then one. And I've gone from having fun and feeling dialed in to just stepping on the mat to get beat up and, and seeing any progress.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  What would you do in my situation? Is rolling jujitsu once a week enough if I can manage it, or should I step back completely? How would you balance discipline and ownership while respecting the limitations of a condition like this?

• 7:23Jocko Willink?

  Obviously, I'm not a doctor, and I don't know that much about chronic fatigue syndrome. I do know that it's difficult to root cause, meaning they're not like, oh, here's the problem, we can just solve it this way. It could be anything for, like, there's a whole bunch of things that it could be recovering from a viral or a bacterial infection, it could be from physical or emotional stress, it could be immune system dysregulation, it could be genetic predisposition, it could be cellular energy levels, like, there's, there's a bunch of different things. So it's not like we can just say, oh, here's the problem, go fix it. So you kind of, you kind of have to live with it for a bit.

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  But I do have a protocol, a recommended protocol for when we hit elf, health issues, and that protocol is, do what you can.

• 8:10Jocko Willink?

  Do what you can. If you can train once a week, do it. If you can train three times a week, do it. If you can train twice a month, do it. Training once a week is better than nothing, and training once a month is better than nothing.

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  So for, for chronic, chronic fatigue syndrome, to me, it's the same answer with injury, with illness, with time constraints, with fam, family issues. With life in general, life does not cooperate with what we want. That, we don't get that. This, life does not get scheduled around what we want, right? So what we have to do is, we have to adapt.

• 8:49Jocko Willink?

  We don't just abandon things, we freaking get after it. So, to me, that is the plan. Do what you can. Now, listen, obviously, continue to do research and get second and third opinions and get, you know, other people's input about this chronic fatigue syndrome. Try different protocols, try different diets, try different workouts, try different sleep patterns. Everyone's different, and you might find a solution that works for you. And I've known many people that have tried. So, that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jacood underground.com and subscribe, and

• 9:33Jocko Willink?

  we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms, so we are not subject to their control, and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is, free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors, and we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now, where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us.

• 10:17Jocko Willink?

  So thank you, it's jacood underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month, and if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you, just email [email protected], and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.