DEF 01: You Still Might Not Get It

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  Discipline equals freedom, episode one. Jocko Willink here with Echo Charles. Why? Why, why am I feeling compelled to talk about this? Well, as I go through life, I have often said, and I've been saying for a long time, that discipline is what you need in your life. And what I oftentimes think people miss is the same thing they miss about leadership, which is that leadership is a skill. And a lot of people think leadership is natural, right? You look at a person and you see them in their leadership position and they're confident and they got charisma and they're making decisions.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  And it's very easy to think that all of that is just natural gift. Now, listen, some of it was natural gift, right? Some, you're going to have some level of natural gift. You're really charismatic, you're very articulate, and that's a skill that you were born with, some of it. But then over time, you become more articulate. Can you, can you become more charismatic? Do you think you can become more charismatic? Yes. Yes, you can, absolutely. I've watched people become more charismatic as time goes by. Generally speaking, oftentimes has to do with their confidence level. What breeds confidence? Well, it's when they practice, when they rehearse, when they acquire skills, when they become more capable.

• 1:28Jocko Willink?

  The more capable you are, the more confident you are. You ever seen a kid going into a wrestling match or a jujitsu match and they're really good? They're confident. Why are they confident? They're confident because they've been training their ass off for a long period of time. Any sport, you watch anybody going into any sport, if they train really hard, Tom Brady playing football, right? You'd see him going on the field, he didn't look nervous. Why? Because that guy was just training all the time. Michael Jordan. Why does Michael Jordan want the ball in the clutch moment? Because he practiced. Larry Bird, why? Why does he want the ball when there's two seconds left on the clock? And they, they're taking the ball in bounds. Why does he want the ball? Cause he's practiced and he's confident.

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  And that is seems like charisma. And it probably is charisma. So, so leadership is not something, oh, you're just born with. And like I said, there are aspects of it. That you have some level of a gift, but then you get better at it. And the more you stand up and talk to people, the more you put out word, the more you get put into situations where you have to make decisions, the better you get at those things. As long as you're humble enough to correct yourself and admit, oh, that wasn't a good decision, as long as you can do that. But, so we, we understand, and I've been saying this at Echelon Front for a while, leadership is a skill. I wrote it in Leadership Strategy and Tactics, leadership is a skill. You can learn it. Well, it's the same thing with discipline. It's the same thing with discipline.

• 2:57Jocko Willink?

  You can learn the skill of, of discipline. And can you be born with some of it? Yep, you can. You get some people that are born, and, and look, is it nature or nurture? I'm not a hundred percent sure, but there's some combination of that, that you can, you can grow up and be a more disciplined person than someone else. Right? If you look at the, the big five on the psychology chart and you're a very conscientious person, that person generally speaking is going to be more disciplined human. But regardless of where you are on that chart, you can become more disciplined. There are no doubt about it.

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  And, and for me, you know, Echo Charles, on one of our earliest podcasts, you said something along the lines of, there's nothing that will affect and help your life more in more different aspects of your life than exercise. Right? So when we're waking up or when we're working out, I was going to say when we wake up and work out, but I know not everyone's in that category. But when we work out, everything gets better. Everything gets better. Every aspect of your life gets better. Your relationships get better. Your business gets better. Your mental health gets better. Your attitude gets, everything gets better. Just from exercise. Just from exercise. Well.

• 4:22Jocko Willink?

  I actually would say that we could take that one step to the left, one precursor, the precursor to exercise, that would be an even more impactful thing in every aspect of your life, would be discipline. I, I think it's the most important characteristic, the most important aspect of your life as a human being is to be disciplined. And again, this is why I wrote the book, Discipline Equals Freedom, Field Manual.

• 4:53Jocko Willink?

  Now, what made me start thinking about this? When did I learn about it? What made me pay attention to this? Well, if I'm gonna go, if I'm gonna go old school,

• 5:07Jocko Willink?

  old Black Fat, Black Flag album, Henry Rollins, it's a live album. And in the song, "My War", which is like, basically, I'm against, you know, it's my war. It's against, I'm, I'm against everybody. But at one point, it's a live album.

• 5:24Jocko Willink?

  And I'm a little kid listening to this. I'm probably 13, 13-year-old kid. And I hear Rollins. And at one point during the song, he's saying, "The discipline. I am the discipline." I don't even know what this word means at the time of 13 years old, right? So, you know, you kind of start to figure it out. I, I don't know if I looked it up in a dictionary, I don't know if I had that kind of, I had that kind of, kind of wherewithal to go to the library and pull out a dictionary. But, you know, you had some indication. So, at a young age, I was, what does it mean? Why is this guy talking about the discipline? "I am the discipline", what does that mean?

• 6:08Jocko Willink?

  But, as a young kid, again, when you're looking at, when I was looking at Henry Rollins when I was 13 years old, he's a 23-year-old guy, seems like a tough guy, right? Seems strong. Okay. Those were things that I looked at and said, "Those things are good. Good to be strong." Seems like a good thing to be strong. When, when, when all the punk rockers back in the day were, you know, doing drugs or whatever, and he was working out. You'd see him doing pushups. So he's trying to be strong, all these other people are doing, that seems like the good thing. That must be the discipline. That's it. So that's what I need, right? So that's probably, that is no doubt my, probably the first little kernel in my brain

• 6:53Jocko Willink?

  of discipline. And so then I started saying, okay, what does that mean? So I need to work out. I need to do pushups. I need to do pullups. That's what I need to do. And I had this goal, of course, of going into the military, going into the SEAL teams, becoming some kind of a commando. So discipline seemed like the thing I needed, the thing I needed. So I did. Worked out, got ready, left, go to the SEAL teams. Go through SEAL training. And, and the thing about SEAL training, does it teach you discipline? Kind of. The thing about SEAL training and the thing about all military training,

• 7:34Jocko Willink?

  all basic military training, which, which basic SEAL training is basic underwater demolition SEAL training? That's BUDs. Basic underwater demolition SEAL. It's basic. So what you're getting is imposed discipline. It is imposed discipline. It's like you are gonna go do pushups. You are now gonna carry this log. You are now gonna do this. You're now gonna do something. You're now gonna sit in the water until we tell you to get out of the water. That's what it's about. So it's imposed discipline. It's imposed discipline, it's not, it's not, you're not, they're not sitting you down and explaining to you the value of discipline. You're not hearing that. I didn't hear it. I don't think I heard the word discipline one time when I was going through basic SEAL training.

• 8:18Jocko Willink?

  I don't think I heard that word one time. I probably had a little kernel of it in my head.

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  What you do learn,

• 8:27Jocko Willink?

  you, what you start to see and what you have to have is you have to have some level of self-discipline. You have to have some level of self-discipline because if you're going through SEAL training and you didn't have the discipline to run,

• 8:44Jocko Willink?

  to get prepared, you're not going to make it. If you didn't have the discipline to do pull-ups, you're not going to be able to climb those ropes and you're not going to make it. So there's a bunch of reasons why it, it ends up surfacing and it ends up becoming, if you're, if you, if you're aware of it, it ends up becoming something that you see as very valuable. Cause you see people that are undisciplined, they only do what they're forced to do. That's not gonna be, that's, that's not the best route. If you're only doing what you're forced to do, that's not, that's not what we're looking for. That's not what the SEAL teams is looking for. Look, they do it and there's, if you don't do what you're forced to, you don't make it. Obviously you, it's called quitting.

• 9:28Jocko Willink?

  We force you to put a boat on your head and run 10 miles? You don't want to do that anymore? Cool, you quit. But what we really want is someone that's going to discover self-discipline.

• 9:43Jocko Willink?

  And what that means is that means that you are, you are the general and you are also the soldier. You're the one that's making you do the task. Right? So if I'm the general and echoes the soldier, I'm like, this is what you have to do and you do it? Cool. That's imposed discipline.

• 10:03Jocko Willink?

  That's actually not that hard. But for me to be the general and me to be the soldier, that's harder. That's, in fact, this is why people have, um, uh, uh, personal trainers, right? They know what they have to do, but they need someone to, they actually need someone to tell them what to do. Like do one more rep. They know what the, look, I could give you the workout program. Here it is. Go do it. But they need someone actually there to impose discipline on them. Otherwise they're not going to do it. Strange, right? It's real. It's real. It's real. So,

• 10:44Jocko Willink?

  we have to realize that we are the ones that are imposing discipline and we are the ones that are executing. We're the general and we're the soldier. So, think about that. Get yourself in the mindset that yes, I'm the general and yes, I'm the soldier. And I've got to be good at both. I've got to be good at setting out what it is I need to do and then I need to be good at doing what I need to do. I'm not allowed to refuse orders, by the way. I'm not allowed to have a mutiny. There's no mutiny allowed. When the general says do it, you've got to do it. And we miss that little piece sometimes. Sometimes we end up with a military unit in our brain that's not functioning because the general's putting out word and the soldier's not listening.

• 11:30Jocko Willink?

  The soldier's, the soldier lacks discipline. The soldier's making excuses. The soldier's rationalizing and the general doesn't know what to do. And so what do you end up with? Failure. You end up with failure across the board in multiple areas. So, so if you're lucky going through basic SEAL training, you can kind of get it. You kind of learn some self-discipline.

• 11:56Jocko Willink?

  And

• 11:58Jocko Willink?

  that's what we need in our lives. That's what we need. That's what, having that general in position, having that commanding officer in position to make decisions for you, the soldier, that's what we need. And this is why I wrote about this in, in the Discipline Equals Freedom field manual.

• 12:25Jocko Willink?

  I get that you don't want to do it. I get that you don't want to do it. I get that the bed is warm and the pillow is soft. I understand that. I get that the water is cold. I get that you're tired.

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  I get all those things.

• 12:47Jocko Willink?

  But if you want to achieve your goals, if you want to move forward, if you want to actually become who it is you know you can become, there's no easy way of getting there. There's no shortcut. There's no hack. There's only discipline.

• 13:08Jocko Willink?

  That's it.

• 13:11Jocko Willink?

  Go into the book right now. Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual. There must be discipline.

• 13:19Jocko Willink?

  Which think about that for 10 seconds of your life. There must be discipline. If there's not discipline, the soldiers are doing whatever they want.

• 13:28Jocko Willink?

  And guess what the soldiers want to do? They want to sleep. They want to get drunk. They want to eat donuts. That's what the soldiers want to do.

• 13:36Jocko Willink?

  That's what they want to do. They're looking for immediate gratification.

• 13:40Jocko Willink?

  So not allowed. There must be discipline. Discipline, the root of all good qualities, the driver of daily execution.

• 13:51Jocko Willink?

  Daily execution. Daily execution doesn't come from motivation. Look, if you get motivated today, great. If you're motivated tomorrow morning and you watch a cool video, you got motivated, good, I'm happy. But how many, what's the, what's the half-life of a video? Having an impact on you. What's the half-life? How many times can you watch a video before you say to yourself, alright, I get it. And it wore off. Right? What's the half-life? So the daily driver isn't motivation. It's not a video. The daily, the, the daily driver has no thoughts almost whatsoever. It only has discipline.

• 14:35Jocko Willink?

  It only has discipline. Did you ever see the movie Soldier? Yes. And Kurt Russell. Kurt Russell.

• 14:44Jocko Willink?

  Look, in my own twisted way, that's sort of the life I wanted. Right? Sure. In my own twisted way, that's kind of the life I wanted. But at one point in that movie, you know, in the movie, the guy, he's just a soldier. He's, he works out, he trains. When there's a war, they send him to war. When there's no war, he sits on his bed and waits for war and trains. That's the fantasy that many of us have, right? So at one point though, he ends up on this other planet. And there, he ends up with a family, living with a normal family. And the mom of this normal family, she's asking him, don't you, yo, don't you, do you have any? What do you feel?

• 15:29Jocko Willink?

  Do you feel anything? And his answer

• 15:36Jocko Willink?

  is fear

• 15:40Jocko Willink?

  and discipline. And he says it like that. Fear

• 15:45Jocko Willink?

  and discipline, which is really, it's really a heavy thing. Cause the only thing he feels is fear, like I'm afraid I'm gonna die. I'm afraid I'm gonna fail. I'm afraid I'm not gonna do the right thing. I'm afraid I'm gonna make a mistake. And all that, all that is overcome by one thing, discipline.

• 16:03Jocko Willink?

  So when we talk about the daily driver of execution, it's gotta be discipline. This is the core principle, going back to the book, the core principle that overcomes laziness and lethargy and excuses. Discipline defeats the infinite excuses that say, not today, not now. I need a rest. I will do it tomorrow. And you can just keep going on the excuse list. Have we ever sat down, we should get on a chat GPT and just have it come up with excuses? Give me 7,000 excuses why I shouldn't work out today. It'll do it too. 7,000. It'll give you 7,000 excuses on why you shouldn't work out today. And you know what?

• 16:48Jocko Willink?

  Probably 6,000 of them, you can kind of nod your head and be like, well, that's not a bad one.

• 16:55Jocko Willink?

  So excuses are a dime a dozen. They're everywhere.

• 17:01Jocko Willink?

  We have to have discipline to overcome them. So then going back to the book, what's the hack? How do you become stronger, smarter, faster, healthier? How do you become better? How do you achieve true freedom?

• 17:16Jocko Willink?

  There is only one way.

• 17:20Jocko Willink?

  The way of discipline.

• 17:23Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing. That

• 17:27Jocko Willink?

  is the discipline.

• 17:30Jocko Willink?

  And with that,

• 17:33Jocko Willink?

  if you want to do some more discipline activities, go to thedefreset.com. If you need fuel, go to jockofuel.com. If you need gear, go to originusa.com or jockostore.com. And if you need leadership, go to ashlandfront.com. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko, out.