27: “How to be Strong, Healthy, and Happy”, “I Remember the Last War”, Bob Hoffman, Being Late, Judo VS BJJ, Family/Priority.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uFS3J4Hqyo 0:00:00 - Opening 0:04:58 - "I Remember the Last War" 1:16:12 - "How to be Strong Healthy and Happy", Bob Hoffman 1:40:33 - Internet/Onnit/Audible Stuff 1:44:32 - What to do facing "burnout". 1:50:09 - Judo compared to Jiu Jitsu 2:01:34 - Being LATE? 2:09:28 - Wives, Family, Re-prioritizing & balancing responsibilities while in the Military. 2:23:34 - Can you lead those who don't want to be led? 2:29:05 - How physical fitness empowers the mind and will. 2:43:25 - Dealing with the loss of Loved Ones. 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 27 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink.

• 0:13Jocko Willink?

  I knew a simple soldier boy who grinned at life in empty joy, slept soundly through the lonesome dark and whistled early with the lark.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  In winter trenches cowed and glum with crumbs and lice and lack of rum, he put a bullet through his brain.

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  No one spoke of him again.

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye who cheer when soldier lads march by, sneak home and pray you'll never know the hell where youth and laughter go.

• 1:12Jocko Willink?

  That's a poem called Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfried Sassoon.

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  Good evening, Echo.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 1:31Jocko Willink?

  Siegfried Sassoon was decorated for extreme bravery in World War I on the Western Front. He was nicknamed Mad Jack for his nearly suicidal exploits against the enemy. His brother was killed in action in the Gallipoli Campaign.

• 2:00Jocko Willink?

  He was eventually sent to a hospital to try and recover mentally from what he'd been through. While he was there, he wrote a little letter that was called Finished with the War: A Soldier's Declaration.

• 2:25Jocko Willink?

  Where he came out and said, "We gotta stop fighting the war like this." "I'm speaking for the men that are on the front lines, in the trenches, being killed."

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  And even after that,

• 2:46Jocko Willink?

  he was promoted.

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  He returned to the front again.

• 2:55Jocko Willink?

  He was wounded, this time by friendly fire.

• 3:04Jocko Willink?

  That's World War I.

• 3:08Jocko Willink?

  And while Siegfried Sassoon tells us to pray, "We will never know the hell where youth and laughter go."

• 3:21Jocko Willink?

  I do not agree with that.

• 3:24Jocko Willink?

  I wanna know, and I want everyone to know and understand and to see

• 3:31Jocko Willink?

  the hell,

• 3:34Jocko Willink?

  the darkness

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  that crushes youth and laughter.

• 3:43Jocko Willink?

  And taking us on this voyage into darkness tonight is a man by the name of Bob Hoffman. And if you look him up, you'll see he's a very accomplished man. He was obsessed with health and fitness, and he became a businessman. He was the, one of the founders of the York Barbell Corporation. If you ever lifted weights in your life, you've used York Barbells at some time.

• 4:12Jocko Willink?

  He's often called the father of modern weightlifting. But interestingly, what you won't find much about him is his military service.

• 4:25Jocko Willink?

  You don't see generally that he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, the Purple Heart, the French Cross of War, the French Military Medal, the Italian War Cross, and the highest Belgian Military Award, the Order of Leopold.

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  You just don't hear that about him. But that was a piece of his life.

• 4:57Jocko Willink?

  And he did write about it. He wrote about it in a book, which is called, "I Remember the Last War."

• 5:07Jocko Willink?

  And let's go to the book.

• 5:10Jocko Willink?

  Few people have been able to learn much about what actually took place in the frontline fighting of the world war.

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  They have often asked about the war and have found few veterans who could talk about it. One of the chief reasons for this is that they had little or nothing to tell about the war. Approximately 4 million men were in service during the war. Half of these went to France, and of these, half a million were near the front. 10 men are required behind the front to keep one man in action. Service, supply, truck drivers, hospital workers, ambulance drivers, guards in the base ports, the replacement in casualty camps, many thousands of military police, artillery engineers, signalmen, aviators, mechanics, and endless more.

• 6:02Jocko Willink?

  Our division lost more men than any other former National Guard division, more men than any other organization except the 1st and 2nd regular divisions. Our regiment lost more men than any other regiment or our division, our battalion more men of any of the 3 battalions in our regiment, and our company more men than any other company in the battalion. Yet we had men who never saw a German who was not a prisoner. Some of our men were cooks, top sergeants, company clerks, supply sergeants, buglers, signalmen, kitchen police, the men who carried up the ammunition, the rations, cared for the wounded at advanced stations, buried the dead, many were liaison men carrying messages from company to battalion.

• 6:49Jocko Willink?

  They fired and were fired at as we fought in towns, woods, and hills, but seldom saw targets at which they fired. Bombs and shells were dropped on them, they suffered from gas, and most of the horrors of war. They were killed, but they weren't actually at the front.

• 7:10Jocko Willink?

  Men who were trained, as I was, scouting, patrolling, observation, sniping, who led patrols, reconnaissance, or combat, advanced guards, captured prisoners, put a gun out of action, held advance posts, served as suicide squads when we were being attacked, were the men who actually saw war, and most of them are dead.

• 7:34Jocko Willink?

  While 125,000 American dead in France are not so many when divided among the million men who were at or near the front, it is a tremendous percentage when it is considered how few of these men were doing the fighting. More than 250 men in our company alone were killed. More than the original strength of the company lost their lives in France.

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  They can't tell you the story.

• 8:03Jocko Willink?

  I was phenomenally lucky.

• 8:06Jocko Willink?

  So I will tell our story. We'll try to tell you something of what happened over there.

• 8:12Jocko Willink?

  There have been war books written by other men who were better writers than I, more fitted to place what they saw upon the printed page. But I don't believe a book about America's participation in the war has been written by a man who spent days, weeks, and months in intensive fighting at or in front of the front, as my comrades and I did.

• 8:36Jocko Willink?

  There is nothing particularly glorious or beautiful about this story. I've told it as well as I could, but have been able to give you only a faint idea of the conditions we encountered during the five worst days of any unit of the American Army experience in France. The five days of our Battle of Fismet.

• 9:02Jocko Willink?

  You could fully appreciate its horrors only if you were there. Never was a group of men harder pressed by superior forces of the enemy or more ill-equipped to fight off those attacks than we.

• 9:18Jocko Willink?

  No artillery support during most of the fighting, no trench mortars, no hand or rifled grenades, just a moderate amount of pistol, rifle, and machine gun ammunition. No food, proper medical attention, or the opportunity to bury the dead. Our men in that battle, the handful who held the front lines, covered themselves with undying glory.

• 9:46Jocko Willink?

  The telling of this story will give a better idea of what we did in France than other books, than other war books I have seen.

• 9:54Jocko Willink?

  It tells the unvarnished truth about how we lived, slept, hiked, fought, and died over there.

• 10:05Jocko Willink?

  Scores of my friends, the men I had lived with, trained with, fought with, had come to like and admire, died in the woods in France. It was only by a series of miracles, amazing escapes, that I did not die too,

• 10:24Jocko Willink?

  that I am here writing this book. I was young then, nineteen years of age at the time of the Battle of the Argonne. I had been too busy to live, and because I had not found what a fine place the world can be, I did not mind particularly dying.

• 10:45Jocko Willink?

  I had no actual fear of death.

• 10:49Jocko Willink?

  Twenty-one years ago, when we fought the Battle of the Argonne, I had thirty-two ugly blood boils on my body from eating a diet consisting mostly of meat and bread for some weeks. Boils which made me swear more than I have all the rest of my life, as I constantly scraped them on the rocky ground while digging a new hole to protect my body each time we halted.

• 11:15Jocko Willink?

  I had French itch and copious quantities of mustard gas, ugly burns which still leave their scars.

• 11:24Jocko Willink?

  Twelve bullets left their mark on my person, or on my equipment, in the first short battle. I was one of thirty-two men of our two-hundred-and-fifty-strength company who marched out of the Battle of Fizmay.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  I was the only man to return of those who followed me on five patrols that I led in one day in the Argonne Forest.

• 11:51Jocko Willink?

  I hope through this book, at least partially, to show the gruesome side of war. Barred from the waving of flags, the bugles, bands, the cheering. To show, at least, part of the ugliness, filth, dirt, evil, immorality, and stink of war.

• 12:15Jocko Willink?

  Be sympathetic, but remain aloof. Be strong, prepared to protect our own country against any nation or combination of nations which may attack our homes, our democracy, our American way of living.

• 12:29Jocko Willink?

  If our country was attacked, the first hour would not pass before I would plan to enlist. And millions of other Americans would be in just as much haste to protect our wonderful country and our American way of life.

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  So that's...

• 12:47Jocko Willink?

  How he kicks this book off, kinda burning through the intro there. And I really liked the point that he made when he broke down the numbers. And how many people go to war, but how many people are actually fighting? And it's a big discrepancy. There's, it takes a lot of people to get bullets to the guy on the front line. It takes a lot of people to get that person transported to the front lines. It takes a lot of people to get to keep that person fed. It takes all kinds of logistics and support just to, just to get that guy through the door of a building where the enemy is.

• 13:27Jocko Willink?

  And I've talked about this before, too. In Iraq, there was places in Iraq where... There was bases in Iraq where it was basically like being in America. They had restaurants and Starbucks coffee and McDonald's and Burger King and they had pools and movie theaters. I mean, it was crazy.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Is it where like the, how you mentioned like Burger King, for example, do they, does Burger King, the company kind of make a deal with, you know, the government be like, hey, we want to supply Burger King?

• 13:59Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I'm sure. And actually, I shouldn't have said McDonald's, it was usually Burger King. They must have be the ones that had the deal at the time.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:05Jocko Willink?

  So Burger King was there on base. And you would, we would travel though to outstations where there's some army unit. This is on my first appointment. We traveled to some outstation where there's some army unit living out in the middle of nowhere. Just totally desolate. Some Marine Corps unit living in the middle of nowhere, eating MREs every day and like, there was a group we worked with one, I wish I could remember where they were to give them some credit. But they were out there, they were on one MRE a day, which MRE is meals ready to eat. It's a, it's a, not a very, not a very good thing to live off of. And these guys were out there living off of one MRE a day. And, and you feel bad, you know, you go out, we stopped, I think we had to stop at their base. We had to get some information, gather some intel. They knew some

• 14:49Jocko Willink?

  targets around the area. We went and talked to them, saw how rough they were living. We went out, hit our targets. Then we were driving back to our big base, you know, where we had good food and you know, internet, stuff like that. I mean, it's, it's, it's amazing how good it can be. And that's what, that's what people, some people don't realize about the military is it takes a lot of support and logistics to keep the guys on the front lines, on the front lines. And not taking anything away from those folks that are doing that because that's a hard job. And I've talked about this before, those logistics convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan, those things were hardcore and horrible dangerous jobs to do.

• 15:29Jocko Willink?

  And so I'm not taking anything away, but if you want to say, okay, who went out and hunted down the enemy? And got them, it's a much, much smaller group of people.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Right. So it's like individually, yeah, you got people who did that part of it, but collectively, it's just this huge force, right? Of people.

• 15:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a massive, it's a massive force, but. And and it's even more extreme because in World War I, the the lines were very clearly drawn. I mean, you had literally had trenches in the ground. Right. And so if you weren't within range of the of the enemy attacks, I mean, maybe they could get some planes to you, but you would you'd be living relatively safe, and that's his point. And then when you get a little closer to the front lines, yeah, you're gonna get some artillery bombardment, but everyone had dug these nice holes in these trenches. So the guys that were actually invading German trenches, most of them are dead. Most of them are dead. It's a small, it's a much, it's one, it's one out of every ten soldiers that was actually going forward to attack.

• 16:34Jocko Willink?

  And most of them are dead. I mean, you could hear what he just said, they took more casualties than the strength of their of their company was. So they had two hundred and fifty guys, there was actually a thousand guys in the company because they took so many casualties.

• 16:48Jocko Willink?

  That's why World War I is so horribly disturbing and scary to me. Because like I've said before, there wasn't a tactics, your your own tactical prowess wasn't gonna help you. Your your own personal skill set wasn't really gonna help you. Yeah. You were gonna get up, you were gonna charge, and and really, uh, Bob Hoffman talks about this, and he was just lucky. He was a great athlete, and he trained hard, and he was constantly trying to make himself better. I'm sure that contributed to it all somewhat, but hey, when you, when he comes off the battlefield and he'd been shot thirteen times, one, you know, in the knees, his bullet holes in his canteens, he'd been just, it's just, that's just miracle. Yep. Looked out.

• 17:34Jocko Willink?

  So going back to the book, he says, "We should bend all our efforts toward becoming so strong that no other nation or coalition of nations will dare to attack us. We should build the physical strength of our manhood and womanhood, our mechanical equipment, our navy in particular, and our army, so that we can resist any form of invasion in the future."

• 18:04Jocko Willink?

  And I, I put that in there because you're gonna see a, a pretty common theme in the way this guy lived his life, which was to be stronger, faster, better, smarter, always trying to improve himself. Always trying to be the best Bob Hoffman that he could be. And obviously that's how he ended up running a giant, you know, organization for weightlifting and, and fitness. And he actually took some heat for the way he lived sometimes. And here they were, they were on, on a ship, heading overseas, heading to France or, or to England. And he's talking about what it was like for him, being a guy that believes in being strong and healthy and smarter and trying to improve himself. Here we, here we go, back to the book.

• 18:49Jocko Willink?

  "All sorts of men make up an army, good, bad, and indifferent. I found myself in lots of trouble, for I had been fond of study, athletics, and work when home. I didn't smoke, drink, chew, gamble, or go out with questionable women, or indulge in other diversions that some considered to be manly.

• 19:14Jocko Willink?

  There were men who thought that I was a sissy because I did not have manly habits. This led to a great many fights, and I thought at one time, I would have to beat every man in the company individually to prove that I wasn't a sissy. I did get enough practice that later enabled me to win the boxing championship in my bodyweight class of our division. This experience served me well on the Atlantic crossing, for I fought five three-round fights in one day. Someone had to do it, and the job fell on me."

• 19:51Jocko Willink?

  So, he was getting, you know, for lack of a better word, picked on, because he was a goody-two-shoes. And the only way he was able to stand up for himself was just to get his scrap on. Get his fight on.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  He was a straight edge.

• 20:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he was a, he was a, he was an early day, straight edge guy.

• 20:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't think he had, uh, the straight edge music going into his head yet, that might have helped him out.

• 20:19Jocko Willink?

  So, they get overseas, and now I'm taking you straight into it, into them getting, him getting tasked with, with their first mission.

• 20:31Jocko Willink?

  And here we go. "Was I thrilled, the front at last? When asked by our captain if I wanted to go with the platoon, I said, 'Do I want to go? That's what I've been yearning and aching for all these months.' When I was just a youngster, I would read books telling how anxious soldiers were to go into action. I couldn't understand how men could desire to go out and fight and die. But it is something that grows on you. You train and expect so long that finally you become anxious to get into it, to get it over with. Time was short. We went back to our companies on the run.

• 21:11Jocko Willink?

  Our company was assembled and I briefly explained that a platoon of fifty-eight men was to be selected and that we were to make an attack with the French at six o'clock that night. My words fell like a bombshell. A brief cheer went up from our company. I asked all the men who wanted to be first in action to step forward. And, like one man, the entire company stepped forward. Men who did not get to go on this trip cried real tears. A direct contrast to the lack of volunteering for dangerous missions a few months later when they had become war weary. Then they would go if assigned to any task, no matter how dangerous, but they did not rush in.

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  They became fatalists and said they'd go if they were chosen. They'd die if it was their turn, but they weren't going to overwork fate.

• 22:11Jocko Willink?

  And if you, that's a perfect comparison to the story that I tell in my retirement speech. Where we had this horrible situation going on in Eastern Ramadi. And I basically said, alright, whoever wants to go and live in this worst area, put your name up on that board. And every guy put their name up on that board. And I'll tell you, this is also accurate in the fact that you fast forward two or three months into deployment, after we'd taken casualties, after Mark had been killed. And all of a sudden, guys were not, and I'll use the exact quote he uses here. "They'd go to any task assigned, no matter how dangerous, but they did not rush in." They became war weary, and that happens to anybody.

• 22:56Jocko Willink?

  And I even saw that on my first deployment to Iraq. When we first got up into Baghdad, everybody wants to go on every mission. Everyone's all fired up. But as time goes by, you start saying, "What are we doing this mission for? What's this mission about? Who, who are we going after?"

• 23:14Jocko Willink?

  Fear starts to creep in.

• 23:17Jocko Willink?

  "Now let's get to the assault."

• 23:20Jocko Willink?

  "The Frenchmen were working like mad with their trench mortars. They kept shells continuously in the air. At three minutes to six, Sergeant Felix walked along the parapet, informing all our men that we were going over in a few moments. I urged him to keep down, not to make a target of himself, but he disregarded my advice. Finally, as our watches, which had been synchronized before the bombardment, pointed exactly to six o'clock, there were whistles and commands, and climbing men leaving the trench all along the line. The gunners who had been working so desperately with the trench mortars to pave the way for us, cheered and cried out to us, evidently urging us to sweep the Germans from the hill.

• 24:04Jocko Willink?

  I just couldn't understand what they said." And soon, we were in the thick of things, bullets flying merrily by this time from the German trenches, perhaps a fourth of a mile away. I was hardly out of the trench until some great force pushed me, knocking me over, for a distance of perhaps twenty feet. I didn't know what had hit me, but I felt blood running down my right eye. After that knockdown, I forgot the line of combat groups, and we fought just as our ancestors had always fought. Instinctive rushing forward, stopping to shoot, rushing again, and shooting again.

• 24:45Jocko Willink?

  So that's your welcome to combat. "Oh, you're all fired up? You ready to go get some? Cool, go over the top." The first thing that happens to you is you get shot, which is what happened to him. He doesn't even know it yet.

• 24:59Jocko Willink?

  All Americans have a legacy which has come to them from courageous, fighting, pioneer ancestors. The American soldier is a good soldier. He has not had the centuries of drilling to make his own individual self subservient to the will of the commanding officer. He does not like to salute the brass bar unless that lieutenant has won his respect through deeds. He does not like to be regimented, turned into a mere robot. He can think and act for himself. And when a battle has passed the initial stages, he's the best soldier in the world.

• 25:40Jocko Willink?

  This is going, again, reminder, this is World War I. And I say this all the time.

• 25:49Jocko Willink?

  People in the military are not robots.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  And I can't speak too much about people from other militaries, but clearly, this was a standout thought as an American, looking at American troops in combat. They, they're not just robots. And one of the best things about them is that they can think.

• 26:11Jocko Willink?

  Now, here come a bunch of Americans over on some Germans. Coming up on their trench. Perhaps the Germans were too startled at the size and evident ferocity of their antagonists to fight well for a minute. But it seemed like a group of big men who'd, who'd met a lot of boys playing soldiers. One push and the German's rifle was knocked from his hand. A long thrust and that unfortunate man had reached the end of his life. I can still see the faces of these men. Their evident terror, their astonishment at the number of men who leaped at them from the grass, at the size and power of these men, their evident helplessness.

• 26:55Jocko Willink?

  There was not time for them to surrender.

• 26:59Jocko Willink?

  They had jumped up with bayoneted rifles and in a moment or two, it was all over.

• 27:06Jocko Willink?

  Now this continues. "Our advanced troops had passed me by. I could see dead Germans laying here and there. Right near me were two of them, close together. One of them was a big, older man with a Prussian mustache. His hands still clasped to the point in his stomach where the bayonet had gone in and been withdrawn. The youngster lay all twisted up. He too had been bayoneted. And it seemed that his bones were broken from the strokes of the butt of a rifle."

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  A rifle is a wicked weapon when swung by a powerful man. And there were many strong men in action that day.

• 27:47Jocko Willink?

  It's, you know, you hear about bayonet fighting.

• 27:52Jocko Willink?

  But to think about it on this scale. Where this is, this is looking more like a scene out of Braveheart at this point than it is looking like a modern war. People clubbing each other to death and stabbing each other at bayonet range.

• 28:11Jocko Willink?

  The Germans weren't giving out, giving up without a real struggle. We had read a lot about chained machine gunners. But these men weren't chained and they were fighting to the bitter death. Now that chained machine gunners, this is like a rumor that happened that the Americans would hear because the Germans had a machine gun and it was a big, heavy sort of a medium weight, or heavyweight machine gun. I think it was an MG-08 and it was so heavy that they put this big sling on it. And on the sling, it was made of leather, but they had to reinforce the leather with chain. And so when they would find these soldiers dead with these machine guns and the chain would clip into their gear,

• 28:55Jocko Willink?

  the rumor was that these guys had just been chained to their machine guns. You can't leave, you're just gonna stay here and fight to the death.

• 29:05Jocko Willink?

  "Our men were constantly rising and falling, some of them never to rise again. Our ranks were becoming rapidly decimated and there were few of us still going forward at this point." "I have never seen an authentic list of the casualties of a company that day, but I know this. I never saw a single one of those 58 men of our company who went over the top that night, again, at the front."

• 29:37Jocko Willink?

  "I had been hit several times. Once on the left knee, once on the right knee. Either bullet could have left me crippled for life, but both glanced off the bone, leaving only a scar which is noticeable to this day. One grazed my arm, leaving a scar at present an inch long and 3/4 of an inch wide. I had a variety of feelings as these bullets struck or scratched me. The first, which hit my helmet, gave me the same sensation as if I had been pushed by a gigantic hand. The bullets on the knees stung like I had been hit with a whip. And the bullet that cut through the arm and the one which left its mark on my face felt like a drop of hot water had hit me."

• 30:23Jocko Willink?

  About this time, the battle had become very hot. We fired at every enemy we could see, and they were firing from every direction. From the front, left and right, and even from behind, because we'd gone so fast that we had not dropped the snipers who were firing at us from the trees.

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  Caught in a little 360 degree field of fire. By the way, caught in a 360 degree field of fire after you've been shot, what, five times?

• 30:58Jocko Willink?

  We talked about lucky, obviously. Better to be lucky than good at this point.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  It's crazy how he, how he describes getting shot, you know, how

• 31:11Speaker 01

  you'd almost think that dang, you get shot, that'd be so painful, but when you're in the heat of things, and I think it happens so fast that it like, your nerves don't pick up on the destruction.

• 31:22Jocko Willink?

  It depends where you get shot.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:25Jocko Willink?

  It depends where those rounds hit. And I remember actually even hearing guys from, Vietnam guys from, SEALs from Vietnam, told me, um, one guy told me a story that the first time he got shot, they were out on operation, came back, he was literally heading out to the bar, actually, actually, he said he was in the bar, and he realized he was bleeding. And he looked down, and he'd been shot somewhere in the abdomen. But, you know, obviously it wasn't that bad, but he had been shot. Um, yeah, and it, it can, it, you can, you can catch a bullet in the wrong place, and it's game over. Or you can catch a bullet in the wrong place, and it can just take you off your feet, or you can catch a bullet in the wrong place, and your arm won't move anymore. Or there'll be massive amounts of pain, or you can catch a bullet in the right place.

• 32:10Jocko Willink?

  And it goes through and through, it goes in and out very quickly, doesn't hit anything vital, and, you know, you're just kinda lucky.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  But the, as far as the pain goes, you think, you know.

• 32:22Jocko Willink?

  It it's the same thing. You're right. Sometimes it goes through and through and guys barely even notice it.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:28Jocko Willink?

  And sometimes if it hits the wrong spot, it hits a bone or whatever. I mean, it's it's.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Like a ricochet.

• 32:35Jocko Willink?

  Massive pain.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Like I hear of stories about, um, it's gonna sound kinda grotesque, but like girls will get stabbed in the back or something. And they'll be like, oh, it felt like, I'm thinking of a particular story I heard where girl got stabbed by an attacker in the back. And she was like, oh, it felt like he was just beating me with his fist on my back. And then I felt the warm blood going down, you know, and then later on they found out. It's like, I don't know, it's weird. It's like it happens so fast or something combined with adrenaline. You don't feel the the destruction part of it, you know?

• 33:07Jocko Willink?

  And it depends what it hits too.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 33:09Jocko Willink?

  It does depend what it hits.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  That's crazy. It felt like hot water. That's, you know?

• 33:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, actually I had a guy, one of my guys got shot. He was out, you know, firefight going on and all of a sudden he's, he feels the hot. You know, the hot kinda dripping down his back, hot liquid dripping down his back. And it turned out he'd just been shot in the camel back.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  In the camel?

• 33:32Jocko Willink?

  Camel back, you know, those, those, they're like thermoses, they're like, uh, canteens. They're soft canteens, you wear them on your back and and it was hot out. So the water in there was heated up. And sure enough, he shot, he thought he got shot, but it actually just hit his camel back.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Dang, I remember I, my toenail fell off, right? In in training, then I stubbed that on a corner and I almost passed out. So you kinda consider the the destruction, you know? You kinda compare them.

• 34:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  It's almost like taking a bullet would be less painful.

• 34:05Jocko Willink?

  Then ripping out Echo's toenail.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Well, it was, my toenail got ripped off and then so it was jacked up for a few days. And then I stubbed that on the corner of, um, I think it was like.

• 34:16Jocko Willink?

  Well, you got a bunch of nerves in your toes.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:18Jocko Willink?

  That's where you got fingernails or toenails. And again, the most important thing is where, you know, what does that, what does that bullet hit? What does that blade hit? What does it do to you?

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:28Jocko Willink?

  Does it hit the, does it hit a nerve or not?

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and adrenaline, because when I got my toenail ripped off, it it hit at this weird angle where it just peeled back my whole big toenail. And it didn't really hurt that much because I was rolling, you know, the adrenaline and stuff. But if I just sat there and said, hey, Jaco, peel back my toenail. Like that, it'd probably hurt way more.

• 34:48Jocko Willink?

  It would hurt way more.

• 34:56Jocko Willink?

  Alright, here we go, back to the book. "The operators of machine guns of any sorts are targets for all riflemen's. Their vulnerability in action gave rise to the term 'suicide squad.' Sergeant Felix called to one of the runners to bring him the gun. The runner dropped dead as he handed the gun to Felix. We'd advanced to the German third-line trench, fighting desperately meanwhile and driving the Germans before us. I had not reached any of them with my bayonet, but had been doing the deadly work with my rifle. As we rushed to the German trench expecting to jump down into it and fight hand-to-hand with the enemy, we saw that we could not do this.

• 35:39Jocko Willink?

  The trench was covered thoroughly with barbed wire, so that nothing much larger than a hummingbird could get in. We lay down outside the parapet to fire at close range. Someone shouted, 'Look out, there's a bomb.' It went off, it went right off in my face, but all my parts seemed to be present immediately afterwards. I saw Felix lying there sprawled out, groping for his pistol. I said, 'What's the matter, Bill?' He couldn't answer, but turned weakly to me, and I saw that half his face seemed to have been torn off.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  I picked up the automatic rifle and as I turned it into the German trench, they got up and ran back. I was the only one firing. I saw many of them drop with the sixty shots a minute I was pumping at them. So I knew I was getting enough of the enemy to make up for our men who had been killed and wounded. For a time, there was nothing to shoot at, so I took stock of the situation. So far back that they were hardly more than specks, I saw tiny men in blue digging in. It must have been all of a half a mile." I knew that we should not stay out here in such an isolated post, but what were we to do? I never thought for a minute of abandoning the wounded. So there we stayed.

• 37:00Jocko Willink?

  The snipers far off in the wood were still firing at us and there was no way we could reach them or entirely escape their bullets. I couldn't get into the trench, so I crawled around it. Well over into the woods. Shell holes everywhere. I saw for the first time what havoc could be wrought by shell fire. At places the shell holes were connected solidly to each other. The trees and bushes were shattered, men were blown up and blown up again. They were in pieces. It would have taken a Bushel basket or a G.I. can to have gathered up all those Germans for burial.

• 37:40Jocko Willink?

  I admit that they were the finest of soldiers. After four years of war, they fought to the death before they would give up a position.

• 37:49Jocko Willink?

  They were so well-trained that it was second nature with them. They had been regimented for so long that they never questioned an order, put up with all sorts of privation and suffering and were cheerful through it all.

• 38:02Jocko Willink?

  The majority of them were in very good condition when captured. It showed they could take it. I often wondered if our own men could be as good soldiers after four years of war.

• 38:14Jocko Willink?

  All of us could not be brave.

• 38:18Jocko Willink?

  Bravery is a sort of fixed quality, something that some men have and others do not. Only physical collapse or death stops the brave.

• 38:31Jocko Willink?

  Some will be brave when they must, when they, like a mother animal, are driven by the instinct of self-preservation to protect their own lives or that of their offspring.

• 38:44Jocko Willink?

  A man who naturally has courage is fortunate. It is the ability to control his mind, to prepare it, so that he feels nothing. Courage is the product of physical strength and mental strength combined. Proper training will make men more courageous. And certainly, these Germans were courageous. Physical strength and mental strength. Combined.

• 39:16Jocko Willink?

  That's where that courage comes from. Back to the book. "I tried to do something for the wounded. They were very cold by this time, suffering from loss of blood. They were lying there, stripped to the waist. I reached for the canteen of one of the dead men. There were two bullet holes through mine, and it was empty. Just as I turned, a bullet from afar off to the left tore through the flesh of my cheek. Had I not turned at that very instant, it would have gone through my head, dead center, killing me, or sadly maiming me for life."

• 39:51Jocko Willink?

  Little Vochona, who lay there, was just sixteen years of age. He was the first of a dozen youngsters, whose ages ranged from fourteen to sixteen, who had enlisted in our company.

• 40:07Jocko Willink?

  They had lied about their actual age, enamored with the appearance of our fellows in uniform. They too wanted to be soldiers.

• 40:17Jocko Willink?

  Some of them lost their nerve before they reached the front, and tried in many ways to get out of service. The Spencer brothers, fifteen and sixteen years of age, were to be killed by shellfire.

• 40:31Jocko Willink?

  There was no fear in this little Italian boy, he's talking about little Vochona.

• 40:38Jocko Willink?

  He'd always been a hothead, wanting to fight with a knife, fork, or anything he could lay his hands on when someone antagonized him a bit. He was dashing forward, with bayoneted rifle in hand, so fast when the bullet which killed him, which hit him, that he lay out well on the barbed wire covering the German trench.

• 41:03Jocko Willink?

  Kid's fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen years old.

• 41:10Jocko Willink?

  I don't, I'm not saying anything bad about our current state in America, but I have a hard time picturing the current brood of fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen-year-olds getting their trench warfare on.

• 41:30Jocko Willink?

  Fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen years old.

• 41:34Jocko Willink?

  Face to face with the Germans.

• 41:40Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. "I crawled back, and there was one of our men, crying. I asked him why, and he replied that so many of his friends had been killed. I told him not to worry about the killed, that we had living wounded to be concerned about, to get back.

• 41:59Jocko Willink?

  That he had better go for help and stretchers and see if we could not evacuate our fellows.

• 42:09Jocko Willink?

  I had no other thought than that I should die as bravely as I could for my friends, or country, or something. So I prepared to sell my life as dearly as possible.

• 42:23Jocko Willink?

  In a surprisingly few minutes, there came a crashing through the woods, the sound of voices, and a large body of men came into view. I lay still, waited until they were close, and then jumped up, pointing my automatic rifle at them, and was prepared to go into action. I suppose it was very startling to have a dead man jump up, for I certainly looked dead.

• 42:49Jocko Willink?

  I pulled the trigger, and as soon as one man fell, the others all shouted, 'Comrade!' It's like holding up a train. No one wants to be the first killed, so a crowded car permits one man to hold it up. When the Germans found that I had stopped firing, they were anxious to surrender.

• 43:10Jocko Willink?

  Their officer was as nice and polite as any head waiter in a high-class restaurant. He knew a little English, and understood when I told him to have his men pile the arms in one place, put their packs in another, and make improvised stretchers to carry back the wounded. This all took just a few minutes, and soon, we were starting back."

• 43:33Jocko Willink?

  So the tough Germans, he ended up capturing a bunch of Germans. And he actually, actually makes a funny comment here.

• 43:43Jocko Willink?

  That he says that, that as he was walking back with all these Germans that he had captured, a couple of other guys now helped him, once he got off the front lines. And he says that his award says that he had assisted in the capture of thirty-eight Germans. And he can see he's kind of upset about that because he did it by himself. He didn't assist, he got the whole thing done.

• 44:07Jocko Willink?

  And now he ends up, because of the wounds that he suffered, he ends up in the hospital. And he starts having thoughts and explaining what it's like being in the hospital and the people that are in there with him.

• 44:20Jocko Willink?

  "Youth of all nations seldom reckons the cost. They make the best soldiers because they will go out and try to die bravely for their countries as I expected and tried to do.

• 44:35Jocko Willink?

  Older men are more cautious. They have homes, perhaps families, positions. They know about life. They usually know the folly of war. They are careful. And battles are not won by being careful.

• 44:53Jocko Willink?

  The impetuous youthful soldiers are the best fighters. That's why war will always take the flower of the manhood of the nations involved, the strongest, most intelligent, most useful of men."

• 45:11Jocko Willink?

  Now he starts talking about what happens, he's again still in the hospital, trying to recover from the wounds he's, he has. His wounds obviously aren't as bad as some of the other wounded that he's in there with.

• 45:25Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. When a man was dying, they would move him out.

• 45:31Jocko Willink?

  It was not, it was bad enough for him to die without his comrades, who did not know when their own turn might come, having to watch him die.

• 45:44Jocko Willink?

  Some of the men went out screaming when they were moved. The nurses would try and ease their going by telling them that they were only going to the operating room for minor treatment, or to the dressing room, to have their bandages changed.

• 45:59Jocko Willink?

  The fellows soon learned to observe whether the little bag which held their personal belongings, sometimes a helmet or a coat, came with them.

• 46:10Jocko Willink?

  If it remained behind, they could expect to come back, but if it too was moved, then they were sure that worse was in store for them. Some begged to be left there to die with their friends around them, not to be placed with a lot of near corpses who were complete strangers.

• 46:30Jocko Willink?

  The more pitifully wounded did not wish to live. They constantly begged doctors and nurses, sometimes at the top of their voices, to put an end to them.

• 46:43Jocko Willink?

  Some made attempts to end their lives with a knife or fork.

• 46:49Jocko Willink?

  It became necessary to feed these wounded, and never leave a knife or a fork with them.

• 46:56Jocko Willink?

  A blinded man who was suffering greatly and did not wish to live, had killed himself with a fork. It was hard to drive it deep enough through his chest to end his life, and he kept hitting it with his clenched fist, to drive it deeper.

• 47:17Jocko Willink?

  That is,

• 47:22Jocko Willink?

  I guess about as bad as it gets.

• 47:27Jocko Willink?

  When you have individuals that survived combat but are in such a wretched state,

• 47:37Jocko Willink?

  that a soldier killed himself with a fork.

• 47:48Jocko Willink?

  You know, one of my guys, one of my buddies, Brian Jobe, he got blinded in both eyes after he took a round to the face.

• 48:01Jocko Willink?

  And it really does show you.

• 48:06Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I would talk to him on the phone when we were still over there, and just his attitude was so indomitable. His spirit was so strong. And I'll tell you something else. He had been sent to, at one point, he was sent to the place where they have the guys that have had traumatic brain injuries, who are having trouble with their thoughts and with their motor skills, and guys that are in really bad shape.

• 48:39Jocko Willink?

  And when he was there, and I talked to him on the phone, he spent about a week there. And he told me, you know, hey, I'm moving, I think he'd already left, but he said,

• 48:54Jocko Willink?

  basically told him, hey, get me out of here. I don't need the kind of help that these guys need. I'm taking up someone's bed. So even though he was blind, and of course, he was a tough bastard, but I mean, tough bastard or not, he was blind, I mean, that's a game changer, obviously. But he still looked at the guys that were wounded worse than him. And was like, hey, I don't want to take up anybody's bed. I'm good, I'll be okay. I can't see, but I'm good. Didn't he say he went to come back too? Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah. He was like telling me, just let me come back, let me come back, and I can, I can, I can stand watch, because I can smell them.

• 49:42Jocko Willink?

  And unfortunately, he didn't get a chance to go back.

• 49:51Jocko Willink?

  So now there's a, the Germans had made a drive for, for Paris and the Americans were now involved in a counterattack and Bob Hoffman is still in the hospital and now the wounded start coming in from this counterattack. The wounded that came in now were particularly serious cases, men who had been wounded by tremendous shells. There was much screaming and anguish displayed by these sorely wounded men. Seldom was it quiet at night. Men whose nerves broke would be screaming all night.

• 50:36Jocko Willink?

  There were many cases of shell shock, men who had had their maniacal moments when they felt that they were still at the front, being subjected to shell fire. They were out of their minds and there was nothing that could be done about it, but it made it most unpleasant for the other wounded. Horrible cases of mustard gas were everywhere. Some of these men were blinded and had to lie for endless days with their heads covered with bandages. Some of the men were able to walk, sprayed a-legged down the aisles.

• 51:18Jocko Willink?

  I was told that their testicles had in some cases shriveled up like dry peas in a pod. They were certainly in a bad way. So the mustard gas, it attacks the softest part of your tissues, right? So your eyes, your nose, your, your testicles, like anywhere where there's moisture and softness.

• 51:51Jocko Willink?

  And on the 21st of July, the doctors decide that he's fit to go back to the front. He gets on a train. Can you imagine? You go, you fight this battle, you get wounded, you come back, you're watching guys come in that are severely wounded, shell shock, mustard gas. And then they say, "Okay, by the way, now you're good to go. We're gonna send you back out to the front." Like, you think you got that million-dollar wound that we talk about in a bunch of these episodes, where people say, "Oh, I made it off the front." He goes off the front for, I don't even think it's a month, I think it's a few weeks. And now you're fit for duty again. Back to the front. Back to the front, back to the meat grinder.

• 52:37Jocko Willink?

  And he goes there by train in a surprisingly short time at about 2 o'clock. We were close enough to the front that we'd started to see the dead soldiers of both armies along the way. The American soldiers had been buried hastily in holes they had dug along the road as they were advancing. But there were still many of them laying in the fields. I could see their khaki uniforms and their white faces as we passed.

• 53:04Jocko Willink?

  There are two chief reasons why a soldier feels fear. First, that he will not get home to see his loved ones again. But, most of all, picturing himself in the same position as some of the dead men we saw. They lay their face up, usually in the rain, their eyes open, their faces pale and chalk-like, their gold teeth showing. That is in the beginning. After that, they are usually too horrible to think about. We buried them as fast as we could, Germans, French, and Americans alike. Get them out of sight, but not out of memory.

• 53:44Jocko Willink?

  I can remember hundreds and hundreds of dead men. I would know them now if I were to meet them in the hereafter.

• 53:53Jocko Willink?

  I could tell them where they were laying and how they were killed, whether with shell fire, gas, machine gun, or bayonet.

• 54:04Jocko Willink?

  In the beginning, we had a fear of the dead. We hated to touch them. Some of the hardest experiences of my life were taking the identification tags from my dead friends.

• 54:15Jocko Willink?

  The first dead man I touched was Philip Beckettich, an Austrian baker who was with our company.

• 54:23Jocko Willink?

  I tried to save his life by carrying him through heavy enemy fire and putting him in one of the cellars of the French houses.

• 54:32Jocko Willink?

  He was shot in my arms as I carried him. A few hours later, I found time to go round and find how he was. He was dead, stiff and cold.

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  I had to remove his identification tags and they slipped down between his collarbones and the flesh of his chest.

• 54:54Jocko Willink?

  They were held there and it took an effort to get them out.

• 54:59Jocko Willink?

  I thrilled and chilled with horror as I touched him.

• 55:05Jocko Willink?

  It was hard to touch these dead men at first. My people at home, hearing of what I was passing through, expected me to come back hard, brutal, callous, careless. But I didn't even want to take a dead mouse out of the trap when I got home.

• 55:22Jocko Willink?

  Yet over there, I buried seventy-eight men one morning. I didn't dig the holes for them, of course, but I did take their personal belongings from them to return to their people. Their rings, trinkets, letters, and identification tags.

• 55:40Jocko Willink?

  You hear these days, you know, people will talk about seeing a dead body, and how that's a traumatic experience. And as a matter of fact, my son, he has, he found a dead body. One down on the beach, and one guy fell off the cliff and by my house.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  I saw that on the news.

• 56:03Jocko Willink?

  Right, right. And, you know, people were saying, "Oh, you know, you should, you know, make sure you talk about it with him and make sure he's okay and all that." You know, "Great, you're concerned."

• 56:15Jocko Willink?

  But can you imagine, I mean, you're just seeing dead body after dead body after dead body after dead body after dead body after dead body. It goes on and on and on.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, like that kinda, this kinda.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  If you're in that environment, sometimes it could, you could have that kinda desensitized, you know, feeling, but I would imagine it would really come to get you after everything calms down, you know, like, like how he was saying, he, he didn't even wanna take a mouse out of the tree, a dead mouse.

• 56:49Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  Cause it's a reminder, in this calm environment, reminder of just all that death, you know?

• 56:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  But at, yeah, at the time, it seems like there, almost like there could be two kinds of reactions to it, where they either get used to it, or get tired of it, kinda thing, and then, so if you get tired of it, it'll just weigh on you, weigh on you, weigh on you, but if you get used to it, it just gets less and less impactful, you know?

• 57:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, obviously, they had to deal with it.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:16Jocko Willink?

  They had to detach from it, you couldn't, I mean, it's just like you talk to a doctor that's been in practice for a long time, eventually, they cannot get emotionally attached to every patient that they had, or they would go completely insane, they wouldn't be able to do the job, and it's the same thing here, obviously, you can't get emotionally attached to every single body that he's dealing with, but you can tell that it leaves a mark.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Yes, fully, and, and you'd think that, I mean, the doctors, a good little analogy, but the thing that the doctor has, and I was talking to Luke, you know, Dr. Luke,

• 57:44Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  we were talking about it, Jade asked him that question, like, does it ever weird you out when you, you know, you're operating on somebody or whatever, and what doctors get is this sense of, okay, so the, not only the job, but it's almost like working on a car, cause you kinda know all the little working parts, and you can fix them, fuse them together, and boom, it works now, you know, kind of, so there's that element of thinking, and then, yeah, sure, on the other side, it's, it's a person, and if you know the guy, you know, it might even be more personal, but in war, it seems way more dark, because the guy's not supposed to be dead, the, you know, the goal is to live and to win the war, death is literally like the worst-case scenario for the person, or one

• 58:24Speaker 01

  of them, so, when you see someone dead, it's like, man, it's not, it's part of the job, but it's not the, the, the outcome that you're, the goal, you know, it's no part of the goal is to die, ever, it's like the bad part, so.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  It can't be substituted with, hey, you know, that's y- y- you can't substitute your thinking in regards to this dead person with, you know, part of being part of my goal of my job, you know?

• 58:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, although I- I will say that, you know, when you've got, at least we had a, we have a volunteer military service. And everybody that joins up knows that that's part of the risk of the job. So at least, even though that's obviously not the goal, you know that guys have at least come to grips with the reality that that, that's what they may face.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Kind of like if you're a fighter and the guy, um, you know, getting knocked out, seeing a guy get knocked out, or, you know, broken leg or something like that. It's part of the game, you know? But, um, obviously way not quite as heavy as the war situation.

• 59:33Jocko Willink?

  So, speaking of which, back to the book here, they are, he's now just fighting. And he's with another guy named Vaughn. And Vaughn kind of pokes his head up above this barricade and starts shooting. And he's kind of looking at him thinking, that seems pretty dangerous, but he sees Vaughn getting away with it. So he gets up there too and starts shooting and soon they're, they're firing shots. And then back to the book here. But after several shots each, I suddenly saw Vaughn's helmet go sailing down over the slight hill. I looked at him and the entire top of his head was off. Apparently a dum-dum type bullet.

• 1:00:15Jocko Willink?

  One in which the lead had been cut so that it would spread in the instant struck. Tearing a terrific hole in the object it hit. Had flattened against his helmet or tin hat and had taken his, taken off his head to a level with his eyes and ears. He had been kneeling and his buttocks went back a bit, his head forward and his brains ran out there in front of me like soup from a pot.

• 1:00:44Jocko Willink?

  I did not fire over another wall.

• 1:00:49Jocko Willink?

  The sniper had his choice to pick one or the other of us. For some unknown reason, he chose Vaughn. I'm here and he's gone. Vaughn lay there for a couple days. Finally, he was carried down and stored in the room where we had the other dead piled up like logs of wood. But he had to have his own place in the corner.

• 1:01:17Jocko Willink?

  It was gruesome enough.

• 1:01:25Jocko Willink?

  The nerve strain of the constant gas attacks was severe. We were wakened up at every hour of the day and night to stand to in preparation for an attack, to prepare to move on, or at least put our gas masks on.

• 1:01:45Jocko Willink?

  And now they're getting ready to do another assault. One of the greatest barrages in the history of the war was being put over. The earth and the air constantly trembled with the force of explosions. Each flare would show us the details of No Man's Land between the lines. Dead men were laying everywhere in the most grotesque positions. Some of them lay as if sound asleep. One man's head rested so comfortably on his arm that I could not believe he was dead. Others had been blown to pieces several times, and some were just arms and legs or torsos. This night approach to the front made us sick.

• 1:02:31Jocko Willink?

  As we finally found the men we were to relieve, we were all thoroughly sick. The ground was rotten with tear and vomiting gas. Mustard gas too was all around. War is bad enough without the constant torture of gas.

• 1:02:50Jocko Willink?

  There was a constant cry for stretcher bearers, for the Red Cross, the most diabolical screaming and moaning that could be imagined.

• 1:02:59Jocko Willink?

  Human beings, lying helpless, no way to fight back, not knowing who would be killed by the next shell.

• 1:03:08Jocko Willink?

  It is hard to be brave at night. Shelling at night saps the courage from the bravest. Everyone lies there and shakes. Only the strongest can keep their right minds.

• 1:03:22Jocko Willink?

  It is on such nights as this that men go out of their heads.

• 1:03:28Jocko Willink?

  One will never know how he will behave in such an ordeal. Some men weep, others shake, some stand up nonchalantly, apparently not caring whether they get killed or wounded. Some tell crude jokes, but mostly, the men dig and dig, so that it's only the direct hits that will get them.

• 1:03:49Jocko Willink?

  Grimly enduring the torture that human beings subject each other to, not knowing who will go next.

• 1:03:57Jocko Willink?

  We spent five days in that place which was popularly called Death Valley.

• 1:04:03Jocko Willink?

  I don't know whether there was any real object in staying and dying there, but we were ordered into that valley and there we stayed. There were always a few maniacs around, men who had lost their mind through shell fire and had to be overpowered and bound. Some men were buried alive and we were constantly busy digging out the live ones. Many would be smothered before we could get them out. At times we would have a group of wounded and stretcher bearers making their way up the hill. A shell would fall among them and nearly all would be killed. So many men were wounded, wounded again, and were still under fire.

• 1:04:48Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes we found two or three men dead together and so badly mixed up that we could not tell whether we got the right parts in the right grave or not.

• 1:05:00Jocko Willink?

  The men suffered, and so did the horses.

• 1:05:06Jocko Willink?

  One of my most painful memories at the front was seeing a shell drop near two artillery horses. The horses broke away from the tree to which they were secured and galloped up through the field. One of the horses was hit in the abdomen. Its intestines dropped out, dragged on the ground, and soon its feet were entangled in its own intestines to the point where it fell down and could not run any further. It lay there with its head up for what seemed like to be an endless period. It seemed to be more surprised concerning how it had become entangled in its own parts than in the pain.

• 1:05:46Jocko Willink?

  We were sorry that it was so situated by this time that it was difficult to put it out of its misery. I think most people, when they think of horses,

• 1:05:58Jocko Willink?

  you just think of a beautiful creature, running free.

• 1:06:06Jocko Willink?

  And now you have this image for the rest of your life.

• 1:06:11Jocko Willink?

  There was intense fighting in a place called Surgi, and the usual atrocity stories. We heard many of them. They went something like this. A two-year-old girl got in the way of a marching column of German troops. A soldier bayoneted it and carried it away on his bayonet.

• 1:06:33Jocko Willink?

  Children were slaughtered for no apparent motive. The soldiers tied up civilian prisoners, prodded them with bayonets, put lit cigarettes in their noses and ears, and shot them. Eyes were burned out with red-hot pokers. Civilian snipers were tortured in every possible way. In Vamil, they had been spread eagled in the public square. A rat would be placed under an iron kettle upon the man or woman's bare abdomen. Then a fire built atop the kettle. The victim was tortured first by the frantic running around of the rat on his or her bare abdomen. When it became nearly smothered and terror-stricken and pain-filled from the smoke and heat,

• 1:07:15Jocko Willink?

  then it would eat down through the body of the human's living flesh to escape.

• 1:07:24Jocko Willink?

  We found the dead body of a girl. Her arms were nailed to the door in extended fashion, her left breast was half cut away. A young boy of five or six years of age lay on a doorstep with his two hands nearly severed from his arms, but still hanging to them. At another place were the dead bodies of a man and woman, a girl and a boy. Each of them had both hands cut off at the wrists and both feet above the ankle. Child of seven beheaded. A whole family killed, including a young girl because the girl would not give herself to the Germans. Burned to death in their houses. All the women violated.

• 1:08:06Jocko Willink?

  The entire German regiment drunk, etc.

• 1:08:12Jocko Willink?

  The above are exact quotations from the Bryce Report which specialized in outrages against women and children. They are samples of the sort of stories we were always hearing.

• 1:08:26Jocko Willink?

  And he goes on to say that he never saw personally these things.

• 1:08:35Jocko Willink?

  But this is the kind of things that they heard about happening all the time.

• 1:08:46Jocko Willink?

  And they're getting ready for another counterattack. "A quick council of war brought the decision that we would cross the bridge in daylight. The men got ready to move and we prepared to rush across the bridge, three or four at a time. The ranks of every company had been decimated. And probably our outfit consisted of only four or five hundred men instead of the full strength one thousand men there should have been."

• 1:09:15Jocko Willink?

  There were dead Germans all around, but I could see one particularly well. He'd been coming up the street past one of the garden walls and had been hit with a shell. His legs were laying on this side of the wall, were lying there like they had been taken from some gigantic frog. While on the other side of the wall, the hole the shell made, I could see the rest of his body. He was a powerful appearing man in his early twenties with a thick shock of blond hair. His eyes were wide open. He never knew what hit him. About the middle of the afternoon, the Germans tried another counterattack and we helped

• 1:09:56Jocko Willink?

  the defenders behind the barricade and in the houses farther up the street by sniping from the second floor of the houses we occupied. We were prepared to stop the attack if it had penetrated down the street to our positions. Firing over the heads of men behind the barricade, we were able to assist in stopping this counterattack. The Germans too had their snipers to cover the advance of their men. I remember one who was firing very carefully from a window in a house well up the street. I took careful aim and he fell forward out of the window. During all this fighting, the air was filled with dust and with the fumes of powder.

• 1:10:39Jocko Willink?

  They burnt our noses, throats, and lungs to such an extent that we could not tell if gas was in the air. And it's this point, they're trying to make progress and they get caught in a horrible crossfire. Flanking fire. Frontal fire is bad enough, but flanking fire is suicidal. Men were getting hit all around us. They were calling for stretchers, trying to apply their own first aid kits on every side, and some of them were gasping out their last breaths. To have come so far, at least four thousand miles, and to have their lives snuffed out

• 1:11:21Jocko Willink?

  so wantonly, so uselessly, behind this wall in the backyards of a remote French village that the world would never have heard of, were it not for the action which took place there. And this...

• 1:11:38Jocko Willink?

  Defense that they make of this village

• 1:11:43Jocko Willink?

  Kind of comes down to one final situation that they're in. They're holed up and they're about to be attacked by the Germans.

• 1:11:54Jocko Willink?

  Some gas had fallen which added to the pain and bleeding of the wounded. And proved to us that no hell In the hereafter could be greater than this man-made hell that we were enduring. Men began to go out of their heads, shell shocked if we could call it that, or just crazy from weakness, Strain, suffering and hunger with all death around them.

• 1:12:22Jocko Willink?

  It was near the breaking point for all of us who survived. We would ask ourselves, "How can there be any more?" But there was more and worse. The night wore on and the morning of the fifth day was about to break. The German artillery speeded up again. We knew that an attack was impending. Everywhere I looked were dead men. There seemed to be no live men around to man the guns. "Here they come!" was shouted along the line and many of the nearly dead men rose up to man their guns behind the wall that had become almost a part of us. Wave after wave of Germans were coming through the pear orchard.

• 1:13:06Jocko Willink?

  Rifles, hand grenades, and machine guns. But worst of all, the flamethrowers. I could see the men plainly. They had tanks on their backs and from the ends of their hoses came great masses of liquid fire, Shooting towards us at a distance of at least fifty yards. The smoke went far beyond us. We felt that the heat would burn us up. Every man able to fire concentrated upon the men who were operating the flamethrowers. Almost immediately, they were put out of action, their tanks perforated and each man's body a mass of flames.

• 1:13:48Jocko Willink?

  The flames leaped and shot into the air.

• 1:13:52Jocko Willink?

  Thus was the attack stopped by the Germans' own diabolical weapon. They suffered far more than we.

• 1:14:03Jocko Willink?

  Never after that in the war did we encounter that type of flamethrower again.

• 1:14:10Jocko Willink?

  They were the real suicide squad. The men who operated those tanks were sure to suffer a terrible and quick death.

• 1:14:21Jocko Willink?

  It was a narrow escape.

• 1:14:24Jocko Willink?

  There were just a handful of us left. When we were relieved that night and staggered across the river, there were just thirty-two of us left.

• 1:14:36Jocko Willink?

  Our companies on the line were almost completely wiped out.

• 1:14:42Jocko Willink?

  But we had held the line.

• 1:14:47Jocko Willink?

  They held the line.

• 1:14:52Jocko Willink?

  At an unfathomable cost in blood and sanity and lives.

• 1:15:02Jocko Willink?

  They held the line.

• 1:15:07Jocko Willink?

  And men like Bob Hoffman, who met face to face with hell and evil and darkness that crushes youth and laughter.

• 1:15:22Jocko Willink?

  And for many people, it crushes hope.

• 1:15:30Jocko Willink?

  But Bob Hoffman overcame all of that.

• 1:15:36Jocko Willink?

  And he came back and really, from my perspective, through fitness, he led an incredible life.

• 1:15:47Jocko Willink?

  And he ended up writing a book about it. And it was called "How to Be Strong, Healthy, and Happy."

• 1:15:57Jocko Willink?

  And that's a tall order. That's a tall order. Who doesn't want to be strong, healthy, and happy?

• 1:16:06Jocko Willink?

  And the book, it, some of it's dated, much of it isn't, but some of it's dated. But I, and I don't wanna go deep into the book, but I do wanna hit some of the highlights from this book on how to be strong, healthy, and happy. Some things to think about.

• 1:16:30Jocko Willink?

  Bob Hoffman.

• 1:16:34Jocko Willink?

  Hero from World War I who'd been through hell.

• 1:16:42Jocko Willink?

  I'm just gonna read some quotes from this. "Physical training pays." "I always say that any exercise is better than no exercise."

• 1:16:56Jocko Willink?

  Now, he talks about sleep a little bit. And those folks out there that harass me on Twitter. Doc Parsley, constantly harassing me on Twitter. Telling me to sleep more. This is what, this is what Bob Hoffman had to say about sleep. "There are different speeds of sleep. Some sleep faster than others. And can awake refreshed with a moderate number of hours of sleep, which would leave others tired and worn.

• 1:17:28Jocko Willink?

  Fast sleeping is a result of properly operating bodily functions of perf- perfect functioning of all organs. And it comes to, from customing the body, to an hour or two less sleep. Many great men of history are reported to have slept only a fraction of the time that the average person spends sleeping. It was said that Thomas Edison, the world famous inventor, would sleep up four hours a night. But, he had a cot in his laboratory on which he would lie and think, and his assistants have reported he took naps during the day. Many men who are reported to sleep up four hours a night will make up for it with naps during daylight hours."

• 1:18:12Jocko Willink?

  So there you go, you're good to go. That's all you need to do, sleep faster.

• 1:18:21Jocko Willink?

  Talking to you Echo. Tuning in and what do you get nine hours, 10 hours? No, regular eight I think. Nice, nice. Sleep faster.

• 1:18:32Jocko Willink?

  Now, speaking of that, too much sleep is not a benefit. Rather, it is depressing, causes sluggishness and a state of lethargy.

• 1:18:45Jocko Willink?

  I like that. Too much sleep. Take that, take that Doc Parsley out there.

• 1:18:53Jocko Willink?

  But in all, you know Doc, do you know Doc Parsley? He trains. Vaguely. Yeah, but he's, he's, he's a doctor, but he's, he's done a lot of stuff with sleep and studying sleep and he's always giving me a hard time because sleep is good for you. I'm only kidding everybody. Sleep is definitely good for you. I should sleep more. I just have a hard time doing it. There's so much to be done in the world. And you're sleeping fast. And I am sleeping a little faster than everybody else. Evidently.

• 1:19:21Jocko Willink?

  Another quote, "Any young man who desires to obtain the most from life should spend a good portion of his time improving himself physically."

• 1:19:31Jocko Willink?

  Regardless of your age, you should make it a rule to learn something new each day and to do something each day to improve yourself physically." So he's talking about mental and physical strength. He talks about learning stuff, memorizing stuff, doing math in your head. Just getting smarter. I believe we talk about that sometime.

• 1:19:53Jocko Willink?

  "The best hobby of all is physical training. Concentrate on your activities. Instead of worrying about the future, welcome the opportunity to face problems or deals or battles of your life."

• 1:20:07Jocko Willink?

  "You can build yourself so that you obtain pleasure from overcoming, from defeating problems, apparently insurmountable difficulties." "You can overcome all your difficulties and win." "You will find the next encounter easier." "You will have greater confidence in your own ability."

• 1:20:28Jocko Willink?

  Got problems? Good. Let's face it. And, uh, actually, I forgot to mention this, but this book, I Remember the Last War, I got from somebody on Twitter. And I'm sorry, hey, everybody on Twitter, number one, I, I don't know if people want to be mentioned or not. And also, when I transfer what people tell me to the document that I keep, it doesn't pull their names. So they're just lost. But usually people hit me up afterwards and say, yo, Right. I gave you that book. So somebody recommended the book to me, I Remember the Last War. And once I started doing some research about Bob Hoffman, and I saw he had another book that was literally called How to Be Strong, Healthy, and Happy, I just ordered it immediately.

• 1:21:13Jocko Willink?

  So I could see what he had to say about it all.

• 1:21:19Jocko Willink?

  And I think he has some pretty good information.

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  Here's another quote. "People who know nothing of the pleasures and advantages of having super strength and health often say, what good are muscles? They say they have no use for them, that they are healthy. But they are only half alive in many cases, for they will never have felt the indescribable sense of power and well-being, the sense of superiority or capability that strong persons feel. Many youths have eliminated an inferiority complex by the growing knowledge of the power they possess by their physical ability or superiority over average persons." We might have to do an ego check here, Bob, on that one.

• 1:22:06Jocko Willink?

  But actually, he's gonna ego check it right here himself. "I do not mean by this that strong men should go around bullying others by demonstrating their strength. As an actual fact, the stronger and more capable a man, the less likely he is to make a show of his strength by hurting or fighting others. But strength of mind and body does beget confidence, determination, perseverance, and many other admirable qualities."

• 1:22:36Jocko Willink?

  So I think he, he, he brought it back around again. And it's funny, you know, we're talking before the podcast started about how some people, if they're a little bit insecure, but they wanna be a tough guy, they, they, they gotta act like that.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  Display it, yeah.

• 1:22:51Jocko Willink?

  And when you're, then you're looking at him kind of like, this guy must not be that tough, cuz he's gotta act this way.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:55Jocko Willink?

  So they actually are getting less respect than they think they are.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:23:00Jocko Willink?

  But if they actually had confidence in their situation, if they knew that they could handle themselves, they wouldn't be acting like that.

• 1:23:12Jocko Willink?

  Here's another little something to think about.

• 1:23:18Jocko Willink?

  Don't worry about things that might happen. Work hard and do the best you can, and if something happens, it can't be helped. Don't give up. Never cry over spilt milk. What is done is done. It can't be helped when it's too late. I survived some apparently overwhelming difficulties easily enough with this point of view. Sort of your basic. I mean, no use crying over spilled milk.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't abuse that one though, cuz you know how, um, you know, people will have that attitude, but then sometimes they'll let it overflow and it'll get, it'll make itself, they'll allow it to be an excuse, you know, to, to go

• 1:24:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't care.

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  Unprepared.

• 1:24:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's, that's not a good idea.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, but it can do it, you know, cuz it's like a, um, there might be a small like gray area, you know, cuz they're like, oh, I don't really care that much about the outcome, and what's gonna happen is gonna happen. So they, it might, like I said, overflow into their, the part of their mind of preparation.

• 1:24:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, don't wanna let that happen.

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, cuz the opposite is like, if you obsess over the outcome, you might obsess over the preparation. Maybe, you know, I mean, that's, that's, those kinda go hand in hand a little bit. So if you go the opposite, you know, you can get that, be like, eh, whatever's gonna happen, it's gonna happen, so whatever.

• 1:24:35Jocko Willink?

  That's not the excuse we're looking for.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  No, no, not at all. That's what I'm saying, be careful with that, you know?

• 1:24:42Jocko Willink?

  Here we go, a few more of these. If you want to live long and be healthy, strong and happy, acquire habits of activity right now. If you are tempted to sit in an easy chair, find something to keep you busy. A few minutes to a half an hour with the weights will be best. If you find yourself going to the garage for your car to get to the grocery store, walk instead. I like this one right here. If you don't feel like getting dressed to go out, do it anyways. Instead of lying down after a meal, find something to do. Don't pass the buck, as they say in the army. Do it yourself if it involves muscular action.

• 1:25:25Jocko Willink?

  Clean off the snow, cut the grass, spade the garden.

• 1:25:31Jocko Willink?

  That's a good one. That's just a general rule.

• 1:25:36Jocko Willink?

  If you don't feel like something, because you're being lazy, just do it. Don't be lazy. The thing that you could do tomorrow, do it today. Do that thing today.

• 1:25:49Jocko Willink?

  Otherwise, you get this. If you put off until another day your good intentions to normalize your body, it won't help. The road to despair and unhappiness is paved with good intentions, lost along the way.

• 1:26:06Jocko Willink?

  I think he's just saying, get after it. Basically, is what I'm getting. This is what I'm getting from Bob Hoffman.

• 1:26:15Jocko Willink?

  This is just old school. Just some old school knowledge right here. If our country was invaded and our young men were a lot of cream puffs, probably cowards, through never having experienced hard work, athletic competition, or a good punch in the nose, we would lose to the invaders, lose our freedoms, and things worth more than life itself. So he's basically saying, be harder. Toughen up. Be tougher. I support this idea 100%.

• 1:26:48Jocko Willink?

  Do things that make you tougher and better, yes. Activity is life, stagnation is death. In life, there is movement. These are all well-known truisms and exercise. Bringing healthful activity to every organ, gland, and cell of the body keeps the entire body and mind radiantly alive. And with a feeling of pep, energy, and well-being that makes one so buoyant and alive that they feel like jumping and running.

• 1:27:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, he's fired up.

• 1:27:24Jocko Willink?

  Exercise builds coordination, balance, control of the muscles. It builds speed, judgment of time and space and distance. Makes the entire body more responsive to the will. And it teaches the body to do the right thing in times of danger even before it is directed by the mind.

• 1:27:40Jocko Willink?

  Exercise is the best insurance against disease or sickness. Exercise builds confidence, for there is no road to supreme confidence as sure as the knowledge of one's physical and mental ability. It cultivates power of will, gives you complete mastery of your physical and mental self, promotes personal efficiency, and all desirable mental characteristics. Exercise improves the efficiency of every part of the body. It helps you sleep sounder and faster. So that you have more time for work and pleasure. Makes it possible for you to earn more.

• 1:28:20Jocko Willink?

  Exercise makes it possible to live more. Exercise will only take one-tenth of the time you now spend on foolish expenditures of time and energy. This is, this is funny because this is written in like 1930 something. Now you have time to sit around to read for entertainment. Too often, true detective stories, other true stories which do you no good, but merely tell you of the troubles of others. You spend a lot of time at the movies perhaps, or listening to the radio, in idle talk or gossip, in watching athletic events which put, which others put forth effort and receive physical benefit.

• 1:29:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, add the interweb into that equation and social media and you've got no time in the day.

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's essentially, internet is basically all that.

• 1:29:13Jocko Willink?

  All that, yeah, yeah, all that without moving, all that just through your thumbs, right. So it's true that you can find time for exercise, to obtain much of what is worth in life, you must find time. Your health demands it.

• 1:29:31Jocko Willink?

  And I'm gonna wrap it up, uh, right here with this, this one.

• 1:29:37Jocko Willink?

  But probably, you have done as the majority do. Drifted along from day to day, promising yourself that you would start exercising tomorrow, or next week, or next month, when the weather becomes cooler. Tomorrow comes, next week and next month, cool weather, and even next year comes and goes, and you do nothing about it. After years of thinking about exercise but not acting, you find the firm, rounded, attractive muscles of your youth have changed into the weakened, soft muscles of middle age. You take on a little excess flesh and make mental note, some night when you gaze upon yourself in the mirror, that you'll have to do something. Cut down on starches or sweets, get more exercise.

• 1:30:23Jocko Willink?

  But you've developed an enormous appetite during these years, and at best you refrain from eating sweets for a day or two. It seems that all the things you like are the best fat producers. You can't give them up. You notice you don't have endurance anymore, you get tired after you walked a block or two, your wind isn't as good as it used to be. Remember last night how you puffed when you ran for the streetcar? Remember how you, how it made you blow to carry you that empty trunk up to the attic? Your tailor pokes you good-naturedly when he's fitting your suit and remarks that the fat is piling on and your waist is increasing by inches. These are all reasons why you should exercise.

• 1:31:08Jocko Willink?

  It's not too late now, it's never too late, as long as you are able to be around to exercise and improve yourself physically. Men of all ages receive quick results from proper physical training. It's never too late to make corrections in your mode of living.

• 1:31:29Jocko Willink?

  Some classic stuff there.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  There's a little caveat there with how he says it's never too late. That's true. That's true. It's never too late, but

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  the more time that you have spent getting into shape, you can fall out of shape and when you come back to it, it'll be way easier. And I mentioned this before.

• 1:31:49Jocko Willink?

  That's cool. You can, you can keep telling yourself that.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  But I'm telling you, if let's say you

• 1:31:54Jocko Willink?

  No, you're right. You're right. You want to have a good base. If you have a good base of being strong, it's going to be easier for you than somebody, somebody that's never worked out before. Yes, that's a given. That being said, if you take a person that's never lifted before, never worked out before, when they start, man, they make all kinds of crazy gains. Right?

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  But keep in mind, they're still starting at the bottom of the ladder. So yeah, the first, you know, 10 steps on the ladder come quicky, quickly. But that comes for everybody, give or, you know, give or take. So sure. Okay. In the small little picture, you can be like, hey, that guy, he started on the first 10 steps of the ladder way later in life. So look at his gains way later in life. But meanwhile, you had those first steps done 35 years ago. You're on step, you know, 125 right now.

• 1:32:42Jocko Willink?

  You are correct. The bottom line is both groups will benefit.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:32:48Jocko Willink?

  From physical activity.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  So the, the point being, you know how, and he mentions this, how it's like, oh, I'll just do it tomorrow or I'll just do it, um, you know, the new year's resolution or whatever. The more time you spend not doing it, the harder it is to, to get there and stay there.

• 1:33:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Cause man, it

• 1:33:04Jocko Willink?

  You know, though, I, I actually have a theory on this too. Like if you miss a workout, you can never make it up. It's gone. Like it's, like it's gone. You can never make it. Cause you work out the next day, but no, no, you missed the day that you, you, that was supposed to be a different workout.

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:33:22Jocko Willink?

  You got weaker. You can't get it back. Now sometimes you need a break.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:33:26Jocko Willink?

  And I think we got some questions about that. Sometimes you definitely need a rest. You push your body so hard. You're doing so much activity, activity, but You're not gonna get that chance to work out again. And you know what, you're not gonna chance, anytime you waste any time in your life, guess what, it's gone.

• 1:33:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:43Jocko Willink?

  So don't waste it.

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:33:44Jocko Willink?

  Don't waste it, don't waste it with sitting, listening to radio shows, or internet shows, or watching TV, that's a waste. Don't waste it with that.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  Unless the shows are helping you.

• 1:33:55Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, yes, if they're helping you, if they're beneficial, if it's Jocko Podcast, man, tune in.

• 1:34:03Jocko Willink?

  But if you're sitting around, if you're, if you, oh yeah, reality TV, just random social media stuff that's not helping you get any better. Of course, you're, you're wasting it and you're not gonna get it back. Sometimes if I miss something, or if I am lazy about something, that, that, that pisses me off. And at the time, I'll say, oh, well, you know, I'll rationalize some excuses around it, and then later I'll say, what is your problem? Why did you do that? And then it's punishment time.

• 1:34:33Jocko Willink?

  Then it's, then it's, let's go get the squat rack. It's time to pay for that.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I think, and I'm gonna put this real bluntly, almost to the point of ignorance, but I think you value rest way less than a normal person, I think.

• 1:34:50Jocko Willink?

  I, I'm not gonna argue with you.

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

  Or it could be that you value the work part of it so much that your rest is quantity wise, less, but quality wise, might be more.

• 1:35:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and also, like, for instance, I don't get the opportunity, I mean, when I travel, like, for, for instance, when I travel, I barely, lea- recently, I have not had time to do jiu-jitsu when I'm traveling. So, when I'm back here, I gotta just get it in, you know, and if I miss it when I'm in San Diego, I'm not happy. I'm, I'm, I'm angry at myself, and I won't even let it happen. I'm just not gonna let it happen. Even yesterday, I was all tired and beat up, and I was like, okay, well, go train, all tired and beat up, because you're gonna miss some days this week. So you gotta just go get it on. Work on being weak and lame, and getting your, getting your game on. And I went and rolled with a bunch of people and did what I normally do, and you know what, by the time you're in the middle of a-

• 1:35:46Jocko Willink?

  Rolling, it doesn't matter anymore. You're just dealing with the situation.

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Man, if you can get to that point where you know how and jujitsu is kind of a weird one where it's really good, really, really good exercise, but it's really, really fun to do.

• 1:36:00Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:36:00Speaker 01

  So it's like a win-win. You don't like, so weightlifting, I think is like that, but it's not like that for everybody. Where it's like, it's fun to actually do, even though sometimes you gotta, gotta build up the, you know, kind of the, the the energy or whatever to, or you know, motivation, whatever to do it. It's still pretty fun. But for most people, I would, I would argue, most people, exercise is like work. It's like a chore.

• 1:36:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  Benefit.

• 1:36:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I think the more you do it and the better you get at it.

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:26Jocko Willink?

  The more fun it is, the more you enjoy it. For me, it's a mental break. You know, it's a mental break from everything else. I, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna go pick up this, this piece of metal off the ground.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  Bunch of times.

• 1:36:40Jocko Willink?

  Bunch of times.

• 1:36:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and the point there is if you can get to that state where actually doing the exercise, separate from the results, actually doing it is, is fun. You can, you can recognize the, the, the pleasure in it. Um, that's when you can be on a, on a program. You know how like, I, I just got back from Kauai, little like a vacation, but I still, I still rolled. I still, uh, did, you know, lifted weights and exercised. Greg trained with, went, so.

• 1:37:12Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  Um, before, and I think most people, it's when it's vacation time, they're off the program. And I'm not even saying I'm specifically on a program, but it's just.

• 1:37:22Jocko Willink?

  You're using the life program.

• 1:37:23Speaker 01

  On the, yeah, on the deal, man. So if you, if you're into it, you know, like I, I look forward to going training at a new spot. There's a lot of fun to be had there. There's a lot of fun to be having, going to trade the, the, the normal spot.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  But if you're in that mindset where you like the exercise that you're doing, probably you'll do it. You go on vacation, you'll do it then. I'm looking forward to it.

• 1:37:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's no doubt.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  So you don't follow.

• 1:37:46Jocko Willink?

  Having fun when you train is, is. And enjoying it, I guess having fun, because it's not like when I'm in the middle of a set of clean and jerks, I'm I'm having fun.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  See, but that's kind of what I mean though, where um, I remember when I used to play football, we'd we'd test in Olympic lifting stuff like power clean was one and snatch was one. And I remember training for those things, if you get kind of good at the technique, right, comes fun, you're there with your friends, they're yelling at you and stuff like that, so it's fun.

• 1:38:15Jocko Willink?

  I guess I was thinking more of like a MetCon scenario, where you're wanting to puke.

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  For a good example.

• 1:38:21Jocko Willink?

  And I I've got, I'll be just being frank with you, I'm not always having fun during those, sometimes I want to not do it.

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:29Jocko Willink?

  And I still do it, but I don't want to, because it's not fun.

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  I would say more times than not, especially in any kind of MetCon situation, that's gonna be the case, so what my my overall point is if you can get to that point where at the very least, you can appreciate this that's happening right now, I like, I I I find some pleasure in here.

• 1:38:47Jocko Willink?

  Ye- yes, and furthermore, I will tell you this, if you get to know the feeling of how you feel when you complete a hard workout and you go, you know what, it's gonna be worth it, because when I get done with this, I'm gonna feel like X.

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:39:04Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna feel good.

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:05Jocko Willink?

  And so that, for me, that's why I'm, I think that's kind of why I'm doing hard workouts, because I'm doing hard workouts, because I know that at the end of it, I'm gonna be like, yeah, I feel, I'm gonna feel good.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:14Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna feel fired up for the rest of the day, I'm gonna feel like I did something.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:39:21Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna feel like a quality human being, like I didn't waste a little section section of my life.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:39:27Jocko Willink?

  I feel good.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:28Jocko Willink?

  So when you know what that, it's the same thing with waking up in the morning, when you sleep in, that that feels good at the moment, but then when you wake up, you're like, oh, man, I just wasted part of my life.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:39:42Jocko Willink?

  Whereas when you get up, even though it's hard, when you know how good it feels to be done with your workout, that early in the morning, be like, yeah, I'm ready, bring it, bring on the tasks.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's strange thing about workouts is the workout. Pays you pays you back for your work afterwards.

• 1:40:02Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:40:02Speaker 01

  It's basically, you know, you work out and the workout isn't what makes your muscle big. It's the response to the workout. So when you work out, it's kind of like you did your part. Now your body's going to pay you back with your gains, you know?

• 1:40:15Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  So you're like, hey, I'm done with the workout. I can go do some other stuff. Meanwhile, I got that check coming, that gains check. That's a good feeling.

• 1:40:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 1:40:29Jocko Willink?

  And now I think it's about time we go to the interwebs.

• 1:40:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:40:34Jocko Willink?

  But first, you can actually support the podcast through the interwebs. Echo, how do we do it?

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:40:44Jocko Willink?

  Let the troopers know.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  One of the ways, um, which may sound repetitive, but necessarily so in my opinion. On it.com slash Jaco. Cause some people, they want to improve their improvement with supplements. And we recommend, oh, we, I recommend supplements that work. I'm assuming you do too.

• 1:41:04Jocko Willink?

  I, I actually do.

• 1:41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go. So you get them from on it.

• 1:41:07Jocko Willink?

  Improve your improvement.

• 1:41:08Speaker 01

  Yep. On it.com slash Jaco. Shroom Tech.

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  These are the ones I take or have taken. Shroom Tech, Alpha Brain.

• 1:41:23Jocko Willink?

  Krill oil for me.

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:25Jocko Willink?

  Warrior bars.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  They're out of, out of krill oil right now. As of today, they're. Yeah.

• 1:41:30Jocko Willink?

  There'll be, there'll be plenty of krill oil.

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  Keep, keep your finger on the pulse of the krill oil situation. And then the, um, Warrior Bar, boom. That one's good. Doesn't, is that a supplement, do you think? Would you call that a supplement?

• 1:41:43Jocko Willink?

  That's just tasty.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. On it.com slash Jaco, get 10% off all supplements. It's dope. Also, if you like the shirts that we make, go to Jaco's store.com and get one or more of that, of those. Um, and then, uh, yeah, that's a good way to support, I think. And then.

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  Before you do your Amazon shopping, click through jockopodcast.com. There's like, there's a little link on there. And then Jaco's store as well as this Amazon link there. Click there first, then do the shopping. Also on the Jaco Podcast website, we have all the, I put all the books that you cover on all these podcasts. So you can see what they're about. Click on it if you want to get one of those books.

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  And then

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  audible.com. Audible is just a way to listen to audiobooks. So what they're doing is they're giving you 30 days free. 30. If you go to audible.com/jaco. So you get 30 days free and then you get to download a free book.

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  What one should they download? Do you think? Would you recommend?

• 1:42:55Jocko Willink?

  I think my recommendation would clearly be a little book by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin called Extreme Ownership. We, we actually read the audiobook too. So if you like the Jaco Podcast, you're probably going to like hearing the Extreme Ownership read by us. It's about eight hours long. So it's like getting four podcasts, maybe even five podcasts. But yeah, you know, we've gotten some really, because of the support people have shown the podcasts and it's becoming more popular. We've been getting hammered by a bunch of people that want to sponsor us. And we don't want a bunch of sponsors. In fact, we don't want any. The only thing we want is if there's things that can help people, help people get better. Well, then that's what we want. So on it,

• 1:43:40Jocko Willink?

  gives you the supplements that you need, some of the gear that you need. And then on top of that, you got Audible, which is a way to listen to books while you can't have the ability to read. So if you're driving, if you're doing yard work, if you're doing some, something that requires your hands and your eyes, you can just listen to a book on audible.com/jaco. And so that's another way to also then thereby support the podcast.

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  30 days free book?

• 1:44:09Jocko Willink?

  Do it. Get smarter.

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  I am. I recommend Extreme Ownership as well. It's interesting that you guys read it. Um, cause that's not always the case, right? Sometimes it's, it's like a professional reader or whatever. But um, like if you know what Leif's voice sounds like, it sounds like Batman. He does sound like Batman. Um, anyway, there it is.

• 1:44:30Jocko Willink?

  Yes, indeed.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  So yeah, there you go. Let's get to the questions.

• 1:44:34Jocko Willink?

  Now, let's get to the questions. I'm down.

• 1:44:39Speaker 01

  Alright, first question. Jaco, do you ever feel burnt out from going full tilt several days or several weeks in a row? And if so, what do you do?

• 1:44:49Jocko Willink?

  Never.

• 1:44:52Jocko Willink?

  No, of course, um, you know, burning the candle at both ends, eventually it's gonna catch up with you. And for me, it's can come in the form of too much travel, too much exercise. Sometimes I'll just be pressed at work, working with a bunch of different companies. Sometimes I'm writing and I'm trying to get a bunch of writing done. Sometimes I'm training so much jujitsu, it's going crazy. So anyways, or a lot of times, it's the combination of all these things going on at once. Cause I'm trying to get a bunch done in a short amount of time. And I end up, whatever, coming off the, coming off the track a little bit, coming off the rails a little bit. And so what do I do on those kind of days when I'm starting to feel like that? Well, number one,

• 1:45:37Jocko Willink?

  I like to force myself to do it anyways. That is a reality. So if, even if I'm, if I don't feel like working out, I'll be like, you know what, just go do a, a quick workout. An easy, an easier workout, or I don't wanna train jujitsu, we were talking about this earlier. Don't really feel like training, gonna go train anyways. Then maybe there's some form of work that I'm supposed to do, I'm just gonna go and do the work anyways. Now, if, if the next day, I still feel like I need a break, that's sort of my red flag to say, alright, you know what, you need a break, you need to take some time, time, relax.

• 1:46:17Jocko Willink?

  Um, do some kind of active rest. I don't really like just kind of sitting around. I'll do something kind of active and probably eat some steaks, plural.

• 1:46:32Jocko Willink?

  Try and eat something really good, try and eat, just try, you know, I might, I might eat something really good. Like steaks. And. Maybe sleep, take an extra nap, try and feel better, do some kind of stretching to try and feel better, just recover. Just recover. So yes, I'm not superhuman. Like anybody else, sometimes I get broken down, beaten up. And I need some downtime and that's what I do. I try and rest, relax and eat some good food.

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good one that I start to incorporate how you were saying, um, if I don't feel like it, or if I feel like I'm starting to get burnt out. You'll, you'll, it's like that one last.

• 1:47:11Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  Thing, let me just do it anyway.

• 1:47:13Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  Then I'll see if I do it, you know, because sometimes like how you say, you, you avoid the situation where you're just not in the mood. If you, some days you're just not in the mood, but it doesn't mean you're burnt out, you're just not in the mood, for whatever reason. So. That's a good way to kind of weed those days out. And, um, and yeah, if you're still burnt out the next day, or even the next day after that, then it's like, okay, you gotta rest. Um, I started doing that and, and you'd be surprised what it, how many times you're really not burnt out, you're just not in the mood. That's A. B.

• 1:47:45Speaker 01

  You might not agree with this, but. If you are like, not, whether it be burnt out or just tired of, you know, you're, you're just, you're just tired of the grind or whatever, and you need a break or vacation or whatever. Would I some?

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  Would I sometimes do is?

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Don't do like filming, for example, where there would be times where I would spend like months just filming every week, filming, editing, filming, like no break. And what I do is don't do any of it and don't think about it. Don't, just don't do it at all. And then slowly, and you'd, I, in my experience, I was surprised how quick it came back where you, you kind of want to get back to it. But then I go like, like a week of still not doing it. It's like jujitsu if you're like, oh man, I'm tired of training every day or whatever. You had a tournament or whatever. And you're like, Ben, I gotta take a break. After about probably like three days, if you're a competitor, three days, you're like, man, I want to get back on the mats.

• 1:48:44Speaker 01

  So what you do is you push that even more. So it's like you're, you're pushing yourself to be burnt out on the recovery. So the only, the only medicine for that burnt out of, of recovery is to get back into it. But that hunger of getting back into it is even more than it normally would be after a normal break.

• 1:49:02Jocko Willink?

  That makes sense, I guess. And I just want to call us both out right now for being total cream puffs. I think is what Bob Hoffman said. Here we are talking about how we get burnt out on working out, training, filming. It's like Bob, Bob Hoffman was, you know, living in the seeds of mustard gas floating around. And maybe we should just say, don't get burnt out. Just work harder.

• 1:49:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:31Jocko Willink?

  Sorry.

• 1:49:32Speaker 01

  You made me sound real bad. They're filming.

• 1:49:34Jocko Willink?

  No, I mean, really, like, like, oh, I was like, oh, I was typing on a computer. I'm real burnt out. Shut up, Jaco. I got a better idea. Why don't you just be fired up that you have the opportunity to create something? How's that sound? Oh, you got the opportunity to go train jujitsu? To go get better physically? Oh, I think I'm going to go ahead and do that. I'm not going to sit there and say, I'm burnt out on training. No. Don't be burnt out. If Bob Hoffman's not burnt out on the front lines of World War One, I don't think we have an excuse to be burnt out on the pleasurable things we get to do in life. Let's suck it up and just drive on. I'm changing my answer. How's that?

• 1:50:14Speaker 01

  All right. There you go.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  Next question. Jaco, hi guys. How about judo as a martial art compared to jujitsu?

• 1:50:27Jocko Willink?

  Judo is a great martial art and Jiu-Jitsu is actually rooted in Judo and I guess originally Judo was rooted in Jiu-Jitsu. And there's some connections, I mean Maeda from Japan, he taught Judo to Carlos Gracie in Brazil, which was then learned by Elio Gracie, who then morphed it into what we consider now to be Brazilian or Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. But you can see clearly if you look at Judo, that Jiu-Jitsu exists inside, I mean Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu exists inside of Judo, there's no doubt about it. But there are some things about Judo that have

• 1:51:11Jocko Willink?

  morphed it into a different direction. Number one, in Judo, if you throw somebody and anything touches the ground before their feet, you win automatically. You can also pin people in Judo. If you hold them down for, I think it's 20 seconds, then the match is over and you win both of those. So what that does is now you can imagine if you get thrown, okay, you win. If you're on the ground with your back down for 20 seconds, you win. So what does that do? It eliminates a part of fighting that is very important. And in, there are really two pieces of Judo.

• 1:51:47Jocko Willink?

  One of them's called Randori, which is basically rolling, and the other one is Nuaza, which is groundwork. And those two are directly correlated or part of Jiu-Jitsu.

• 1:52:00Jocko Willink?

  But Jiu-Jitsu, bottom line, in both these, if you don't know anything about these two, Jiu-Jitsu allows the fight to go on, even after you get thrown. And it allows the fight, you can't, there's no pinning in Jiu-Jitsu. You are allowed to fight and continue to fight until the match is over. And you can recover from being pinned, just like you can recover from being thrown. And it doesn't really matter. I mean, today, we were training today and we got some good Judo players. Keeling was, you know, Judo Keeling? Yeah. And he, he tossed, he tossed Andy, Big Andy. And, I mean, because he's better at Judo and he tossed him and it was legit, then Andy ended up getting out of that position and getting in a better position. Right. And so the fight wasn't over just because he got thrown. Right.

• 1:52:45Jocko Willink?

  And so that's, that's one of the big benefits of Jiu-Jitsu is that you will generally learn better ground game.

• 1:52:55Jocko Willink?

  And but judo you will definitely have better takedowns. I mean a judo player is gonna have better takedowns than a jiu jitsu player. And I'll tell you, if we're just gonna start ranking things, you gotta throw wrestling out there because wrestling has possibly better takedowns than judo. I mean, with the gi, sure judo has a has an advantage, but if you don't know this, in 2010, they actually banned the double leg takedown from judo competitions in the whole world.

• 1:53:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:53:22Jocko Willink?

  Why?

• 1:53:22Speaker 01

  Wrestlers.

• 1:53:23Jocko Willink?

  Because wrestlers came in and started double legging people. Boom boom, just hitting double legs. So, yes, I would say judo is an awesome martial art. It really in some ways could be considered the precursor to Brazilian jiu jitsu, even though judo itself is comes from actual Japanese jiu jitsu.

• 1:53:47Jocko Willink?

  But I would say if you're gonna if you got the opportunity to learn judo, yeah, learn it. Learn especially, you know, you'll learn the takedowns and those are great things to have. In real life, they're great things to have. In in self-defense situations, to be able to take someone down with judo throws is awesome. In jiu jitsu competitions, if you're a judo player in jiu jitsu competitions, you're gonna you're gonna get the takedown with when it's a gi competition unless you're going against a really good wrestler. So, good thing to augment jiu jitsu with, but I would say you would wanna make jiu jitsu your main focus.

• 1:54:18Speaker 01

  Agree. Uh, the, yeah, so a lot of times when you learn jiu jitsu, some, a lot of guys, especially nowadays, a lot of guys avoid the the takedown element. So they know ground game is just vast, but the takedown element, so you'll get a lot of people pulling guard, which just means pulling a guy down on top of you.

• 1:54:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:54:37Speaker 01

  That's what pulling guard is.

• 1:54:37Jocko Willink?

  Which is a crazy thing to do in a real fight.

• 1:54:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, but but man, if you're good enough.

• 1:54:42Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:54:43Speaker 01

  You can totally do it. That's what's crazy about it.

• 1:54:45Jocko Willink?

  But no, even if you're really good at it, you don't wanna be pulling people on top of you in a street fight.

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  Compared to being able to take them down.

• 1:54:52Jocko Willink?

  Compared to being outside.

• 1:54:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, no brainer. Yeah, not even close. So, what I like about, I mean, wrestling, I think is more, I mean arguably more more dynamic of a of a thing because it's all these different situations, even. On top of just the takedown part. But man, judo, I feel like it takes a little less energy and it can kind of keep you in, positionally, it can keep you in safe areas when you're standing up. Cause you know, like these weird positions where you're on balance and that guy's off balance. Or you, you're controlling the guy's weight when you're standing up. And um, so I learned like a signal, I took judo when I was young for, for a little bit.

• 1:55:31Jocko Willink?

  That's weird, I never would have guessed that.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  For real?

• 1:55:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  That's for a little bit, anyway. And then, but as an adult, I learned a, a little bit of judo um, from, from Terry, so could you.

• 1:55:44Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:55:45Speaker 01

  He has a judo background, um, and man, he was showing me stuff, he's like, hey wrestlers will do this.

• 1:55:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

  And he'd kind of show, they grab your head, neck and, and he's like, and here's what you do as a judo guy. And he, it's an elaborate thing he taught me, but it's like dang, these are real useful things for jujitsu, even aside from the takedown part of it. And then going to the takedown part of it, if you know the takedowns solid, even if you know like three or four really good ones and you're really good at them, that'll change your whole approach and your whole outlook on jujitsu. So, okay, and here, here's an example, let's say you go into, I don't know, you know, a party or everyday thing where you could find yourself in a situation where you gotta, you gotta get in a fight or defend yourself or your friend or whatever. If you know takedowns, especially takedowns where you don't have to like risk,

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  like doing a double leg in a real situation, it's kind of an all or nothing situation. You know, you can't just, it's not like this gradual escalating of force with a double leg takedown.

• 1:56:43Jocko Willink?

  I see what you're saying, I see what you're going with this.

• 1:56:45Speaker 01

  So with judo, it's different.

• 1:56:46Jocko Willink?

  You can be much more subtle with your takedown.

• 1:56:48Speaker 01

  With varying levels of, of force, you know, with the, with the judo situation. So if, and if you're good at that, man, when you get into this, these situations, it's like no factor, you're not worried about it at all. Compared to like, you don't know takedowns, but your jujitsu's sick, you're like, nah, nah, I gotta get this thing to the ground and it's like, oh, that's gonna be a pain in the ass, once we get there, I'm fine. But just that one little crossover from standing or no fight to fight is like,

• 1:57:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  It kind of can provide some anxiety for you, but if you know that judo. Whatever.

• 1:57:19Jocko Willink?

  Yep, but I guess the overall point is learn that judo.

• 1:57:22Speaker 01

  Very useful.

• 1:57:23Jocko Willink?

  Learn that wrestling.

• 1:57:24Speaker 01

  And that's not to mention when the other guy knows it, you know what to do too.

• 1:57:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:27Speaker 01

  You know, cuz.

• 1:57:28Jocko Willink?

  Otherwise you're just getting tossed. Keeling tossed me the other day.

• 1:57:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, bro.

• 1:57:32Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty funny.

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, and sometimes it can be funny and fun cuz you know, they can toss you and you land on your back and stuff like that. But man, so you land on your head or something.

• 1:57:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's true. There is, there is some validity to the ippon in that if you were in a street fight and you got thrown and land and the person puts you down in a bad way. I mean, you're still, it's, it's like, it's not like you're gonna get knocked out a hundred percent of the time. Probably not even fifty percent of the time, but there is a, there is a chance.

• 1:57:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:58Jocko Willink?

  That getting thrown ippon style in a street fight could be, I mean, you go, go pull up some judo videos of people getting tossed ippon style, even in the, in the high levels. Some of those guys, if they landed on the street, they would be injured.

• 1:58:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:11Jocko Willink?

  Not all the time, and you do learn to, you learn to fall in judo. You learn how to break your fall.

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:17Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, some of those would be devastating if they happened to you in the street. So that's why ippon does have some validity to it, that if you toss someone super hard and they landed on their back or on their head on the street, on concrete, they would be severe, they would be, it could be a fight ender. But, but it's not going to be a fight ender. That's the problem. It's not going to be a fight ender. It's possible that it ends a fight, just like a, a left hook is possibly a fight ender, but it's not guaranteed to end a fight.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  I'll tell you a guaranteed fight ender, rear naked choke.

• 1:58:50Jocko Willink?

  Rear naked choke or end a fight.

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and if, I'll tell you, and knowing some judo and especially knowing some judo moves that I feel like I'm pretty solid at, if you do it against a guy who doesn't really know that much judo.

• 1:59:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59:02Speaker 01

  It's your choice whether you wanna put him on his head or his back. It's your choice. So if, if that's the other guy's choice that you're fighting with or competing against or whatever, then that's his choice, not yours. So that's the reason to at least know.

• 1:59:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure you should know, for sure. I, yes, learn judo.

• 1:59:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:59:21Jocko Willink?

  Learn wrestling. Learn jujitsu. Jujitsu's the most complicated, learn it first, spend the most time on it, learn to strike too, Muay Thai, boxing. Saying this for the millionth time.

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  Said it once, said it again.

• 1:59:35Jocko Willink?

  Although I, I actually do sometimes leave judo out, not intentionally, but just, I just do.

• 1:59:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:43Speaker 01

  I personally like judo better than wrestling. I like it personally, I like it better than wrestling because when I was starting to learn wrestling with um

• 1:59:53Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna sick Greg train on you, he's gonna come and get you.

• 1:59:57Speaker 01

  Why tell him this too? But this, I'm not saying I dislike wrestling, I'm just saying I like judo better because when, like I said, when you shoot a double or a single or something and he stuffs it.

• 2:00:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're in a bad situation.

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  You're in a bad, a worse situation than if you go for, you know, some, you know, sayanagi or something and you don't get, well, he's on your back, but you know what I mean though? A failed judo throw, you have way less of a price to pay typically.

• 2:00:21Jocko Willink?

  Do you usually have less of a price to pay on a judo throw than you do in a wrestling takedown?

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, and of course it depends, but yes, generally speaking, in my experience, that's why.

• 2:00:32Jocko Willink?

  I'll, I'll, I'll give that to you with like a, like a small percentage of agreement, not a full.

• 2:00:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's not that black and white for sure, that's what I'm saying.

• 2:00:41Jocko Willink?

  Because you look at Greco guys, Greco Roman wrestlers, now they're not grabbing your leg, now they're not shooting on you anymore. And, believe me, you're getting tossed. You train with a good Greco guy, they're not grabbing your legs at all, they're not even shooting.

• 2:00:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:53Jocko Willink?

  But they are throwing you.

• 2:00:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:00:56Jocko Willink?

  And they don't have to grab the gi to do it. So Greco, that's, you know, Greco is awesome.

• 2:01:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yep, agree. Um, and then also the judo thing.

• 2:01:05Speaker 01

  It tends to, in my experience, um, take less out of you, you know?

• 2:01:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's a less, it's somewhere in between jujitsu and wrestling is the exertion.

• 2:01:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:19Jocko Willink?

  Generally.

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  Generally, yeah, yeah.

• 2:01:21Jocko Willink?

  We're making a lot, a lot of generalities. Please don't, uh, go crazy because of some generalities that Echo made.

• 2:01:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully. Alright, but, um, wait, are we good there? Do you have any more to add?

• 2:01:35Jocko Willink?

  I have nothing further to add. Keep training, everything you can.

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like the judo. Thumbs up for the judo though, for sure. Question number three.

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  What's your recommendation for an employee that is late to work, who usually is late, but they're usually a good performer?

• 2:01:56Jocko Willink?

  So, being late is unacceptable. And I, I, I tell this whenever I work with a company and they start talking about, you know, this guy's late for meetings sometimes. I always tell them that I was in the military for 20 years and I was literally never late. I was literally never late one time.

• 2:02:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:15Jocko Willink?

  Think about that. 20 years, never late. Never late. Never late. Any time for anything. We would, you know, we would show up at work in the morning so early that even if the worst case scenario, my, I got T-boned on the way to work, I would still be able to get insurance, get everything covered, get a cab and still show up and be an hour early.

• 2:02:40Jocko Willink?

  So, you should be, you're right in the fact that being on time is definitely very, very important. So, people shouldn't be late. So now, with this individual, you got someone that's showing up late for work, you got it like any other leadership challenge, what I would attack is making sure they understand why. Why is it important? Some people never make the connection as to why being on time is important.

• 2:03:10Jocko Willink?

  So, you got to explain to them why it's important. You got to explain to them that's basic respect for other people's time. That it's a basic operational readiness is to follow a timeline, that it's about being prepared, that it's about showing your reliability and your professionalism to, to other people that you're working with inside and outside of your company.

• 2:03:36Jocko Willink?

  And even Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu. And I, I didn't say this during the, during the podcast that we did about Sun Tzu. And I can't believe I didn't say it. Because I always believe in waking up early and being early. And Sun Tzu said that he who is waiting on the battlefield is gonna win. And who he was rushing late to the battlefield is gonna lose. Well, that's the way your life is too. And if you're rushing and you, things are disorganized and you're running late, it's horrible. But if you wake up early and you show up early and you're ready and you're prepared and you're waiting on the battlefield, you're gonna win.

• 2:04:17Jocko Willink?

  That's all there is to it. So, those are the important things that you have to explain to your employee.

• 2:04:24Jocko Willink?

  That they so that they understand why being late isn't unacceptable and why being on time is the standard that needs to be maintained. Some people, it's a horrible habit that some people have of being late. It's a horrible habit.

• 2:04:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:41Jocko Willink?

  You don't wanna get into it. It just just unreliability.

• 2:04:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, I was one of those people. I used to work in the nightclub, um, in here, San Diego downtown. Uh, for a while too, from like seven years and unlike you, I feel like, I feel like, I don't know, I don't, I didn't gauge it or not or count them, but it feels like I was late, at the very least, one minute late. You know, you have a shift, right? You know, it starts at whatever time. Either one minute late or ten minutes late. I feel like I was more, I was late more times than I was on time. I feel like, right, so. My dad was always late. I come from a long line of late guys, so to speak, but nonetheless, um, but

• 2:05:25Speaker 01

  I was this guy. I was the guy, I was a good performer. I felt like, I mean, according to my bosses and stuff and I would, you know, I'd, I'd do well. Other than the time thing, I was pretty reliable. Um, very reliable in the nightclub industry, so. And I'd always justify it, like, man, all this time I would, you know, take to be prepared to get there and find parking and all this stuff, um, I could be doing something else. In my life or whatever, not necessarily useful stuff, but just something else. Why do I have to work while I'm not working, you know? Like preparing for work, I don't know. That was kind of my attitude. As long as I have good output, as long as my job is being done, it's fine. So when I stopped the, you know, when I was done with the nightclub, um, industry,

• 2:06:10Speaker 01

  Jade, my brother would, um, he explained it to me where, and the, the, the thing that I read, that really kind of hit me was being late is a, a blatant disregard and a blatant display of disrespect to the person or people who are waiting for you.

• 2:06:26Jocko Willink?

  No doubt about it.

• 2:06:27Speaker 01

  To their time, which is time is like, when you really think about it, it's the most valuable thing you have. So even if you're talking about one minute or you're talking about one hour, you are wasting that person's time. If you have a meeting or something, right? You can, you show up. Five minutes late, people are waiting for you to start the meeting. That's five minutes gone where, you know, we still have to go over that material. So, we're gonna spend an extra five minutes just because you were late, because you failed to prepare. Everyone else was there on time. And you're the one doing it, you know. So, and then also I learned through, uh, I wanna say it was a book I read, I forget where, but, um, where one of the two major, the main things that ensure your success or will get in the way of your success is reliability.

• 2:07:09Speaker 01

  Being reliable. So, and, and one day I went to the store, right, and my wife sends me in this shopping spree, she says, get this kind of tomatoes, like canned tomatoes, but it was like this specific kind. You ever tried to go shop for canned tomatoes, bro, there's like this one, and this one, this one. And I'm like, I'm just gonna either just grab one, any one, because I can't find this one, or I'm not gonna get them at all. I'm just gonna go home and be like, you get the tomatoes if you, I don't even want whatever it is you're making with them. So, I'm getting frustrated on the inside, like, like, down the line of frustrating things that I've told myself, all the way to the point of, this isn't my job to do this. It is my job, by the way.

• 2:07:51Speaker 01

  But, this isn't my job. I don't want tomatoes. Why should I, why am I even shopping right now?

• 2:07:56Jocko Willink?

  Why are you telling this story?

• 2:07:59Speaker 01

  I'm making a point, and in my opinion, it's a very important point. So, if I do that, if I'm like, you know what, screw it, I'm not getting the tomatoes, or I'm just gonna go ahead and settle for the wrong one, I've demonstrated and basically proclaimed that I am unreliable. So why would anyone come to me for anything? Who's to say I'm, I'm gonna be reliable about it? And sure, you might be reliable on some things, but you've demonstrated that you can and will be unreliable under certain circumstances. And those circumstances are dictated by, by you, so who knows, really? You're not gonna get hired.

• 2:08:36Jocko Willink?

  No, you're not.

• 2:08:37Speaker 01

  You might not even be a somebody's friend. When you think about it.

• 2:08:41Jocko Willink?

  Or husband.

• 2:08:42Speaker 01

  Husband. Or whatever, you know.

• 2:08:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, definitely. It shows lack of being on time shows a total disrespect for other people's time and it shows a lack of reliability on your part. So these are the kind of things you got to explain to your subordinates or explain to this person that's being constantly late so that they understand why you're telling them that and then they can then they can improve and then you could, you know, if the person's a good performer generally, that means they're the type of person that care about how they're perceived and doing a good job. So let's get them to understand how being late affects everybody else and affects their own reputation as as a performer.

• 2:09:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it'll mean something to them. Plus, you'll be a come-through guy. Everyone likes the come-through guy, the guy who comes through. I'm sure they liked you for coming in on time every single day for 20 years.

• 2:09:34Jocko Willink?

  They did. They did.

• 2:09:36Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 2:09:39Speaker 01

  Okay, you stated in prior podcasts that you are grateful for an understanding wife who allowed you to treat your SEAL career as the number one priority. Do you believe that marriage and children should bring about a reprioritization of your life? Given that marriage now brings another person on your life, a partner, but also someone who relies on you and especially children who heavily rely on you, how did you reconcile still treating the SEALs as the number one priority? Both a wife and children you brought willing to willingly into your life, was there a point that despite having an understanding wife that you should have made the decision to end the SEAL career early because of people you have a newfound responsibility for? Debatably, a responsibility greater than the responsibility for your career?

• 2:10:30Jocko Willink?

  So this one, this is something that can be hard for people to understand.

• 2:10:36Jocko Willink?

  But, yes. The SEAL Teams was my number one priority over my family, over my wife, over my kids, over my own life. Over everything. And just FYI, I literally told my wife that before we got married. Multiple times, on the way to the chapel, or to the San Diego courthouse to get married. On the way there, on the bridge, driving from Coronado to San Diego. I said, "Hey, listen, I just want to give you one last chance."

• 2:11:11Jocko Willink?

  "Being a SEAL is not just what I do, it's who I am, and you are not going to change me. So don't think that I'm going to change." And she was like, "Oh, I know. I know what you are." "You still want to do this?" "Yes, let's go do it." And what was good was, to her credit, she didn't try and challenge that, she didn't try and fight that. She gave that to me. She understood it, and it's probably one of the reasons why we stayed married. For so long. And a lot, I mean, the SEAL Teams, if you don't know this, has about a 90% divorce rate. It's an astronomical divorce rate. And the reason a lot of it is because the guys are so dedicated to the SEAL Teams

• 2:11:54Jocko Willink?

  that everything else starts taking a second, a backseat. Now, I think that my wife actually saw that I was loyal and I was dedicated to the SEAL Teams, and therefore she saw that as something that was positive. And something that would transfer over to other parts of my life, including my family. Now, to answer more on this guy's question, I want to, think about this. Being a SEAL, the best thing I could do for my family was be dedicated to my job.

• 2:12:29Jocko Willink?

  It was the best thing I could do for the other SEALs I worked with. It was the best thing I could do for myself and for my family was to be the best SEAL possible. Why? Because we're going into combat.

• 2:12:43Jocko Willink?

  And if I want to come home alive to my family and I want my brothers to come home alive to their families, the best thing we could possibly do for our families is to be totally dedicated to the job so that we're ready, we're prepared, and we can bring each other back.

• 2:13:00Jocko Willink?

  So, I, tha- that's the way it is. And I would stand by that to this day.

• 2:13:10Jocko Willink?

  And it actually does transfer, in many cases, to normal civilian careers. Because being hardworking and being dedicated to your job generally is going to translate to being more successful in your job. And if you're more successful in your job, you have more financial stability, right? If you have more financial stability, I mean, how many fights in families take place because of finances? I mean, I think that's probably the leading cause of problems in families is there's a, there's financial strain. And so, I, I think that it does translate somewhat to people in their normal careers, even if they're not SEALs, if they're not preparing for war, that they're trying to do a good job, they're being dedicated to their jobs

• 2:13:56Jocko Willink?

  so that they can perform better and have more stability in their lives. And by the way, when you work harder, you get rewarded more. It also eventually translates into more freedom because you move into a leadership position. Maybe you go into a situation where you're no longer working for somebody directly and they're over you and they're demanding. Now all of a sudden, you get a little bit more freedom. You can, you can dictate what happens in your life more. So that's important as well. And also, in, on top of all that, guess what? The way you act and the way you carry yourself, you are actually teaching your family and your children something.

• 2:14:34Jocko Willink?

  Now, if you're a warrior, if you're a military guy, if you're then your children, guess what? Warriors have been going away to war for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. And people have been just fine from that. The men have been raised by their moms because their dad was going away to war. That's the way it is.

• 2:15:04Jocko Willink?

  So I think that that's okay. It doesn't mean that the warrior doesn't love his family, he does. But he's got a job to do and he's gonna go do it. And also, if, again, if you apply that to a normal civilian situation, if your children see that you are dedicated, that you are hardworking, that you are loyal, that's a positive example that you're setting for your kids. Now, of course,

• 2:15:35Jocko Willink?

  they shouldn't be thinking, and I never came home to my kids and said, "Hey, look, you're number two on the list of priorities around here." Now, I might have said, "Listen, I've got a job to do. I've got guys that are depending on me.

• 2:15:51Jocko Willink?

  We're going to combat, bad things can happen. I need to be ready, and I need to be ready for my guys. And I need to be ready for you."

• 2:16:03Jocko Willink?

  And, so I don't think you need to throw it in people's face and say, "No, you're the number two priority." But your family should understand that you're working hard for them, you're building their future, you're building, you're building a legacy for your family. That's what you're doing when you're working hard. At any job. So I think that's a good,

• 2:16:24Jocko Willink?

  I think that's a good example to set. And I think that there's nothing wrong with that example. Now, where people can go too far, which of course they can, they can do it in the military, they can do it in their civilian career, where the job becomes not just the short term.

• 2:16:47Jocko Willink?

  Um, priority, because I will say this. My long-term priority was my family, right? That was the long-term priority. I mean, I had these, you know, my wife and kids, I'm gonna raise them, they're gonna be with me forever. That's what I'm doing with my life. So the long-term priority is definitely the family. But the short-term priority, and by short-term, I'm talking years, right? Two years, five years, three years. That's a long, that's a short-term priority compared to your family, which is gonna be with you until you die.

• 2:17:21Jocko Willink?

  And so I think you need to keep that in mind and make sure that you're not sacrificing things long-term. In other words, if you're gonna destroy your marriage because you're working so hard, you got problems. If you're gonna destroy your marriage because you're dedicated too much to your job, that's not, that's not supporting the long-term strategy of taking care of your family.

• 2:17:47Jocko Willink?

  So, that's sort of where I come out on that. And again, tons of credit to my, to my wife and my kids who were, you know, I was gone all the time, and they dealt with it. And guess what, I'm gone a lot too now. I'm traveling all the time. And again, they all know that, hey, I'd love to be staying home with them, but I've gotta take care of the family. I've gotta support the family. I've got to maintain my situation so that I can take care of them if something bad were to happen.

• 2:18:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:20Jocko Willink?

  And I think they understand that.

• 2:18:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's a, I, I think that's a big component where, you know, your wife and your kids, they do understand. And I'm assuming, I mean, given, you know, what I know about you guys is that, that you're, you're pretty clear through what you say and what you do, that you are supporting them and they are a part of your life. You know, because some people, let's say, I don't know, just this is a hypothetical situation, but let's say a cop, right? Or detective, he's ruined through his job, he's frustrated with the job, and this goes for any job. He comes home, he's frustrated because, whatever, work stuff. He comes home, but he's not dedicated to his relationship or his family that much. So he allows the frustrations of work to...

• 2:19:00Jocko Willink?

  Carryover.

• 2:19:00Speaker 01

  Carryover. He takes it out on his wife because she said, you know, do the dishes. You forgot whatever. She, then he's even more mad because he's frustrated with work, like that kind of thing where, you know, he kind of in the back of his mind, he regards his family as something that should, I don't know, serve him while he does his, you know, real lot in life, which is be an amazing detective, you know? So I think a lot of times there's that. And then on top of it, the, the family wife will just say the, the wife, um, has these expectations that are not clear, not, not correct. Put it that way, you know? Where, you know, you should be home at a certain time.

• 2:19:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:19:39Speaker 01

  You know, you shouldn't be working late.

• 2:19:42Jocko Willink?

  That was the worst.

• 2:19:42Speaker 01

  We're your family.

• 2:19:43Jocko Willink?

  That's the worst is like, I'm not coming home. Like, oh, I'm done with work in the SEAL teams? Oh, I'm done with work, but I'm going to the bar with the guys and I'll be home at midnight or one o'clock in the morning or two o'clock in the morning.

• 2:19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:55Jocko Willink?

  And guess what? My wife actually understood that. She actually understood that, hey, these guys are a team. These guys are a family of their own right and I gotta let him go and develop and hang out with his friends because he's got to know these guys better than anybody in the world.

• 2:20:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. See, and that's, that's.

• 2:20:13Jocko Willink?

  That's a hard thing for, uh, for some people to handle.

• 2:20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And now when you gotta be careful with Navy SEALs, to me, yeah, that's, it's absolutely true and legitimate. But some guys might use that as like an excuse just to not have to come home and wash dishes.

• 2:20:28Jocko Willink?

  Of course. Yeah. Then they're, then they're wrong.

• 2:20:30Speaker 01

  Right. Right. So, you know, kind of be careful with that one. Like, um, you know, I don't know. A sales guy closes a deal and guys want to celebrate.

• 2:20:40Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:20:40Speaker 01

  You know? Meanwhile, it's, I don't know, Mother's Day or something. I don't know. Something or something.

• 2:20:45Jocko Willink?

  Or Thursday.

• 2:20:47Speaker 01

  You need to, you know, um, and you know, they, I don't think it's unreasonable for wives to have certain expectations, especially if you don't address them. Like, you know, you don't communicate or whatever. Like you have expectation. You have, you have an expectation for your husband to come home after work. You do. So if he just doesn't show up all of a sudden, you know? I mean, you're, I'm assuming you're, you're going to tell your wife, hey, I'm not gonna, this is why. Just like, are you saying, you're going to explain?

• 2:21:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:12Speaker 01

  Everything. But some guys are like, I'm the man. I don't have to come home right now if I don't want to, which is kinda true, but you're in a relationship, you're in a team.

• 2:21:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and and really, I would say one thing that's awesome about my wife is I would say, oh yeah, sorry I didn't come home, I was going out with the boys.

• 2:21:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:30Jocko Willink?

  And she was independent enough and secure enough and confident enough that she was like, oh, okay, whatever. Hey, I'm going to do this. Most of the time.

• 2:21:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:43Jocko Willink?

  There were some times, flowers were bought, things were, things were rebuilt, uh, you know, cause you know, it's a it's life.

• 2:21:52Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, and no one's gonna be like hundred percent focused on that, um, you know, that situation or the, the, the, um, you know, you go, how you say, you, you said, I'm a Navy SEAL, don't, you know, don't change me or whatever. She, that's not gonna be on the front of her mind hundred percent of the time. She has, she's a person, you know, and

• 2:22:11Jocko Willink?

  They, the people always think they can change you.

• 2:22:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and even if they know ultimately they can't, they still, for a day, they might, you know, and it can go back, you know, some back and forth, so yeah, it's not gonna go perfect, but as long, just like how you're saying, you communicated that early and she is a strong enough person to be like, understand that and understand the value of that throughout the whole process, then you know, then you're gonna have success with that kinda thing, but it depends on how good you communicate it and how willing the girl, your wife or husband or whatever the situation is, um, depends on how good they can receive it and and go through it, you know, but some people are needy, man.

• 2:22:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you know, though, a lot of military, I've been talking to a lot of military people that listen to the podcast, um, spouses and service members, and so, yeah, guess what? Give your service member some room to form those bonds, to be dedicated to that job, because they are truly doing it for you. They really are. They're doing it for you. And now, service members, as Echo just said, don't abuse the privilege.

• 2:23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:20Jocko Willink?

  Don't abuse it. Do what you gotta do, be the best you can be at your job, bond with your brothers in arms that you're going on the battlefield with, whether you're a cop, whether you're a firefighter, build those bonds. But of course, don't abuse it and make sure you take care of your family too.

• 2:23:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:44Speaker 01

  Jocko, can you lead those that don't want to be led? If so, how?

• 2:23:52Jocko Willink?

  The beauty of that question is in its simplicity.

• 2:23:57Jocko Willink?

  And the answer is,

• 2:24:00Jocko Willink?

  yes and no. You can't lead them in the traditional sense. You have to be indirect. Again, there's our word. You have to be indirect, meaning you can't say, "Hey, you need to do this." Or, "Hey, I order you to do that." You need to be indirect. And the best way to do that with people that do not want to be led is to let them lead. Put them in a leadership role. Say, "Hey, you know what? You're really good at this. I think you've got a good vision here. Can you run this? Can you lead this?" And then, once they're in a leadership role,

• 2:24:42Jocko Willink?

  then you can make suggestions and you can subtly steer them as they lead. But an important point is that you actually have to be ready to let them lead. You can't just be like, "Oh, I want you to run this," and then all of a sudden you go all level seven micromanagement on people. You have to let them lead. You have to let it go.

• 2:25:05Jocko Willink?

  Let them go. Now, you do need to make sure that they're being safe, you know, or make sure that they're being profitable, make sure they're not doing anything illegal or egregious in what they're doing, but you have to let them lead. You have to let them make decisions.

• 2:25:25Jocko Willink?

  And so that is my first suggestion is to put them in a leadership role. Now, if there's no way to put them in a leadership role, then let them lead their little part of the mission, whatever that is. Let them tell you how they are going to do things. And again, you can make little course corrections along the way, but you need to let them lead. Now, one of the hardest parts of both these situations is, guess what? Your ego. Because, guess what? You want to be the leader.

• 2:25:57Jocko Willink?

  You are offended by someone that doesn't want to be led. Like, "Why aren't they listening to me? I am awesome. I am the leader. I'm in charge. I outrank them. Why aren't they listening to me?" All those are little insecurities that you have. About your own leadership capabilities. Don't let it happen.

• 2:26:17Jocko Willink?

  I was never offended by subordinates that I had that wanted to lead more. That wanted my job. I wanted them to want to have my job. I wanted them to be able to take my job from me. That's what I wanted. If they're doing that, good. I can look upwards and outwards and I can focus on other things. Good. Come and take my job. Be good enough to take my job.

• 2:26:45Jocko Willink?

  And if I ever said to myself, "Well, I can't believe this guy's trying to step up and take my job." I realized, "Oh, my God, I'm being insecure."

• 2:26:52Jocko Willink?

  I need to put my own ego in check. Because you know what? If they can step up and do my job, good. I'll step up and do the next person's job.

• 2:27:01Jocko Willink?

  So, when somebody below you doesn't want to be led, let them lead and be happy that they want to lead.

• 2:27:12Jocko Willink?

  Give them that leadership. That's what you do with people that don't want to be led.

• 2:27:21Speaker 01

  I just thought of a riddle.

• 2:27:25Speaker 01

  What kind of... Actually, I didn't think of it. I kind of got it from Twitter and then made it into a joke. Okay. What kind of steak does Jaco eat?

• 2:27:36Jocko Willink?

  Ribeye?

• 2:27:38Speaker 01

  Flank steak.

• 2:27:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I like it.

• 2:27:42Speaker 01

  Can't take credit, I got that from Twitter.

• 2:27:43Jocko Willink?

  I like it. Good job, Twitter. That's awesome. Good solid question, though.

• 2:27:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:48Jocko Willink?

  That's one you hear a lot.

• 2:27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I said that, obviously, joke. But that's kind of like leading by way of flank, right?

• 2:27:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 2:27:55Speaker 01

  So, it's like you don't lead them directly how you would, like, traditionally or whatever. You're kind of letting them lead. But you allowing them to lead. It's the best leadership tactic.

• 2:28:04Jocko Willink?

  You are flanking them. I mean, the people that are like this, these are people that are either. Have a big ego, or maybe they they know more than you, maybe they are more experienced than you. Maybe they really do know more than you.

• 2:28:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:28:15Jocko Willink?

  And they're bummed or angry because you've been promoted above them.

• 2:28:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:28:20Jocko Willink?

  So now, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna be a jerk. That's what I'm gonna do. And so, you know, I'm not gonna support your plan, and I'm not gonna do what you tell me to do, and I'm gonna have my own way of doing things. That's what's gonna happen. So don't let that happen. All you gotta do is say, hey, listen, man, really respect what you've done. You've been doing, you've been doing this longer than I have. You know what? Can you, can you run with this? Can you plan this? Can you execute this? That'd be awesome.

• 2:28:46Jocko Willink?

  And then they go, oh, okay. Now, do they think, oh, that's right, he's an idiot, he doesn't know what he's doing? No, not when you do it right. Not when you say, hey, you have more experience than me. I would really like you to lead this, instead of me. How's that sound? You can only pull that off if you're secure in your own leadership.

• 2:29:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:06Jocko Willink?

  It's the way it works.

• 2:29:09Jocko Willink?

  Flank 'em.

• 2:29:11Speaker 01

  Flank, flank the style of leadership.

• 2:29:15Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 2:29:20Speaker 01

  Jaco, your podcast listeners and Twitter followers know you're before five daily, meaning you're up before five. Uh, work out essentially every day and are devoted, uh, devoted student of jujitsu. What relationship do you see between physical fitness and empowering the mind slash will? When a man commits, really commits, to changing his fitness, what else changes?

• 2:29:48Jocko Willink?

  Well, you heard Bob Hoffman talk about this a bunch tonight in his book. Bob Hoffman wrote the book, The, I Remember the Last War, and he wrote the book, How to Be Strong, Healthy, and Happy. And there's no doubt that physical fitness is gonna help you in every facet of life. Especially in terms of what you're talking about, empowering the mind and the will. Working out is a test of will. Right? I mean, it is gonna see, can you push yourself harder? Can you get the last rep? Can you shave another second off the sprint? Can you lift a little bit heavier? That's- That's what working out is. It's a test of will. And that test of will, and you've heard me say this before, starts,

• 2:30:34Jocko Willink?

  before the workout starts, it starts when the alarm goes off. Can you get out of bed in the morning? These are all little tests of discipline and of will. And as we've talked about before, discipline begets more discipline. The stronger you get, the stronger you get.

• 2:30:54Jocko Willink?

  And physical will, that it takes to get through these workouts, that it takes to get out of bed in the morning, that carries over to mental will. So you can eat better food, so you can get work done, so you can control your temper, so you can create things and improve things, and you can be better.

• 2:31:12Jocko Willink?

  Now, I remember a while ago, speaking of Twitter,

• 2:31:18Jocko Willink?

  I posted a picture of early morning workout, got done.

• 2:31:24Jocko Willink?

  And then I posted a picture of a little, the post surf session. And then I posted a picture of post jujitsu session. And, you know, so these were all like three posts in a row.

• 2:31:38Jocko Willink?

  And someone made some kind of a comment that was kind of along the lines of, "Oh, must be rough." Right? Must be a rough life. You know, you're getting up, you're just surfing and doing jujitsu and, and honestly, when I saw that, when someone wrote that, I kind of felt bad. I kind of felt

• 2:31:59Jocko Willink?

  guilty, in a way.

• 2:32:02Jocko Willink?

  Because here I am, I'm going surfing, I'm working out, I'm training jujitsu, I'm kind of living the dream, or in fact, in my mind, I actually am living my dream, doing what I want to do, when I want to do it. And, and then there's other people out there that are grinding, that are either overseas, that are in combat, that are working, that are doing jobs that they don't like, they're working with people that they can't stand in a cubicle somewhere, whatever's they're doing, and here I was, almost I felt like, damn, I'm rubbing this in people's faces.

• 2:32:37Jocko Willink?

  And I, and I actually felt bad, and I was like, I can't be doing that again.

• 2:32:42Jocko Willink?

  And someone else on Twitter

• 2:32:46Jocko Willink?

  came on the same thread or whatever, and said, "Discipline equals freedom."

• 2:32:55Jocko Willink?

  They quoted me.

• 2:32:59Jocko Willink?

  And they were right. They made a great point. The reason I'm able to go surfing and do jujitsu and work out and do whatever is because of discipline throughout my life. And again, I'm not making no claims right now to be the ultimate success story. I'm certainly not. And I will tell you this, you know, I live in a great place right now. There was a time where my wife and I wanted to live down by the beach. We bought a house down by the beach, a dump that was barely livable. And it was eight hundred and fifty square feet and we had three kids in there. And my wife and I, our bedroom, our bed, when you opened the front door to the house

• 2:33:43Jocko Willink?

  and walked into the living room, our bed was on the floor right there. For a few years, we just lived there. And now we live in a great house. But I have to remind people, like, you know what? There was a time where I just was sucking it up and living on Navy pay. And we squeezed into this house and borrowed a bunch of money and lived on the floor in the living room.

• 2:34:08Jocko Willink?

  But we had that discipline back then. And then the discipline eventually

• 2:34:15Jocko Willink?

  becomes a form of freedom.

• 2:34:19Jocko Willink?

  And so it wasn't always like this where I was just chilling and surfing and doing jujitsu and playing guitar and whatever, you know, there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears along the way. And I, and, and by the way, the blood, sweat and tears along the way, I actually enjoyed. I enjoyed. I wouldn't trade it. I'm glad that I was put in those situations to do those things. And most importantly.

• 2:34:46Jocko Willink?

  This is available to anybody. That life that you want is out there. And it might be a few years in the future, but it's there. And you can get to it. And the path, the path getting there starts early in the morning. And it ends late at night. And it requires sacrifice and discipline. And it requires force of will. And that comes at 4:30 in the morning when the alarm goes off. That's when it comes. So get up and go get it. And that's why I think that the idea of physical fitness,

• 2:35:30Jocko Willink?

  empowering the mind and the will. I think that's what happens when you commit to those things. I think the rest of your life will reflect positively on what you've done. And guess what? I've been real lucky too. You know, I've been very lucky along the way. And I won't, I won't say that, uh, you know, I made everything happen myself. I got lucky. I was blessed in a lot of situations and had good things happen. I mean, for instance, the housing market crashed. And I was in the Navy. It didn't matter to me. I mean, I had a couple of houses and I was like, oh, I didn't even notice there was a housing market crash until I was buying more houses and they were cheaper. You know, it, it, but it wasn't, that was luck.

• 2:36:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36:10Jocko Willink?

  Didn't plan that. It was, might've been a long-term strategy. Hey, I want to buy houses. But, you know, a lot of people got caught upside down in some rough situations in the housing market. And I was lucky in the fact that I hadn't overextended myself. Again, maybe that's partial luck, partial strategy. But that's a situation. Again, I'm just trying to point out that I know I've been lucky in, in, in some of it. Um, but let's make our luck with some hard work for sure.

• 2:36:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, just you pointing that out that you got lucky, you know, and you recognizing it. Some people, a lot of people, they don't like, they don't want to recognize all the factors. You know, they, it's just easy to blame something else for what didn't happen. And then blame, not blame, but take credit yourself for something that does happen good. You know, so you're you're over here recognizing everything, kind of the good of it, which is part of your discipline way of being.

• 2:37:06Speaker 01

  Back to your your your Twitter post. Situation that was that was good. That was heavy. That was good right there. I thought. And I know thinking about that, someone who posted must be uh must be rough, right? Like a sarcastic. Obviously, that was just a fun.

• 2:37:24Jocko Willink?

  I don't think they were.

• 2:37:25Speaker 01

  So so. Out of the way, yeah, and and it hit you actually in a in a good way. Some people might be like, hey, I work for this stuff. Don't say that, you know, take it the wrong way or whatever, but you didn't. You took it in the opposite way, which is says yet again, more about you and your approach. So that being said, let me add this little part to it where when you look at those Twitter posts, like that Twitter post, right? You have your, you know, the aftermath of your workout, you know? Go look at or Instagram, whatever. Look at every single day of your posts, every single day. You'll see four thirty four, wake up, you know, workout four thirty, every single day.

• 2:38:07Speaker 01

  And then step one step back and look at all of them all at once. That's just the clear picture of your discipline of your, you know, doing it every single day. Cause like, okay, I understand I can wake up at four thirty four tomorrow if I want to and I'll get a workout in and I'll be like, look at me, I'm Jaco. And then go surfing, go do jujitsu and eat flank steak. But if you expect me to do that every single day and I'm not used to it and and I do it, that's saying a lot more. And you do that. So there's your picture. That's what it is. Of course, don't focus on just that little narrow view of, oh, how cool it was that he got to do jujitsu, surf all day, cruise. Look at the big picture.

• 2:38:51Speaker 01

  And that picture, just like I said, discipline equals freedom. There it is. There's your picture right there, right there on Twitter.

• 2:38:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was cool that uh that was cool that somebody actually had to point that out to me. When I read it, I was like, damn, they they're making a very good point.

• 2:39:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, but man, that's like the perfect example, in my opinion, that discipline equals freedom. It's like, within that picture of freedom, all you see is discipline all over it. Starting with the four thirty-four in the morning.

• 2:39:19Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I tell you, if I would have had more discipline throughout my life, I'd be in the even better situation than I am right now. Like, I look back and say, man, what did I do this for? What did I do that for? And that's one thing that, as now, when people talk to me and ask me questions, I'm trying to tell them what mistakes I made. Things that I did wrong, things that I did that were stupid, so that they can say, oh, okay, cuz the opportunities are out there, you know? The opportunities are out there to make good things happen in your life. But you're gonna have, they're not gonna, they're not gonna show up at your doorstep. They're not coming to your doorstep. I'm gonna go ahead and tell everybody that right now. You have to go out and make of them happen.

• 2:39:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39:59Jocko Willink?

  You have to go out and take them, because they're not gonna come knocking on your door. The good deal is not coming to your door, not happening.

• 2:40:06Speaker 01

  It's so crazy how obvious that sounds, you know? That, like, you saying that, I'm not gonna be like, hey, I never realized that. I thought they were gonna come to my doorstep. But it's almost like most people, I don't say most people, but it's almost like people don't really understand that that's true. Because you have, like, people who watch this TV, like, if you wa- can you remember Lost? Remember that?

• 2:40:29Jocko Willink?

  I never watched it.

• 2:40:30Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, I watched a few episodes, but I remember people were just really into that. And they're like, talking about Lost and the characters, cuz that was a confusing show, is why I use that. Um, and they're talking about this, like, they know all the details and they're trying to figure this out and it, over like, seasons upon seasons of Lost, and they know that. Like, bro, you know what you could have been doing with all that mental energy and, and the time that it takes to watch all this? You could have been doing a lot. And that Lost example is just one of many examples of what we all do, I think.

• 2:41:03Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's very fitting that it's called Lost. Because you lost a bunch of time and a bunch of opportunity in your life.

• 2:41:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:11Jocko Willink?

  Unless, I mean, there's things that could be so inspiring, I guess, some artwork, or some art form, or some film, or movie, or show that could be so inspiring to you. But if it's not inspiring to you, it's not, if it's not forcing you to get out and make something more of yourself, or create something more, then it's probably not worth your while, to be quite honest with you.

• 2:41:30Speaker 01

  Right, and, and. Again, the, the whole, you know, lost situation, I mean, if that, hey, everyone's different, I know. But when you're watching TV, which is just, I think, a huge one that, that people waste their time on. I mean, I can get some inspiration from TV with cinema stuff because I'm in video. Uh, but I think that, I would argue that that's not why most people watch TV. That's not why they're watching, uh, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, I'll tell you that. So.

• 2:41:57Jocko Willink?

  I'm not familiar with this.

• 2:42:00Speaker 01

  It's a show on TV. Nonetheless, um, people don't act like that that's true. That opportunity's not gonna just come knocking on your door.

• 2:42:09Jocko Willink?

  Well, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier today. Are you gonna let, are you gonna, you only have so much time. You only have so much time. And if you miss a workout, if you miss a moment with your family, if you, whatever you're missing, is it worth it? You're letting it go away. You only got, that day is only gonna go by one time. You only got one shot at today, what are you gonna do with it?

• 2:42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:35Jocko Willink?

  Do something good.

• 2:42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just, yeah, it's just so interesting, interesting how, again, this is like nothing new, you know? But I, I feel like we're, a lot of us act like that that's simply not true. Ain't that weird, though?

• 2:42:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it is, cuz it's such a big, you know, you have a lot, a long time on this earth. If you, if you just sit back and go day to day, then wasting a few hours watching a TV program maybe doesn't seem like a big deal. When you add all those hours up and you subtract them from the actual time that you've got here, man, don't let it go to waste.

• 2:43:13Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 2:43:15Jocko Willink?

  Don't do it.

• 2:43:16Speaker 01

  One of the guys on Lost was named Mr. Echo, by the way. I think he died, though, I don't know.

• 2:43:22Jocko Willink?

  I wish you wouldn't have given me that information for my head, you've wasted space in my head. I like Echo Actual.

• 2:43:29Speaker 01

  We'll stick with that, then. Alright, um, I think the last one?

• 2:43:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think we got time for one more.

• 2:43:36Speaker 01

  Jocko, I lost my little brother who died in a random medical accident. He was someone that I always looked after. How do you deal with grief and loss of men in your command?

• 2:43:53Jocko Willink?

  Someone asked me a similar question to that the other day, something along the lines of, "How can it be good when you lose a loved one?"

• 2:44:05Jocko Willink?

  And that's definitely a tough question, and I almost replied, "No, it isn't good." There's nothing good in death.

• 2:44:25Jocko Willink?

  And then I started to remember the people I've lost throughout my life. The memories of them, the experiences, the fun, their unique personalities, and everything they'd given me.

• 2:44:48Jocko Willink?

  Not only in their life, but in their death.

• 2:44:57Jocko Willink?

  What their life taught me and what their death taught me. The mark.

• 2:45:07Jocko Willink?

  The mark they had left on me, and I realized,

• 2:45:14Jocko Willink?

  I realized that even in death,

• 2:45:21Jocko Willink?

  even in death, there is good.

• 2:45:30Jocko Willink?

  First of all, I was lucky to have that person in my life. Even if it was only for a short time, too short of a time, but at least I got that.

• 2:45:42Jocko Willink?

  Those unforgettable moments, those precious moments. At least I got those, and I got to experience those times, to know the beauty of their personality, their attitude, their outlook on the world.

• 2:46:05Jocko Willink?

  They were all unique, and I'm thankful

• 2:46:11Jocko Willink?

  for the opportunity that I had to interact with them, even if it was just for a short amount of time.

• 2:46:21Jocko Willink?

  And now comes Death.

• 2:46:30Jocko Willink?

  Death is horrible, and death is wretched, and death is cruel, and death isn't fair.

• 2:46:38Jocko Willink?

  And I don't know why the best people

• 2:46:44Jocko Willink?

  seem to get taken from us first.

• 2:46:52Jocko Willink?

  But the fact is, death is inescapable.

• 2:47:00Jocko Willink?

  There is no way out.

• 2:47:05Jocko Willink?

  And death, in that, death is part of life. And like the contrast between the darkness and the light, without death, then there is no life.

• 2:47:21Jocko Willink?

  And the people that I've lost,

• 2:47:27Jocko Willink?

  they taught me that.

• 2:47:31Jocko Willink?

  They taught me how precious life is, how blessed we are to have every day to learn, and to grow, and to laugh, and to live.

• 2:47:49Jocko Willink?

  To live.

• 2:47:53Jocko Willink?

  To live every day with purpose and with passion, to wake up in the morning and be thankful.

• 2:48:04Jocko Willink?

  Thankful for that morning, and thankful for the opportunity to go out into the world and live.

• 2:48:17Jocko Willink?

  To live for them, for those that don't have the opportunity, for those that were stolen away

• 2:48:26Jocko Willink?

  by death's cruel hand.

• 2:48:36Jocko Willink?

  For them,

• 2:48:40Jocko Willink?

  I will live.

• 2:48:44Jocko Willink?

  I will cherish their memory and I will live.

• 2:48:53Jocko Willink?

  So,

• 2:48:56Jocko Willink?

  let's cry no more, let's mourn no more, let's remember.

• 2:49:04Jocko Willink?

  But let's not dwell. Instead,

• 2:49:10Jocko Willink?

  let's laugh and let's love and let's embrace and cherish everything that life is and every opportunity it gives us.

• 2:49:24Jocko Willink?

  Live.

• 2:49:34Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's

• 2:49:37Jocko Willink?

  all I've got for tonight. Remembering the ones we have lost. By embracing the ones we still have.

• 2:49:53Jocko Willink?

  So, to everyone out there, thank you for embracing us and listening to what we have to say and supporting what we are doing.

• 2:50:05Jocko Willink?

  Echo, what's the best way to support the podcast?

• 2:50:08Speaker 01

  Well, the best ways, uh, shop at Onnit, Onnit.com slash Jaco, get 10% off. Um, and that's a way to support yourself as well. Supplementation, the good kind. Uh, we haven't really talked that much about Onnit recently, but,

• 2:50:25Speaker 01

  I mean, in any kind of depth, but nonetheless, it's dope. Shroom Tech, AlphaBrain, Warrior Bar, and whatever else uh, you get into on there. You can get, get really into just experiencing the website. It's really dope. Anyway, Onnit.com slash Jaco, or

• 2:50:41Speaker 01

  When you get any of these books, or if you're interested in getting any of these books at Jaco Reviews, um, and you want to listen to them, rather than physically read them, um, you can do it, you know, while you drive or do yard work or whatever. Um, use Audible, audible.com slash Jaco. You can get thirty days free and get a free download. whichever one you want. They have a lot, they have a lot of books.

• 2:51:03Jocko Willink?

  Get yourself smarter.

• 2:51:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:51:05Jocko Willink?

  Stop watching TV programs. Get yourself smarter. Go to audible.com slash Jaco.

• 2:51:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:51:11Jocko Willink?

  And support the podcast while you're doing it.

• 2:51:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:51:14Jocko Willink?

  We're not going to run a bunch of advertisements on here. We're not going to read a bunch of stuff. We just need your support. So just go to audible.com slash Jaco and support yourself.

• 2:51:24Speaker 01

  Or, uh, get a shirt if you like them. Discipline equals freedom, you know?

• 2:51:28Jocko Willink?

  Good one.

• 2:51:30Speaker 01

  Speaking of good ones, the good one, there's one that was good. Anyway, go, go to jacostore.com, see if you like any of their shirts. Get one of those. Get two. Or a coffee mug or whatever. Um, yeah. Or, uh, if you're in the mood to donate, which some people have been doing, which is crazy, yet very, I think we're very grateful for that one. Right? Hey, donate something. Four dollars, thirty-four cents, or whatever. Anyway, um, those are the ways.

• 2:51:57Jocko Willink?

  And as always, if you want to continue this conversations, or ask questions, or give us feedback, you can find us on the interwebs. On Twitter, Echo Charles is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. We are also on Facebook and on Instagram. And you know, this has been a pretty cool experience so far. And last week, this little podcast broke into the top twenty on iTunes, which was pretty cool of all podcasts. And that's kind of crazy to see, and it's because of you.

• 2:52:38Jocko Willink?

  Because of you out there, listening, reviewing, telling people to check it out. Spreading the word. It's you. You are responsible for all this, your questions, your support.

• 2:52:57Jocko Willink?

  So, thank you for joining us in this

• 2:53:03Jocko Willink?

  this crazy world we're living in, for choosing to fight instead of surrender, for choosing to bring light into the world instead of darkness, for choosing to be stronger instead of weaker, for choosing to get better every day, for choosing to live, every day,

• 2:53:23Jocko Willink?

  by choosing to get up

• 2:53:27Jocko Willink?

  and get after it.

• 2:53:31Jocko Willink?

  And so, until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.