33: The Killing Zone (F. Downs), Male Psyche & Fighting, BJJ Frustrations, Talking about Yourself, Fear of Failure

0:00:00 - Opening 0:0:3:13 - "The Killing Zone", by Frederick Downs - Book review 1:27:48 - Internet / Onnit Stuff 1:41:07 - Is Fighting ability the most overlooked essential stabilizer in the young male psyche? 1:58:01 - Frustrations of beginning Jiu Jitsu 2:11:41 - Checking ego while Talking about yourself in an interview 2:16:02 - Staying humble when you know you have better skills than others. 2:27:15 - When 2 leaders have Extreme Ownership have to go against each other. 2:35:06 - Overcoming Fear of Failure 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.

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 33 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:14Jocko Willink?

  People say there is a line.

• 0:20Jocko Willink?

  There's a line between good and evil, right and wrong, between light and dark.

• 0:32Jocko Willink?

  And that's a nice, clean way to think of things.

• 0:38Jocko Willink?

  But the line can be hard to recognize. It can get blurry. It can get twisted by emotion and passion and by one's own ego.

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  And in war, that line is tested. It's pressed. It becomes even more blurry.

• 1:05Jocko Willink?

  It gets crossed and violated and sometimes abandoned.

• 1:13Jocko Willink?

  And we can see that throughout history and we've talked about it here in the Japanese slave camps in Rwanda and Mali. Those are a few examples, but there are thousands of them.

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  And I've seen the line. And I've seen men approach the line.

• 1:38Jocko Willink?

  Driven, filled with fury and with hate.

• 1:47Jocko Willink?

  And that fury needs an outlet. And if it gets a purchase, it can become unstoppable.

• 2:01Jocko Willink?

  But it can also be controlled.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  Because there is a counter to all that evil.

• 2:13Jocko Willink?

  There is the man that steps up and says, "No.

• 2:19Jocko Willink?

  No, not today, not here, not now. We will not do that."

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  And the dichotomy of leadership and the dichotomy of war is so hard to balance.

• 2:36Jocko Willink?

  Soldiers are trained and tasked to kill.

• 2:44Jocko Willink?

  And yet they are also trained to be humane and fair and moral and good.

• 2:55Jocko Willink?

  So how does a warrior reconcile those opposing forces, that dichotomy?

• 3:05Jocko Willink?

  How does he know to balance?

• 3:16Jocko Willink?

  "God damn." Thoughts rush through my mind as I try to decide what to do. Women, old men, and kids, obviously non-combatants.

• 3:29Jocko Willink?

  But this is a free-fire zone. There are not supposed to be civilians in this area. Yeah, but dinks occasionally ignore those warnings about free-fire areas. Maybe they're the point element for Viet Cong or NVA traveling behind them. Maybe they're supposed to give the warning if stopped. It's happened before. In that case, some of my men could come under fire and be killed or wounded. 46 killed that one dink last evening, and he had a Thompson. There was a whole squad of Kong in that group. There was some incoming fire when we made the LZ. A dink tried to cross the dike last night. These people look innocent enough.

• 4:09Jocko Willink?

  They may be carrying supplies for the Kong in the area, food and/or ammo. It's a free-fire zone. Everyone is supposed to be considered enemy. I'm responsible for my men. They'll get killed if I make the wrong decision. These dinks coming toward us mean nothing to me. My men mean everything.

• 4:29Jocko Willink?

  What if the Dinks aren't innocent? My men depend on me to keep them alive.

• 4:37Jocko Willink?

  I spoke softly to the men around me. It's a lick on them. When I give the order, open fire.

• 4:45Jocko Willink?

  I brought up the M16 to sight in on the Dinks. Spag was standing to my right, his M60 machine gun supported on his hip by a sling around his neck and shoulder. He reached over and touched my arm. His whispered voice reflected the agony of doubt in his face. No, sir, you can't. Kids, women. He motioned toward the file of people coming towards us. I felt ashamed. Spag was right.

• 5:18Jocko Willink?

  Wait one, I whispered to the men around me. I'll call for them to surrender. I felt relieved. Capturing them was the best solution. If they were the point for a VC group, I would just make sure none of us was exposed to fire when we captured this point. The Dinks were almost to the intersection.

• 5:38Jocko Willink?

  I stepped through the brush with some of my men. Deng Lui, Deng Lui, I warned. They were only ten to twenty meters from us. They all glanced at us, standing with our weapons trained on them. We had them dead to rights. They had no cover and no place to run to. A perfect capture situation. Almost in mid-stride, they all moved with astonishing speed. The two boys in the point split up. The one ran past us, heading down the trail past the schoolhouse. The other boy, the woman, the old men started running back toward the bridge. Stop, stop, Deng Lui, Deng Lui, I yelled to no avail. I could not order the men to run after them. It could be a trap. Neither could I let them get away. Why were they running?

• 6:22Jocko Willink?

  In the split second those thoughts ran across my consciousness, I gave the order to open fire. An irrevocable wave of death swept in front of us. After the initial burst of gunfire, I yelled ceasefire.

• 6:36Jocko Willink?

  The two women survived long enough to cross the bridge and enter one of the hooches. Three of my men crossed over the bridge and threw grenades in the hooches. We hurriedly looked over the bodies on the trail since they were lying in the open and we had no desire to be caught exposed. The men reported that some of the dead had been carrying hand grenades in their ammo and ammo packs. I felt somewhat relieved. Those supplies could have been for, could not have been for anyone but the Kong. I received a report from the squad down the trail. The firing had alerted them, barely fast enough to fire at the teenager running toward them down the trail. Someone hit him in the shoulder and knocked him down. Surprisingly, the boy had jumped up and run past the squad to safety somewhere in the brush.

• 7:22Jocko Willink?

  I had no pleasure in reporting to Delta Six that we had killed six dinks and one wounded. I knew he would ask how many weapons we had captured. I stared at the gray horizon for a long time before answering that the dinks were not carrying weapons, only supplies and grenades. I felt low. This putrid war. I thought of so many ways I could have done it differently. So easy to think afterward. After all, now I knew there was no dink squad behind on the trail. This episode would be the darkest of my career. I called my men together for a march up the slight hill to Delta Six's position. Forcing the dinks out of my mind.

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  Now that's from a book that we're looking at tonight. It's called The Killing Zone. My Life in the Vietnam War by Frederick Downs.

• 8:22Jocko Willink?

  Now Vietnam.

• 8:25Jocko Willink?

  It was a hard war, obviously a wretched war. For many reasons and the My Lai massacre

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  is almost the apex, almost the pinnacle. It almost seems like the essence of the war in many respects.

• 8:43Jocko Willink?

  At least it's viewed that way and it did have a huge strategic impact. It was devastating to the war effort and something that should always be remembered is that tactical operations can have strategic impact. Like Hackworth said, "The My Lai massacre probably did more to end the war and hasten our departure from Vietnam than anything our communist enemy did." And in a similar vein, in the war I was in, in the mistreatment of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the photographs that showed that mistreatment likely did more to fuel the insurgency in that country than anything Al Qaeda did.

• 9:26Jocko Willink?

  Tactical actions can have strategic impact and that actually happens in business too. One bad customer experience for a customer that's got some reach and there can really be a strategic impact. And what the frontline troops do really does matter and what the frontline troops do is based on how they are led. Clearly, in My Lai, there was a total lack of leadership, especially from the moral and ethical perspective. But this was not the norm, not by any stretch.

• 10:08Jocko Willink?

  And like I said, it's viewed sometimes as the representation of what the Vietnam War was like, but it's not. And I said this when we talked about My Lai, "Yeah, America has done monstrous things in our history, but we most certainly are not monstrous. We are an amazingly benevolent nation, especially now, perhaps even to our own detriment." But that's why I wanted to talk about this book, The Killing Zone, to show the challenges

• 10:48Jocko Willink?

  of Vietnam War and how American troops handled those challenges and pressures on a day-to-day basis and how they sometimes crossed that line, if only for a moment, but then...

• 11:06Jocko Willink?

  Most of the time brought themselves back from the brink of darkness into the light.

• 11:16Jocko Willink?

  Now, let's go back to the book here.

• 11:22Jocko Willink?

  Going to the beginning, when Fred Downs, young lieutenant in the army, is flying into Vietnam. At twenty-three thirty hours, the continental big bird with the golden tail DC-8 dropped through the night sky into the landing pattern over the black landscape of Vietnam. Twenty-three hours earlier, a hundred and sixty-five of us had been crammed aboard the commercial jet at the airport near San Francisco. I looked around the cabin at the officers and enlisted men who had come from all over the United States to catch this flight from San Francisco.

• 12:01Jocko Willink?

  How would they return? How would I return? I had graduated six months earlier from the US Army's OCS program at Fort Benning, Georgia, and now I was soon to be leading men into combat.

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  I was twenty-three years old, and I had been trained to lead. Physically, I thought I was ready. Mentally, I was as confident of myself as any young officer could be. But underneath my confidence were the ever-present questions, worry, and curiosity about war and my role in it.

• 12:36Jocko Willink?

  I was eagerly looking forward to finding answers.

• 12:41Jocko Willink?

  I would not have to wait long.

• 12:45Jocko Willink?

  So, we've talked about that before. When you're stepping into a leadership role, you're not gonna... There's a good chance you're not gonna feel a hundred percent confident. And that's okay. So he gets to Vietnam, he gets assigned to uh 4th Division. And he actually, he hadn't heard of 4th Division, he hadn't seen it in the papers, and he kinda is asking, "Hey, why, why, why haven't I seen that in the papers? What are they doing?" And he said, "There's no reporters up there where they're working, it's too rough for them." And he's kinda saying, you know, "I wanna get, I wanna make sure I, I get it on." And, and some of the old timers are telling him, one of them says, "You'll get a belly full of fighting up there, son, if that's what you want."

• 13:27Jocko Willink?

  So, it's one of those be careful what you wish for scenarios. And uh, I thought this was pretty, pretty interesting. You know, we talk about Hackworth and the hardcore Ricondos as the salute and reply, the reply is no fucking slack. So, here's what they had here. "It was SOP to salute in the, in the company area, but not in the field. When enlisted man saluted, he would say, 'Golden Dragon, sir.' The officer would return the, the salute with, 'Right of the line.'" I asked about this. They told me that it, that the 1st to the 14th, that's the, that's the division he's with. "The 1st to the 14th was an old infantry regiment, steeped in tradition.

• 14:13Jocko Willink?

  During the Box Rebellion in China, the unit had fought bravely. Afterward, they adopted the symbol of a golden dragon. The other part of the salute came from some, some battle in the Civil War. Right before a large battle, a staff officer asked a general where to put the 1st to the 14th. The general had roared back, 'Put them to the right of the line where they belong.' The right of the line is where a leader traditionally puts his best men in units. This comes down through military history, when a man fought with the shield and sword, the right arm or sword arm was unprotected. The best fighter was put to the right to protect the sword arm of the man on his left. Only the most trusted and best fighters held the position to the right."

• 15:03Jocko Willink?

  Legit.

• 15:06Jocko Willink?

  So, he's there in the, in, kind of in the, in the, uh, headquarters area for a little while, and then he gets his indoctrination and then gets flown out. He's, flies out into the field, into where he's gonna be operating out of. He gets up there and this is, this is straight out of a movie, right here. Bugs swarmed around my face. I squatted and looked at the men, who looked right back at me. It was my first view of American GIs who had spent several days in the jungle. I stood there in sparkling crisp fatigues, brand-new boots, new rifle, clean-shaven, fresh haircut, I even smelled clean. My helmet camouflage cover didn't have a mark on it, nor did I.

• 15:51Jocko Willink?

  The two men opposite me were filthy. Their fatigues were torn, and they had scratches all over their skin, two or three days of growth on their beard, and dark circles under their eyes. They looked tired, and they smelled the high heaven. So that's, that's right out of a movie, the boot lieutenant coming in to take over, he's in his pressed cam, he's looking all squared away, and these guys look like they're living in hell. And they introduce the, the company commander. And this guy, you're gonna see throughout the book, this guy Captain Sells, was an ROTC officer, 26-years-old, son of, son of a father killed in Korea. So, that's, you know, the guy's dad got killed in Korea, and he's, during the Vietnam

• 16:35Jocko Willink?

  War, he's joining up and, and leading men into comedy, he's the company commander. And if you remember from, from the book Platoon Leader, you remember, he didn't even meet the company commander, so his direct boss didn't even meet him for weeks, he'd been in the field for weeks before he even met him, and here's this, this company commander, obviously much more squared away, walks him around, introduces him to everybody, he's giving him a heads up, you know, this is the way it's supposed to be. And, you know, he's getting told, "Look, there's enemy all around." And you might have heard in that intro piece that I read, I was talking about Delta Six. And, and here's a little piece about that. He informed me that his radio signal was Delta Six. So that's the Delta Company Commander's Delta Six. Lieutenant Smart, the first platoon leader, was Delta One Six.

• 17:20Jocko Willink?

  The second platoon leader was Delta Two Six. Sixes were the commanders of the unit, and this is a tradition that holds true in the, in the Army and the Marine Corps today. And it's pretty cool when you're, when you're in the field. You'd hear someone call for the Six. And, and that means we want to talk to the guy that's in charge out there. Their seconds of command were known as Fives. For instance, Delta One Five was the first platoon sergeant. And this is, uh, you know, goes on to talk a little bit more about Captain Sells, who's asking about his family, he's getting to know him. And he's, you know, uh, uh, Downs had a, had a wife and two little girls back in Illinois. And so, again, you're getting the impression that Sells is a guy that's trying to get to know his people and, and learn about him, which is, which is the way a leader, what a leader should be doing.

• 18:05Jocko Willink?

  Now, these guys are out. And he's talking, again, this is, this is something straight out of a, straight out of a movie. Darkness quickly engulfed us. My hooch mates watched in astonishment as I pulled out mosquito netting and spread it over my poncho liner and air mattress. They were aghast that I carried so much extra weight. "No," I answered. "This is all the good stuff." Their amazement grew as I revealed three changes of underwear and fatigue clothes. "Wait until the next day," they scoffed, "when the sun, sun and heavy pack will drag me down." "The jungle would exact a toll for every ounce I carried." "We'll see," I answered. Not a good answer.

• 18:48Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant Smart said, "Yeah, you'll see." "You'll see that the only change of clothes you'll carry isn't be an extra pair of socks. You'll learn to live in one set of jungle fatigues until they rot off you or rip too badly to wear." That's, that, that actually reminds me when we were in, uh, my, my first deployment to Iraq, we, uh, we had, you know, three sets of camis and just wore them, rotated them. In Ramadi, that, the op tempo was so high and, and the conditions of fighting, we had to order new camis. Within, within a couple of weeks of being there, guys had destroyed camis. You run across the street, they're getting, you know, dragging people and they were just ruining their, their camis.

• 19:27Jocko Willink?

  So, that was another indicator in Ramadi that we were in a totally different scenario than I was on my first deployment to Iraq.

• 19:37Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. My first days on combat control, combat patrol introduced me to the vicissitudes of war. Ten-foot-deep, punji pits. Wait-a-minute vines that collected around the feet and legs until their combined strength stopped you and you had to say, "Wait a minute", while you untangled or cut yourself loose. The hot sun beating down us, on us as we marched around with seventy-pound packs. The sweat pouring off us. The bugs so thick, our faces, that, around our faces that we sometimes inhaled them. And the physical agony of forcing tired muscles to keep going. It was a search-and-destroy mission, which meant we searched all the hooches we found and then burned them down. Whether a single farmer's hooch or a whole village, all were burnt.

• 20:21Jocko Willink?

  The few Vietnamese we found in the area were women, children, and old men who had been left behind. When we started to burn their particular hooch, they would start wailing, crying, and pulling at our clothes. We didn't harm the people, but the orders were to destroy all the dwellings, so we did. The first time I saw a Vietnamese family go into hysterics when their hooch was set on fire, I, I was unsure of whether burning their home would accomplish our mission. The mission was to deny the enemy use of the hooches, to destroy any food we found, and to teach the people a lesson about supporting the enemy. But I quickly got used to it and accepted that this was one way to win the war.

• 21:01Jocko Willink?

  And that's, you know, if you, if you talk to anybody, anybody knowledgeable about true counter insurgency, this is not a great plan to go in and basically abuse the populace. Now, if you know that they're supporting the, the insurgents, sure, you wanna, you wanna disrupt that, but oftentimes, they're not dis- they're not supporting the insurgents because they want to. They're, they're supporting the insurgents because they're fear for their lives. That's the way it was in, in Iraq when, when I was there. So, back to the book, Sheldon Brand took the opportunity later that day to explain in the u- in this unit, "Everyone called the enemy, and ultimately, all outsiders, dinks."

• 21:46Jocko Willink?

  So that's their word that they use. And I found this interesting. He says ultimately, "All outsiders." And you've, you've heard me, and you've heard Leif, and in the book, we, we talk about moosh. That's what we called the enemy. We called the enemy moosh. But what's interesting is here it says "all outsiders," and that's exactly what we did. If, when we were getting resistance from, you know, up the chain of command, down the chain of command, guess what we called them? Moosh. We'd say, "Oh, the boss is saying this. I can't believe that moosh." So it became the word that we used to every, to all outsiders. And that's, that's unit cohesion. And there's some dehumanization of the enemy there, obviously, but the fact that you end up using the same slang word to, to describe anybody that's against you- Right.

• 22:29Jocko Willink?

  -is, is, is interesting. Back to the book, "It turned out that the enemy started calling us dinks first, because it was an insulting or demeaning term that meant hairy man from the jungle. We had just turned the word around and started calling them dinks. At least, that was the story." I don't know if that's true or not. I never, never read, didn't do any research on that one. "I saw the face of the enemy for the first time. He'd been machine-gunned down by one of our gun crews. The powerful weapon had thrown a hail of bullets into the brush where we had spotted him. When we got to his position, I saw for the first time the death of a soldier. The machine-gun crew had done a good job. The young soldier's green combat uniform body was riddled with bullets. He was sprawled across his bicycle with his face toward the sky.

• 23:13Jocko Willink?

  At last, I had before me the enemy I had been trained to destroy. He was a young man for whom the war and life had ended." One evening, a jet was returning to base and needed a target to get rid of his unexpended bomb load. The captain called the forward air controller and gave him the coordinates of a sniper 300 meters away who'd been pestering us off and on for three days. As the jet pulled up after dropping napalm on the sniper's position, we could hear the pop-pop of the sniper firing at the jet. The men talked about the gall of that sniper as I watched the napalm burn itself out. I wondered what would drive a man to stand up to death in so remarkable a manner.

• 23:57Jocko Willink?

  Again, you're dealing with a hardened enemy. You're getting napalm dropped on your position, and as you burn to death, you're trying to shoot down a jet fighter.

• 24:09Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, Sheldon Brand was worth his weight in gold to me in running that platoon. He even introduced me to the platoon motto, "It's a lick." A lick is a lick on a young man's ass, Lieutenant. You remember when you were a kid and you did something wrong or something got fucked up that you got the blame for? The old man would give you a licking with a switch or a belt? Yeah, I sure remember getting lickings. Well, when something goes wrong, it's a lick on you, you see? Anything that goes wrong will give you a lick, and over here, you'll get plenty of licks. My RTO was the other most important man to the platoon. His job was to carry the radio and stick to me like a shadow.

• 24:49Jocko Willink?

  The radio was our link with literally everything outside our platoon, from supplies to survival. Without a working radio and a good RTO, a platoon leader and the platoon were as good as lost in this war. My RTO, man, a skinny kid, five feet, 11 inches tall, was next to perfect for his job. He loved to know what was going on, and his job was akin to the central switchboard operators. So that's the RTO, that was actually when I was an enlisted SEAL, that's what I was. So I was, uh, I always had that same attitude. When you're the, when you're the RTO, you always know what's going on. Cause the, the officer's telling you, you're right next to him, you're listening to what he's saying, so you always know what's going on, and that was a real good education for me.

• 25:35Jocko Willink?

  Growing my whole career, always being next to the, to the guy that was running the platoon.

• 25:41Jocko Willink?

  Talking a little bit about the troops here. My squad leaders were first squad Del Katol cowboy type from Wyoming. Second squad Porter, a light, a slightly built black from east St. Louis. Third squad Jose, a skinny short, swarthy Puerto Rican. Fourth squad Gallagher, a medium built redhead from New England states. And of course, there was the platoon medic, Doc.

• 26:03Jocko Willink?

  The platoon makeup was whites, blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Americans. And an Indian and a Japanese American, all of them from 18 to 21 years old. In a combat platoon, we were evaluated by our peers on our ability to help the platoon survive and not on our racial backgrounds. A combat platoon pulled together and was tight with each other. With no room for the soldier who wouldn't do his share. So I, you know, it's always good to just point that out. These are just people, this is a cross section of America and these, these are pretty stereotypical, right? A cowboy from Wyoming, you know, this is, this is stereotypical stuff. And that's, that's one thing that the military. So when I joined, I grew up in New England, right? When I joined the Navy and I got to California.

• 26:49Jocko Willink?

  And I went to the enlisted man's club on NAB Coronado, the Gator Gardens. Back in the day, I was 18 years, no, I was 19 years old. And I showed up, you know, because there's a club, so it's a club on base, right? And so I go, I'm gonna go there. People saying, hey, we're gonna go to the, the club. So I go, okay, well, let's go see what's going on there. So I walk over to the club and as I'm kind of standing outside, I see two guys walk by with, with jeans on, with cowboy boots, with big belt buckles and cowboy hats and like a Wrangler shirt. And I was kind of thinking to myself, oh, that's, that's, is there some kind of, is it Halloween? Is these guys getting dressed up for something? And again, this is pre-internet, man.

• 27:34Jocko Willink?

  I mean, and, and, and then I see a couple more guys go by and it turned out it was country, what, western night, but. At the club that you went to? At the club, but I had never seen a person in, you know, I come from a, a small town in, in Connecticut. And there's, there's, there's just no cowboys up there. Yeah. And, and interestingly, there's farms and there's people that raise cattle and there's people that grow, you know, have, have farms, but they don't have cowboy boots and they don't wear cowboy hats. And so it's just, that's what I, that's what I was thinking about when I read this is just how you take all these different people from all over the place. They had no idea, you have no idea what other people are like. And again, this is pre-internet.

• 28:18Jocko Willink?

  You know, when I joined the Navy, we didn't get to Google, we didn't watch YouTube videos, cause you, you're exposed to the entire planet and, and galaxy through YouTube.

• 28:31Jocko Willink?

  First time you saw a real cowboy, huh? Mm-hmm. It is. I thought, I thought they were, I thought they were dressed up. I thought they were dressed up. Yeah. It is kinda crazy.

• 28:45Jocko Willink?

  And then, you know, I ended up, I mean, in, in TU Bruiser, we had all kinds of guys from Texas and there's all kinds of cowboys down in Texas. Uh, like, I mean, Chris, Chris Kyle was like a legit, whatever, rodeo dude in Leif. Leif's a cowboy. Leif's an absolute cowboy. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there was all kinds of cowboys in there. Yeah. So, alright, now, we, we're gonna advance a little bit and this is the first time that, that Downs is actually in charge. Um, he did a little turnover with the, with the former platoon commander. He takes charge of the platoon. And he's doing security for the bridges, for some bridges that are out kind of away from the main camp.

• 29:30Jocko Willink?

  And they're out there to prevent landmines and gather intel and kinda set up a checkpoint and, and they're there, they're, they're actually staying out there. So they would, they would set up by these bridges. And as they're getting set up for the first time, I'm going to the book. An explosion ripped the air behind me, followed immediately by a scream. My body instinctively threw my, threw itself against the sandbags as my mind shouted, mortar attack. My eyes registered the scene of men frozen in shocked wonderment, their eyes staring behind me. Man was directly in front of me and the track men were off in the background, crouching where they-

• 30:07Jocko Willink?

  Where they were when the explosions went off, so they're actually out there with some tracked vehicles. Quickly turning around, my eyes swept an awful catastrophe. One of the claymores had gone off, shattering forever the lives of the three men in front of it. Jesus Christ, was it a mortar? No, one of our claymores went off. Get those men quick. No, no, wait, there's another claymore out there. What the fuck set it off? What about the other one? So, imagine this, you you get to a position and you want to put out claymore mines. And if you don't know what a claymore mine is, it's a directional blasting mine that you set off by command detonation. So you have a little, a little thing that you squeeze.

• 30:50Jocko Willink?

  And when you squeeze this thing, it sends an electrical charge down the wire into the claymore, detonates a blasting cap, the claymore explodes and everything in front of it's gonna die. Well, they had set up the claymores and then they were going to put some barbed wire out. And as they were putting the barbed wire out, there was a storm, electrical storm, you know, thunderstorm. And the static electricity in the air actually set off the claymore. So, it killed, or it did some serious damage. Back to the book, only a few seconds had passed since the explosion. One of my men and I dashed to the other claymore, frantically fumbling, unscrewing the plug and holding the blasting cap, throwing it away from the claymore. Then I rushed back to the radio. Two men were applying first aid.

• 31:33Jocko Willink?

  The other positions were covered by the men assigned to them. They had stayed in place during the action. Good training, I thought as I fumbled with my map. It was folded in a plastic radio bag. All of us used to carry maps in. Delta six, this is one six, over. One six, this is delta six, over. This is one six, I need dust off. There's been an accident resulting in three peanuts, over. We tried to say nothing over the radio that could be understood by the enemy. Thus, we used code words for certain things. A Kool-Aid was a dead soldier and a peanut was a wounded soldier.

• 32:03Jocko Willink?

  This is Delta Six, what the hell happened, over? This is One Six, static electricity in the air set off a claymore while three trackmen were putting out barbed wire, over? This is Delta Six, what's your position, over? Now what would he ask me that for? I was on the bridge he'd assigned to me. Let's see, we're here, so I read right and up, real easy, just like all the training, so he's looking at his map, he's trying to figure out where he is. Of course, that was my first responsibility, where men had been hurt, so maybe that accounted for what happened next in spite of training. Lieutenant, Lieutenant, you've gotta get a dust off out here, quick. This man's got a bad head wound, said one soldier as they brought the wounded over to me. Dirty black clouds with lightning crashing around added to the confusion as the wind howled over from all directions. Huge raindrops started to spatter down.

• 32:49Jocko Willink?

  This is One Six, I'm at coordinates 298028, over? I read them out. This is Delta Six, are you sure of that, over? This is One Six, uh, let's see, yeah, it's, that's it, alright, there. One Six, you better check that again. According to what you gave me, you're in the South China Sea, over? Oh, did he sound mad, goddamn, I've done this a million times. The thought ran through my mind as a sweat broke out. The wounded were groaning, the storm was reaching gigantic proportions, and the track sergeant was demanding to know where that fuck that dust off was. Concentrate, Fred, concentrate, I said to myself while staring at the meaningless blob of colors, worlds, and numbers, so he's looking at his map, he's just trying to figure it out. Suddenly, everything gelled in perfect clarity.

• 33:33Jocko Willink?

  Delta Six, this is One Six, you're right, my coordinates are 288028. I need a dust off, fast, over? One Six, this is Delta Six, I know where you are, I just wanted to see if you could figure it out. I already called the dust off.

• 33:50Jocko Willink?

  So Captain Sells, this, that's who he was talking to, Captain Sells, that's, uh, that's Delta Six, the commander of the company. And even in this pressure situation, he's trying to make sure that the guy is thinking, he's in opportunity to think for the first time under pressure. And he already called the dust off, but he's still putting the test to him and seeing how he operates under that kind of stress and pressure. Another, uh, following situation, they're, they're kinda sitting in this location and they see a woman start to, start to approach, where they had some, some equipment. And she was, looked like she was gonna steal some stuff. And you know, it's kinda no big deal, okay, she's gonna steal some, whatever, some ponchos or something. Well, then they see her, what she picks up is a case of grenades.

• 34:35Jocko Willink?

  And they're thinking, wait a second, now this just got really bad. Because if she was stealing a poncho, okay, no big deal, but if she's stealing grenades, that's stuff that's gonna be used to come back and kill them. But again, because we have a guy with a, with a conscience, you know, a guy that sees where the line of darkness is and he doesn't wanna cross it. So instead of just shooting her, which he could've done, he loads a, a magazine of tracer rounds into his, into his weapon, and he starts shooting them around her, kinda warning shots, and then eventually starts shooting, he's a good shot, he starts shooting at the little rope

• 35:15Jocko Willink?

  that holds the case that she's holding on to. He starts shooting at that rope, shoots at it like five or six times, finally hits the rope, kinda hits her hand, she drops it, she runs off. Again, just trying to show the discretion that this guy's using as a real contrast to, to the Milai episode.

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  Now, speaking of that, they've, a little later on, they roll up some prisoners. One is an old man, and one is a young man. And this old gray-haired sergeant starts going after them. So they got these two prisoners, they're captured. And here's the sergeant, "So, you're the fuckers that zapped my buddies in the tank?" The old gray-haired sergeant snarled. "Without warning, he swung a heavy fist into the face of the old man, knocking him down. The other fist swung into the face of the younger man, knocking him down beside the old man. The sergeant was screaming and bellowing as he pummeled the two men on the sand. They rolled into balls for protection, but were hampered by their tied hands. I ran from the road, yelling my two men to pull the sergeant off the prisoners.

• 36:19Jocko Willink?

  They grabbed him by his soldiers as he fought them to get back to the Vietnamese. He lashed out with his foot at the prisoners, catching one of them in the side. "What the hell are you doing, Sergeant? Those men are my prisoners," I exclaimed. His face was red with fury as he yelled back at me, "You had no right to take those stinking Kong prisoners." He smelled of beer that he had drunk. "You should have killed those motherfuckers like they killed that other tank crew." "Fuck, these men are tied up." "We don't know who they are," I yelled back. I was saved by the sound of Lieutenant Knutson's voice breaking over the argument. "Calm down Sergeant, go back to your tent." The other lieutenant was the commander of the tanks. Again, I'm pointing this out. He's new in country, he sees somebody beating up a prisoner.

• 37:04Jocko Willink?

  They had just lost one of the tanks to a mine earlier. And obviously the gray-haired sergeant's pissed and he wants to take it out on these guys. But, you know, calmer, cooler heads prevailed in that situation. Now, speaking of mines, mines, back to the book, mines continue to be laid in the road at irregular intervals. "It was a fact of life, but the terror of an explosion never failed to send a shiver through our guts no matter how many times we heard them." "Whatever we were doing, our heads would jerk around." "It was as terrifying to hear the explosion, see the ugly gray and black cloud as it ripped into the air,

• 37:44Jocko Willink?

  see dark pieces of metal, canvas machinery, and human beings flying in the blossom of death out from the center of destruction."

• 37:53Jocko Willink?

  And this one big mine happens. And he's going to check it out, it hits a truck, it hits a vehicle. I approached the twisted wreck. "It was very disheartening to see the smoking wreck which had once been the carrier of human beings." "There were wisps of smoke drifting upward from the hulk." "As we approached closer, we saw parts of the driver's body mangled beyond recognition in the cab and on the ground." "The main portion of the driver was only recognizable because we knew that was what it was supposed to be." "My men ran toward the still-living being huddled in the rice paddy mewling over and over that his leg was gone." "The scene of desolation brought about the true impact of the Vietnam War to me."

• 38:38Jocko Willink?

  "There was no enemy to fire at, there was no, nothing to retaliate against." "At a distance, the traffic of vehicles and Vietnamese watched."

• 38:52Jocko Willink?

  All that remained was the messy job of cleaning up while thinking that this could happen to us. A small part of our mind tried to retain its sanity by reminding itself over and over that it would never happen to us. It can happen to everyone else, but it would not happen to me. With that in mind, we started scraping up what was left, preparing it for the plastic body bag. Now, eventually, they, they go from guarding the bridges to where they start doing patrols

• 39:33Jocko Willink?

  out in the jungle, and ambushes out in the jungle, and direct action missions out in the jungle, and at this point, they're out in the jungle. And, I'll go to the book, "My platoon and I had not shaved for three or four days. Delta Six was a bear about shaving. Combat patrol or not, just because we lived like animals didn't mean we had to look like them," was his way of thinking. Throwing my fatigue jacket across a bush, I grabbed my shaving gear and told Spag and Visonor to accompany me. We would guard each other as we shaved. So, the, the company commander's coming out, and they're unshaven, and they're like, "Okay, we gotta shave real quick."

• 40:12Jocko Willink?

  But, again, you can see that Captain Sells has a real influence, and you can see that that discipline, it carries over, and when you let it slacken, but then you go visit your troops and they have to get back in line, it brings them back to humanity, it makes them, reminds them that they, because think about it, that shaving is something you do in the military every single day, so when all of a sudden you're out in the field, you start losing that, you start slipping away from that, and things start, other things start slipping away as well. They get into a, uh, they get into some firefights out there, and at one point, he gets wounded,

• 40:54Jocko Willink?

  and I'm going to the book, "After Holmes had finished bandaging my arm, I put on my fatigue jacket and lit a cigarette. I felt good. I'd only been in country a few months and I had my second Purple Heart. The first one had been from a wound received in October. To top it off, I'd been wounded twice in one day, shot in the ear in the morning, and hit with a grenade shrapnel in the afternoon. Luck was with me. All three wounds had been slight."

• 41:21Jocko Willink?

  Now, you can say luck when you get shot in the ear and you are lucky for sure. But that's, that's a real, that's a real eye opener indicating that you realize how close you were to dying. And I had guys get shot in the helmet and, and they didn't like it one bit. Cause that's real close. Someone got real close to, to getting you.

• 41:47Jocko Willink?

  Now, going forward more, there's a, there's a battle going on and the company's out in the field. And they're not directly involved in the battle. So they get told, okay, we want you to go set up where the, where we think the, the VC is going to run to. Where we think they're going to run. You guys set up a blocking force so that way when the VC runs into you, you ambush them and take them out. So they're kind of maneuvering to go set that up. His platoon is maneuvering to set that up and we'll go to the book. After 15 minutes or so, we were approximately halfway down the ridge. The captain gave me a call. Dragon six had decided it would be better if I halved my platoon, marching the two elements in opposite directions in order to cover a larger area.

• 42:30Jocko Willink?

  I was dead set against this. My platoon was below strength and dividing it would be asking two reinforced rifle squads to defend hundreds of acres of jungle against a foe of unknown size. So Dragon six is above the company commander. This is now the battalion commander. And so now you're getting an order from the battalion commander. So it's, you know, you're a young lieutenant, platoon commander. And you're getting told to do this and he doesn't feel good about it.

• 42:58Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, but orders were orders, especially from Dragon six. I passed back the word for Sheldon brand to come up. I was poring over my map and compass when Sheldon brand reached me. The battle was full, the full blown. It sounds, it sound provided background noises. I briefed Shelley on the situation and our orders. Shit, I don't like it, sir. I know I don't either, but it's a lick. You got your map and compass? Good. So there's all kinds of reasons why they don't like this idea. Uh, obviously, one that he already stated was that, you know, you take your platoon and you cut them in half. That's, that's just, you don't have the same fighting capability at all.

• 43:42Jocko Willink?

  I think they had one, one heavy machine gun in each squad. So now you got, basically they're down to two squads because they were under strength. So we're talking one heavy machine gun. And by the way, if somebody gets wounded, you know, you got your wounded guy. And if you're going to carry that guy, it takes two or three guys to carry the guy. So that's four guys gone. So you could very easily be outnumbered, outmanned and outgunned by the enemy. So he doesn't like this idea. On top of that, I will tell you, he doesn't talk about it here. When you split up in a situation like this, it's becomes very difficult to do command and control. And now you've got two elements that are weaker size and you're, you're no longer able to support each other. That's the, that's the premise of cover and move. Cover and move means you want to be close enough that you could support each other. You don't want to split far apart where you can't help each other if something happens.

• 44:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's what they're getting told to do. They don't like it and, but they do it. And maybe he should have protested more, but he's getting, he's getting orders from the battalion commander. And he says, okay, let's do it. And of course, within a couple of minutes of doing it, they lose radio contact. So now they can't, they can't hear each other and they're starting to march apart. Finally, they get radio, uh, they get connected on the radio again, they get comms again. And it sounds like this, one five, this is one six. Have you figured out where you are yet? This is one five, negative. So Shelley with his squad is lost, doesn't know where he is. Okay.

• 45:11Jocko Willink?

  Now, the lieutenants all set up though, they're, they're in their position where they're thinking the enemy might come by. They're set up to attack them.

• 45:21Jocko Willink?

  And here we go back to the book. Lieutenant, Porter whispered as he reached my side. We hear noises to our front. Men are moving across in front of us in the jungle. Hold on a second, Porter. One five, this is one six. The sound of the battle should be on your right if you're going in the right direction. Where are the sounds? Over. This is one five. Negative on the right. The sounds are on the left. Over. One five. Did you just say the sounds are on your left? I was squeezing the handset so hard my knuckles were white. Affirmative, affirmative. Jesus Christ, one five, I hoarsely whispered intensely into the mouthpiece. You're heading in our direction. I could hear the sounds of men moving through the jungle below us. I whispered to Porter, get back down there and tell the men to hold their fire.

• 46:06Jocko Willink?

  That may not be dinks after all. Hurry. Porter had heard the conversation with Shelley and quickly turned to carry out my order. He couldn't yell because the sounds were coming from the dink soldiers. His yell would put us in jeopardy. As Porter started toward the crew, the machine gun crew opened fire. The harshness of the guns, multiple explosions ripped across my thoughts as its sound echoed through the handset I was holding next to my ear. The sound of Americans swearing and screaming rebounded from the jungle below and from my handset. Cease fire, I screamed, cease fire, so he can actually hear his guys getting shot by his own guys. We have a blue on blue.

• 46:48Jocko Willink?

  Porter and I were running to the gun crew, both of us yelling, cease fire, cease fire, the sound of their gun blanketing the screams in front of them. Abruptly, the gun quit firing. I yelled into the jungle, Shelley, is that you? Yes, yes. Stop firing, don't fire. I was answered by many voices. I stood there an instant. The horrible realization that I had fired on my own men swept over me like a wave from an ice cold hell. The gun crew looked at me, their faces filled with shock. I ran, leaping and falling down to the brush line where my men were, asking the question, anybody hit? For Christ's sake. Gallagher yelled back as I burst into a small clearing. One man, the point man.

• 47:33Jocko Willink?

  So there you go, blue on blue, another reason why if you don't have to separate your forces, you don't. You don't separate your forces unless you have to, and when you do it, you do it with extreme caution. And we, we've, I think every book, we've, we talk about blue on blue, it happens in all these books, it happens in my book, and some of these descriptions right here, I recognize those 100% when he says, "The horrible realization I'd fired on my own men swept over me like a wave from an ice cold hell." Yeah, I totally recognize that. And the fact that he says, "The gun crew looked at me, their faces filled with shock." When I, when I explained to my guys in the field, like, "That was a blue on blue," their faces were just complete

• 48:14Jocko Willink?

  shock. If you're in the military, if you're in law enforcement, be very careful when you split your forces. It's, it just multiplies the challenges. Sometimes it is necessary, but you've gotta keep control over it. And now we go to where he's calling for a medevac for his, for his wounded guy. Delta Six, this is one six, over. This is Delta Six, over. This is one six, I need a dust off for a peanut. We've run into a little action, over. This is Delta Six, what do you mean a little action? What's going on? What happened? Over. My knees felt weak and

• 48:54Jocko Willink?

  my stomach was sour. This is one six. We had a little difficulty with, with the terrain and, uh, I ambushed one five, over. What? How the fuck did you do that, one six? You mean you ambushed your own men? What kind of outfit are you running up there? That's the most asinine thing I've ever heard of. You get your head out of your ass, one six, and get that platoon straightened up. You got that. Over. This is one six. Affirmative. Over. Ah, one six, give me your coordinates, the dust off's on its way. How bad is your peanuts? Over. This is one six. Not too bad. He'll lose a couple of toes, but everybody else is okay. Over. Alright, one six, settle down.

• 49:36Jocko Willink?

  He was more gentle with the last transmission because I'm sure he heard my voice and showed the strain I was feeling. Whatever the reason, I welcomed the sound of his voice. Perhaps he understood better than I thought what had happened. So he comes at him real hard. He realizes that the guy feels horrible and then he kinda backs off and says settle down. He also knows he's gotta stay in the game. He's gotta get him to stay in the game. And there's a nightmare of a video on YouTube of, and this actually it's from a documentary, but there was a really bad blue on blue in the first Gulf War where Apache gunship lit up, I think it was a Bradley, some kinda APC.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  I saw that.

• 50:16Jocko Willink?

  It's a nightmare, but you can hear the one guy that fired. They're saying, "Hey, you gotta get back in position, you know, hold the line basically." And he's like, "I just killed my own guys. I wanna come back." And they're saying negative. And so that's basically what this, what Captain Sells is doing here, saying, "Hey, listen. Okay, I'm pissed, but guess what? Calm down, settle down, get your shit together." And he says, "Out." And by the way, for those folks that aren't military, over, when you say over at the end of a transmission on the radio, it means you expect a reply. When you say "out," there's no reply expected. So like when we end this podcast, I say "out" because it's over. Don't say anything back to me. It's over.

• 50:58Jocko Willink?

  I don't say "over," and sometimes you'll hear people say "over" and "out" in the military. That doesn't, you don't say that. It doesn't make any sense. So when you hear that in a movie, know that they are cheesy.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Is that kinda like when they hang up the phone on the movie, he goes "dun," and you hear the dial tone?

• 51:16Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that doesn't really happen either.

• 51:20Jocko Willink?

  "I trudged back, back to the book. I trudged back to my position, one, five and his men following. Man handed me a can of coffee. I chain smoked my cigarettes and drank coffee while the platoon expanded into a larger perimeter. I stood facing the mountain, the battle still raging on. One, five walked over to me, still shaken from his experience. He told me how he was sorry that he had gotten to me in such a Dutch with the captain, and we discussed the operation, going over his mistake while we attempted to figure out ways to keep it from happening again if we were ever split up. Shelley and I had been through too much together for me to blame him for what had happened. I told him so, and we let it go at that. We had been lucky." Besides, I blamed myself for what had happened.

• 52:02Jocko Willink?

  The responsibility for any unit's actions ultimately rests with its commander. The leader got the glory when things worked out, and he took the blame when they didn't. That went with the job. When it came right down to it, the men were my responsibility, and I had failed them today. Little bit of Extreme Ownership, if you read the book Extreme Ownership that Leif and I wrote, the opening chapter, that's what it's about. Blue on blue and doing exactly what Lieutenant Downs did right there, taking ownership of what the mistakes were made in the battlefield. Back to the book, there's a couple guy, well, actually not yet, they're, they link up with

• 52:47Jocko Willink?

  another, with another platoon, and now, they're having a conversation. Downs is having a conversation with another officer named Anderson. A dink was lying next to us as we talked. He had a black ace of spades stuck onto his fist. "Hey Anderson, what's that all about?" "That's so the dinks know what outfit fucked them up over here. Look around, most of the dinks got those in their hands." Sure enough, the dinks were all holding an ace of spades. "That's a good idea, but where'd you get all the aces?" "One of the guy's moms works in a card store, so he wrote home asking to send her a couple packs of nothing but ace of spades." "Why did we want to kill dinks?"

• 53:29Jocko Willink?

  "After all, we had mostly been law-abiding citizens back in the world, and we were taught that to take another man's life was wrong. Somehow, the perspective got twisted in a war. The government told us it was alright, and in fact, a must to kill members of another government's people, then we had the law on our side." "It turned out that most of us liked to kill other men. Some of the guys would shoot at a dink as much as they would at a target."

• 53:59Jocko Willink?

  Some of the men didn't like to kill a dink up close. The closer the killing, the more personal it became. Others in the platoon liked to kill in close. A few even liked to torture the dinks if they had a prisoner, or cut the dead bodies with knives in a frenzy of aggression. A few didn't like to kill at all, and wouldn't fire their weapons, except to protect their buddies. Mostly, we all saw it as a job and rationalized it in our own way. Over it all, ran the streak of anger or fear, that for brief moments, ruled us all. My job as platoon leader was to control the spectrum of emotions, to guide the men towards survival.

• 54:42Jocko Willink?

  I didn't believe in torturing, or in allowing a dink to die a lingering death. In the jungle, we never took prisoners if we could help it. Every day we spent in the jungle eroded a little more of our humanity away. Prisoners could escape to become our enemy again, hence, no prisoners. The philosophical arguments, in favor of man's ability to resist the slide into barbarism, sound noble and rational, in a classroom, or at a cocktail party. But when the enemy is bearing down on you, bent on taking your life away from you, it's not his country against your country. Not his army against your army. Not his philosophy against your philosophy. It's

• 55:23Jocko Willink?

  the fact that that son of a bitch is trying to kill you, and you'd better kill him first.

• 55:30Jocko Willink?

  That's a reality, right there.

• 55:34Jocko Willink?

  Now, going back to tactics a little bit.

• 55:39Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. There was a spot about midway down the mountain, marked in blue. That meant something bigger than a stream. If I were an enemy commander, that would be a perfect spot for a camp. High mountains on three sides, good water supply, thick jungle growth, and escape path in any directions. If he decided on that location, the enemy commander would be counting on attack from the valley up towards his location. He would have his back guarded, but not very heavily, or so I reasoned. I just liked that because you can see, he's getting his mind in the mind of the enemy. He's thinking about what would... He's looking at the map, he sees stream, he sees valley, he sees good, good, uh, covered positions from three sides. He's thinking, okay, this is what the enemy must be thinking, right here.

• 56:23Jocko Willink?

  Now, the, the fighting continues, and, and as always, you know, I'm burning through book. I mean, this is a, this is a 250-page book, and I'm reading, you know, what, maybe 20 pages from it? So, there's so much action going on, and, and so many good lessons to learn. Obviously, I can't cover them all, that's why you can buy this book yourself, as you should. But here we go, I'm going to a point here where, they've been in a firefight, they got three wounded, one of the guys lost an arm, one of them's unconscious, and they're getting a, they have a helicopter that's come in, and the helicopter's lowered down a cable, and they're lifting the guys out to get them to a medevac situation. Back to the book, "The signal was given, and the cable pulled him off the ground.

• 57:08Jocko Willink?

  About halfway up, he waved to all of us, grinning like a Cheshire cat. Blood dripped on us. It was a picture I shall always hold in my mind. A man dangling from a cable, holding a stick fastened to a tourniquet on the stump of his leg, waving at his comrades with the other hand. A cigarette dangling from his lips." "One-six. This is getting hairy up here, we're starting to take fire," the pilot reported. "Hold on, just one more." Spag and I lifted the unconscious man up, while we slid the vest onto him. Someone had to be the cable which I hooked onto the ring. The unconscious man was winched upward, dangling like a limp doll at the end of a cable. Spag and I stood underneath, watching this final exodus.

• 57:53Jocko Willink?

  As the crewman reached out to grab the man, something went wrong. The man had become unhooked and somehow fell through fifty feet of sky towards us. We jumped back as the man fell in a heap at our feet. The medic and I pulled the man over. Fuck." He stopped breathing. He goes on to say, "The attrition rate on our side was terrible on our morale. Although we killed and wounded many of the NVA, we never knew how much it hurt them. It seemed there was an unlimited number to take their places. But on our side, when we lost a man, we all knew, and it wore heavily on our minds.

• 58:38Jocko Willink?

  The constant marching and fighting demanded two things of us: strength and absolute reliability."

• 58:48Jocko Willink?

  Now they're moving out on another operation. And there's one of the, one of the soldiers named Yoder. Yoder was the point man. He was experienced and full of good humor due to his promotion to door gunner. A good man to have on point any day. He was aggressive and unafraid. Even though he was going in soon, there was no question of putting someone else in his place on point. It was his turn and he would not have it any other way. So he's getting promoted to door gunner. So he's gonna get pulled out of the field. He's gonna fly around in a helicopter. Um, you know, relatively safe compared to being in the field.

• 59:25Jocko Willink?

  He reminded me of a hillbilly with his coarse language, mannerisms and humor. I was always asking him when he was gonna get that front tooth replaced. That missing tooth made him look more like a hillbilly than anything else. He always laughed and said, "Fuck sir, I ain't about to let them fucking army dentists work on me. Shit, no, that would be a lick on me."

• 59:48Jocko Willink?

  So they continue their patrol and they're coming up on this kinda flat area. And Yoder crept forward in a crouch, looked back at me and grinned. I grinned back and nodded my head. Yoder stepped over a tree root, holding up part of the small gully bank. At that moment, all hell broke loose as a Chicon machine gun strafed the point element. Yoder was hit in the body and fell forward into the gully. The machine gun acted as a key which triggered a complete ambush. We walked into a classical U-shaped ambush with the machine gun being at the base of the U. So this is, we, we used to call this a fire sack when you get ambushed and you're completely surrounded by the enemy.

• 1:00:32Jocko Willink?

  And that's where, that's where they are. Starts with this machine gun hitting Yoder and then just breaks out.

• 1:00:43Jocko Willink?

  Explosions, machine guns and rifle bullets ripped through the air and ricocheted off the ground and trees around us. The noise was overwhelming. Men were screaming and yelling, trying desperately to get cover, or screaming when they were hit or thought they were hit, which was almost as terrifying. We still had not seen any of the enemy in the thick growth around us. Most of us, in the point, played dead. I lay trying to get my thinking organized as to what to do. So you're just taking massive ambush and you're laying there thinking, "What am I gonna do?" I could hear Yoder crying on the other side of the route where he'd fallen. He cried out for me to come and get him. "Lieutenant, I've been hit. I've been hit bad. I'm dying. Please come and get me. Please come and get me."

• 1:01:24Jocko Willink?

  I turned my head in his direction. Twigs and bark from trees were falling like snow all around us, as the terrible shrapnel and firepower ripped through the jungle around us. I was terrified.

• 1:01:41Jocko Willink?

  So they're pinned down and he's actually ends up going to try and help one of the other guys first, a guy named Bell. And he gets to Bell, under covering fire, and he says, "Bell was able to help me but couldn't see anything. He limped and crawled. I pushed and swore as we continuously fell in our flight back up the hill. As I pulled him up the hill, one of my feet was shot up from underneath me. I'd been shot in the heel, one of the bullets knocking off a piece of my boot heel. And then, and the force had knocked me down. I got up again and felt a tremendous blow to my hip knocking me down. Hit again, I thought. Finally, I got Bell behind a rock. Doc was there and started

• 1:02:24Jocko Willink?

  working on him. I lay on my back, looking up at the sky through the jungle canopy, not believing I'd actually made it down there and back. Yoder was still down there, and although I had witnessed the bullets hitting him, I didn't want to leave. I had to be absolutely sure he was dead. I would never forgive myself if I pulled back and he was still alive." I was ready to call artillery in on our position if we were overrun. And that's like the ultimate.

• 1:02:52Jocko Willink?

  The ultimate game over move. We're gonna be overrun by the enemy. Okay, here we go. I'm gonna call, call all ordnance on my position. Drop. But luckily, the fire subsides. The one of the other platoons had come to their help. And now that other platoon shows up and the enemy's pretty much gone and had stopped shooting. We all stood up. A couple of my men and I ran down to where 3/6's point was standing over Yoder.

• 1:03:20Jocko Willink?

  I leaped over the edge of the gully and stopped at Yoder's body. Kneeling down, I turned his body over. He had died with his head lying downhill. His face was a dark blue from the blood which gravity had pulled into the downhill portion of his body. There wasn't much blood on his body, but numerous bullet holes were cut into his fatigues, covering his stomach and chest. His eyes were closed. I looked at him for a moment, my thoughts running back to our many conversations in the past. Once we had discussed whether we would go to the aid of one of our fellow soldiers if he was in trouble. I had told him I would always respond to one of my men if they needed help.

• 1:03:58Jocko Willink?

  He had replied it would be a lick on me. I wondered if he had known that I tried to get to him.

• 1:04:06Jocko Willink?

  He was the first man under my command to die.

• 1:04:11Jocko Willink?

  I looked up to see some of my platoon and 3/6's platoon standing over a dink body in the gully. 3/6 had an Indian in his platoon, and I had an Indian in my platoon. They drew their knives and slashed the enemy's body in frustration. This was the only dead dink the men could find. One lousy dink for all that pain and suffering. At least we could take our hate out on that son of a bitch.

• 1:04:37Jocko Willink?

  They had also taken one prisoner. As well, the, the other platoon head.

• 1:04:46Jocko Willink?

  And so now he starts thinking. Back to the book, "This is it," I thought. I'd been wounded four times in battle. I had done my job. Captain Sells had asked after my third wound if I wanted to be sent back. Anyone with three wounds was do that. All it took was two wounds to get you out of the field. Surely four would let me live with myself. What was I trying to prove? But I answered my own question. The men depend on me. It's my job to keep them alive by giving them good leadership and looking after them. They need me.

• 1:05:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but shit. What did I owe myself? I had a wife and two little girls who needed me. The ten thousand dollars in insurance money wouldn't do them much good. Where did my duty lie? I was still shaking. I couldn't go through this again. Reluctantly, almost against my will, I started walking toward the captain. Captain? Yes, Fred. You asked once if I wanted to go out of the field, if I'd been wounded a third time. He turned and looked into my face. Yes? Well, I think, I mean, would you think I was letting you and my men down if I did? I stammered. No, I wouldn't. You've done your job. I could get you a job, get you a good job with S2. That's intelligence back in the rear.

• 1:06:06Jocko Willink?

  I, I think I want out. I don't know if I can do this again. Maybe I can't cut it. That's nonsense. You're a hell of a fine officer, and the men will understand, but you think about it. Okay, I will. Let me think. A little bit of confidence returned at his words. I handed Yoder's things to him. I wandered back to the packs, thinking, I should find Yoder's pack. Bell had stood up and was coming toward me when he saw the blindfolded Dink. In one motion, he swung his fist into the Dink's face. He hit him again and again, knocking the surprised Dink down in a burst of fury. Bell started kicking him. It was obvious Bell was going to kill him.

• 1:06:50Jocko Willink?

  The other men and I stood smoking and watching. We were gonna let Bell kill the Dink. Bell had the right. Captain Sells yelled and ran over to us, pushing me out of the way and pulling Bell off the dink. "Here, what's this? What's going on? We are not gonna have this in my company. This man's a prisoner." "Lieutenant Downs? What are you doing just standing there?" I looked at him in surprise. Bell was killing this motherfucker. "What's wrong with that?" I retorted. "You know goddamn well what's the matter with that lieutenant? This man is defenseless and our prisoner. Now let's get this prisoner back to the LZ." I wanted the dink dead, but the captain was right.

• 1:07:35Jocko Willink?

  So you can see there, obviously Captain Sells has a great head on his shoulders. And there's something else at play. The other thing that's at play is that by function of the way the battle went down, and by function of being one rank above the platoon commanders that are in the firefights, guess what? He is de facto, he's detached. He's detached. He didn't, I mean Bell's the guy was pinned down, almost got killed, right? He's the guy that's emotional. And guess who pulled him out, risked his life, lost the odor? That was Downs. So these guys are emotional, they're, they're, they wanna kill this guy.

• 1:08:17Jocko Willink?

  They captured him, he's VC, let's kill him. And Captain Sells is detached because he wasn't in that firefight, he wasn't directly there, so he's able to maintain enough mental detachment to, to make a hard decision, but also hold the line. And this is something that, you know, when we go through the Mealy-Lyme massacre, this could have happened over and over again. This could have happened anywhere along the way. Someone could have said, "Hey, what are you doing right there? Stop. We don't do that." And that's exactly what Sells does. And I think another thing that's, that's important from a leadership perspective, also, well, before I go to that point, you notice that when he's having a personal conversation

• 1:09:01Jocko Willink?

  with Lieutenant Downs, he calls him Fred? But when he's screwing up and he needs to kinda put him in his place, he's Lieutenant Downs.

• 1:09:10Jocko Willink?

  On top of that, from the leadership perspective, from Captain Sells' perspective, he's gotta always remember that wha- what is happening, that they are emotional, that they did just lose their buddy. They, he's got, he can't just, you know, be so on the straight and narrow that goes, "Oh, I'm gonna court martial you." He could court, he could court martial, "Belle, right? Hey, you abused a prisoner, you're, you know, I'm gonna court martial you." And he doesn't do that, because he understands their perspective. And that's why, you know, again, throughout this book, Sells really impresses me as a, as a very squared away, good, solid leader. As does Downs. I mean, Downs, obviously, right here, he's emotional, and he's lost it. Uh, he's, he's crossed the line, right?

• 1:09:54Jocko Willink?

  But, all it takes is Sells just telling him, "Get back over here, buddy. You crossed the line, come back." And he says, "The captain was right." So that's all it took, just a little snap, just to get him to detach a little bit from the emotions, and, and move, move away from the darkness. Back to the book. "I walked over to the bodies. Yoder's eyes were partially shut, and I leaned down to push them close. Not that it did any good, but for some reason, I thought it was better that way. I stood there with one hand on my aching hip, smoking and thinking. Yoder's face was all muddy from the numerous times he'd been dropped in the mud, and there was a trickle of blood at the base of his throat.

• 1:10:38Jocko Willink?

  This is the way it will always end, I thought. Men being killed in the jungle, other men dragging their bodies out, putting them on choppers, and the rest of us going back to the fighting. When they left on the chopper, it was as if they had never been. Man's beginning and man's end would always be attended by only a few. Those that bore him at birth, and those that bore him at death. The only important thing was what he did in between. Good, or bad, or indifferent, he would touch those around him in some way, and then be gone. I wondered if a salute would be in order, not necessarily in the military sense, but

• 1:11:22Jocko Willink?

  a salute from one who had known him and who would never forget him. I decided it was, and I raised my hand to my forehead in a farewell."

• 1:11:37Jocko Willink?

  Now the bird's coming in to pick him up as after he gives that final salute to Yoder. Smoke was popped and the large chopper swung in towards us for his landing. The doors were pushed back and I saw the door gunner on the side facing me, looking around, anxiously searching for the ominous, for the omnipresent enemy. "Good man," I thought, not trusting a goddamn thing even with an American infantry company surrounding the LZ. And I lo- I lo- just love that. He's noticing that this door gunner's coming in, that he's coming to pick him up, and instead of this guy cutting corners and be like, "Oh, there's an infantry company, there's no rounds being fired, I'm just gonna relax," no, this guy's in the game, opens the door, doesn't- what does he say?

• 1:12:17Jocko Willink?

  He says, uh, "Not trusting a goddamn thing even with an American infantry company on the LZ."

• 1:12:27Jocko Willink?

  Many thoughts were crisscrossing my mind. Above everything else ran the thought that I could not abandon my men. I felt ashamed that I had asked Captain Sells to pull me out of the field earlier when I was still shaken. What would the men think if they found out I was doing such a thing? Worse, what would I think of myself?

• 1:12:52Jocko Willink?

  Now they continue to do operations and eventually they get, they, they get pulled out of the field on this, for the final time, on a helicopter. Back to the book, "The machine carried us away. I looked over, my men sprawled along the sides of the chopper. They had removed the magazines from their weapons before boarding and now were holding them close to their bodies. The men were dirty and unshaven, their clothes in various stages of disrepair, jungle boots worn and torn with clods of mud between the cleats. There were dark rings under their eyes and their faces were drawn and tired. Some of those faces were new men sent out to other places, the faces that started the operation and were erased.

• 1:13:37Jocko Willink?

  We had experienced the worst of life and the most challenging. We had survived.

• 1:13:44Jocko Willink?

  The platoon I took back was not the platoon I had brought out."

• 1:13:56Jocko Willink?

  Now, they're on yet another operation. After they go back, they get reset and they're out on another operation.

• 1:14:06Jocko Willink?

  Doing a patrol and I'm going back to the book. "About five meters past the gate, the two men turned to me and waved me forward. "All clear, sir. Let's go, Rudolph." I passed through the gate. My right hand grasped my M16, my left held my cigarette. I was humming the "Blue Tail Fly" as I mentally ticked off the positions around the saddle where I would set my men. I noticed the time. "Zero seven forty-five hours." My foot slipped backwards a fraction of an inch, hitting the trigger mechanism of a mine. I never heard the explosion. Black powder and dirt flew by me, my eardrums ripped. My body was flying through the air. I threw my arms in front of me in a reflex motion to balance myself. My eyes registered

• 1:14:51Jocko Willink?

  the horror of a brilliantly white jagged bone sticking out of the stump of arm above where my left elbow had been. Ragged bloody flesh surrounded the splintered bone. My mind cursed as utter helplessness and disrepair and despair overwhelmed me. Another part of my body coolly calculated what had caused the explosion. It had been a landmine. But what kind would blow off my arm instead of my legs? Of course, it had to be a bouncing Betty, a mine that flies up to, out of the ground after being tripped and explodes its waist high. That would do it. My M16 had been in my right hand. The rifle was shattered, my hand was mangled. I stared

• 1:15:33Jocko Willink?

  in horror at what remained of my right arm. The flesh had been ripped away exposing two bones in my white forearm from wrist to the elbow. The bones looked like two white glistening narrow rods buried in raw bloody meat. Thinking, "My God, my God, my God," I felt told defeat of my life as I landed on my feet five yards from where the mine had explode exploded. After landing, I staggered forward two or three steps and then collapsed. My legs wouldn't work. The mine had gone off about six inches from my left hip. From the waist down, my body was mutilated and torn where large chunks of flesh, muscles, blood vessels, and nerves had been ripped away by the hot exploding shrapnel.

• 1:16:17Jocko Willink?

  My buttocks were blown away, the back of my legs were ripped to the bone down to my heels. I rolled over on my back being careful to keep my stump and right arm out of the dirt and sand. My body was sending so many pain signals to my brain that it overloaded like an electrical circuit. It caused me to feel a racing, humming numbness. I lifted my head to view a scene from hell. I watched a couple of men run by me to the wounded point man. They would only glance at me sideways as I lay there holding my bloody stump in the air. They seemed nervous. Some of my men ran toward me then turned suddenly away at the sight of my torn body.

• 1:16:58Jocko Willink?

  They stood near me but hesitated to come too close, as if their movement through the air would make it worse. Spag asked me to turn sideways a little bit so he could pull my gear off. There were tears in his eyes as he worked over me. With a grunt, he pulled the belt out from under me. "Is there anything I can do for you, Spag?" asked. "Yes, run over there and pick up my arm and bring it back to me, I don't want to leave it in this stinking village."

• 1:17:25Jocko Willink?

  I told Marley to get my squad leaders. "Go take care of the other men, Doc, they need you." I looked up, Marley and my squad leaders were standing in a rough line along my right side. I asked who was hurt, I was feeling weaker and weaker, it was so goddamn cold. As my body fought for life, my thoughts ran to my men in my platoon. I felt I was cheating them by leaving them when they needed me most. When I had joined the platoon as their leader, they had taught me the ways to survive in combat. A second lieutenant who was new in country and they were old timers. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, but old to the ways of combat and death. As I gained experience and confidence as a leader, I became an old timer.

• 1:18:06Jocko Willink?

  Having to make decisions that put me in the position I was in now, wounded and maimed, facing death.

• 1:18:13Jocko Willink?

  My men were still up there, looking at me, despair on their faces. Their invulnerable leader had been brought down. Marley? Yes, sir. I want you to, your men, to get the dink who planted that mine. I want him dead. Get him. We will, One Six. Don't you worry about that. They looked at each other, then back at me.

• 1:18:35Jocko Willink?

  The gray haze of the day was strong. I pushed it back to look beyond my men. It was colder now, and harder to see. I was thinking of my Grandma Downs and her farm of the woods and fields of Indiana I love so much. If only I could walk them one more time. I'm only twenty-three years old, and I'm dying. What a waste. There are so many things I had meant to do and say, but I hadn't.

• 1:19:05Jocko Willink?

  Now I will never get the chance.

• 1:19:10Jocko Willink?

  So...

• 1:19:14Jocko Willink?

  Obviously, although he thought he was gonna die, he lived. He lost his arm, he, uh, ended up with a, with severe wounds, got discharged from the Army, and, you know, that's one of the things in the story. He had actually got picked up for a, for a pilot program. So he was gonna be a pilot in the Army. He was gonna stay in the Army, become a pilot. And obviously, that was gone, because he didn't have an arm anymore. Uh, luckily, they were able to save his other arm. But, you know, severe wounds, real long rehab, and eventually, he ends up going back to college.

• 1:19:54Jocko Willink?

  And here we go, back to the book. "In the fall of nineteen sixty-eight, as I stopped at a traffic light on my walk to class across the campus of the University of Denver, a man stepped up to me and said, 'Hi.' Without waiting for my reply to his greeting, he pointed to the hook sticking out of my left sleeve. 'Get that in Vietnam?'

• 1:20:17Jocko Willink?

  I said, 'Yeah, up near Tam Kye in One Corps.'

• 1:20:22Jocko Willink?

  'Serves you right.'"

• 1:20:28Jocko Willink?

  As the man walked away, I stood rooted, too confused with hurt, shame, and anger to react. Ten years have passed. The hurt, shame, and anger still flood over me with the memory. But one thing I am certain.

• 1:20:45Jocko Willink?

  None of the men I knew who served in Vietnam deserved to die or to be maimed, either physically or mentally. I think it is necessary now to give Vietnam, to give another view of Vietnam. That of the day-to-day life of an infantryman on the ground. I have always been asked what I thought about Vietnam, but never what it was like to fight in Vietnam. This is the way it was for us. The Platoon of Delta 16.

• 1:21:24Jocko Willink?

  And in the afterword, he talks about why he wrote this book.

• 1:21:32Jocko Willink?

  "In writing The Killing Zone, I had two goals.

• 1:21:39Jocko Willink?

  I wanted future young infantry lieutenants and non-commissioned officers to learn from my experiences, both good and bad. Some actions I took as a combat officer had worked out well, and some had not. The time had come to deal with both. Perhaps some would learn from my mistakes, especially the lessons that combat, especially the lesson that combat does not go by the book. I also wanted to show future generations that the American soldier in Vietnam was a good soldier. In 1978, the anti-war, anti-military feeling in the United States was pervasive in the newspapers, on television, among writers, in movies, and in colleges.

• 1:22:20Jocko Willink?

  I had started college in, at the University of Denver in the fall of 1968, while I was still on active duty in the military. The Students for a Democratic Society, the Weathermen, and other anti-war groups on campus targeted anyone in the military as fair game for their anti-war stance. Such hostility was not pleasant for me or other Vietnam veterans. It was hard to be denigrated for serving your country. Many veterans have never admitted, many veterans never admitted they were in the service for many years after Vietnam." Angry at the anti-war faction, I wanted to set the record straight by proving that the men I served with had fought and died with honor.

• 1:23:08Jocko Willink?

  And here are the men that died and made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom and for their brothers in arms from Delta Company, 1st Battalion of the 14th Infantry, 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division.

• 1:23:33Jocko Willink?

  PFC Donald Lawrence Glover. PFC Norman Charles Kissinger. PFC Robert Wayne Seaton.

• 1:23:47Jocko Willink?

  Spec 4 Gregory Thomas Iding.

• 1:23:53Jocko Willink?

  Spec 4 Charles Edwin Doc Hoffman. PFC James Garrett Miller.

• 1:24:07Jocko Willink?

  Spec 4 James Strong Yoder.

• 1:24:13Jocko Willink?

  PFC William Henry Harf. Spec 4 Steven Richard Anderson. Spec 4 Louis Charles Nelson.

• 1:24:26Jocko Willink?

  2nd Lieutenant William Dwight Ordway.

• 1:24:30Jocko Willink?

  PFC Paul James Miller.

• 1:24:34Jocko Willink?

  Spec 4 Jose Cortez.

• 1:24:41Jocko Willink?

  PFC Charles Peter Torliot.

• 1:24:46Jocko Willink?

  And 2nd Lieutenant John C. Martin.

• 1:24:55Jocko Willink?

  So Fred Downs, Second Lieutenant, asks us to do two things in this book. First, learn from his experiences, the mistakes, the lessons, and that is what we do here.

• 1:25:17Jocko Willink?

  We read, and we study, and we think, and we learn.

• 1:25:23Jocko Willink?

  And the second thing he asks is that we remember the men who fought and died with honor.

• 1:25:33Jocko Willink?

  And that's something that we need to do, and we should continue to do each and every day.

• 1:25:42Jocko Willink?

  Remember.

• 1:25:47Jocko Willink?

  And that is one thing about this podcast that is a...

• 1:25:59Jocko Willink?

  Has a lot of meaning to me, is the fact that people are listening to it, and the memory of these types of men and the challenges that they faced, it will be remembered. They will be remembered.

• 1:26:22Jocko Willink?

  Always.

• 1:26:29Jocko Willink?

  So, once again, the book is called "The Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War", by Frederick Downs. It's a fantastic read, it's a fantastic book, it's a fantastic dedication, and it's an incredible job of honoring these men that fought so hard in a very unpopular war. And buy the book and read it. You will absolutely get a lot out of it.

• 1:27:10Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles.

• 1:27:14Jocko Willink?

  I believe we can move on to the next sector of this podcast. And again, if nothing else is delivered through this podcast, you know, let's let it be these couple things. These couple ideas of learning lessons from other people's experiences and remembering other people's sacrifices. That's definitely one of the driving forces behind my will to do this podcast.

• 1:27:52Jocko Willink?

  And we're gonna keep doing the podcast. Echo, get me out of here, please. Get me out of this situation. I'm in that, I'm in that zone right now. Um, I need to send up a red star cluster. You know what that is? So, so in the military, when you need help, it's a red star cluster. It's a, it's a flare. You pop up and it's big. Means you couldn't communicate with anybody and you need some help. So there's my red star cluster. You need to jump in and say, hey, Jaco, speaking of the podcast. Here's how we can support it.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:28:22Jocko Willink?

  So, talk about that while I get over here and get myself under control before I start smashing things.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you want to send in reinforcements to support Jaco and, and our podcast here.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  While supporting yourself with supplementation, by the way. Good idea. Go to onnit.com/jaco. So Onnit has like these supplements that we take. Supplements for your joints. Krill oil, boom.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  Shroom tech for, uh, performance, hard stuff, you know? Uh, CrossFit, jujitsu. If you're trying to go hard, you know?

• 1:28:58Jocko Willink?

  Hardcore.

• 1:28:58Speaker 01

  In the paint. Um, yeah, shroom tech, boom.

• 1:29:03Speaker 01

  Also, if you do your shopping at Amazon, which I think we all do, um, go ahead and click through our website. We have a little link there, um, you know, and you can support it that way. That's a super easy way. All you gotta do is remember to do it before you shop.

• 1:29:19Jocko Willink?

  That is helpful.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, very much so. We also have a new tool.

• 1:29:26Jocko Willink?

  Cause can you, can you make the remembering part a little bit easier?

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  Yes, so when, you know, you figure, hey.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  I gotta remember to go to the website before I shop on Amazon. Sometimes I'm in a hurry, whatever, you know? Maybe I'm thinking about other stuff. I'm not thinking about Jocko's podcast every single day, all day. I gotta buy some, you know, some cleaner, some duct tape, whatever. Here's a way, so you, it helps you remember and/or makes you not have to remember. You know, it's this little tool called the Trooper Tool.

• 1:30:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  Jocko Podcast Trooper Tool. Thanks to Brady for that one.

• 1:30:05Jocko Willink?

  Brady, props.

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  It's a cool little thing. It's like this, this small little thing. It's pretty cool. You click on, there's, there's a little link on both websites. So you click on the thing, it asks you if you want it, you click yes. Puts a little icon there on your browser and it basically directs you to the, to the affiliate Amazon link, um, automatically. So you don't gotta think. Yeah, it's dope.

• 1:30:28Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's a really, uh, easy way to support the podcast and the, the, it doesn't cost you anything. It costs Amazon something. And it seems to me like Amazon can afford to kick a little bit to the podcast over here, right?

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it really, it does serve its purpose. Cause you know, Amazon, you know, like Amazon, they're, you know, they're a good company, provides good stuff, good service and all that. And they're trying to get the word out and you know, they, they partner with people who, who can get the word out.

• 1:30:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and there's people that are gonna go, oh, you know what? I wanna support the podcast, so I will buy this instead of buying it through some other website. They're gonna go to the, the, the store that's gonna support something that they enjoy or something that they get value out of, hopefully from this podcast. So yeah, that's an awesome way to support. We appreciate it.

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  And it makes it like, it's kind of, this little tool's kind of cool because it kind of makes it official, you know, like if you're, I mean, if you're one of the people that, that listen to this and really talk with us and stuff, it's, it is a cool way to kind of be more part of the, the group, I guess. I don't know, it seems like it. When I put mine up there, I'm like, hey, you know, I'm like official, I don't know, it felt like that to me. I don't know. Yeah.

• 1:31:33Jocko Willink?

  Michael Charles is in the game and we dig that.

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  So it's, yeah, it's, it's a really cool tool. You don't have to, it, it's safe. It's not like this, you just put it on if you don't want it on there anymore, for whatever reason.

• 1:31:43Jocko Willink?

  Right click it.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Right click and it

• 1:31:45Jocko Willink?

  Cause you made a little video that shows you go to the Jocko Podcast YouTube channel and Echo Charles made a video, a very high-speed instructional video on how to do this.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  I wasn't trying to waste anybody's time. It's really easy.

• 1:31:58Jocko Willink?

  You are not playing around with the instructional video. I think that was very impressive. And, and by the way, subscribe, do me a favor, troopers, subscribe to the YouTube channel, the Jocko Podcast YouTube channel. That way when Echo, cause I'm been, I've been hacking on Echo to make little outtakes and other little conversations and videos. And he's like, well, you know, we, we got some subscribers, but maybe, you know, if we had some more, maybe I'd be more, so we need to motivate Echo Charles just a little bit. Cause, so we could get some outtake videos, some other, other interesting videos. I wanted to do a little pre-video today of what it was like when we're getting set up.

• 1:32:37Jocko Willink?

  Cause we have a little ritual that we go through when we're making some, some beverages, you know, some, some alpha brainy. And we have little, so I was like, ah, it'd be pretty cool if you shot a little video. And he's like, well, you know, maybe one day.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  Are you trying to imitate me right now?

• 1:32:52Jocko Willink?

  No, I, I actually am imitating you. So subscribe to the, I don't think it doesn't, I mean, just, just go to, go to the Jocko Podcast channel on YouTube, subscribe.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I think it's youtube.com slash Jocko Podcast.

• 1:33:04Jocko Willink?

  And also what's cool about that is when you do that, then you get little emails that say, not like, you just get an email that says, hey, Jocko Podcast just uploaded a new video. I get those and I'm always like, oh yeah, cool. Now I can watch the video.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  And even that's optional.

• 1:33:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  You can opt out if you want. But yeah, that's a good, and I have, um, remember that, that one, uh, child children's book idea I had? Yeah. You probably forget, cause.

• 1:33:29Jocko Willink?

  No, you need to remind me. I got a lot of ideas.

• 1:33:31Speaker 01

  Anyway, I had that, I had that on video when we were talking, anyway.

• 1:33:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, oh yeah, that'd be funny. Yeah. So yeah, some, some things you gotta understand. So I have a certain stand, this, I'm not talking to you Echo and talking to people that are listening right now. I mean, you're here too. So I guess I'm talking to you too. But people gotta understand that there's a certain expectation in my mind of what the podcast is and what it's supposed to be. So. When something happens that's not quite there, I'm like, you know what? I don't really, hey, you know, I don't want to talk about that on the podcast. But this, like, for instance, before we hit record, we're recording, but before we go, before I open the show, we're talking about something, right? We're always talking about something, and sometimes those conversations are 20 minutes, half an hour.

• 1:34:17Jocko Willink?

  We're talking about real stuff. We're talking about legit things. But we haven't even introduced the podcast yet, so that goes in the scrap pile.

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:25Jocko Willink?

  Now, some of the scrap pile material, while it might not be in march, marching step with what the podcast is, it does perhaps have a, have a life that it could live and could, could guide people in a certain way, and it's stuff that people might be interested in. So that could be YouTube download, you know, YouTube just post on there. So that way people get a little taste of other things around the podcast, which I think people would dig.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So like, you know, if you-

• 1:34:56Jocko Willink?

  Free your mind, Echo Charles, free your mind.

• 1:34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, you, you're totally right. Um, the-

• 1:35:02Jocko Willink?

  Well, thank you, thank you. Once, for once.

• 1:35:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, cause you know, if you listen to it on iTunes, you're like, why am I gonna sit and watch Echo and Jock talk-

• 1:35:13Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  -to each other, you know? I listen to, what, and I gotta look at them too, you know? A lot of people might not be interested in that.

• 1:35:19Jocko Willink?

  There's some, there's some moments, you know what I do is, I, well, I watch certain moments of the podcast on YouTube.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:27Jocko Willink?

  Like, when I know I was feeling intense about something, I go and see what it, see what that looks like. See like, okay, what does that look like when I'm feeling that? Does it look like, does it look like from the outside, what it feels like from the inside? Cause even today, I was getting pretty fired up, like, I mean, you're talking about heroes. And young man, man, 18, 19, 20 years old, that said, okay, this unpopular war, I'll go fight it. I'll go fight it, you know, I'll go risk my life. I'll go out there in the jungle and live in, you know, I was, I was, uh, out this week in the field, right? Camping, I, I, I kept putting it in quotes on Twitter. I was putting in quotes, cause I was like, I can't call this the field.

• 1:36:11Jocko Willink?

  But you know, it wasn't the comfort of a house, right? It was in, it was, and it was, you know, bugs and ants and, and I'm like thinking to myself, you know? This is nothing. And I was thinking back to, uh, to the Forgotten Highlander. And remember the bugs were just eating those guys alive? And, you know, you just

• 1:36:34Jocko Willink?

  you just can't, you can't compare. So, these guys that that just stepped up, fought, I just wanna

• 1:36:45Jocko Willink?

  I just wanna always, you know, that kinda thing will get me fired up. So when I go back to the videos, sometimes I go, man, what was I looking like right there? You know? A little self-assessment. And I wonder if, you know, cause when I'm feeling that way, I'm like, okay, you gotta detach a little bit, cause you're starting to get a little bit fired up. I'm gonna start breaking, I'm gonna start getting like really emotional about something. And so I gotta, I gotta, the red flag goes up, I go, you gotta back off a little bit here. We don't have to edit the video if I break down. So, I gotta just back off. And sometimes I gotta see, what does that look like? Does it look, can you tell? Am I looking, you know, so? That's the kinda thing that I like to go back and look at the YouTube videos and say, you know, what does this, what does this look like?

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, yeah, yeah, there's some value, and there's a lot of value on YouTube that I'm, that we're probably not, uh, you know, capitalizing, I don't know, whatever, for, for people who care.

• 1:37:33Jocko Willink?

  And it's weird too, because the, the interesting thing about all this is, you use the word capitalize, right? And the fact of the matter is, we aren't really capitalizing on this at all. And I keep getting told by a variety of different people, what to do to, you, to do what, that right there, to capitalize.

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  I meant it just capitalize, not for us to capitalize, I mean for everybody, you know, people listen.

• 1:37:55Jocko Willink?

  But what we, what we wanna do is we wanna maximize the effort that we put in here, wanna maximize so that people get the most out of it.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I

• 1:38:05Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's what, I know that's what you meant. I know you didn't mean, like, let's run to the cash machine, cause we're doing it for the passion of doing it. That's what I'm sitting here for. Sitting here so I can tell, so I can tell this story right here about these guys.

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:18Jocko Willink?

  And I know, you know, I know, I hear from all kinds of cops, I hear from my, my SEAL buddies that are still in, that are listening to it, that are asking me, texting me questions going, hey, man, what's going on with this? Hey, what would you have done differently here? Hey, tho- those are my buddies that are in, that are getting ready to deploy overseas right now. And I get texts and emails and Twitter things from guys that were, guys that are active duty in the Marine Corps and, and the Army. So I know that we're getting the word out there and that's what that's what I'm sitting here for.

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, and and you make a good point with, you know, there's a lot of people who don't watch the video of course.

• 1:38:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, obviously, yeah. I mean, I don't watch podcast videos.

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:38:57Jocko Willink?

  I mean, why, why, you know, the reason podcasts are so convenient is you can be doing something else.

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:39:01Jocko Willink?

  You don't have to dedicate, you have to dedicate your, all your senses to it. You only have to dedicate two of them, your ears and your brain.

• 1:39:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:08Jocko Willink?

  But you don't have to dedicate your eyes, you don't have to dedicate your ass to sit down in a chair and watch something. You can walk around, you can do yard work, you can drive, you can do what you gotta do.

• 1:39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:17Jocko Willink?

  But I think the shorter little YouTube clips where you go, hey, check this out. This is when Jaco and I were discussing a kid's book that Echo was talking about or.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Good idea, by the way.

• 1:39:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  I'm gonna post it.

• 1:39:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, post that thing up.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's interesting because a lot of people apparently don't, I mean, don't, are surprised that I look different than I sound apparent, I guess.

• 1:39:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, they think you're a skinny white hipster.

• 1:39:40Speaker 01

  Or, yeah.

• 1:39:41Jocko Willink?

  That's what they think you are.

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  Maybe I am, at heart.

• 1:39:43Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you are at heart, you're just trapped, maybe you identify as a skinny white hipster.

• 1:39:47Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 1:39:48Jocko Willink?

  Even though you're a, a two hundred and twenty something pounds.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  I don't know, I don't, I don't, I don't identify myself by my physical characteristics. So it's what's in my heart and my mind.

• 1:39:59Jocko Willink?

  The content of your character, as we like to say.

• 1:40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the YouTube idea is a good idea, yeah, we'll, we'll post more stuff. I have a lot too, man, so many outtakes, a lot.

• 1:40:08Jocko Willink?

  Oh, and you've done some really good outtake videos in the past.

• 1:40:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they're pretty, yeah.

• 1:40:15Jocko Willink?

  From when we were filming commercials and stuff.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  Oh, right, yeah, yes, yes.

• 1:40:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, those were good.

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:40:19Jocko Willink?

  Anything else?

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  Jaco, you in?

• 1:40:22Jocko Willink?

  Jaco's store, did you talk about that? Yes, go to the store, buy some, buy some merchandise. Somebody hit me up on Twitter the other day and they're like, hey, you should set up a, we got asked this a bunch of times, set up a Patreon, Patreon? Is that what it's called?

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  Patreon, yeah.

• 1:40:34Jocko Willink?

  Patreon, where you can donate to the podcast, a certain amount, and I just said, hey, man. Go buy a T-shirt. You know, that supports us just as well.

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:42Jocko Willink?

  And you get a T-shirt and just that's a good way to support the podcast.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:45Jocko Willink?

  Buy some merchandise. Buy some gear.

• 1:40:47Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, the the Jaco story. That's a good one. T-shirts, coffee mugs, stickers. Those are kind of cool. Um, one of my friends saw two Jaco stickers in the wild.

• 1:40:57Jocko Willink?

  In the wild.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  In one day. Yeah.

• 1:40:58Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Or maybe just over the weekend.

• 1:41:00Jocko Willink?

  What location?

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  Here, San Diego.

• 1:41:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, everyone in San Diego. We know everyone in San Diego. Doesn't count.

• 1:41:04Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:41:05Jocko Willink?

  I want to see it in Cleveland.

• 1:41:07Speaker 01

  It counts. It counts. Oh, but yeah.

• 1:41:11Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  That's good. Yeah.

• 1:41:12Jocko Willink?

  So now we get to those questions from the interwebs.

• 1:41:18Speaker 01

  Interwebs.

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  First question.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  Jaco, is a minimal amount of competent defensive ability, self-defense, essentially, the most overlooked essential stabilizer of young male psyche?

• 1:41:38Jocko Willink?

  So this question, this actually, this actually came across the interwebs as a, as a statement, an opinion. And I, I kind of rephrased it just a little bit to make it into a question, but it actually came across. Someone was saying, look, he believes, this person believes that they, knowing how to fight, you know, competent defensive, defensive ability, I call that knowing how to fight, is, and he thinks it's the most essential stabilizer of a young male psyche. I agree with this statement. I think that, yeah, I completely agree with that. I think that learning how to fight and knowing how to fight gives you real confidence and security, not just in the form of being secure,

• 1:42:22Jocko Willink?

  but as, as a, in, in opposition to insecurity, right? Because when you know how to fight, all of a sudden, you don't have anything to prove anymore.

• 1:42:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:33Jocko Willink?

  And we, this changes so much. I, you know, I wish I would have learned how to fight and I'm watching, we fought all the time when I was a kid. We fought, we didn't know how to fight. So what do we have to do? Prove that we knew how to fight. If we actually knew how to fight, we wouldn't have had to prove that all the time. So. I I absolutely agree with this and that's why I'm constantly trying to get people uh to get into jujitsu, you know, get your kids into jujitsu, get your thirteen year old boy, your ten year old boy, get him into jujitsu. Your girl too, I mean, your girl too, because your girl's gonna use it for defense. Um, girls don't have the constant tension of fighting that guys have. It is part of who we are. When I shake someone's hand, I don't care what kind of mood I'm in.

• 1:43:18Jocko Willink?

  I am thinking about taking them down. I am thinking about what I'm gonna do to them in a fight. It doesn't matter if I'm meeting Santa Claus, I'm thinking about doing a double leg. I'm thinking about what what his weight is, does he have cauliflower ear, that's what I'm doing. And guys do that, guys do that, and it's real. And I mean, especially in the environment, I grew up in the SEAL teams, I mean, everybody's got that constant

• 1:43:43Jocko Willink?

  like test. Yeah, the evaluation. It's the evaluation. So, if you don't know how to fight, there's only one way to figure out where you are, and that is to fight. And so you end up doing stupid things, stupid things to prove your your manhood, and I hate to use that word. But you end up doing stupid things to prove your manhood. So, my recommendation um is, well, I totally agree with this statement. I think it is a huge stabilizer of of your personality and and your psyche as a man. So, teach, get those kids to learn jujitsu. They're gonna understa- the other thing is you understand

• 1:44:22Jocko Willink?

  violence, you respect it, because you know you got choked out, you know it's happened, you know that is a horrible feeling. It's a horrible feeling when another human being can control you a hundred percent. You know what, physically, it doesn't matter how smart you are anymore. I'm sorry, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter how smart you are anymore. When you are getting completely physically dominated by someone, it doesn't matter that you're smarter than them. At that time, there's nothing you can do about it. You could, what are you gonna challenge him to a spelling bee? It's not gonna help you. You're you're under their control and that's a horrible horrible feeling.

• 1:45:01Jocko Willink?

  And so I think it's a you know, and I felt that you know, when I was a kid, you know, I got bullied, just like everybody, everybody gets bullied at sort of certain point, you know, you show up to high school, you're thirteen years old, I was there, I was a young. Whatever, however, that works when you are born, I was born in September, so. I was a young scrawny kid. And I didn't get bullied to some crazy extent, but you get picked on, you get picked on, you get in the little scuffles and you get thrown around by a kid that's. That reached puberty when he was nine and he's now, you know, six feet. Two twenty and I'm showing up at school thirteen years old, weighing a buck forty-five. You're gonna get, you're gonna get physically controlled and it's not fun. And so. I didn't know. How to fight.

• 1:45:46Jocko Willink?

  I was trying to figure it out. And there was no, no one knew how to fight back then, unless you were a boxer, maybe a wrestler, um, but. Yeah, so definitely, this is a huge piece, helps you with, I think, I think. Kids that know how to fight are gonna get a lot less. Street fights, they're gonna do a lot less stupid things to prove themselves, because guess what, they already have the essential. Primal. Animalistic characteristic of physical domination and that goes a long way.

• 1:46:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and we talked about this before, um, back to the the girls thing, getting your girls into it.

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  You know how when you get into any kind of physical situation, even if you're in a crowd and someone starts shoving someone else, not even you, and boom, you feel the force of somebody or someone's just. All like on you, or even if someone like, I don't know, tackles you or something like that, it's like this kind of imposed physical situation. And when you're into jiu-jitsu, that's every day, so you get used to that real quick and in fact, you get real comfortable with it. But as a girl, you're not trying to like win fights now, you know, I know jiu-jitsu, I'm gonna try to win fights and beat up guys, that's not really what it's for for girls. It's more for. Knowing how to function, knowing where to be, where not to be, because man, if you don't know, you just simply don't know.

• 1:47:02Jocko Willink?

  And also be, yeah, and also being totally right, and then also being inoculated to the, the. Physical contact when it happens.

• 1:47:09Speaker 01

  So it won't pull you off.

• 1:47:10Jocko Willink?

  You say you can't win, I mean not looking to win fights, there's, go watch YouTube.

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:13Jocko Willink?

  There's all kinds of videos of girls just working over guys, and I mean in street fights.

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:19Jocko Willink?

  There's one in particular where this girl's just triangle, arm lock, just choke, just crushing this kid.

• 1:47:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, the, I mean, the, the truth is, if you learn jiu-jitsu, if someone knows jiu-jitsu, someone doesn't, the, the chance of the person knowing jiu-jitsu, winning the fight is very, very, very high.

• 1:47:35Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  Even if you're a girl, it's still applies to you. Of course, the girl's at a physical disadvantage because she's smaller, weaker, whatever. But like I said, jiu-jitsu is just this huge jump in, you know, ability as far as fights go.

• 1:47:48Jocko Willink?

  And you know something else? From a pure self-defense perspective, if you, a lot of times, let's say a girl's not able to physically, let's say she's a hundred pounds and she's, a guy attacks her that's two hundred pounds. She might not be able to put him to sleep. She might not be able to finish him, but she may be able to be able to survive, fend the guy off for a minute and thirty seconds instead of two seconds.

• 1:48:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:48:15Jocko Willink?

  Instead of four seconds, instead of eight seconds. So that's what it takes for someone to hear, for someone to see. So every second counts. And if you know jiu-jitsu, I guarantee you, uh, it's, it's really hard to subdue somebody that knows some jiu-jitsu if you don't know anything. You are gonna have a hard time getting control of them. They're gonna, they're gonna be, and even if you're stronger than them, you'll be able to get a hold of them, maybe eventually if they're a lot smaller, a lot weaker than you, but it's gonna be a fight. And a lot of, a lot of, you know, you read a lot of stories when, in self-defense situations, if the girl puts up a decent fight, the guy's not gonna have any of it. You know, he's gonna realize that he's not looking for that, he's not looking for a fight, he's looking for something else. And so the fight begins, he backs off. So yeah, absolutely, it applies for, for girls as well.

• 1:48:58Jocko Willink?

  And there's just a certain level of confidence, you know, and I've seen that, you know, my son's had a couple of little scuffles, a couple that I've witnessed too, where, uh, you know, he just was like not trying to, not trying to have a problem, until someone just grabs him and is obviously gonna do, try and do something to him, and then that person's getting launched, you know? Like a perfect judo cuz you're gonna get you know how hard is it to judo throw somebody that doesn't know any judo jujitsu it's so easy So you see a kid fly through the air hit the ground you see my son you know just like there's no guard passing cuz the person doesn't even know what the guard is So it's just straight to mount and then once you're in mount the person has no idea what's happening and and they're completely controlled and they're getting put to sleep That's it it's as easy as that

• 1:49:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so funny how you this is kind of the part that I forget actually every once in a while Where you how you brought up when you shake someone's hand you're always thinking about it or whatever so that's that's the thing too that's why that's why It's almost like if you don't know jujitsu like or or for real fighting there's not many out there man there's not many but even we'll just say if you don't know jujitsu You might fall into this trap by thinking well you know I might you know you never know he's not on all the time or he might not be ready for this or you know I'll surprise him with a like this punch or something like this and they'll they won't give it its due credit But the thing is when you learn jujitsu bro that's all you're thinking about you're like oh fuck take this guy right here

• 1:50:21Speaker 01

  One hundred percent of the time you you can be laying in your in your bed with your wife and she'll be like hey give me a hug and you're like Yes exactly the whole time so you can't really to surprise a guy who knows jujitsu to surprise him is super hard like you gotta do From behind I don't know even if you see them from behind like you know what to do from behind you know it's you gotta like I don't know hit him Or something really hard knock him out one punch Yeah, but that's so funny cuz um that that is how it is even as like a like a high level guy you're still like It's always on your mind like it's like you're walking around with this big powerful like gun or something like you're like okay who wants to get shot

• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  Not that you wanna shoot people specifically but it's like this radar that's like okay who wants to get shot kinda thing Cuz you're just ready it's ready you know you're just ready to do it

• 1:51:15Jocko Willink?

  And to me honestly it's so instinctive At this point Just part of every movement that you make is thinking about that and you you ever had somebody that doesn't know jujitsu like Maybe you haven't seen someone in a while. I've had that happen. I've seen someone for a while.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:51:32Jocko Willink?

  And I mean 20 years. So they have no idea what jiu jitsu is. We've gone completely different paths in our lives. And they like grab hold of you as if it was the old days and you were gonna have a tussle.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:42Jocko Willink?

  And it's, yeah, it's just a, it's just a four second, you know, spirit crushing maneuver of death.

• 1:51:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and you're happy to do it too, you know, because as an adult, like, you know, I think anywhere past 26, 27 years old, it's hard to get away with like getting into a wrestling match in public or, you know, somewhere outside of the.

• 1:52:03Jocko Willink?

  That's interesting.

• 1:52:04Speaker 01

  You might not have known that, but yeah, I don't know. I think I speak for more than, more people than just myself, but you, there's a part of your mind that kind of hopes it, it happens just with your friend, you know, or something like that. Just so you can do it.

• 1:52:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course. Always, always hoping for a, for a scrap.

• 1:52:20Speaker 01

  You know what? Ironically, back to the part where, where I was saying, um, it's kind of hard to surprise a jiu jitsu guy. Ironically, the easiest time to surprise a jiu jitsu guy is on the mat. If you're another jiu jitsu guy. What you do is you play like, oh, we're just going light right now. And then you go hard, you know? So you can't really surprise them in the, like, in public. You gotta like, you gotta learn jiu jitsu, go on the mat, roll with them, make them think you're not rolling hard, then surprise them.

• 1:52:46Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I think that's part of it is you become more aware. What you're just talking, what you've been talking about the past couple of minutes is awareness. And when you have jiu jitsu in your brain, then, and it's true with boxing too and, and Muay Thai. When you have that stuff in your brain, then you can't help but be aware of what's happening around you because it's in there. It's like knowing that the color of the table is brown. Like you, you know what that person's body position is. You're looking and seeing that their stance is off balance. You're seeing an underhook exposed. You, you know, so you can't help, you can't take it away. So your awareness increases. You also are aware of what problems can occur really quickly. So if you start, you know, if you're a girl and you say, oh, wait a second, now I'm back.

• 1:53:31Jocko Willink?

  Into a corner where I can't get out. I don't like this feeling.

• 1:53:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:34Jocko Willink?

  It becomes, it increases your awareness as a human. It makes you more aware of your surroundings. So there's so many benefits.

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:41Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of ridiculous.

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you kind of have almost like one level up from that awareness that you're talking about. Because like how you're saying, it's part of that, even if you don't know how to fight, it's still kind of on your mind. You know, you, like, all guys have that kind of sort of evaluation, especially if the guy's close to your, close to you.

• 1:53:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:58Speaker 01

  Who you are, you know, whether it be age, size, whatever, whatever the scenario even. Like, if you're a scholar and no one else is a scholar, then another scholar walks in, ooh, this evaluation, you know? So that's how it is naturally.

• 1:54:09Jocko Willink?

  See how smart this guy is.

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, oh, so as a guy, just naturally, you're gonna have even more. It's like, you know what the color of brown is or whatever, but just instinctually, you're always looking for brown. That's kind of what it's like. So now you, when you're doing these evaluations that are gonna happen anyway, your jujitsu mind is right there at the front, ready the whole time. Yeah.

• 1:54:32Jocko Willink?

  Indeed.

• 1:54:33Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:54:34Jocko Willink?

  Train jujitsu people.

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  But that's not to be confused with, like, you're aggressive and want to fight. That's the weird thing. It's like, you don't want to actually fight with people because you don't feel the need to like, oh, I gotta, I don't know.

• 1:54:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you don't have anything to prove. That's where this whole conversation started off. And also now you not feel like you need to prove anything, but I literally am like, oh, do I really want to get in a fight with this guy? I'm gonna get my knuckles, you know?

• 1:54:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:54:54Jocko Willink?

  I'm probably gonna rip my t-shirt. This guy's gonna grab, is this really, no. I, I fight every single day. I don't need, I don't, I don't care about this guy. This is a two-second thing where I gotta scuff up my knee on the pavement and he's probably gonna rip my sh- my shirt and that's gonna be a pain. And I gotta deal with the cops if they show up. It's just a big pain.

• 1:55:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:16Jocko Willink?

  Whereas if you don't fight and you have that opportunity, maybe you got that thing inside you, you don't know.

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  Right. The payoff of the fight, right, if you don't know or if you're just insecure or whatever, the payoff of the fight and hopefully winning is bigger than all the detriments that you gotta pay.

• 1:55:30Jocko Willink?

  I used to tell my platoon guys, um, when we were overseas before the war started. And, you know, so guys are overseas, what are you doing? You're drinking, you're out in bars, you're just causing problems or whatever. And I, you know, before you go out, I'd be like, hey, guys, if you feel like fighting tonight, come find me. Cause if you want to fight, come find me and it'll be, I'll be good, you know? You, you know, we'll, we'll fight and it's all good. You won't get in trouble. You won't get arrested. You won't get hurt. It's all good.

• 1:55:52Speaker 01

  Oh, you'll get in trouble. Get in trouble for sure.

• 1:55:55Jocko Willink?

  You're not gonna get in trouble with the law though, you know what I mean? You're not gonna get in that kinda trouble. You're in trouble in your situation and your, in your positioning is gonna be troublesome. So, yeah, it's better to fight amongst yourself than to fight against the outsiders who are gonna sue you, pull a knife out and stab you in the throat, whatever, right? Don't do that. Stay out of the street fights. Not worth it.

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:56:18Jocko Willink?

  Alright.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  I agree with it too though. When you said you agree that it is the stabilizer?

• 1:56:23Jocko Willink?

  Indeed.

• 1:56:24Speaker 01

  It is. Cause if you don't know, you don't even know how much you don't know.

• 1:56:28Jocko Willink?

  It's funny, cause we get a lot of people that have started training jujitsu.

• 1:56:31Speaker 01

  Good move.

• 1:56:32Jocko Willink?

  Yes, but they, but they'll come on Twitter or on, on the Facebook and, and say, you know, um, "Hey, I started training jujitsu, oh my god. I can't believe, I, I need to train this all the time, I can't believe I got control." How humiliating. They always say, "How humiliating." And sometimes they say humbling, but sometimes I think even when they say humbling, they actually mean humiliating. Cause they, you, that's the weird thing. When you're walking around on the earth without the knowledge, you think, you look at other people, you think, "You know what? This guy knows jujitsu? I heard this guy knows jujitsu?" It doesn't matter, I'm strong, I'm athletic. I'll just hit him in the neck, or even, even, you know what, I'm just strong enough, he's not gonna get my, how's he gonna get my arm over there? It's not gonna work. I'll just pull my arm back.

• 1:57:18Jocko Willink?

  And you get on the mat and you go, "Oh my lord, I have no control over this situation." This guy is effortlessly making me submit over and over and over again. And that's when the reality hits. The reality hits, doesn't hit on the first time you tap. Cause on the first time you tap, you go, "Oh, I'm, I'm gonna, I'll just, I won't do that single movement again. I won't stick my head over there." Okay, so then you get your arm locked.

• 1:57:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:39Jocko Willink?

  And then you get your foot locked. And then you get your knee locked, and then you get commuted, and then you get guillotine again, then you get rear. So you all, it's just a lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, and then you go, after, usually for me, it's like three to five times with somebody that's never trained jujitsu before, three to five times before they realize like, "Oh, I will never..." Cause you know, when you tap a guy once that's never trained before? And he comes at you so hard, in his mind, he thinks, "Oh, this time I'm gonna get him." And they don't even come close, they don't even realize. So yeah, get on the mat, man, and learn, learn the jujitsu.

• 1:58:11Speaker 01

  Please cover the over, or please cover overcoming the frustrations of beginning jujitsu.

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  And this is coming from a 54 year old, by the way, but not quitting.

• 1:58:22Jocko Willink?

  Good, good for him. Uh, that's awesome. Glad you're picking up the jujitsu at 54 years old. Uh, okay. So how do you, the frustrations of beginning jujitsu and it is absolutely, if you have the wrong mindset, it's viciously frustrating because of everything we just talked about. You think, oh, I'll just do this and I'll just go a little bit harder and I just won't put my arm there and then I'll be able to win. You're not gonna win. You are gonna lose, you're gonna lose over and over and over again to people that are smaller than you, weaker than you, not as tough as you are, literally not as tough as you are.

• 1:58:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:58:54Jocko Willink?

  Not as tough as you are. You know, jujitsu has a faction of, of nerds, for lack of a better word, straight nerds. And no offense to the nerds out there, but you know, people that are not physically active and then some, for some reason they fall into jujitsu at some point. And, and they, and all of a sudden they got a guy that's, they're not tough, but they'll, they'll know the moves and they'll finish you. So that's, so those are the people you're gonna lose to. So, and it's a, it's a long, long, slow journey that takes a long time. Now, that being said, if you train for a month and someone's trained zero, that journey's not that long. You'll beat that guy.

• 1:59:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:38Jocko Willink?

  You, you will beat that guy. I mean, you know, again, you take two people, one of them knows jujitsu for a month and one of them doesn't. That guy's gonna win. I mean, you know, basic weight, same weight, basic same, you know, you can't have somebody that's completely weak. But in six months, you're beating anybody that's untrained for, you're beating 95% of, maybe even 99% of people that are untrained. But, but, but as far as, like, you think you show up and in six months, you're gonna be beating a blue belt, it's not happening.

• 2:00:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's not happening. A beating a purple belt is not happening. You're not gonna, you're not gonna catch a purple belt. Yeah. In, in your first two or three years. Um, unless you got just somebody that doesn't. Or he lets you. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah, like Glover, Jeff Glover, he'll, he'll, he'll let people put him in all kinds. I mean, he does that in competition, he just saw that at Metamoros. He lets all kinds of crazy things happen. So yeah, can that happen? Of course. But as far as legitimately. Yeah. Taking someone down. Yeah, it's not gonna happen. So, so that's all, that's what I'm saying is a long, slow journey. Especially too, because everyone's on that bus. We've talked about this before. Everyone's on the bus getting better. So that blue belt that started, that you started six months behind or a year behind, so he's a blue belt, you're a year behind him.

• 2:00:54Jocko Willink?

  He's not stopping getting better. So as you start to pursue his game, his game is evolving and changing and improving. So you're not going to get there. And then on top of that, when you do learn something new, it takes time to incorporate into your game. So if I taught you Echo a new move tonight, I said, hey, here's this cool, it's, it's, here's this new setup for the arm lock. And we drilled it 10 times. And you went now and started to apply that, it would make your game worse. Because you'd be trying to apply a move that you don't know a hundred percent yet. Like you've got some good, solid moves that you do. And those are, you know, those work really well. So when you start incorporating this new move,

• 2:01:36Jocko Willink?

  you don't know it well. You don't get it all together. So you're gonna fail at it a hundred times. It's not gonna work a hundred times before you get it. And by the way, every time you tried it on me, I got on top and then I smashed you and then I. So you're, you're sacrificing and it's, and every time, so you're actually going backwards a little bit before you can go forward. So that's problematic and that's very, very frustrating. Occasionally you might learn something that like really improves your game dramatically, almost instantly. That happens from time to time. Someone will say, hey, put your arm position here or hey, you know, whatever the case may be. But generally, when you incorporate something new, it can take some time. You're gonna get injuries. You're gonna get little injuries, you're gonna get big injuries, you're gonna be sore, you're gonna, so yes, you will be frustrated. So how do you counter all that? You just got to embrace it.

• 2:02:21Jocko Willink?

  You got to embrace all those things. You gotta enjoy all those things. And I hate to be cliche here, but you got to enjoy the journey. You got to enjoy getting tapped out by somebody that's small. Uh, be amazed by that.

• 2:02:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:02:35Jocko Willink?

  Say dang, how did that just happen? That is impressive.

• 2:02:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:02:38Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you know, say, hey, got a little war scar on my face. I got, you know, split the eye open. Okay, cool. Chicks dig scars, you know what I mean? Just gonna go, don't, don't.

• 2:02:49Jocko Willink?

  Don't look at all that stuff as negative. Look at it as, you know, it's like, don't rush to the end, uh, don't rush to the end. Don't be in a rush to get there. Take your time and enjoy the sights that you're gonna go for. Also, I've said this before. Select your training partners carefully, especially like you're 54 years old. You don't want to be rolling with a 20 year old steroid freak that's going white belt trying to kill you. You want to be rolling with a cool, mellow, purple belt that's, wants to do jujitsu.

• 2:03:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:19Jocko Willink?

  And, and train. Um, and finally, I would just say. Re- remember that jujitsu should be fun. It should be all those other things, all those frustrating, all those challenges, all those things, all that humiliation and hu- and getting humbled. But it should be a good time. You should have fun when you're doing jujitsu. I know I do.

• 2:03:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, like a video game, right? You know how?

• 2:03:38Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I was out of town for a couple of days, man. And I came back and I had a little injury that I figured, figured out. Took me a little while, I got my jacked up finger. It took me a little while, a little while to, uh, get the right, get the right apparatus to splint it properly and protect it. But it's, but tonight I trained and I was so happy. I was so happy going, getting on the mat, just saying yes.

• 2:04:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that is how we're, all these, all the junk parts that come with it were quote unquote junk. But you know, like the, the soreness, yeah, the, I got choked out or that's all part of the game, seems obvious, right? Yeah, it's all part of the game, but be happy that that's the game you're in.

• 2:04:18Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:04:18Speaker 01

  You know, so I mean, jujitsu basic, I mean, if you don't do jujitsu. This would be kinda, kind of an insight. Basically, all it is, you go, if you go to a class, you go in, you, you may or may not warm up, you learn a, a move. Whether it be a submission move, or just a move. You learn a move, two moves, three moves, sometimes four moves. And then you cut to

• 2:04:38Jocko Willink?

  Roland.

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  Straight up, you guys are fighting. No strikes, that's it, you're fighting. No strikes. If you, whatever moves you know, go ahead and do them, in real life, against this guy. That's it. If you don't know, if, that's your first day, and you learn one, two, three moves that first day, you better try to do those moves. That's it. So of course, you know two, three moves that you learned once, by the way. And you roll with someone who, even if he's still a white belt or whatever, he knows those moves and then, you know, three, four more, and he's practiced them in, you know, in real time or whatever, of course he's gonna get you, you know? That's just how it works. But keep in mind, the more you go, the more you do the moves, the more moves you learn, the more you practice them in real life, the better you get at them.

• 2:05:15Jocko Willink?

  And, and you know, let's go ahead and just apply this to life as well, because jiu-jitsu is such a great metaphor for life.

• 2:05:22Jocko Willink?

  Whatever you're doing, whatever goal you're trying to achieve, if you're letting those frustrations, when you hit those obstacles, if you're letting them control you and get you down, that's the wrong attitude to have.

• 2:05:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:05:32Jocko Willink?

  Look at it as a learning opportunity. Look at it as something that's good, that's happening. Look at it as, as a chance for you to try something new. Look at it as the journey that you're trying to achieve. And by the way, anything that's easy to achieve and you don't hit any obstacles, well, that's not worth it, right? That's not, that's not gonna get the full satisfaction that you want out of that. So,

• 2:05:54Jocko Willink?

  in life, as in jiu-jitsu, don't get frustrated. Embrace those challenges, because those are what is making this goal worthwhile.

• 2:06:03Speaker 01

  Yep, man, and I'm telling you, when you, let's say you, well, back to the, um, avoiding frustration specifically, um, it does, how you were saying, training partners, that does make a big difference, because sometimes, every once in a while, like I've, I've heard of, um, people where their, their schedule doesn't allow them to catch, like, the beginner class, for example. So they're like, hey, I've no choice, I gotta do this more intermediate or advanced class. So they're the only white belt, and the next, you know, guy even closest to him is like a advanced blue belt. So. That's gonna be a steep learning curve. It's gonna be tough cuz it's how are you gonna practice your moves in the wild?

• 2:06:38Jocko Willink?

  You'll never, you won't get to work your offense.

• 2:06:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really, but here's kind of the good thing. You get to work your defense. So when you do get the opportunity to exercise like your offense, whether you you get another class or it just comes, but it just takes longer, whatever, but you know how good your defense is gonna be?

• 2:06:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I actually, so from training with Dean for so many years, you know, he's just got some positions that are brutal, brutal positions. And, you know, for instance, his mount is is outstanding. He's when he gets the mount, when anybody else that I've ever trained with in my life has mounted, with the exception, I guess, of of Hicks and Gracie, I felt like, oh, it's not Dean. This is not, you know, this is not a horrible scenario, right? And not that I'm not that worried. I'm not trying to degrade people I've trained with, but that is a great Dean has an incredible mount. And on top of that, Dean kind of knows my escapes. So whereas if I roll with a random other really good, you know, world-class black belt, they might not know the particulars of my escape. Dean actually does know those.

• 2:07:35Speaker 01

  And he's good at it.

• 2:07:36Jocko Willink?

  And he's good at it. So so you're right in that the more you train with people that are better than you, your your defense is gonna become very good cuz like when you mount me, I mean, you got a good solid mount, but I'm not, I'm like, I'm like, okay, cool. I'm gonna be out of this in a in a short period of time with with no real threats.

• 2:07:54Speaker 01

  Keep telling me that.

• 2:07:55Jocko Willink?

  And and the re you've had, I mean, I'm sure it's the same way. You've had Dean mounted on you. I mean, my mount, because I don't have a great mount. My mount is nothing compared to Dean's, nothing.

• 2:08:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, fully. Yeah. And that's absolutely true. And at the same time, though, so if you fall in and I don't want to say it's like a small, cuz it's a pretty big chance where if you enter a beginner class, there's gonna be a guy who's just as much of a beginner as you. And that's where you can really flourish because you're you can practice moves, your new moves, which I mean, for lack of a better term, your junk moves on junk people.

• 2:08:31Jocko Willink?

  You know, I will say this, though. Whoever you roll with, whether they're worse than you, the same as you or better than you, you're gonna get a lot out of it. All three of them. So you should roll with all three of those types of people. I have a tendency to wanna usually roll with guys that are, you know, like, good and and I should spend more. And I do. I mean, I definitely I train with everybody that we got at the gym. I'll train with everybody. But I always prefer, of course. I guess I shouldn't say of course, because there are people that are like white belt hunters. That wanna go out there and be bullies. I'm not like that. I'd rather get bullied, right? I wanna get, I wanna feel the, I wanna get after it, you know?

• 2:09:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:12Jocko Willink?

  But you definitely get benefit from training with people that are better than you, worse than you, and the same as you, because you practice, one of them, you're practicing defense, one of them, you're practicing pure offense, and someone that's equal than you, you gotta start practicing your setups and, and your approaches, and you gotta learn how to defend and do offense and defense at the same time, so it's all good. Roll.

• 2:09:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:34Jocko Willink?

  That's basically the concept here. Roll.

• 2:09:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:09:36Jocko Willink?

  Get after it.

• 2:09:37Speaker 01

  Consider that scenario, you roll with, and you're talking from an ideal standpoint, roll with people better than you, same as you, worse than you, or, you know, not as good as you. For a beginner, that's not really the option. The worst than you guys, that's not an option for a beginner, like, really.

• 2:09:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:09:50Speaker 01

  You know, so.

• 2:09:51Jocko Willink?

  There's no one that's worse than them.

• 2:09:52Speaker 01

  Well, as far as overcoming the frustrations or whatever, it is a good situation where you can get in with guys just as beginner as you, and, and you hope that they hang around, because after a certain amount of time, those guys who aren't as new or, or.

• 2:10:06Jocko Willink?

  I could, I could see where it could become frustrating if you were the guy that you were talking about earlier, let's say a guy that's, you have to work late and you can only go to the advanced class, and all of a sudden you think jiu-jitsu is just getting crushed and destroyed.

• 2:10:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, and I can't learn this, really, you know, it's like, I'm not even getting good.

• 2:10:21Jocko Willink?

  Distance to, to understand, but yeah, that's, that's a good point. So keep in mind that if you're in that situation, it's okay, you're gonna, you're gonna, when you eventually get to roll with people that are more your skill level, you will be, uh, you'll be that much better off.

• 2:10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, and watch the first time you tap someone out with a move that you learned.

• 2:10:45Jocko Willink?

  Celebrate that, did you?

• 2:10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good, that's a good time for everyone.

• 2:10:51Speaker 01

  Next question. Jocko. How do you balance the idea of checking the ego while in an interview scenario where you need to talk about yourself?

• 2:11:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so, good question. I, I would say, in that situation, and that's something that, it's not just an interview situation where you're gonna need to do that. I mean, you're dealing with your, your superiors, you know, throughout the course of your career, whatever that may be. You're constantly interacting with people and you're gonna wanna make an impression. Uh, so, I, I think one of the best ways to do this is, instead of you speaking about why you're so awesome, just state facts of, let's say, accomplishments and let them speak for themselves.

• 2:11:40Jocko Willink?

  In other words, you know, you wouldn't wanna say, uh, you know, "I am the best project manager in the entire world."

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  Mm.

• 2:11:50Jocko Willink?

  Right? That's not, that's, sounds ego-centric. You know, instead you'd say, uh, you know, "I got this, hey, we had a thirty-eight million dollar project, got it done on time, under budget, ahead of schedule, and when I got done with that one, they moved me to another project that was off-track, and we got that one, uh, back on schedule and back on track as well." So, that, that's the kind of experience that I've had, and I'd love to bring that here to this company. Right? So, you're not, you're not, you know, there's a hint of, "Hey, this is what I did, I can get some stuff done." But you're not saying, "Listen, I'm better than the people you currently have, so you should hire me, cuz I'm the best," cuz you don't wanna do that.

• 2:12:29Jocko Willink?

  Um, and you know, so, so yeah, just build, think about it, you know, before you go in, how, what, what experience that you have represents the good qualities that you have. So then you can say, if they say, you know, "How are you at meeting timelines?" You don't say, "I am perfect, I'm never late."

• 2:12:48Speaker 01

  Right, I'm dope.

• 2:12:49Jocko Willink?

  You just say, you say, you say, "Well, you know, as far as meeting timelines, here's a bunch of projects that I got completed on time. The only one that I missed was one that we had to roll back cuz of whatever, that way you're actually showing a little bit more humility." You're saying, "Hey, here's what happened," you're being logical about it. And you know, speaking of that, I actually got a good question that's similar to this one, um, about what's the best way to interview people to see if they can...

• 2:13:15Jocko Willink?

  Be in a leadership position and this is really hard. This is really hard because it's really hard to interviews. And working, I work with all kinds of different companies and everybody always says, you know, hey, what's the best way to interview and? Man, I interviewed this guy and he seemed so great or I interviewed this woman and she seemed incredible and her. Her paper looked great, you know, she looked great on paper and we hired her and she's a disaster or he's a disaster, whatever the case may be. Because, because there's people that are very good interviewers, right? I mean, there's people that can interview well. They have the gift of gab, they can, they can BS their way through anything and make themselves sound good. So it can be really hard to identify if someone's good. Is actually gonna be fit for a leadership position or really any position. So one of the things that.

• 2:13:58Jocko Willink?

  That I always tell people to do is when you go into these, when you want to ask interview questions, ask them scenario based questions. And say, okay, here's what's going on. You've got these three people in your department and one of the people. Has come to you and said that they think there might be something illegal going on with the other two. What actions do you take? And, and you know, have a scenario built out that you can actually talk through. And see where they go and see what their mindset is and see what they're going to develop as a plan and see how they would execute plans. So it's a great way of. Figuring out how people think. And then, you know, even that's not a guarantee.

• 2:14:37Jocko Willink?

  Cause there's people that can, can navigate those types of answers as well. So, you know, one thing you can do is hire people on a little bit of a trial basis. And that can be difficult in some situations where people are walking away from one job into another job and they're not going to do it on a 90 day trial basis. But when you do have that opportunity, it's a good thing to do as well. Um, but hey, so going back to the first question about keeping your ego in check in an interview, like I said. Be confident but not cocky and let the facts of your experience speak for your, your abilities. Rather than beating your own chest.

• 2:15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's almost like, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here. So. You, you essentially, even if you're talking yourself up, you just, you simply state the fact, that's it. You just state the fact. Don't say your opinion about it.

• 2:15:26Jocko Willink?

  Like just like you were saying. Simply state the facts. Here's what I did, you know, we turned this project around. We got it on, on track and on budget and that's the type of. That's the type of experience that I have in those situations.

• 2:15:38Speaker 01

  Right? Just like how you're saying, like even if someone had got like an award to be. The best whatever.

• 2:15:45Jocko Willink?

  Salesman of the year.

• 2:15:46Speaker 01

  Right, salesman of the year, the best whatever of the year. And then, um, like to say that in a factual way would be, I was recognized as the best guy in the world. Instead of saying, I'm the best guy in the world, here's my award to prove it, you know? So it's like you're seeing the fact that you were recognized, you know? Not so much the fact.

• 2:16:04Jocko Willink?

  That's a very good way of doing it.

• 2:16:06Speaker 01

  Stick to the facts, right? Just the facts.

• 2:16:08Jocko Willink?

  Just the facts.

• 2:16:10Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, sure. Next question. Um. How do you stay humble when you know you have better skill sets than others? You seem humble with all that you've accomplished.

• 2:16:22Jocko Willink?

  Well.

• 2:16:23Speaker 01

  This is just what? Like in general, just how do I be humble?

• 2:16:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, how do you stay humble when you know you have better skill sets than others? And then he's saying that I seem humble with all that I've accomplished, which is, which is actually.

• 2:16:37Jocko Willink?

  It's funny when I read that, like, it's not. I'm sure that for, for the dude that's asking this question, he's thinking I accomplished all this stuff and it's not, I don't feel that way. Like, first of all, there's always somebody that's better than you. That's, I guarantee it. There's someone that's done more than you. There's someone that's had better experience. There's someone that's accomplished more. And, and if you are truly the master of some thing. Whatever one thing you're a true master of. There's gonna be people that are a lot better at other things than you. So you might be the master of one particular thing, but are you, you have to respect the fact that

• 2:17:22Jocko Willink?

  people are gonna be masters at other things or better than you. I mean, so if you're super strong, that's great. Let's see you run a marathon. If you're super flexible, awesome. How much can you deadlift? If you're, if you're smart, that, that's great. You're smart academically. Let's check out your common sense and see where all that's at. You know, so, so you're, you, you're gonna be good at one thing, but you're gonna have failed in other areas or have weaknesses in other areas. And so. You just have to keep that in check and I'll tell you, like, I recognize why I've been successful.

• 2:18:03Jocko Willink?

  You know, for one thing, been surrounded with great people, for other, been lucky in certain situations that I've been in certain times. And, you know, going back to jujitsu a little bit. It's a good example because, just because I can beat someone in jujitsu, it doesn't mean that I'm a better person. Yeah, it does. It doesn't mean that I'm a better person. It, it, what it means, basically, is that I happened to get into this random fringe sport before they did. And I spent more time on the mat than they did. That's what it means. It doesn't make me a better person. And I'll tell you what, it goes with,

• 2:18:43Jocko Willink?

  you know, if you're, if you feel like you're smarter than someone, it's probably because you've had the opportunity to study a subject, or you've had a bunch of education on something, or you've dove into some subject so that might make you seem smarter, whereas if they applied themselves in that particular, guess what? They were applying themselves to something else. So, yeah, stay, you gotta stay humble with that. And also, when we talked about this, when you, oh, you know what, I am smarter than this person? Well, guess what? There's something, there's still something that they're better at than you. And what is it? You, you might be smarter than them, but guess what? Maybe it's a guy we talked about earlier, where I'm smart as I can be, guess what? This person can physically take me down and dominate me, and that's horrible.

• 2:19:27Jocko Willink?

  Or they're better at whatever, better athletically, or some people are really good craftsmen with their hands. I mean, there's so many different things that you can be skilled at. And if you start thinking that yourself, that you're, that you're better than other people, you're gonna have issues because in the long run. You wanna stay humble? Just stay alive. Because life will humble you, humble you. Life is hard and if you're pushing hard and you're driving hard and you're trying to achieve a lot, you're not always gonna win. I don't care who you are, you're gonna get humbled, it's gonna be hard. So many, so many people that are successful, they've got some hard luck stories along the way of

• 2:20:09Jocko Willink?

  things that they had to push through and overcome in order to get there, they got humbled. And if you're winning every single time, then you're, you're not, your goals aren't high enough. So step those up. So, you know, I appreciate the, the kinda comment, but um, man, it's not hard to be humble. When, you know, you need to take, like, maybe someone, you know, people always think, oh, oh, he's a Navy SEAL or whatever. Um, you know, there's a lot of SEALs that are more badass than me, that done more deployments, that have gotten after it more than me. And I know that. That, that, that's awesome. I mean, good. Good for them.

• 2:20:54Jocko Willink?

  I, I, you know, they got after it. Good. Um, so I don't feel like, oh, I did more than everybody. No, there's no one like that. There's no one like that, even, even, uh, you know, Mikey Thornton, who was SEAL, that won the Medal of Honor, awesome guy of, uh, you know, just to, just to, you know, he's a, he's a hero. But if, if, you know, he gets interviewed, I've watched a bunch of interviews, heard him talk. He's like, you know, he's like, oh, you know, you, you, you got the Medal of Honor, he's like, it's not mine. It's my guys. You know, it's the guys I was with, represents all. So, there's a guy, like, who's gonna be, if there's anyone in the world that needs to, that could not be humble? Maybe it's Mikey Thornton. But guess what? Mikey Thornton, he's as humble as they come.

• 2:21:39Jocko Willink?

  Cause you know what? He also has been humbled by combat. Cause he realizes things that he tried to do that he didn't get done. There's lives he tried to save that he couldn't save. So, you're gonna, there's no doubt, if you're living the right life. You're gonna be humbled by it and there's always, always, always gonna be somebody that's better than you, that's done better than you, so just stay humble. And by the way, what does being cocky get you anyways? What does that turn you into? What we've I talk about something, what is, what is overconfidence get you? You start cutting corners, you start slack, I mean, it's just ridiculous. So you gotta stay humble, you gotta stay hungry if you, if you wanna stay in the game and believe me. You wanna stay in the game, you wanna stay in the game.

• 2:22:22Speaker 01

  Do you think that?

• 2:22:26Speaker 01

  Like, and I, I can't, I mean, I don't know if maybe this is where this even the question is coming from. Um, but if you know, when you're insecure and like you're just like, everything's a competition. Like just in life, it's, it's like, it goes beyond just what you're into. It's just like, if someone's better than me, it makes me mad, it makes you uneasy or whatever. It's like this insecurity kinda thing. So when you do, it's like, if you look at everything, it's just this big life compet- like I gotta beat that guy, gotta be better than them. So when you are better than them, it's like you're still looking at this as this competition like eh, you know, like you're not on my level. So you don't deserve to be treated. It's kinda like, maybe this is a good analogy, maybe not, but like in jujitsu where if you roll with a white belt, you don't go hard.

• 2:23:11Speaker 01

  You don't get satisfaction or whatever. So in the jujitsu competition arena, you're not giving them the respect. You're not going all out like you would, you know, you're not respecting his arm bar, you know? If you are, you're smashing him, no satisfaction, you know, whatever. It's in that specific competition setting, but if you're just an insecure person where you think that all life is like just one big competition.

• 2:23:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you gotta smash that person.

• 2:23:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and if you're not worthy of my smashing, it's like, I don't even treat you like you should be on the mats with me kinda thing. But may, I mean, do you think that maybe that's where some of that comes from? Like if, if you're having trouble, like being humble, it's kinda like I'm better than you in life.

• 2:23:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's probably just, just driven from insecurity, but there's also a, uh, there's a dichotomy there too. Because man, I like to win, like, like no doubt about it, I like to win. And, and the dichotomy of it is, is that I also don't, literally don't care. Like if I get beat, I'm like, okay, well, I, what can I do to get better? What it's not, I don't feel this.

• 2:24:18Jocko Willink?

  Despair because I lost losing actually kind of motivates me more.

• 2:24:23Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 2:24:24Jocko Willink?

  As opposed to getting angry and the worst thing that happens is people decide they're not going to compete. Right? They're not going to compete in the game of life because they didn't win or they don't feel like they can win. So they go, ah, you know what? I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna back off. I'm just not going to participate in the game. But get in the game. Get in the game.

• 2:24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:44Jocko Willink?

  Theme.

• 2:24:45Speaker 01

  So maybe it comes from not understanding what that means when you win and stuff.

• 2:24:56Jocko Willink?

  I guess, I guess.

• 2:24:57Speaker 01

  You know, like, let's say, like, like, the fight, like, back to the fighting situation where the, about, you know, being a secure part of the male's balancing. Male psyche. If you know that you've achieved these skills, have these skills to win people, you know, who, who don't have your skill set. You don't want to fight them. So you're just like, whatever. But let's say like you, you have a better skill set, yet you're still blowing your horn about your skill set. You know, you're not humble about it. It's like it comes from maybe, I don't know.

• 2:25:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's definitely, there's no doubt. There can be some insecurity that charges that makes people super competitive beyond healthy.

• 2:25:36Speaker 01

  Right? Just like in life, like I'm just in life, you know, no matter what.

• 2:25:41Jocko Willink?

  Which again, there's people that are that way, myself included and but again, the dichotomy is.

• 2:25:48Speaker 01

  I don't think you like that.

• 2:25:49Jocko Willink?

  No, no, I, I, I, I know I am.

• 2:25:51Speaker 01

  Well, okay.

• 2:25:52Jocko Willink?

  I know I am.

• 2:25:53Speaker 01

  Remember Echelon Front. Remember the logo.

• 2:25:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:56Speaker 01

  Right? And I'm going to post this on Twitter, too. Jocko made the original Echelon Front logo. This is like a long time.

• 2:26:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:26:04Speaker 01

  And you were like, hey, you know, this is the logo, something like this. And then basically, but you didn't care that it was junk?

• 2:26:11Jocko Willink?

  No, no, but I, all I wanted to do is get you the idea.

• 2:26:14Speaker 01

  You weren't competing with me, but you drew and I drew, but like it, like as someone who's competing in everything in life, like if you draw something and I draw something, you're like, I want to make mine better.

• 2:26:22Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no, but, but well, I see. I wanted to win with the idea, not with the skill, the idea.

• 2:26:28Speaker 01

  Win the war.

• 2:26:29Jocko Willink?

  I wanted to win the war, not the short term battles, like who can draw this thing better? That the war was who comes up with the strategic. Victory, which the icon and the symbol for Echelon Front is the one that I drew.

• 2:26:45Speaker 01

  I liked it.

• 2:26:48Jocko Willink?

  So, yes, I didn't care that it looked like junk because I'm not, I was, did it, you should post that because it's pretty funny. I did it on PowerPoint with like a, like a crayon, looks like a crayon. Because I, I didn't want to take much time with it. I know, I knew that that thing would take you 15 minutes to make on your, what is it, AI illustrator?

• 2:27:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, that was long time. I don't know. I was like, that might have been, don't be mad at me, that's probably the first logo I've ever actually made. Maybe. Hey, there you go.

• 2:27:17Jocko Willink?

  It was very successful.

• 2:27:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, cool. Thanks for trusting me.

• 2:27:24Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 2:27:28Speaker 01

  What do you do when you have two extreme ownership believers that have to go against each other?

• 2:27:35Jocko Willink?

  Ooh, sounds like a big challenging question, but it actually shouldn't be because if you think about this, if you truly think about this, this should not be an issue, and here's why. Go against each other? Against each other? So what are the goals? Are, are, are these two people on the same team? I'm assuming that they're on the same team, right? They're on the same team, so if they're on the same team and we want to win, we have the same goals, we want to win, but we won't work together? Because if the goal is to win and we both want to win, why would we be going against each other?

• 2:28:15Jocko Willink?

  We are not taping, taking actual extreme ownership, because if you and I were, had opposing ideas, but we had the same long-term goal, I'm going to take ownership and say, all right, Echo, we got to come to terms here, we got to work this out, we got to figure, and if you were doing the same thing, you'd be like, yeah, absolutely, let's sit down, let's figure this out, let's figure out what's going to be the best, let's take it to market, let's do, market says, we're going to figure out a real solution, because we're taking ownership of it. So what's the little, what's the little nugget that's getting into the system here and screwing things up? It's ego, 100%. And I will say this, occasionally, the idea of extreme ownership can be...

• 2:28:50Jocko Willink?

  Very poorly and very incorrectly interpreted as micromanagement and egomania. Meaning like, "I'm gonna own this, I own this, this is mine," right? We're not, that's not what extreme ownership is at all. It's, you've gotta own everything, but you don't, you don't feel the intrinsic need to do everything. Right? Cause you own, it's like owning the outcome.

• 2:29:21Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:29:22Jocko Willink?

  And owning the progress. And owning the steps along the way. And owning the responsibility of mission achievement. It doesn't mean that you own each individual step and you have to make it your way. That's not extreme ownership, that's micromanagement. But, you know, so extreme ownership is about leadership and decentralized command and using indirect tactics to make things happen and owning the outcome. So that's, that's why when you, if you have two people that were truly about, like, "Hey, I'm gonna own this." I'm gonna do, I'm gonna have the attitude of extreme ownership.

• 2:30:04Jocko Willink?

  If you and I have the attitude of extreme ownership, we're not gonna fight over anything because we have the same long-term goal. And if you come up with a better idea of how to get there, I'm gonna say, "Oh, Echo, awesome job, that's a great way, we're gonna get to where we wanna go. We own that outcome, we're gonna make it happen." Boom, I'm gonna support you. The only time it's gonna be a problem is if I have an ego and then you have an ego. When we both have an ego issue. And, and usually, one person with a big ego, that, that inflames other people's egos. Because if I say, "Hey Echo, I got a great plan for how to do this, we need to execute it my way."

• 2:30:48Jocko Willink?

  There's a little bit of ego coming out, there's a, cause now, your ego was down, but all of a sudden you're like, "What do you mean your way?" "Wait, wait a second, just right there, now we got a thing, now we got some kind of issue going," you know? We're, now we're working against each other, instead of working together. So that is a...

• 2:31:06Jocko Willink?

  That is absolutely problematic and I guess to say, to put this in a nutshell, the if you're using the principle of extreme ownership, the most important thing you need to take extreme ownership of is your own ego and put that thing in check.

• 2:31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems like the extreme ownership as far as owning it is more, is essentially take responsibility like at all costs kind of thing for more like the ju- the bad stuff that happens.

• 2:31:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, absolutely the bad stuff. Absolutely the bad stuff. But you know, but you're gonna take, because absolutely, if you and I do something great together and I was the leader, I don't go, yes, that's right. I was the, I'm, you know, you say, hey, first of all, this was mostly on Echo. He did most of the work. He did all the, you know, that's what I'm gonna say. I'm not gonna say, no, this was mine. But when something goes wrong, obviously, I don't say, no, it was Echo's fault. No, I say, hey, this is my fault. This is, you know, I should have done double check on the audio before we started the podcast because, uh, you know, we wanted to make sure that thing was recording. Right? I don't say, no, Echo, drop the ball.

• 2:32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:15Jocko Willink?

  I don't do that. I say, hey, should have double checked. So that's, if you truly have two people that have real ownership and they put their egos in check, this is literally not an issue.

• 2:32:27Speaker 01

  Right. So they, yeah, this isn't even a question for that, right? Cause they don't go against each other. They're going with each other.

• 2:32:33Jocko Willink?

  And so what are the chances that you, as a person that's really put your ego in check and you're exercising extreme ownership, what are the chances that you work with another person that is exactly with the same mindset, taking ownership, but no ego? What are the chances of that? They're actually pretty slim. This is not easy to do. This, it's simple, not easy, right? So that means you have to be even more.

• 2:33:01Jocko Willink?

  proactive in helping adapt to their ego scenario that's happening and when Echo says, "Hey, we need to do this my way." I'll be like, "Hey, you know what, Echo? Let's take a look at it." Absolutely, you've always come up with great plans. Let's take a look at what this one is here. And all of a sudden, I've disarmed you a little bit. You're feeling good about it. You're like, "Oh, yeah, that's right. Jaco's gonna listen to me." Because it's great. That's exactly what I want you to think. It's exactly what I want you to think. So, you're gonna have work to do. You're gonna have work to do. That's what it is. It's a challenge. It's work. But when you have the basic principles, I shouldn't say basic. When you have the fundamental principles, they are going to work well for you.

• 2:33:42Jocko Willink?

  And when they're not working well for you, don't get mad at the other person and blame their ego. Look at your own ego. Because you can adjust and adapt and maneuver and get that person disarmed. And you can flank them, and then you're gonna win.

• 2:33:57Speaker 01

  Right, that's so interesting that how this question is like that. Like, it seems like when I first read it, I was like, "Oh, shoot, that's a good question." You know? When they're... And it is, but in a different way. Because this question is essentially what it does is it like, what do you call it? Like a strainer or whatever? Like, it shifts, it strains out the guy who's not doing extreme ownership. See how it says if they're both exercising it? But if they're going against each other, that means there's some extreme ownership not being practiced. Somewhere in here, we don't know. But we're gonna, we can find out, you know? Who's going against who, kind of thing? If they're both going against each other, well, maybe they both have it, you know?

• 2:34:33Jocko Willink?

  But there's always gonna be one person, well, not always, but there's usually gonna be one person that is got it, that understands it. And that's gonna be working. And this guy is just so good and so smooth and so tactical. And they're gonna win. And that other person, that's like, "That's right. You know why we're winning? Because I got extreme ownership going on." And I took ownership of this project. And you know what the guy says? The real leader is like, "Absolutely, man. You did a great job with that." And meanwhile, he knows. He just manipulated and flanked him and made it happen to the best of, for the team.

• 2:35:09Speaker 01

  Yep, keeping the train going. That's good.

• 2:35:12Jocko Willink?

  Yep, indeed.

• 2:35:13Speaker 01

  Interesting. Okay.

• 2:35:15Jocko Willink?

  I think we got...

• 2:35:16Speaker 01

  Last question.

• 2:35:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just maybe one more.

• 2:35:18Speaker 01

  Maybe. Uh, Jaco, can you talk about fear of failure and how to overcome it?

• 2:35:28Jocko Willink?

  Fear of failure.

• 2:35:31Jocko Willink?

  So, obviously, fear of failure can, can keep you from taking risk. And it can leave you just sitting there paralyzed into not taking any action at all. And obviously, that's bad.

• 2:35:50Jocko Willink?

  But, I don't actually want you to overcome the fear of failure. I want, I want you to be afraid of failure. Fear of failure is good. Fear of failure will keep you up at night. Planning and rehearsing and going over contingencies. Fear of failure will keep you training hard.

• 2:36:23Jocko Willink?

  It'll stop you from cutting corners. Fear, fear of failure will keep you working and thinking and striving and relentlessly trying to be more prepared for battle.

• 2:36:44Jocko Willink?

  So, I want you to be afraid of failing. I fear failure.

• 2:36:51Jocko Willink?

  But, more important, I want you to be horrified. I want you to be terrified of sitting on your ass and doing nothing.

• 2:37:06Jocko Willink?

  That is what I want you to be afraid of. Of waking up in six days, or six weeks, or six years, or sixty years. And being no closer to your goal. You've made no progress.

• 2:37:22Jocko Willink?

  That is the horror. That is the nightmare.

• 2:37:29Jocko Willink?

  And that is what you need to be truly afraid of.

• 2:37:34Jocko Willink?

  Being stagnant.

• 2:37:41Jocko Willink?

  So, get up and go. Take the risk, take the gamble, take the first step, take action. And don't let another day slip by. And I think that's all I've got for tonight. And if you got something out of the podcast tonight, you want to hear some more, well then maybe you should go ahead and support the podcast. And Echo, how can the troopers out there best support the podcasts?

• 2:38:25Speaker 01

  Well, one of the, or the initial way is to support yourself at the same time. And that is to supplement, uh, on it, on it has the best supplements, uh, you know, it's one thing to say they have the best supplements because I like them, but they have, for real have the best supplements. Like the legit, you read all the stuff about it, it's straight up the best. Anyway, if you want 10% off theirs, just support your wallet as well. So you're supporting podcasts, yourself and your wallet, 10% off. On it.com slash Jaco. Yep. Solid. Um, also, if you want to passively support, uh, you can do the Amazon click through. That's you go to one of the websites, Jaco Podcasts.com or Jaco, or the Jaco store.

• 2:39:10Speaker 01

  There's the Amazon link on the top. Now we have international because they're, um, every once in a while, like people who are overseas or, you know, international, hey, what about this? Cause it's a, it's a long story, but nonetheless, we have that now.

• 2:39:22Jocko Willink?

  Everywhere overseas, it's Canada, England.

• 2:39:25Speaker 01

  Basically, when I started the ones that people have actually told me, you know, like, hey, we're here in the UK, we want to, you know, be down with the thing or whatever. And yeah, so, so I did those and, um, so those are up on both the websites as well. Thanks for hitting me up with that, by the way.

• 2:39:41Jocko Willink?

  Overseas support. Appreciate it.

• 2:39:44Speaker 01

  Yes, fully. So dope. And also speaking of Amazon, the, the new trooper tool. That was, that was good. That's pretty, it's a cool little tool. Thanks again, Brady for that one. IT genius. And jujitsu student, by the way.

• 2:40:01Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, like this tool, you just click it, you go, there's a link to it on things called the called the True Jocko Podcast Trooper Tool Chrome Extension, that's what it's called.

• 2:40:09Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 2:40:10Speaker 01

  You click on the thing, you just, just like you click on the thing, if you want to, you click on the thing, it shows up, it's a little icon, Jocko's head. And you can even hide that if you don't want it on your browser, whatever, you just hide it if you don't want it there, but it looks, I think it's kinda cool, it's up there, whatever. Anyway, it helps you go to, it makes you go to Amazon, it helps it go through the affiliate link. So you don't have to go through the website anymore, it does automatically for you, I think, it saves some time.

• 2:40:34Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:40:34Speaker 01

  You know? Uh, also, you know, of course, subscribe to iTunes and YouTube. I think we're gonna pump some more value in YouTube, put some outtakes on there, I think.

• 2:40:45Jocko Willink?

  I like that, I like where you're coming from.

• 2:40:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, subscribe to the YouTube.

• 2:40:48Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe to the YouTube channel, that would be cool. So, we know that you're out there and you're gonna receive these things that Echo's putting together.

• 2:40:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40:58Jocko Willink?

  And then also the, uh, the Jocko Podcast Store.

• 2:41:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you like shirts, if you wear shirts.

• 2:41:05Jocko Willink?

  Who is it, Jocko Store?

• 2:41:06Speaker 01

  JockoStore.com.

• 2:41:07Jocko Willink?

  JockoStore.com.

• 2:41:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:41:09Jocko Willink?

  Some cool t-shirts, I still have, I still have yet to see one in the wild, not someone I know. So, I'm looking forward to seeing that somewhere in the world, somewhere on planet Earth.

• 2:41:23Speaker 01

  I am thoroughly enjoying the pictures that people send.

• 2:41:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're awesome.

• 2:41:28Speaker 01

  You know what's funny, the, the, the Heather Gray, right?

• 2:41:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:31Speaker 01

  The gray, it's like, that's the kinda shirt, like, you know, a lot of lighter colored shirts, they get real, um, like, dark if you sweat in them or whatever, you know? So, there'll be like pictures where, I don't even know why I think this is funny, but it's interesting, because the other one is charcoal gray, that's a dark gray. So, they'll be like, "Yeah, I got my disllute too", and I see the bottom like, looks like a stripe, I'm like, wait, what? That's weird, how the lighting is, or so there's a stripe on the bottom of your shirt? But it's not the charcoal gray one, it's, you know, they thought they were getting after it.

• 2:41:57Jocko Willink?

  It's an indication of getting after it.

• 2:41:59Speaker 01

  Yes, very much, so, anyway, I don't know why I thought that was funny, but it's, it looks funny. Not funny like I'm laughing at them, but it's interesting, it looks like a shirt and it's like optical illusion, anyway. JockoStore.com, there's some other shirts on there if you like them, coffee mugs and stickers.

• 2:42:15Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 2:42:16Speaker 01

  Bumper stick.

• 2:42:17Jocko Willink?

  Also, if you like the podcast and you want more of this information, there's a book that I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. It's called Extreme Ownership. You can order it through Amazon.

• 2:42:31Jocko Willink?

  Or you can get anywhere books are sold. It's available in hardcover, digital and audio format. And the audio format Leif and I actually read, so get some of that. If you want to talk to Echo and I, you can find us on the interwebs. At Twitter, Echo is at Echo Charles. And I am at Jocko Willink. We're also on the Facebooky. And some of that Instagram. I got a Snapchat thing. I signed up for it or whatever, but I haven't done anything with it yet. So I gotta explore that, but man, the social media stuff takes some time and, and I can't.

• 2:43:14Jocko Willink?

  If you want me, find me on Twitter. That's the best way. Ask your questions on Twitter. Hit me up on Twitter. That's the most common thing that I use. Uh, I do, I do check Facebook. I mean, I read everything that has ever been sent to me, I've read. I might not have responded to it because I can't, literally can't respond to every single thing that gets sent to me. Uh, which is what's nice about on Twitter, I can just hit that I like it, you know, so that people know like, oh, he read it. Cool. On Facebook, I read it, but there's nothing to press to say, I read your thing. So, um, maybe I should figure something out like that, but anyways.

• 2:43:52Speaker 01

  You tweet, you're solid on tweet. Like you get back to people and stuff, which is cool. Cause there's some people you can tell it's not them. It's like their, their social media.

• 2:44:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, it's me and I was just out where, where I just was, there was very limited internet. So I was able to get like a tweet out in the morning, a couple tweets out in the morning. But when I'd go to start responding, it was, you know, three minutes to get to, to, to look at the tweet from somebody. So I'm backed up right now for like five days, four days behind or something like that. Five days behind, actually.

• 2:44:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, but see even you saying that, like that you're like backed up, it means like. Think you're, you know, your engagement, that's good.

• 2:44:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but even then, I was reading and I, I do, man, if you send me something on Twitter, I'm gonna see it. I'm gonna read it. I might not respond to it directly, but I might.

• 2:44:39Speaker 01

  Well, I've had a day, actually more than once too, but I'm remembering a very specific time, a day where I wasn't gonna go to jujitsu. I wasn't gonna go. I was, you know, today's the rest day, what, I don't know, whatever, I wasn't gonna go.

• 2:44:51Jocko Willink?

  We call, we call that weakness.

• 2:44:53Speaker 01

  Maybe, call it what you want. Nonetheless, um, when you see pictures of, I saw, I, I don't know the, the, the name of the, specific person, but I saw a picture, ooh, first day of jujitsu. And I'm like, you know, you get that feeling when, like, let's say you weren't at jujitsu. And I took a picture of me on the mat saying, foo, I'm here without Jaco. I'll do that every once in a while to like my friends, or I'm here without Jaco. And it's, you kind of like, you have this feeling like, dang, I wish I was there right now, just to whatever. I kind of got that feeling.

• 2:45:21Jocko Willink?

  That weird competitiveness you were talking about earlier?

• 2:45:22Speaker 01

  No, it's more like, oh, I wanna be there with you, maybe, maybe a little bit. Oh, by the way, I, I don't know if you knew this, um, you know, like guys will be like, hey, I wanna come visit you at, at the gym or whatever, right? And to, to me, it's like, um.

• 2:45:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you, a guy showed up when I was out of town.

• 2:45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, I, I, I say the days, like I go on these, these days typically and whatever, so just hit me up, whether it be on Twitter, whatever, if you're in town and, but he did, and cause he, the, the reason that's significant, one of the main reasons, what I said too.

• 2:45:48Jocko Willink?

  Where was he from?

• 2:45:49Speaker 01

  Um, Arizona, so Arizona, his name's AB, AB, the man showed up, rolled money, yeah. So, cause a lot of people in life, I'm not saying just on Twitter, I'm just saying in life, they always will be like, hey, oh, you do jujitsu, yeah, I'm gonna come by and, you can show me or I'll roll or whatever. And I would say a good ninety-five to ninety-nine percent of the time, they don't, they don't come.

• 2:46:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, a lot of times they're hitting you up from, love, places farther in the way than, than Arizona.

• 2:46:16Speaker 01

  I'm even talking about like, before the podcast and stuff, I'm saying like your friends, you know, my,

• 2:46:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, just, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:46:22Speaker 01

  Whatever, you know, yeah, you do, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna come check it out, sounds cool, you know, and they never come.

• 2:46:27Jocko Willink?

  Had this dude rolled before? AB?

• 2:46:29Speaker 01

  AB, yeah, um.

• 2:46:31Jocko Willink?

  Was he a jujitsu player?

• 2:46:31Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's a, uh, yeah, he was like a three straight white belt or something like that. We didn't know.

• 2:46:37Jocko Willink?

  He's coming up.

• 2:46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, but cool, nice guy, you know, anyway, he was cool. What's up, AB, the man, thanks for coming.

• 2:46:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, um.

• 2:46:47Jocko Willink?

  Yep, and, and obviously, I just want to give a shout out. We talked about some soldiers today, but I want to give a thanks to all the police out there. I hear a lot from police officers all over the country, and thanks to you guys for doing your duty to keep us safe. Same thing for the firefighters. I've actually hear a lot from fire, there's all kinds of firefighters, and all you guys are protecting us on the home front, obviously much appreciated. And then, of course, the military folks out there, especially those that are deployed right now, taking the fight to the enemy. Be aggressive and

• 2:47:26Jocko Willink?

  crush them. And we'll see you when you get home. And finally, to all the, to all the Jocko Podcast troopers out there, thank you for the support across the board with all of us. We appreciate it. And what we really appreciate more than anything is you out there in your life, taking ownership of your world and getting after it. So, until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.