Jocko Podcast 12: What Made Jocko, When to Quit, Mistakes & Trust, Fitness for Military, Switching On & Off

0:00:00 - 0:04:03 - What made Jocko Jocko 0:04:03 - "The Forgotten Highlander" Book review 1:04:33 - Jocko won't complain about anything ever again. 1:11:49 - Mistakes by Leaders and re-gaining trust. 1:19:43 - Workouts for Special Forces selection. 1:26:32 - Is the Military a "Young Man's Game"? 1:31:55 - When to cut your losses. When to decide to cut bait. 1:43:03 - Substituting anger for aggression. 2:04:00 - Switching BEAST MODE on and off. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast, number 12, with Echo Charles, and me, Jocko Willink.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes people ask me,

• 0:17Jocko Willink?

  "What made me,

• 0:20Jocko Willink?

  me? How did I turn out like this? Where did I come from?"

• 0:28Jocko Willink?

  And I go back and I, I point at, you know, hardcore music growing up and being in that scene, where it was cool to be hard and strong and it was about aggression and discipline. Those were like the underlying themes, so I point at that, you know? And I think that's real. There was mantras that I remember from those days that stuck with me my, my whole life, from some of those, from some of that music. And then there's other things that influenced me as a kid, at even, even a younger age. And one of the things that I know influenced me at a very young age,

• 1:13Jocko Willink?

  in a pretty significant way, was seeing the movie, "Bridge on the River Kwai", which is a classic war movie.

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  And that movie,

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  pretty much had it all for me. And I think I can trace my ideas of being a commando. I use that word. You know, that's kind of a archaic word that people don't use anymore, "commando", but I, I think I got it from watching that movie when I was a kid. And, if you haven't seen that movie, you should check it out, for sure, because it's epic. And it's the story of prisoners of war, and American and British, mostly British, that are sent to build a bridge in the middle of the jungle in Burma, for a train line that is to connect Bangkok and Rangoon.

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  And of course, these are prisoners, so they're badly mistreated, they're beaten, they're poorly fed. Eventually, one American escapes. And he leads a commando troop back to the site of the bridge to blow up the bridge. And they do it all. The commandos in the movie, they do it all. They parachute in, they swim up the river, they lay demolition on the bridge. It's like a dream operation. And one part of the plot, though, is that the senior British officer at the camp, the senior prisoner at the camp, his name in the movie is Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson.

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  He takes a true leadership role in building the bridge. Now, think about that. He's being tasked by the Japanese to build this bridge. And instead of sabotaging the job because it's gonna help the Japanese, he actually gets his men fired up and helps organize and has his engineers redesign it, and they relocate it to a better piece of terrain, and he pushes his men to do a good job building it. And he actually takes pride in this bridge. And again, this is a bridge that's gonna aid in Japanese domination. So, when the commandos show up to blow it up, the Colonel,

• 3:38Jocko Willink?

  he almost foils the attack. But in the end, the bridge gets destroyed. It's an awesome movie. And it was, like I said, it was very influential to me as a kid. And people should definitely watch it. And then you should know this.

• 4:00Jocko Willink?

  It's all a lie.

• 4:03Jocko Willink?

  Wait, what's all a lie? There, well, there really was a bridge on the River Kwai. And it really was built by prisoners of war. But that's about where

• 4:16Jocko Willink?

  the similarities end. What the prisoners suffered at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Guards is beyond anything that they showed in the movie. And really, beyond anything that even remotely civilized person could imagine.

• 4:37Jocko Willink?

  I was, uh, I was overseas recently in Europe and I was in Britain and a friend of mine gave me a book called The Forgotten Highlander. And he told me, you know, "Oh, it's by one of the soldiers that built the bridge on the River Kwai, read it." And I thought to myself, "Oh, okay, you know, great, it's like the movie." And he said, "It's not like the movie, it's not like the movie at all." And it isn't. This is a book that shows the ultimate in human suffering.

• 5:14Jocko Willink?

  And through that, the ultimate in human will. The author, Alastair Yurkort, was fresh to the British military. He was sent to Singapore and when Singapore was overrun by the Japanese Imperial Army, he ended up in the jungle, a prisoner and a slave. By this time, mental health had become a major issue on the railway. We all suffered from depression. Men were taking their own lives.

• 5:58Jocko Willink?

  All along the railway, men cut their own throats, put their heads on the railway line and simply walked into the jungle to die. Many developed the "ATAP" stare and just looked intently at the thatched roof of the hut. Death soon followed. Others went mad because of medical conditions caused by vitamin deficiencies and some just gave up, losing their minds and their self-control. They would fight with anyone over nothing at all, throwing punches, biting, kicking. They needed to be controlled physically.

• 6:43Jocko Willink?

  But just could not be calmed down. It came to a point where something drastic had to be done to prevent innocent men being killed by deranged fellow prisoners, some of whom had reverted to animal instincts. The decision was made to build our own lunatic asylum to cage these poor souls. With the agreement of the Japanese, the burial party built two six-foot-square bamboo cages. The mad men could stand or lie down in these, just ten feet from my hut, and they had a bench to sit on. They received food and water, but sadly were largely ignored.

• 7:27Jocko Willink?

  At night it was awful to hear them in the darkness jabbering and screaming, throwing themselves at the cages. The men who went in never came out alive. Death would have been welcomed for them. It was a dreadful thing to see our fellow human beings caged like animals, but what else could we do?

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  You know, as I was preparing for this, and a lot of times when I'm putting notes together, I'm thinking about something that I'm gonna say, some comparable thing, that I can bring back from some of my experiences, and I got nothing for you. I got nothing for you. And this, this book is just like that.

• 8:32Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book.

• 8:35Jocko Willink?

  I turned to God several times. Often I felt my prayers went unanswered. But I somehow lived through this madness and I think that someone must have been listening. But faith in God could not prevent the beatings on the railway, which were totally routine. The threat of a rifle butt across your head or bamboo cane across your body forever loomed large. For no reason at all, wire whips would lash into our backs and draw blood. Some guards would creep up on you and strike the open tropical ulcers on your legs with a bamboo stick, causing intense agony. Often they delivered these beatings with such brutality and swiftness that you did not

• 9:19Jocko Willink?

  see them coming, or even know that they were, what they were for. Sometimes, you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Korean guards took a certain pleasure in the beatings. They had express permission to kill prisoners without any reference to higher authority. But most of them would be satisfied to stop at the sight of a blood trickling. The beatings, no matter how frequent, never got easier to take. In fact, they got tougher. Each time I took a beating, it chipped away, not just at my bones and waning muscles, but at my will to endure them. The dilemma, the dilemma, was whether to swallow your pride by going down at the first

• 10:03Jocko Willink?

  blow, or to retain some of your dignity by taking several blows and standing up to them. If you was, if you refused to show that their blows were hurting you, they would fly into rages, and the beating could be severe, even fatal. From an early period, the Japanese camp commandant, whom I called "The Black Prince", became ever more inventive with his punishments. I could not imagine a more sadistic and evil person on the planet. The more heinous the so-called crime, the sicker the sentence. Under his instruct- under his instructions, the guards had free rein.

• 10:49Jocko Willink?

  If they felt you deserved something more than a beating, it meant taking you aside and making you pick up a large boulder. For the rest of the day, you had to hold the rock over your head in the blazing heat. Within minutes, your already weak and malnourished arms would start to twitch and fail you. Before long, you would have to drop the rock, usually the size of a rugby ball or football, mindful so that you did so without letting it fall on your own skull. When you let go, the guards would pounce. Fists, rifle butts, and boots flailing into your body until you picked up the rock again. It would go on all day. And if the Japanese officer did not think you had learned your lesson sufficiently,

• 11:35Jocko Willink?

  the punishment would be repeated back at camp.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  The Black Prince was a true bastard. Others called him the Can You Kid, but I thought my name suited Lieutenant Usuki really well. He was darker than the other Japanese soldiers and strutted around like royalty, his beefy gut protruding from beneath a shabby uniform. He despised us totally. We were scum to him. His absolute power over us and capacity for pitilessness, for pitiless brutality, made him so terrifying to me.

• 12:13Jocko Willink?

  Long before our decision to incarcerate crazy men, the Japanese had built their own cages. The Black Holes, as they were known, were a higher form of punishment. Those fortunate enough to be locked inside the sem- the- Those unfortunate enough to be locked inside the sem- the semi-subterranean cages, proportioned so you could not stand, lie down, or even kneel fully, would be kept in for a month typically. Corrugated iron and metal covered the bamboo to intensify the heat and deprive victims of air and any cooling breeze. Few who went in came out alive.

• 12:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's...

• 13:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 13:07Jocko Willink?

  It's unbelievable.

• 13:10Jocko Willink?

  Unbelievable.

• 13:17Jocko Willink?

  "The Black Prince's right-hand man was Sergeant Sechi, known to us Brits simply as Doctor Death. Short and squat, he took the roll-calls and carried out all of the camp commandant's orders. Presumably, he was more educated than the other Japanese or Koreans, but he was evil to the marrow. Ruthless in the extreme, he loved tormenting us. He especially reveled in a sickening brand of water torture. He had guards pin down his hapless victim before pouring gallons of water down the prisoner's throat using a bucket and a hose. The man's stomach would swell up from huge volumes of water.

• 14:03Jocko Willink?

  He would then jump up and down gleefully on the prisoner's stomach. Sometimes the guards tied barbed wire around the poor soul's stomach.

• 14:13Jocko Willink?

  Few survived."

• 14:26Jocko Willink?

  "When a prisoner was caught stealing from the Japanese officer's storeroom, or if a man turned on a guard, they received the next grade on the sliding scale of Japanese torture. I called it the Indian Rope Trick, one favored by Indians in the old cowboy films. The helpless prisoner would be tethered spread-eagled to the ground. They wrapped wet rattan, the same string-like bark used to lash our bamboo huts together, around his ankles and wrists, and tied him to stakes in the ground. As the rattan dried, the ties would slowly gash into the skin, drawing blood and tearing into the sinew and cartilage as it pulled limbs from their sockets.

• 15:11Jocko Willink?

  It reduced even the toughest men to agonize screaming, and they would be there all day." I would almost be glad to get out of camp in the mornings, just to avoid hearing their cries of unbridled pain.

• 15:28Jocko Willink?

  It was a way of torturing all of us. Often, when we returned from a day on the railway, the men would no longer be there. Nobody asked where they had vanished to. I certainly did not want to know. After such a horrific ordeal, at the end, a Japanese bayonet would have been welcomed.

• 16:08Jocko Willink?

  So as time went on, eventually, you know, when they showed up, they had their, their pants, their shirt, their boots, their socks. And as time went on, they, all that stuff just got destroyed, it got eaten by the jungle as they worked and eventually fell apart.

• 16:26Jocko Willink?

  And, one of the worst things to lose is, the last thing that Alistair lost was his boots.

• 16:43Jocko Willink?

  Now in bare feet, I had a new challenge. My feet were extremely soft from living constantly in wet boots, and the ground was particularly unforgiving. The jagged volcanic rocks, often hiding just below the surface of topsoil. I knew that the soles would harden up, but until then, I would have to walk like a cripple. When using the spade, I wouldn't be able to use my foot to dig deeper into the soil and would have, and would require more upper body strength.

• 17:15Jocko Willink?

  Having no boots also made the ever-frequent trips to the benios, the latrines, even more unsavory. They were revolting. Vast, open pits, later covered in after weakened prisoners began to collapse into them and drown. As you approached the benios, you had to wade through the mud layered with excrement of those dysentery sufferers who never quite made it. Flies and maggots and flies and maggots swarmed and wriggled over this foul mush. It got so bad that we had a bucket of water at the entrance to wash our hut, to wash our feet in. It all added to the misery.

• 18:09Jocko Willink?

  It's amazing what we take for granted, isn't it?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, to say the least.

• 18:15Jocko Willink?

  And he goes on to talk about, and if you, how do you deal with this when you're going through it? And he writes, "In moments of adversity, I would often think back to my childhood and remember going barefoot during the long, hot summers we spent down at the Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire Fisher Fishing Village of Newton Hill, where I was born."

• 18:42Jocko Willink?

  So there he is, you know, having to go barefoot, his feet practically falling off. And the best thing he can do is try and think of the good times in his life when he was forced to go barefoot.

• 18:58Jocko Willink?

  And you would think,

• 19:03Jocko Willink?

  you would think some level of camaraderie would be critical.

• 19:11Jocko Willink?

  And this is one of those books where, again, in almost every military book, you just hear about leadership and camaraderie. And there's points in this book where that stuff fails. Fails.

• 19:31Jocko Willink?

  And this is where he kinda talks about that. Back to the book. "I even castigated myself for getting involved with another prisoner's problems."

• 19:43Jocko Willink?

  "Once you got started with sentimentality and grief, you were a goner. It was a selfish tactic, but I was desperate to survive. I was refusing to let the Japanese win this. Like on the death march, some men found the going easier by teaming up and making a close bond with another prisoner. They would fight railway life together, sharing whatever food they had, helping each other wherever they could, and always having their back. They even took beatings together to share the blows and the pain. It was not the way for me. I watched the heartache of men losing their best pals and suddenly being left alone.

• 20:26Jocko Willink?

  They never usually lasted very long, and soon followed their mates to the grave."

• 20:35Jocko Willink?

  By now, the cuts on my feet and legs had turned into painful and dangerous tropical ulcers. When I suffered scrapes on the railway or had a rash, I could not tend to it until Yasumi time, which is like rest time or at ease time, or until I was back at camp. Then I wrapped leaves around the cuts at night to keep the flies off, but it was useless, and the ulcers usually spread. They rotted your flesh, muscle, and tendons. People were left with gaping holes as the flesh simply fell away. An ulcer would eat deep into your flesh, so deep you could sometimes see the white of bone.

• 21:19Jocko Willink?

  Even worse, if you were not careful, they could become gangrenous, and many men lost legs that way, by improvised amputation, without anesthetics or drugs.

• 21:40Jocko Willink?

  I went to the medical hut for advice. In common with most of the men, tropical ulcers had engulfed my feet, ankles, and lower calves. I had avoided the medical hut until that point. It was set aside from the sleeping huts and about the same size as ours. The officer in charge was Dr. Mathiasson, a likable character from Paisley, just outside Glasgow, where he had studied medicine. He had come to Singapore about the same time as me, and would later, in much different circumstances, save my life. On this, my first encounter with him, he would at least save my legs.

• 22:23Jocko Willink?

  Sneaking under the cloud of black flies that circled outside the hut like a swarm of miniature vultures, I entered nervously. The overpowering stench immediately had me gasping. Stepping across the cadaverous forms of five or six men who appeared to be rapping at death's door, Dr. Mathiasson introduced himself. I had not spoken for so many days that when I went to reply, my parched throat failed me. "Here," he said, handing me a half coconut cup of water, "get this down you." I sipped the cool water down and thanked him, asking how his patients were.

• 23:05Jocko Willink?

  Dr. Mathiasson, in his mid-thirties at this point, appeared weary beyond his years. He was probably on self-imposed half rations just to keep some spare for his patients. The men had spoke highly of him, and many of our doctors were revered as saintly figures. The doctor took me by the arm and led me down to the far end of the hut, away from the men. In a soft west coast accent, he said, "Half of these men will die within days. The other half, who knows? If I had access to some proper clinical treatments, drugs, or instruments, they might live. But that is not possible, as I'm sure you know." I could only nod in agreement.

• 23:49Jocko Willink?

  The squalor and stench of death inside the hut was appalling.

• 23:55Jocko Willink?

  "What can you do for them?" I asked. "Quite simply, not a lot. I try and give them some hope, if nothing else."

• 24:11Jocko Willink?

  He went on. "It's easy for these men to give up, and when they lose hope, the fight just seems to seep right out of them. On countless occasions, I've seen two men with the same symptoms and the same physical state, and one will die and one will make it. I can only put that down to sheer willpower."

• 24:46Jocko Willink?

  We do talk about willpower.

• 24:50Jocko Willink?

  I don't think we've ever discussed willpower at this level. And that is when you have two men with the same symptoms and the same physical state, and one dies and one lives, and the doctor's only determination is he thinks it comes down to sheer willpower.

• 25:11Jocko Willink?

  The will is strong.

• 25:14Jocko Willink?

  It is a strong force.

• 25:21Jocko Willink?

  I considered this for a moment and looked around the hut. You could tell the men who were dying by the look on their faces. Their gaze was lost before it reached their eyes, and no amount of positive attitude and care from Dr. Mathiason could change their destiny. It certainly was not the medical staff's fault. Their hands were tied. No, blood was firmly on our captors' hands. I told myself right then and there that I would not stop fighting.

• 26:02Jocko Willink?

  "What can you do for this?" I asked the doctor, lifting a foot onto a bamboo chair. "Tropical ursars. A disease of food, filth, and friction. Do you know what maggots look like?" "Maggots?" I asked, frantically inspecting my foot, praying that I was subject to some sick joke. "Yes, maggots. They'll fix you right up. Go down to the latrines, find yourself a handful of those wee white beasties, and set them on your ulcers. They will chomp through the dead flesh before you know it. You'll be right as rain." "Almost as an afterthought, he added, "Remember to count how many you put on carefully.

• 26:47Jocko Willink?

  You don't want to forget one and leaving it there to eat itself to death."

• 26:54Jocko Willink?

  I left the medical hut, shaking my head, still wondering if I were being had. Letting maggots eat my skin did not sound particularly appetizing, but I was willing to try anything. I knew I had to stop the rot that was devouring my legs. The latrines were nothing more than holes in the ground. But now, with bamboo slats across them. A bunch of jungle leaves usually laid piled near, or you took your own foliage, or toilet paper if there was no river water collected for the job. I did not have to go far to find what I was looking for. I gingerly scooped up a handful of maggots, watching them squirm and wriggle.

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  Without thinking about it too much, I found a quiet spot nearby and sat down, placing just two or three on a nasty ulcer on my ankle. The maggots, which were about a quarter of an inch long, instinctively knew what to do. They started gnawing away at my skin with the most miniscule of bites. The sensation was of tingling, unearthly, yet not altogether unpleasant. Until the realization that the maggots were eating your raw flesh came racing back to the forefront of your mind. I can still feel that sensation to this day.

• 28:14Jocko Willink?

  But to Dr. Mathiason's credit, it certainly worked. Within days, the wounds had started to heal. And new skin grew back. It was a trick that I persisted with throughout my time on the railway, passing it on to other men when I thought I could.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  They still use that today, by the way, the maggots thing.

• 28:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Um, well, I've heard of it.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  That's crazy how he was kinda like, um, like, you know, I'll never forget that feeling of the maggots, but he talked about it as not being totally unpleasant. Kinda liked it.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Probably because he knew it was kinda healing him, you know?

• 29:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 29:04Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  It's heavy, brother, it's heavy.

• 29:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 29:11Jocko Willink?

  So now we get into a guy that, uh, had tried to escape and was captured.

• 29:18Jocko Willink?

  "I was unaware that anyone had escaped, until one morning, a sorry-looking chap was dragged before us. He had been horrifically beaten, his swollen and bloody features virtually unrecognizable. The interpreter told us, 'This man very bad. He tried to escape. No good.'

• 29:39Jocko Willink?

  Two guards threw him down on the ground in front of us, battered wreck of a human frame, and made him kneel. He did not plead for mercy or beg for assistance. He knew his fate and waited silently, resigned to it. The black prince, who seemed to have dressed up especially for the occasion, strode forward and unsheathed his long samurai sword. He prodded the prisoner in the back, forcing him to straighten up. Then the black prince raised his sword, its stainless steel glinted in the sunshine.

• 30:20Jocko Willink?

  It was a moment of such horror that I could scarcely believe it was really happening. I closed my eyes tightly. This was one of the many instances of barbarism on the railway that I would try to shut out of my mind."

• 30:38Jocko Willink?

  But I could not escape the chilling swoosh of the blade as it cut through the damp tropical air, or the sickening thwack of the sword coming down on our comrade's neck, followed by the dull thump of his head landing on the ground. I kept my eyes firmly shut, but swayed on my feet and felt a collective gasp of impotent anger and revulsion.

• 31:10Jocko Willink?

  And that line right there is...

• 31:18Jocko Willink?

  Something that when I heard it, when I read it, I kinda thought to myself that this is what separates every experience I've had in my life with this, and that is this, this gasp of impotent anger and revulsion. So, the anger's there, the revulsion's there, but it's impotent, and you can't do anything about it. Mm-hmm. Because you're a slave and you're at the mercy of another human being. Your freedom has been taken away.

• 31:56Jocko Willink?

  And I talk about freedom fairly often.

• 32:07Jocko Willink?

  And I don't think there could be any greater reminder of how precious freedom is than reading about someone, about a group of men that have had their freedom completely taken from them.

• 32:38Jocko Willink?

  Now, at this point in the book, and I wanted to point this out because if you have seen the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai, he makes some, he kinda spells out the differences.

• 33:01Jocko Willink?

  "The building of the bridge on the River Kwai took a terrible toll on us and the depiction of our sufferings in the film of the same name was a very, very sanitized version of the events. Unlike the well-fed extras in the movie, we did not whistle Colonel Bogie tune, nor did we work alongside Americans, nor did we have any semblance of a uniform. We were naked, barefoot slaves. And there were certainly no pretty and scantily clad local girls wandering through the jungle. And contrary to the film, our real-life commander, Colonel Philip Toosey, did not collaborate with the Japanese. I was not alone in doing

• 33:44Jocko Willink?

  as little work as possible without blatantly shirking, which resulted in sadistic beatings. Energy, every ounce of it, had to be conserved for survival. To bust a gut on starvation rations was absolute suicide. We had long lost our dignity, and working faster certainly would not have brought it back. In fact, it would have resulted in us in the opposite, with even more of us dying. Instead, we made constant attempts to sabotage. Men whispered orders to impair the construction of the bridge wherever possible. Some charged with making up concrete mixtures deliberately added too much sand or not enough, which would

• 34:28Jocko Willink?

  later have disastrous effects. We collected huge numbers of termites and white ants and deposited them into grooves and joints of load-bearing trunks."

• 34:38Jocko Willink?

  Out of sight of guards, I saw it halfway through wooden bolts wherever possible, hoping they would snap whenever any serious weight like a train was placed upon them. But the River Kwai and its tributaries harbored a killer even more lethal than the Japanese and our starvation diet.

• 35:00Jocko Willink?

  As an inevitable consequence of the lack of sanitation and the tens of thousands of bodies buried in shallow graves or dumped along in the jungle, the river system was loaded with cholera, bacteria, and the monsoon season became cholera season.

• 35:20Jocko Willink?

  As the heightened waters of the Kwai flushed Vibrio cholerae throughout the land, this fearful disease cast a black shadow over the camp. Cholera arrived unseen and unheard, but soon had us in its grip. I was slow to hear about it, but I sensed something terrible was in the camp. More men were falling ill than usual, and the Japanese kept their distance, leaving us alone. They were scared to death of catching cholera themselves.

• 35:59Jocko Willink?

  So this wretched disease comes into camp, and you just don't think things can get worse. And they do.

• 36:11Jocko Willink?

  And you think that Alistair is gonna avoid cholera, but he doesn't.

• 36:20Jocko Willink?

  Overnight, cholera struck me down. I woke up with explosive diarrhea and violent projectile vomiting. My ears were ringing as I felt dizzy. Cramp started in my bowels and soon spread all over my body as it rapidly dehydrated. I was drying from the inside out, shriveling like a picked grape left out in the sun. The cholera bacteria burrowed into the walls of my small intestine, producing toxins that sucked my vital salts and every ounce of water out of my body.

• 36:55Jocko Willink?

  I was unsure what was wrong, but I knew this, but I knew it was serious. I did not want to finish up with life drained out of me. I had always been extremely careful to drink only boiled water, so at first I was doubtful that it was cholera. I did not know much about it, but I knew that the first twenty-four hours were crucial. If you see through a day and a night, you would probably survive. Most men who succumbed did so in the first few hours, a horrible death, and so quick. Men who threw the bodies of cholera victims onto the funeral pyres in the morning could easily contract the disease, die, and be thrown on the pyre themselves that evening.

• 37:39Jocko Willink?

  They died in agony like crazed animals, and it was dreadful to see.

• 37:51Jocko Willink?

  I lay in my bed, unable to rise for work party. By then I was semi-conscious and I thought it was the end. I was hallucinating. Vivid red flashes stormed my eyelids. I knew I had to seek help. After psyching myself up, I managed to rise and wobble to Dr. Mathiason's hut. As soon as I walked in, he knew that I had cholera. It was a death sentence, and he was reluctant to tell me. Instead, he looked at me and simply said, "You'll have to be isolated. You'll be looked after." His orderlies led me to a cream-colored tent, like the ones we had used in scouts.

• 38:31Jocko Willink?

  As they peeled back the tent's front flap, a deathly stench leaped out. Unknown to me, this was the death tent, and I was the unlucky thirteenth occupant of a dimly lit space already full of men. When I saw their state, their eyes rolling back, rasping unintelligible voices, their legs raised with knees bent, the bizarre telltale sign of a cholera sufferer, I knew that my number was up. The orderlies were putting me here to die. The fight was fading from me, and I lay down on the canvas floor with a sense of complete and utter desolation.

• 39:14Jocko Willink?

  But he did survive. Out of the thirteen men that went into the tent, he was the only survivor.

• 39:27Jocko Willink?

  Now,

• 39:32Jocko Willink?

  at this point in the book,

• 39:37Jocko Willink?

  and I want you to remember that this isn't a book. This is another human being's life. And at this point in Alister's life, he actually got moved to a another facility, another prison camp that was for people that were in really bad, bad shape.

• 39:59Jocko Willink?

  And he was there, he went through some recovery time. And that's a very important part of the book.

• 40:14Jocko Willink?

  And then he begins working on the docks, you know, unloading food stores for the Japanese soldiers and loading them.

• 40:24Jocko Willink?

  And eventually, it comes time for him to be moved.

• 40:33Jocko Willink?

  And so they move the prisoners of war by shipping them.

• 40:40Jocko Willink?

  "On 4 September 1944, nine hundred British POWs were rushed up the gangway of the Kachidoki Maru, a ten thousand ton cargo vessel that had been named for, that had been named the President Harrison before it was captured from the Americans. Using sticks, the Japanese drove us like cattle aboard the ship and down into the holds. We could never move fast enough for them. The liner had two holds, both quite obviously not made to accommodate human beings. Yet they wanted around four hundred and fifty of us in each. The lads below were shouting, begging, and pleading for the Japanese not to let in any more men.

• 41:26Jocko Willink?

  But the louder they shouted, the more frenzied the gars became. Down and down we went into the depths of hell."

• 41:36Jocko Willink?

  Nothing in all of our suffering had prepared me for anything like this, and even today, I can scarcely find the words to describe the horrors of the Kachidoki Maru.

• 41:49Jocko Willink?

  By the time I got down to the hold, I had nowhere to sit. It was standing room only, most of us packed in like sardines with no toilet facilities. Most had dysentery, malaria, beriberi, and all manners of tropical diseases. Once inside, and the hold crammed full, the Japanese batten down the hatches, plunging us into a terrifying black pit. At that moment, the most fearful clamor went up as claustrophobia and panic gripped the men. Many feared they were doomed and began screaming and shouting. Yet a strange tranquility came over me.

• 42:34Jocko Willink?

  I felt resigned and just thought, "This is it."

• 42:42Jocko Willink?

  I thought that we would never get out alive and would never see home again. You felt resigned to accept this as your last. I could only think that they were taking us out to sea, to sink the ship and drown us all. Our captors were capable of it. I had seen what they were capable of, anything.

• 43:03Jocko Willink?

  We knew nothing about these ships, which would become infamous in the annals of the Second World War history as hellships, a fleet of dozens of rusting hulks used to shuttle supplies and prisoners around Japan's Far Eastern Empire. Some of the most appalling episodes of the war occurred on these ships, in which men, driven crazy by thirst, killed fellow prisoners to drink their blood. In some cases, prisoners trying to escape from the seething mass of hysterical captives were shot by Japanese soldiers.

• 43:41Jocko Willink?

  Some voyages took weeks with only a handful of prisoners surviving. Men drank their own urine. Sick prisoners were trampled to death or suffocated. The sane murdered the insane and wondered when it would be their turn to go mad. Cannibalism as well as vampirism was not unknown and even Japanese medics were shocked by what they found when the holds were finally opened. In the case of the Oroko Maru, where insane prisoners killed fellow man for their blood, only 271 men survived out of 1,619.

• 44:24Jocko Willink?

  So all those times that you think of horror movies and they don't seem realistic and you don't think it could ever happen? It has happened. There must have been at least one officer, a warrant officer, or sergeant major somewhere in the hold, but they certainly didn't make themselves known. Discipline had gone. Everyone, whatever their rank, was in the same situation. All of us just wanted to survive and were prepared to do anything to ensure that happened. It would have taken a very brave man to try and take command of the men in the hold in these conditions. It would have been suicidal.

• 45:09Jocko Willink?

  And again, that's one of those points where, you know, every book we've talked about, no matter how bad things get, there's a leader ready to step up. And you wonder if there's a line that you could ever go across where that doesn't happen. Well, here it is.

• 45:32Jocko Willink?

  I thought, I never thought anything could ever match the terror of the railway. Being in the hold was worse. At least slaving on the railway, you could move, and you had fresh air.

• 45:49Jocko Willink?

  Then another dread thought struck me: submarines. The Kachidoku Maru had no Red Cross markings painted on it. I would later learn that none of the hellships bore any indication that POWs were on board, as they were required to do by Geneva Convention. Red Crosses were, however, painted on Japanese ammunition carriers. My fears that without markings, we were a target for our own side.

• 46:24Jocko Willink?

  So he starts thinking, "Well, um, we're part of the Japanese fleet now. What if we get attacked by our own people? What if we get sunk?"

• 46:39Jocko Willink?

  And as you can probably foresee, because this story is just misery upon misery, it happens.

• 46:52Jocko Willink?

  In the hold of the Kachidoki Maru, the torment went on. The noise was constant and deafening, an awful cacophony of throbbing engines, moaning, coughing, and occasional panic-stricken screaming, the background music for this latest torture. The chilling screams of the mad and insane would stop abruptly. I don't know how they were dealt with, but I could imagine.

• 47:22Jocko Willink?

  I was completely stuck where I was in the hold and could not move. No one could. You couldn't sit or lie down. You couldn't even go down to your haunches. There was so little room. You didn't really want to lie down anyway. It was a sea of human waste and you risked being trampled. You had your space and protected it with your life, quite literally. You stayed strong, protecting your space with elbows and fists. By any means necessary. By this stage, it was every man for himself. Each person had their own problems to resolve, their own life to save.

• 48:01Jocko Willink?

  Again, we have not seen this yet. Every man for himself.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:13Jocko Willink?

  The smell inside the hold was indescribable or a pugnant stench. An overpowering mixture of excrement, urine, vomit, sweaty bodies, weeping ulcers, and rotting flesh clogged the atmosphere. There was no way we could get any fresh air. Even when the Japanese opened the hatches, it really didn't help that much. You were still breathing in what was already there.

• 48:41Jocko Willink?

  Thirst became our biggest problem. People don't understand what real thirst truly is. You start to hallucinate and see mirages. And that is the most dangerous thing. People died down in the holds from suffocation or heart attacks. The men who died were not taken away. Their bodies lay among us.

• 49:09Jocko Willink?

  So one of the other vessels

• 49:13Jocko Willink?

  that they're out with gets hit with a torpedo. American torpedo. It's another vessel that's holding prisoners of war.

• 49:24Jocko Willink?

  It is the

• 49:28Jocko Willink?

  1,317 were killed.

• 49:38Jocko Willink?

  Or sorry, 1,317 prisoners were on board. None of them were killed by the explosion.

• 49:47Jocko Willink?

  But 1,159 of them drowned or died of exposure.

• 49:55Jocko Willink?

  And, mind you, these were all guys that had served on the death railway. Guys that had already suffered just unimaginable torture.

• 50:19Jocko Willink?

  And then, as he suspected, it became their turn.

• 50:27Jocko Willink?

  Four minutes later, we suddenly felt a tremendous blast and an explosion tore through the hold. The whole structure shuddered and water flooded in it from above. I knew then, as the water crashed on top of me, that my worst fears had been realized. We'd been hit and I knew that the torpedo had struck very close to us. It was, in fact, the first of two torpedoes that would send the hell ship to the bottom within 15 minutes. The ship tilted. We were going down.

• 51:00Jocko Willink?

  So the ship sinks.

• 51:03Jocko Willink?

  Now, the Japanese had immediately tried to get off with lifeboats. It left all the prisoners trying to just create rafts with whatever they could.

• 51:14Jocko Willink?

  Even after the sinking, the killing went on for those of us who survived and got onto rafts. Anyone starting to panic was thrown off into the sea. When they scrambled to get back, they were kicked away. Men pushed under and held the Japanese, uh, men pushed under and held under Japanese survivors. Fighting broke out as the animal instinct to survive asserted itself, making some survivors try to capture more seaworthy vessels and shove others off to their deaths. Many gave up, already so weak, dangerously dehydrated and ill. Many gulped saltwater and quickly went stark, raving mad, drowning themselves to end the torment.

• 51:55Jocko Willink?

  Horrible as it may sound, as men became mad, they had to be shoved off of the rafts or boats, or the remainder might have perish, perished.

• 52:07Jocko Willink?

  There was a lot of shouting and screaming, cries of "get off you bastard" or "I'll kill you" made me close my eyes in distress. Most of the shouts were in English. There were not many Japanese, the majority of whom had gotten off early in the lifeboats. Drowning and dying men called for their wives, their children, or mothers.

• 52:31Jocko Willink?

  Men said things like, "Daddy will be home soon," and then disappeared beneath the waves. It was harrowing to hear.

• 52:41Jocko Willink?

  By that stage, most of us were treading a very fine line between sanity and madness.

• 52:48Jocko Willink?

  It didn't take much to put people over the top.

• 52:52Jocko Willink?

  I couldn't see where it was coming from, but a group of men started singing. First, to keep their spirits up, they sang "Rule Britannia."

• 53:01Jocko Willink?

  After the Selangor incident, we had been banned from singing this stirring anthem with its line about Britain's never, ever being slaves.

• 53:13Jocko Willink?

  So, there you start seeing some spirit.

• 53:20Jocko Willink?

  As they start singing "Rule Britannia," and the Selangor incident was when some prisoners had just, just when the Japanese had taken over in Singapore and the, and I, forgive me if I don't remember this correctly, but a couple guys had tried to escape and they got caught and basically it was a standoff between the, the soldiers and the Japanese prisoners, or Japanese prison camp commanders. And they wouldn't, and the, the soldiers did not back down until they had executed four, uh, the four prisoners that had tried to escape.

• 54:02Jocko Willink?

  And then they kept everyone else locked in this, uh, compound for five days. And when the guys started to die from starvation and dysentery and dehydration, then they, they said, okay, well, then they signed a paper that said no one else would try to escape, but they, they held the line as long as they possibly could.

• 54:23Jocko Willink?

  Two hundred and forty-four of my comrades on the Kachidoki Maru died that night. It was tragic beyond belief that having survived the death railway, they became prisoners of the deep.

• 54:38Jocko Willink?

  One thousand four hundred and three Allied servicemen had died as a result of the failure of the Japanese to observe the Geneva Convention and apply red crosses to our hell ships.

• 54:50Jocko Willink?

  He ends up getting recaptured by the Japanese.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  After the ship's

• 54:55Jocko Willink?

  Yes, he does survive. He gets recaptured by the Japanese. Eventually, he's close to where Nagasaki is, but far enough away that he doesn't die from the blast of Nagasaki. The war ends. They get picked up. And eventually they're obviously brought home by Americans and eventually sent back to England. He says that when he left Aberdeen, he'd weighed a healthy hundred and thirty-five pounds, but here in Nagasaki, on the steel yard scales, very accurate contraptions, similar to those I had used at the plumber's merchants.

• 55:38Jocko Willink?

  I was reduced to a skeletal eighty-two pounds.

• 55:45Jocko Willink?

  They've got some pictures of these guys. I mean, they literally look like skeletons. It's unbelievable that they were even able to survive.

• 56:00Jocko Willink?

  New arrivals, men from the vast industrial gulag the Japanese had created in Fukunawa, flooded the quayside and lengthened the queues for showers. So they're basically cleaning these guys up now, getting ready to put them on ships and ship them back to America. Sadly, at this final hurdle, some did not make it and died on that quay. This distressed the Americans immensely, and they were shocked by the matter-of-fact way that the other prisoners accepted the deaths of their mates. We had seen so much.

• 56:40Jocko Willink?

  Too much.

• 56:51Jocko Willink?

  Now,

• 56:54Jocko Willink?

  I think quite possibly this is the

• 57:01Jocko Willink?

  heaviest book that we've talked about on the podcast. Yeah, I would agree with that. And it's one of those things where

• 57:21Jocko Willink?

  it's a question if people

• 57:27Jocko Willink?

  are even gonna wanna listen to this.

• 57:31Jocko Willink?

  And I understand that. I understand that some people did not make it through this reading.

• 57:41Jocko Willink?

  And some people

• 57:44Jocko Willink?

  listen to it. Some people are gonna buy this book, which they should.

• 57:50Jocko Willink?

  And some people are gonna take this

• 57:54Jocko Willink?

  as a

• 57:59Jocko Willink?

  message

• 58:02Jocko Willink?

  from somebody who has seen evil.

• 58:08Jocko Willink?

  In a way that not too many people can claim to have seen.

• 58:14Jocko Willink?

  In a person that has had their every freedom taken from them. And their lives and their destiny

• 58:25Jocko Willink?

  put into the hands of sadistic people.

• 58:33Jocko Willink?

  Now, if you did make it this far,

• 58:38Jocko Willink?

  I will

• 58:41Jocko Willink?

  let this end

• 58:44Jocko Willink?

  on a

• 58:46Jocko Willink?

  on an incredibly,

• 58:51Jocko Willink?

  incredibly

• 58:54Jocko Willink?

  positive note and message

• 59:00Jocko Willink?

  from the author.

• 59:05Jocko Willink?

  And he says this.

• 59:09Jocko Willink?

  "My time as a prisoner of the Japanese helped shape and determine my path in life just as much as my childhood did. Like it or not, the horrors did happen to me and to thousands of others. Yet some good has come out of it. My ordeal has made me a much more patient, caring person. Inspired by the devotion of our hard-pressed medics on the death railway, I was able to care for my young daughter when she was ill and for my late wife, who required 24-hour attention in the last stages of her life. While in Japan and working with my friend Dr. Mathiason, I vowed to spend the rest of my life helping others,

• 59:54Jocko Willink?

  and I am so pleased to say that I have done so. It is where my satisfaction comes from nowadays. I have tried to use my experiences in a positive fashion and have adopted a motto from them, which I never tire of telling others. There is no such word as can't.

• 1:00:21Jocko Willink?

  I have not allowed my life to be blighted by bitterness. At ninety years of age, I have lived a long life and continue to live it to the fullest. I enjoyed a long marriage to my wife, and I have been fortunate to have a family and to enjoy their success. I have amazed my doctors, my friends, my family, and myself by remaining fit.

• 1:00:51Jocko Willink?

  I am grateful for my present way of life, after all the turmoil that life has thrown at me, and thankful to have retained my sense of humor."

• 1:01:03Jocko Willink?

  Most importantly, I now visit schools to tell pupils what really happened in the Far East during those terrible war years. In my ninety-first year, I am fortunate enough, despite the best efforts of the Japanese Imperial Army, to have the vim and vigor required to tell a new generation of how we suffered.

• 1:01:25Jocko Willink?

  Scandalously, our sufferings, which have haunted all of us Far East prisoners of war throughout our lives, were only recognized by the British government in the year 2000, when it offered compensation of ten thousand pounds to remaining survivors. Unbelievably, the British taxpayer had to pay out that paltry sum, and not the culpable Japanese government. I hope this book will stand as an indictment of the criminal regime that ran Japan during the war years, and the failure of successive Japanese governments to face up to their crimes.

• 1:02:03Jocko Willink?

  But I hope too, that it will be inspirational, and offer hope to those who suffer adversity in their daily lives, especially in these difficult times.

• 1:02:16Jocko Willink?

  Life is worth living. And no matter what it throws at you, it is important to keep your eyes on the prize, of that happiness will come. Even when the death railway reduced us to little more than animals, humanity in the shape of our saintly medical officers triumphed over barbarism.

• 1:02:40Jocko Willink?

  Remember, while it always seems darkest before the dawn, perseverance pays off, and the good times will return.

• 1:02:52Jocko Willink?

  May health and happiness be yours.

• 1:02:58Jocko Willink?

  Alistair Ercart

• 1:03:03Jocko Willink?

  July 2009

• 1:03:16Jocko Willink?

  Life is worth living.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Geez.

• 1:03:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:25Jocko Willink?

  The book is The Forgotten Highlander. It is a phenomenal read. It is a reality check. It is

• 1:03:38Jocko Willink?

  incredibly moving.

• 1:03:42Jocko Willink?

  And I highly recommend you buy it, you read it.

• 1:03:48Jocko Willink?

  And you understand what the world is. You get a better understanding of what the world is about. And I know I definitely got a better understanding of what the world is about in reading this.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Pretty much every detail, like every, every little element that he went through, made me think like dang, I'd rather, I'd probably rather die in that situation. Every little thing that happened.

• 1:04:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and there's, uh, there's obviously thousands of thousands and thousands of men that made that choice.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:22Jocko Willink?

  And their will got broken. And they just they lost the will to live.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  Dang.

• 1:04:29Jocko Willink?

  So it's incredible how strong the human will is, that you can survive that, eighty-two pounds. Disentery, starvation, ulcers in your legs, putting maggots on your legs.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it's just, um, it's truly incredible what the, what the human can survive. And it's also truly incredible what the human can complain about in this day and age. Right? I mean, we can complain about just the most ridiculous things.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:02Jocko Willink?

  Just the most ridiculous things.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's crazy how how big that spectrum is.

• 1:05:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just remind me to never complain about anything ever again. You know what I mean? Don't don't let me complain about anything ever again. I mean, I don't consider myself a big complainer, but come on, this is just, we have no reason to complain about anything.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, man, what's crazy too is one of one of the heavier parts there where I felt it was when he talked about the claustrophobia part.

• 1:05:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know you have an issue with that.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  It's there, but it's not it's not I'm not super sensitive to it, but it's something. I know I feel that that. That's like a tough one to get over, you know?

• 1:05:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Dang, especially going through all that stuff first and then you gotta deal with the. I don't know, man. This might be too heavy for me.

• 1:05:59Jocko Willink?

  Well, it was too heavy for a lot of people.

• 1:06:04Jocko Willink?

  And, yeah, I mean, it's almost like you you we almost don't need to have a discussion about this book. You know, Meg, just just stop talking about it. Everyone go read it.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  I get it, yep.

• 1:06:17Jocko Willink?

  And just let's move on, you know?

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:20Jocko Willink?

  Because like like I said, it just makes you realize.

• 1:06:27Jocko Willink?

  Just just what kind of suffering there can be and how good you've got it. How good you've got it. I'm gonna go to bed tonight in my bed and it's gonna feel good. I'm gonna appreciate that. I'm appreciated every night.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, so.

• 1:06:44Jocko Willink?

  Cause you think about like some little things you don't even think about, but they're like a real luxury. It it's just things that you really enjoy, but you don't even think about it. They're just they're just like a whatever. Like for me, I really like a nice cold, you know, big uh bottle of water, you know, I have a big. Just a big bottle of water. I completely take it for granted. When I go to work out in the morning, I drop a couple ice cubes in there, fill it up. It's all nice and filtered and whatnot.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:07:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I don't think anything about that.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:07:17Jocko Willink?

  That would be like heaven. Heaven and then you get, you know, you go to bed at night, you just crawl into the to the the five hundred thread sheets or I don't know, there's there's some kind of sheets that are nice, but whatever they are.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, the count.

• 1:07:33Jocko Willink?

  Some kind of cotton sheets that are all nice.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Jocko Willink?

  You climb into those, you don't think about that. You're not thankful for that every night.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much everything, like how you said, everything.

• 1:07:45Jocko Willink?

  Pretty much everything.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  Even like how. Yeah, you you know how you're breathing right now?

• 1:07:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Okay, consider that compared to that, what you just read there. Just well, just breathing, let's just start with that.

• 1:07:55Jocko Willink?

  Let's just break it down with air.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, the the beginning. I remember um, the cable guy was coming.

• 1:08:03Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  Which already sounds silly, I know. And um, and he was late, he was supposed to come, two was the cutoff, right, where he was gonna come, he was like, you know, before.

• 1:08:13Jocko Willink?

  The struggle is real, the cable guy was late.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he can't, I don't know, two fifteen or something and I had to go, I want to say go to work out or something.

• 1:08:22Jocko Willink?

  This is getting worse and worse.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  I know, but see, and that's the point.

• 1:08:24Jocko Willink?

  The cable guy is gonna be to.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, for my.

• 1:08:27Jocko Willink?

  Fifteen minutes late.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  For all my TVs, you know, he's he's fixing, not fixing, I don't know.

• 1:08:31Jocko Willink?

  For your seven plasma TVs you got here.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  I know some some lame thing, yeah, and. Yeah, and that's one of the things I thought of primarily when you said, think of all the little luxuries. So not only I'm not only am I complaining about something I don't need. I'm complaining about something that I'm get like a sub sub supreme luxury. I'm complaining about that. You know, because it didn't come fifteen minutes of all things. Um.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  Before the time uh, that it did.

• 1:09:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  I'm gonna check myself.

• 1:09:10Jocko Willink?

  It's a good idea. I'm gonna check myself too.

• 1:09:15Jocko Willink?

  So with that,

• 1:09:18Jocko Willink?

  let's uh, let's go to some questions

• 1:09:23Jocko Willink?

  from the internet.

• 1:09:26Jocko Willink?

  And actually, to start this one off, um, after the last podcast, number 11, when I had Leif on.

• 1:09:35Jocko Willink?

  And we talked about Mark, we talked about Mark Lee, we talked about Ryan Jobb, we talked about Chris Kyle. And, you know, we actually didn't talk about Mikey Monsour. So I had a couple of people ask me, "Hey, why didn't you guys talk about Mikey Monsour?" Well, the, the the simple reason is, it's kind of similar to the reason why I hadn't talked about Mark and Ryan and Chris yet either, until I got Leif on. Because Leif was the, the Charlie Platoon commander, those guys were in Charlie Platoon. And, you know, I wanted to have him on as a

• 1:10:17Jocko Willink?

  you know, as, as a

• 1:10:21Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what the word I'm looking for is, but I wanted to have guy from his platoon on, or from their platoon on to talk about him. And I just, that's the way I felt, and so that's what I stuck with. With Mikey, Mikey was in Delta Platoon. And I, I can promise you,

• 1:10:43Jocko Willink?

  I will be talking about Mikey at some point on this. Mikey was just

• 1:10:49Jocko Willink?

  phenomenal, and a hero, and a saint. And I will actually, absolutely be covering his life, and how he died, and how we remembered him, and how we remember him still. But I, I really just want to get, you know, somebody from his platoon that was, you know, right with him, uh, the whole time. And that's just, this is the way I feel about it. So that's what I'm gonna do. And

• 1:11:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so that's what I'm gonna do with Mikey. So it was, Mikey will, Mikey will definitely, we know we'll have a show for Mikey, absolutely. Mikey deserves a hell of a show. Uh, and we will have it for Mikey. So be ready for that. I don't know whom to get. A lot of, a lot of guys from Delta Platoon are still on active duty. Uh, the platoon commander is still on active duty. The, uh,

• 1:11:53Jocko Willink?

  all his good friends are still on active duty. So it's gonna be tough. It's gonna be tougher. It might take a little bit of time. But that's the plan. And it'll be worth it.

• 1:12:05Jocko Willink?

  So, let's go to the next question.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  Jocko, regarding mistakes, what are some of your own and some you've seen made by leaders you've looked up to? And how to recover? Can someone ever fully regain trust?

• 1:12:25Jocko Willink?

  This is actually a pretty easy one because, um,

• 1:12:30Jocko Willink?

  look, if you make a mistake, own it. Uh, the, the worst thing you can do if you make a mistake is try and avoid taking blame for it. That's the worst thing you can do. And if you think about the bosses that you've had, and you had some boss that made a mistake and he's like, no, it wasn't my fault, you just totally lose respect for him. So you can't do that. You gotta take, you gotta take ownership of it. Um, because, and again, if you think about the bosses that you've had, and the times that you had a boss that made excuses, you don't have any mercy on them. You're just ruthless on them. You just pick them apart. So that's step number one is, um,

• 1:13:11Jocko Willink?

  you know, take ownership if you make a mistake. And that's how it's always seemed to me from, as I looked up the chain of command, you know, if I saw a guy that made mistakes and then he took ownership of them, they're like, okay, cool. The guy's, you know, he knows he made a mistake. Cool. Well, we'll support him. If they're doing the other thing, they're blaming everybody else, they're not taking ownership, you're gonna have a hard time with it. And as a matter of fact, I actually had a mutiny in in one of my platoons where this is a long time ago. It's you know, all the names are long since forgotten, but we had a we had a a mutiny in our platoon where we said, you know, pretty much us us lower enlisted guys.

• 1:13:53Jocko Willink?

  We had a we went to the we literally went to the commanding officer and said, we don't want to work with this guy.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Dang.

• 1:14:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you know, all these ideas that people have of the, you know, military and of, you know, we obey orders and all this stuff. I mean, think of what a little jackass I was. We, you know, we say, well, you know what? We don't want to work with this guy. We're gonna go to the commanding officer and tell him we don't want to work for this guy. And the commanding officer, to his full credit, he was like, listen, guys, you can't have a mutiny, not at my command, not at my team. You guys suck it up. You figure out a way to work it out.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:14:29Jocko Willink?

  Go do what you're told. Get in line.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  Oh, so the mutiny didn't work?

• 1:14:33Jocko Willink?

  And then he fired the guy. Yeah, no, but he he like basically made it perfectly clear, like this is your one chance.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:14:43Jocko Willink?

  And he fired him.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Dang.

• 1:14:45Jocko Willink?

  But it was it was it was pretty crazy to see to see it happen. But and I say this all the time, it wasn't because the guy lacked tactical skill. It wasn't because he wasn't physically fit. It most of the reason was because he just couldn't take anyone's, you know, advice. He wouldn't listen to anybody. And so when he was making a mistake, it was like, no, no, we'll do it this way. No, it's okay. Constant cover up for himself and obviously it it didn't work out for him.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  So your mutiny sort of just put him on put him on notice. That was his write up essentially.

• 1:15:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but I think the commanding officer, I think, was really just doing the right thing, saying, look, guys, you can't have a mutiny. Doesn't work that way. This is the military.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:15:30Jocko Willink?

  Get back in there. Do what you're supposed to do. And then he was like, okay, I gotta fire this guy because he must not be good to have every enlisted guy in the platoon come forward and say, I don't want to work with this guy.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:41Jocko Willink?

  That's not a good sign. So the commanding officer did an outstanding job and he was actually a great, great commanding officer, too.

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  So it kinda worked on the DL, kinda?

• 1:15:50Jocko Willink?

  It worked on the DL, I guess, as Echo would say. And then I actually, the guy that took over was one of the best guys I ever worked for, if not the best.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  Dang.

• 1:15:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was pretty awesome. Um, and then as far as regaining trust, which is the other part of the question.

• 1:16:05Jocko Willink?

  It's almost as soon as you admit that you made a mistake, you are automatically regaining trust. That's where you start regaining trust.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:12Jocko Willink?

  And it just goes from there. Then you follow through with what you say. You know, you're constantly trying to build trust and relationships. That's what you're trying to do. And the minute you're lying to people, how are you building trust?

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:23Jocko Willink?

  And if you make a mistake and you say it's not your fault, then that's a lie and everyone knows it.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that that fear is, um, especially, not especially, but in regards to regaining trust, so to speak.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  You know, when someone admits mistakes, they have that fear that, oh, they're gonna think I don't know what I'm doing. Or I don't have a handle on this, you know?

• 1:16:44Jocko Willink?

  So doesn't matter. It so doesn't matter. It's so much better to go, hey, guys, I don't really know how to do this. Can you show me how to do this? I'm not sure. I've never done this before.

• 1:16:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:53Jocko Willink?

  Or, hey, never, I've never used this kind of weapon before. Can you give me an, an indoc on this thing?

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:16:58Jocko Willink?

  The worst thing you can do is step up to the line with a weapon you've never used before and not know how to lock and load it or clear and safe it and look like a total idiot. Cause then you look like a guy that is too arrogant and too insecure to ask.

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:12Jocko Willink?

  It's actually, it's actually a sign of insecurity if you can't ask when you need some help with something.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's funny how when people, when people are in that position and how can it just, this is kind of a general thing to know is that you're, you come off way more transparent than you think. You know how people will like, I don't know, something just as small as like name dropping. If you name drop someone, right, even or you just mentioned this person's name, but you're really name dropping even in a small way.

• 1:17:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  Like, people can smell that.

• 1:17:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  So even like this stuff, stuff that's a little bit more important where if a leader's insecure about something, I wanna make it like he knows everything, but he really doesn't.

• 1:17:50Jocko Willink?

  I hate when I do stuff like that.

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  I know, but, and, yeah.

• 1:17:54Jocko Willink?

  I hate when I do stuff like that. I'm like, oh, God, I'm such a loser.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  And it's transparent. Everyone, everyone knows it. And a lot of people, brother, are not in touch with that. They think that, oh, yeah, they don't know, cause I'm just gonna sort of mention it. And there's all these little things that it's just, you just reek of.

• 1:18:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  And I don't, I don't wanna put it like that. I wanna, I'll just say, like I said. You're way more transparent than you think.

• 1:18:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  You know.

• 1:18:18Jocko Willink?

  And transparent in this day and age actually has a positive connotation. I don't know if you know that.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:24Jocko Willink?

  But people view, oh, he's really transparent guy, you know, he really just tells you what's going on.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  If you're deliberately transparent.

• 1:18:29Jocko Willink?

  And you're using it in a negative way saying, look, people can see right through your.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  Exactly, yes.

• 1:18:33Jocko Willink?

  BS.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, when you're not trying to be transparent.

• 1:18:36Jocko Willink?

  Right, right. There's a big difference there.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:39Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, totally true, but it is definitely better just to, you know, ask and say, hey, I don't know. That insecurity, the, the, when you don't feel like asking something, that's a little knock at your door that says, oh, you're insecure. You're insecure.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:54Jocko Willink?

  When you're like, hey, you know what? I don't know how to do this. Can you, can you be a hand with this? All right, I'm stuck on this problem here. Can you, can you give me help with this? Cause I don't know how to do it. People don't say, oh, this guy's idiot, unless you're doing it every three sentences, cause that means you haven't studied.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:08Jocko Willink?

  Cause you gotta study, you gotta know your trade, you gotta know your craft. And if you don't, you gotta learn it.

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:14Jocko Willink?

  You know, you gotta break out the books and get on it. But once you've broken out the books and now there's a little bit of stuff that you still don't understand, well, guess what? Just ask the question.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:22Jocko Willink?

  Cause your frontline troopers are gonna know more than you. They should know more than you.

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:25Jocko Willink?

  You know, this, it's highly likely that they'll know more than you. I mean, I was a radio man for eight years in the SEAL teams and by the time I was a lieutenant commander in a troop, I didn't know as much as those, you know, guys knew about all the new radios and stuff. So I just had to ask a question. It's no big deal.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:41Jocko Willink?

  If you're secure in your leadership, you're, you're fine to ask a couple of questions. It's not that big of a deal.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:49Jocko Willink?

  But you are not clear to lie to people. You're not clear to make excuses. And that's what, that's how you regain the trust is by telling people the truth. It's really a simple concept.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  In regards to working out, right, and training for, um, you know, selection.

• 1:20:13Jocko Willink?

  And by selection, you mean, uh, mean special forces or ranger or seal selection?

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:20Jocko Willink?

  That's what they're talking about here.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, Jocko, what do you think of rucking as fitness versus just train up?

• 1:20:30Jocko Willink?

  So for, for people that don't know what rucking is, rucking is putting a backpack on, a rucksack with a bunch of weight in it, and walking long distances. And, and to be honest with you, you really are jogging, you know, you're really going at a pretty good pace when you're doing it.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  And that's it, as far as rucking goes?

• 1:20:46Jocko Willink?

  That's what rucking is. Because, because in the military,

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:50Jocko Willink?

  they can bring the pain with ruck mat marches, forced road marches is what they're called.

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, you'd be rucking all up in the.

• 1:20:56Jocko Willink?

  You, you'll be rucking till you don't want to be rucking anymore. And, uh,

• 1:21:03Jocko Willink?

  and so, you know, you'll do twenty mile forced road march, which is just, you're on the road with a fifty pound pack, just marching, you know? And, uh, so, uh, the thing is, like anything else, if you want to get good at it, you gotta do it, right? So if you want to get good at, uh, people ask me, well, how do you do, get, get, get into pull-ups? You know, how do you get good at pull-ups? I'm like, do pull-ups. How do you get good at running? Run. How do you get at swimming? Swim. Oh, you want to know how to get good at jiu-jitsu? Do jiu-jitsu. You know, get on the mat and do jiu-jitsu a bunch.

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:21:40Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and if you want to get good at rucking, at humping a ruck, at carrying weight over long distances, ruck. Because there's all kinds of little things you gotta get used to. Your feet gotta get prepared. You're gonna get weird muscles, your back's gotta get stronger, you're gonna get, you know, calluses all over your feet. It takes a special type of fitness regimen to get used to and ready for long ruck marches. And that special fitness regimen is rucking, and lots of it. So, uh, if you want to eventually, you can augment that, you know, you can start doing squats, you can start doing sprints, and that'll help you, you know, that's fine, but the foundation of the preparation for ruck, humping,

• 1:22:25Jocko Willink?

  should be ruck, humping, and that's what's gonna make you good at it. So.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  Did you do that?

• 1:22:32Jocko Willink?

  I did, I did. And rucking for me, actually oddly enough, is something that I was, I was good at. And it's weird because I wasn't the fastest sprinter and I wasn't the best long distance runner, which what does that make you? Makes you a loser. Right? You can't win a sprint and you can't run a long distance run? What's wrong with you?

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're kinda in the middle though.

• 1:22:53Jocko Willink?

  I was in the middle and what I realized was that was good for carrying a rucksack.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:00Jocko Willink?

  And I I got used to it too because I was a radioman. So you always had a, I always had to carry a freaking radio, you know? Thirty pound radio with water and batteries and you're just, it's always heavy. You're just sucking it up. And so I got used to it. I suppose it was that more than anything else.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  You're like, um, you ever seen the movie Tremors?

• 1:23:18Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  Right, well, there's a time at the end, they were like, man, we need to, we need to go to those mountains for those, you know, to, to avoid the underground worms. And they were like, hey, we could take the cat. And he's like, hey, it's, it's slow, you know? The cat is a big, uh, you know, the, uh, bobcat, you know?

• 1:23:35Jocko Willink?

  I actually know what a bobcat is. I'm not sure I know what underground worms are.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  That's something, that's something completely different, but they're bad. So. They took the cat and the guy, the guy was like, no, we can't take the cat slower than hell. And he's like, it doesn't, uh, it can carry a ton though, you know? It was, he was like you. You're like the cat. So they hooked up this big trailer, which is the rock in your chat. And you know, and they, and they drove everybody, um, you know, to the mountains.

• 1:24:02Jocko Willink?

  What were they planted? Did it walk?

• 1:24:03Speaker 01

  No, they were trapped on, on roofs, on a rooftop. And they're like, we're all gonna starve up here. We gotta make it to the mountains. It's like nine miles. They're like, how are we gonna get there? We can't, you know, we can't run. They're gonna get us. We can't, you know? So they'll say, we'll get the cat. And they were like, oh, it's too slow, but they're like, yeah, but it can carry this big trailer.

• 1:24:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:24:25Jocko Willink?

  And I used to say that in the SEAL teams and I, I don't know, my opinion was it was better to be built like a four by four than like a Porsche.

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:33Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it was better to be, just because you gotta carry weight around.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:24:36Jocko Willink?

  Durable, you know? What would you rather have working on a farm? Uh, Ford F three fifty?

• 1:24:44Jocko Willink?

  Or a Porsche.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:46Jocko Willink?

  I mean, a Porsche is cool for the track. When everything's all lined up and dialed the way it's supposed to be.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:51Jocko Willink?

  But you get any kind of terrain going on, you want that four before. He want it bad. And so that's why, you know, the seals, the seals, guys that were kind of more a four by four.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:25:03Jocko Willink?

  Than a Porsche.

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you can get.

• 1:25:06Jocko Willink?

  Be better in the field, in the real seal situations.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:10Jocko Willink?

  You know, the re- the actual, because the, the thing about that's, that's. It's a misconception about the seal teams is, you know, you see guys running on the beach.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:25:19Jocko Willink?

  And you see guys swimming in the ocean and they never are carrying anything.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:23Jocko Willink?

  And that's just complete lie. Because every time you do anything in the seal teams, you're carrying a ton of weight with you.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:30Jocko Willink?

  And so you gotta be built like a four by four and not like a Porsche.

• 1:25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. So, yeah, you'd way rather someone like you than some sprinter who can run like a four two forty. But then you put some, you know, something on his back.

• 1:25:42Jocko Willink?

  A sprinter is actually, you, you know, what you, you just want somebody that's durable.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Jocko Willink?

  Durable is the word.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:52Jocko Willink?

  And if they're a great athlete and they can have an awesome forty time, or they can run a marathon, but they're just durable, it's awesome.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:26:00Jocko Willink?

  I'm not trying to put parameters around the guys.

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:26:03Jocko Willink?

  Cause there's guys, there was a guy when I was at team two, and he was a guy I actually went through buds with. And he was. He's, he's. Kind of a short guy.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:26:16Jocko Willink?

  And he was kind of had an odd body shape. And so he kind of looked, he kind of had almost like a little pudgy belly.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:26:26Jocko Willink?

  And, uh.

• 1:26:29Jocko Willink?

  He just was one of those guys and the funny thing is, he could run faster than me and he could bench more than me. Yeah, no kidding. It was awesome. I love that. Yeah. He's an awesome guy. Awesome guy. I said, you know, that's cool. People say that about him because he's a little bit short and a little bit pouty looking. I'm like, he can, he can actually bench more than me and he can run faster than me. He can beat me in all the runs. So let's just be quiet.

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  Alright, next question. Jocko, do you think that the military, Army, Navy, Air Force is a young man's game? Cause he, this, this guy is twenty-nine years old and he's about to join up.

• 1:27:09Jocko Willink?

  He's about to get it on.

• 1:27:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 1:27:11Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 1:27:14Jocko Willink?

  Uh, two answers to that question.

• 1:27:19Jocko Willink?

  And as usual, with answers from me.

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  The dichotomy.

• 1:27:23Jocko Willink?

  Unfortunately, there's a dichotomy and they oppose each other. Uh, first of all, yes. And anybody that says it's not a young man's game is not telling the truth because it's a game where you're gonna be on travel, you're gonna be gone, you're gonna be risking your lives at times. You're gonna have to

• 1:27:44Jocko Willink?

  put up with a lack of comfort in your world. You're gonna be living in barracks, you're gonna be, I mean, it's just gonna be, it's not, it's not creature comforts, right? It's the military. It's a semi-Spartan environment. It's not the forgotten Highlander, for the love of God, but it's, but it's definitely more Spartan than what the average person has in regular life.

• 1:28:05Jocko Willink?

  So, to anybody to say it's not a young man's game is, is not telling the truth. Because it absolutely is. And for me, you know, I, I joined when I was a kid, when I was eighteen years old. And it was awesome. I had no attachments in life. Like, I went to the MEP station with nothing. With, that's the, that's the recruiting station where you actually go, and I forget what it stands for, but it's where you actually leave for the military. And I had no, I had nothing. They're, oh, do you need to store anything? No. What's your, you know, where are you gonna send your mail? I don't get mail.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:41Jocko Willink?

  There's no mail that's sent to me. I'm a blank slate. And that's awesome. You don't think about family, you don't think about anything. You just get in there and you get your job done and if they say, hey, we're gonna deploy you tomorrow for the next eight years, you say, cool, let's do it.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:54Jocko Willink?

  Let's bring it.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Dang.

• 1:28:55Jocko Willink?

  And and you have a obedient nature because you don't know any better, you know?

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:29:02Jocko Willink?

  You joined the military and you're, you're stoked. You're getting a paycheck all of a sudden. You know, you got a three hots and a cot. It's all good.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:10Jocko Willink?

  You know, whereas when you're, you know, when you're seventeen years old and you're not quite putting things together yet. Yeah, man, all of a sudden, like I said, you got a paycheck, you got three hots and a cot, you're ready to rock and roll. They tell you what you do, you do it.

• 1:29:25Jocko Willink?

  That's good. So yeah, it's a young man's game. Now, that being said, of course, there's a dichotomy to that. And that is that the military is always in need of guys that are mature and smart and have experience in life, right? That you need to have people like that. Now, you get them eventually through the military. Right. But it's also good to have people that weren't raised in the military environment, so they can always have a little bit of an outer view and you can learn a little bit from them. But what you have to get over is all those things that the young guy can eat for breakfast, right? You know, if you're twenty nine years old, there's a decent chance you've had a pretty nice apartment somewhere.

• 1:30:08Jocko Willink?

  There's a decent chance you slept in until, you know, nine forty-five on the weekends. There's a decent chance that you stayed out until two o'clock in the morning and partied and, you know, brought a girl back and you slept in until nine and you might be doing that on the regular, you know what I mean? Yeah. You, you got some clothes, you're watching cable TV, you got all these things, right? And then the other, the other part of that is you might have a family, you know, you might have a wife, you might have kids at twenty nine years old. Yeah. You might be established, you might have people relying on you, not just financially, but emotionally. Yeah, just to be there. So how are you gonna cut all that away? That's the challenge for the older guy. Now, some older guys that are twenty nine years old, they don't have any of that yet. If, if so, best case scenario, you got both.

• 1:30:52Jocko Willink?

  Now, I'm not telling the eighteen year olds to hold off on enlisting in the military. Don't hold off, just get it done. Get it done and you won't regret it unless you're, unless you screw up and bring it upon yourself. But if you are twenty nine and you can either overcome those obstacles of the things that are gonna, the things that are gonna, things that are gonna tear at you emotionally. Right. Right? They're gonna tear at you emotionally. Now, what's cool is when you're in the military and you're raised in the military,

• 1:31:24Jocko Willink?

  you are

• 1:31:28Jocko Willink?

  raised in such a way that those

• 1:31:32Jocko Willink?

  Those distractions are easily overcome.

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:31:35Jocko Willink?

  Right? You learn how to, you learn how to compartmentalize those things. At least I did. To say, you know what? Hey, I understand it's nice to stay home and sleep in on the weekend, but I'm not gonna do it.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:31:46Jocko Willink?

  Right? It's nice to be able to hang out with your wife and kids, but it doesn't matter to me compared to my job. That's what you end up like, which is slightly psychopathic, but it's where you end up, right?

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:56Jocko Willink?

  It's where I end.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  That's how. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:58Jocko Willink?

  It's where I ended up was, you know, nothing else matters besides the SEAL teams.

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:32:03Jocko Willink?

  And I don't care about anything else. So if you wanna be in my life, cool. You just gotta do it around these giant parameters that's called the SEAL teams.

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  Giant.

• 1:32:11Jocko Willink?

  Deal with it.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:14Jocko Willink?

  So join up. My brother, twenty-nine years old. Go and get after it.

• 1:32:18Speaker 01

  Do that. BTF.

• 1:32:21Speaker 01

  Next question. Jocko.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  When do you cut your losses or give up on something? And walk? When and how?

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  To decide to cut bait? Not a quitter.

• 1:32:40Speaker 01

  Too much brain damage.

• 1:32:43Jocko Willink?

  Brain damage. It's a word I've been hearing more from the corporate world, actually, as people talk about when something's really hard to do. And they're just causing brain damage by trying to do it. Uh, and these was actually two questions.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  That's obviously a metaphor, obviously.

• 1:32:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. It's a metaphor. It's a metaphor for, a- a- and it's a metaphor for what I talk about when I was like beating my head against the wall.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  Oh, gotcha. Yes.

• 1:33:02Jocko Willink?

  And this is one of those things that confuses people because everyone hears, including us in the SEAL teams.

• 1:33:09Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:09Jocko Willink?

  We hear the mantra of never quit, right? Never quit. And it's not just a mantra that we say. It's actually, it's actually what we believe.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:24Jocko Willink?

  And furthermore, it's not just what we say, and it's not just what we believe. But it's literally how we act.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:35Jocko Willink?

  So that, that drive and that attitude of never quit, it's a powerful force and it does push you over the edge to victory. To victory in many cases.

• 1:33:54Jocko Willink?

  But, and there's always a dichotomy to just about everything. There's a dichotomy to this too, because over that attitude, you have to layer something on top of that. And that is,

• 1:34:12Jocko Willink?

  is basically strategic vision and understanding of

• 1:34:19Jocko Willink?

  the battlefield as a whole. So, you know, it's like the, the, the saying of, win the battle, lose the war. This is the opposite, right? Win the battle, lose the war, meaning, oh, you, you stick to it right now and you might win right now, but in the long run, you're gonna lose. This is the opposite. Where you, you're gonna say, you know what? I'm gonna lose this battle right now.

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:42Jocko Willink?

  But I'm gonna win the war in the long run. So, you absolutely need to know when you gotta stop beating your head against the wall. You've gotta know that. I personally draw my limit at twenty-seven times. After I've beaten my head against the wall twenty-seven times, on the twenty-eighth time, I'm gonna say, you know what? I bet there's another way to do this, or maybe this isn't a battle worth fighting.

• 1:35:07Jocko Willink?

  Now, the main reason,

• 1:35:10Jocko Willink?

  I think why people get caught in the trap of banging their head against the wall, or not knowing when to quit, is because, and again, quit is a strong word, and it's almost hard for me to say right now, because it's not knowing when to quit. I'm not talking about quitting.

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like you're making this like, give up.

• 1:35:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, I'm talking about making a strategic assessment of an unwinnable situation, and deciding to disengage only so you can reengage with superior firepower and crush the enemy.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sounds true.

• 1:35:43Jocko Willink?

  So there's a big difference between that and quitting. Quitting means you curl up into a ball and wait to die. That's what quitting is. And, uh, I don't support that under any circumstances. So when do you, when does it happen where, i- it happens because people get emotional? They get too emotional about whatever obstacles in front of them. They get crazy about it, and they start seeing the obstacle as not only the battle, but also as the war. And they get lost in their own determination. I've seen this with some SEAL buddies of mine.

• 1:36:23Jocko Willink?

  They're so determined that they will not stop even when it's completely detrimental.

• 1:36:32Jocko Willink?

  You know, and and they do it with just about everything, you know, they'll be determined at anything, you know, they'll be hurting themselves, training, they'll be, you know, determined to drink harder than anybody else, they'll, I mean, just anything you can throw at them and they're determined to win at that and you're actually losing.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:49Jocko Willink?

  Um. So, so how do you prevent that from happening? Is you have to, again, common theme here, you have to detach, you have to detach yourself, you have to

• 1:37:03Jocko Willink?

  be able to step back away from the problem enough to look at it from a strategic viewpoint and say, okay, what's, what's going on here, what's the risk, what's the reward? How much am I willing to sacrifice right now and how is that sacrifice going to impact me tomorrow or the next day or next week?

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:21Jocko Willink?

  And then, once you've detached and you've weighed and you've seen what the real value of the, this immediate objective is, then you can assess and make a logical decision based not on your emotion, but on the actual impact of the situation in the overall strategic picture.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, um,

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  how you're saying when you weigh the, the the detriment and the, and the rewards and I think that, that really makes it real clear when you can assess and be like, oh,

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  all of this, we're getting all this, like, all these, this detrimental stuff. When we're trying to get this, you know, this one

• 1:38:09Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  Benefit, you know, out of this person or out of this situation or whatever. And when you're, you're using up your resources or sacrificing more resources, then you are gaining ground. Then, you know, that, that seems like a clear time to, at the very least, start thinking about disengaging.

• 1:38:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you gotta, you gotta detach to be able to notice that. And I notice this in jujitsu all the time. People try and pass, the passing guard is the simplest example.

• 1:38:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:32Jocko Willink?

  People will just like do one guard pass.

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:34Jocko Willink?

  And it doesn't work and they do it again and it doesn't work and they do it again and it doesn't work. They do it again and they go on and on and on until they're exhausted. They get mounted and then they get put to tap.

• 1:38:46Jocko Willink?

  And it's because they were stubborn and they didn't detach and say, I mean, after you've tried to pass a guy's guard 14 times in a row, the same way. And it hasn't worked, why is it going to work the 15th time? The answer is it's not. Try something else.

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  Trying to think of a solid, solid answer to that.

• 1:39:04Jocko Willink?

  There is no solid answer. And it's the same thing. I used to see this putting seals through training. They'd get like bogged down in a bad situation. And they would, um, they would, they would just be start, get focused on that one problem. You know, one room in a building, they'd be like, no, send more guys into it. Send more guys into it. Everyone's just getting sprayed with paintball and put down in the training operation. No, it's two more guys. And eventually everyone's just, you know, it's training, but everyone's dead and they're like, I don't know what happened. You just didn't, they got focused on it and it cost them. So the leaders gotta be able to step back and detach. And take a look at the situation and decide, you know what?

• 1:39:44Jocko Willink?

  I'm going to go ahead and, uh, change course right now. Not going to quit, but I'm going to adjust, make a strategic adjustment.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and that's, it's weird how those semantics can really change your outlook on the whole task. When you, when you use the word quit versus disengage or another one with quit, like I said, is, is give up. You know, like give it up. I mean, unless it's something negative like smoking or something like that. You're going to quit smoking. You're going to give up smoking. That's good. But obviously smoking's negative, but any kind of task or anything that requires effort. If you quit or quote unquote, give up, it's like, it's hard to.

• 1:40:21Speaker 01

  Have that sound like a good thing, you know?

• 1:40:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and one thing that's, this is, you know, obviously it applies to combat. It applies to jujitsu as we just talked about, but also, you know, you look at what you're doing day to day. And the little things in your life that you're trying to make work or in a business that you're trying to make something happen.

• 1:40:41Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:40:41Jocko Willink?

  And sometimes people get so addicted to their plan.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:45Jocko Willink?

  They get so, their ego is wrapped around their plan. Their plan is like fifty percent, fifty percent tactics and technique and it's fifty percent their own ego.

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:40:55Jocko Willink?

  And so when you try it, when that person's plan starts to fail, guess what? They don't wanna let it go. Cause it's all wrapped up in their ego, so they just push it further. They push it further. They push it further. And especially if that person's in a senior position, well then everyone's kind of just followed in line and they're looking at them. They all know, they all know when they're at the bottom of the chain of command, they're all looking at this person saying, hey buddy, it's not working.

• 1:41:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:19Jocko Willink?

  Let's disengage.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:21Jocko Willink?

  And fall back and figure out a new plan of attack. And then let's re-approach the target from a different angle. Let's flank this target.

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:30Jocko Willink?

  So if you're in a business, if you're in a relationship.

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  Relationship, yeah.

• 1:41:36Jocko Willink?

  And you've got a situation where you're trying to make something work a certain way and it's not. Maybe it's, you gotta disengage and you gotta come with a different angle of attack. So that you can get the big win in the long run.

• 1:41:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and with relationships, obviously it's, it's, it's the same dynamic, but it's different because, um. Well, it's the same because when you're in a, let's say a boyfriend girlfriend relationship, whatever, even husband wife, um, you. Say it's not working. Let's say one of them's abusive, right? Meanwhile, the other one's trying to quote unquote make it work.

• 1:42:10Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  And if they end up leaving, oh, you gave up on him, you know, you, you, or you, you quit. No, no, I don't think you'd ever say you'd quit the relationship, but you would just say you gave up on the relationship.

• 1:42:21Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  You know, well, he's been abusing her for ten years already, you know? Or in your case, twenty-seven years or, you know, whatever the number is. And, um, and you gotta.

• 1:42:33Jocko Willink?

  I do not abuse my wife.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  Right, right, but you know, as far as your numbers go, uh, twenty six. Um, but again, like if you say, oh, you gave up on the relationship, it's kinda like, well, it's kinda like it's the girl's fault a little bit. Like, maybe she, she, she shouldn't have done that almost, you know? But, um, yeah, you disengage. And if you wanna, if you wanna go for the win in that relationship, and if you really wanna maintain the relationship, don't let it be a husband and wife relationship. Maybe go back to being neighbors or something like that. Even though in an abusive relationship, that might not work, but I'm just saying theoretically.

• 1:43:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm not sure about all that.

• 1:43:10Speaker 01

  Sure, man, I'm sure.

• 1:43:11Jocko Willink?

  Uh, but I do know that if you find yourself trying repeatedly to make something happen and it's not happening, try a different route. Don't consider yourself a quitter, consider yourself a strategist or a tactician.

• 1:43:32Jocko Willink?

  Good.

• 1:43:32Speaker 01

  Next question.

• 1:43:39Speaker 01

  Jocko.

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  In a fight, MMA or otherwise, would you substitute anger or rage for aggression?

• 1:43:53Jocko Willink?

  Would I substitute anger or rage for aggression? This isn't a fight, MMA or otherwise, that's important, actually.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so wait, so just to clarify, this means like, instead of aggression, is it okay to use anger or rage?

• 1:44:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:44:08Jocko Willink?

  Well,

• 1:44:11Jocko Willink?

  I think pretty obviously, and people would expect the answer to be from me, the initial answer here is no, and I would not substitute anger or rage for aggressiveness. Uh, I think obviously when you let rage take over, you, you're not thinking anymore.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:30Jocko Willink?

  And the mind.

• 1:44:33Jocko Willink?

  Is allegedly the most important weapon and I actually believe that to be true. So if you let your rage and anger take over, you're not using your mind and that's not good. And you actually get to see this in MMA on a fairly regular basis because you'll get somebody that is really good at talking smack.

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:51Jocko Willink?

  And they'll get into the other person's head. What does it mean to get in the other person's head? What does it do to them? Does it make them sad? No. Does it make them not hate the opponent? No. What does it do to them? It makes them angry.

• 1:45:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:04Jocko Willink?

  It makes them frustrated. And that anger leads to frustration, which leads to defeat. So

• 1:45:17Jocko Willink?

  and again, I think it's important to recognize that this doesn't just occur in MMA. It occurs in everyday life. And a good example is when you get in a conversation with somebody, you get in a debate with somebody. You get in an argument with somebody. The minute you get frustrated or angry or enraged, you just lost the argument.

• 1:45:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:40Jocko Willink?

  Right? I mean, you might, you might feel like you won.

• 1:45:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:45:44Jocko Willink?

  But you will not win the argument. You, you lost the argument.

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:45:48Jocko Willink?

  The minute that that happens.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, in any, yeah, especially if it's in a debate, man, because it's an understood, you're debating, you're kind of against each other and then it's you just went off the rails, basically.

• 1:46:01Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:01Jocko Willink?

  It's not good to lose your temper in a debate, in a conversation, or in an MMA match.

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  It's like if you were playing chess, we were playing chess. And I was talking smack to you, you got frustrated and you flipped over the chessboard.

• 1:46:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  Right. Uh, with the, with the, um, you know, a display of monumental power or whatever, whatever that was.

• 1:46:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, rage, actually.

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  Rage, yes. Um, yeah, you, you lost.

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  In a way.

• 1:46:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you, you absolutely is. Um, so, I, you know, I talk about this all the time is that the rule is you'd never let your emotion get in control.

• 1:46:39Jocko Willink?

  So you don't let anger, rage overwhelm your little brain.

• 1:46:46Jocko Willink?

  Now, here's the, here's the other side of that coin, here's the dichotomy, and I don't think you can even argue against this.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:46:55Jocko Willink?

  Cause it's, that's a pretty sound argument, right? I mean, what we just said, I mean, we've seen it, we know, we know for a fact.

• 1:47:02Jocko Willink?

  But rules are made to be broken. Um, there are times

• 1:47:08Jocko Willink?

  when emotion can increase performance.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:11Jocko Willink?

  Right? There absolutely are. And I remember when I was a kid growing up, the, the Soviet Union was still just hardcore communist. And when I would watch like the Olympics, they would be like machines, the Soviets, no emotions. And I thought, man, those guys are badass. I wanted to be like that. And it often brought them victories. But I heard a quote when I was a kid and I, I actually looked for it, cause I wanted to bring it up. I couldn't find it, but it was something along the lines of this. And that was that Soviet, the Soviet athletes perform better in practice, but the Americans perform better in the stadium.

• 1:47:51Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:47:52Jocko Willink?

  So

• 1:47:54Jocko Willink?

  the Americans, and that's not a universal statement, and there's plenty of examples of the Russians beating Americans and whatever, but there's also examples of where the Americans with their emotion and their fire

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:48:09Jocko Willink?

  were able to beat these Russians. And I mean, the greatest example would be the miracle of ice on ice in, in Lake Placid, New York in 1980, which is, you know, that was a bunch of college kids that were fired up to beat the hardened Russian professional hockey team.

• 1:48:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:26Jocko Willink?

  And, and it's because, you know, they kind of trained their emotions out of it. And there's a great time to have your emotions trained out of it. You know, there's a great time where you're like, you know what? I'm not gonna let my emotions play into this. I heard a, I heard something about Tiger Woods and his golf game. And he's not thinking about, you know, the, the broad statement is when he's hitting a shot in golf, he's not thinking about the last shot and he's not thinking about the next shot. He's just thinking about that shot right there.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:57Jocko Willink?

  So there's no emotional of whether he's ahead or behind or nothing else. It's just, he just is there on that one shot. So.

• 1:49:06Jocko Willink?

  I think that, you know, we, I think that people, I mean, Americans is the example I used, but I think that people in general can use your emotion to, to your advantage. Sometimes, but it does take control and it takes direction. And also, I think it's important to remember that it doesn't take long for that extra fire of anger to go from making you stronger and faster to making you slower and weaker, both mentally and physically. So you can get that burst.

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:49:45Jocko Willink?

  And you know, you see this in fighting all the time where people punch themselves out. You know, they go, they go level seven rage and they start swinging for the fences.

• 1:49:52Speaker 01

  Or even excitement even.

• 1:49:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, or excitement. They think the guy, they think they got the guy in the, in the hurt locker. They come, they bring the thunder for, they get, they get emotional.

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:50:02Jocko Willink?

  And I think on the mat, when you get a guy that loses his temper, when, when somebody loses their temper with me on the mat, it's just a matter of time. Like, I just go, okay, cool. He's got, you know, he's got three minutes left because he's gonna be done. So.

• 1:50:20Jocko Willink?

  I, I, yeah, you've gotta stay calm. Now, a couple situations that I've seen or been a participant in. Uh, and I'm pretty sure, I was trying to remember this for sure, but I was cornering Jeremy Stephens.

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:50:35Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't know who Jeremy Stephens is, Little Heathen MMA, awesome guy, stud fighter. And we were training him at the time and he was fighting, I'm pretty sure it was against Marcus Davis, who's a well-respected boxer, really good MMA fighter as well. But definitely known for his boxing. Well, Jeremy's known for his striking as well. He's a very powerful striker and he's got unbelievable one punch knockout. Uh, power, Jeremy does. So I was cornering Jeremy and it was a really, really close fight. I mean, it was a, I didn't know if he was winning or losing. I think it was leaning towards Marcus, actually.

• 1:51:19Jocko Willink?

  And there's three rounds in MMA in this, in this fight. And in between the second and the third round, I got in the ring. Got in the cage with Jeremy and I, I did the full on, you know, in his face. And I'll, you know, I gave him the, hey, listen, this is what's going on. This guy across the ring from you is taking money off your kid's table. He's taking food off your kid's table. He's gonna take your, the roof off their heads. He's taking everything that you've worked for. He's gonna take it from you right now. You gotta get pissed, you gotta go in there, you gotta destroy him. And I got, you know, I got, gave him a fired up speech like that. And you could see it switch in his eyes. He realized like he went into a rage of, I need to kill this guy. Yeah.

• 1:52:03Jocko Willink?

  And he came out that round and knocked him out. Yeah, remember that? And that's one, I'll tell you another one I saw. That was.

• 1:52:13Jocko Willink?

  It was the same. So it was, it was Carlos Condit versus Rory McDonald. And this was.

• 1:52:22Jocko Willink?

  This was the first time they fought. I'm pretty sure it was in Canada. I was there, I forget who I was cornering, but I was there. And I was done with cornering whoever I was cornering. And.

• 1:52:35Jocko Willink?

  I wanna say it was Peterson boat I was cornering, I think it was up in Canada. But. Um. So Carlos Condit versus Rory McDonald. And. Carlos, who's the veteran, is going up to, gets the kid, you know. Rory McDonald wasn't kind of an, he was an unknown, but he was definitely the younger. I think he was twenty years old. You know, just a kid, no offense Rory, but he was young, you know what I mean? Badass, but young. And Carlos was the vet, you know what I mean? He was a veteran, grown man with a wife and kids. And. Man Rory was getting the better of him, it was in front of Rory's hometown. Well, I don't know if it was his hometown, but it was in Canada. And so the crowd was absolutely supporting Rory. At least I'm pretty sure I remember this right. I'm sorry if I don't.

• 1:53:21Jocko Willink?

  But it seemed like the crowd was on the side of Rory McDonald.

• 1:53:26Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:53:28Jocko Willink?

  In between, so I'm just watching the fight, but I had snaked some really good seats, so I had a really good view. By the way, when I go to UFC, thanks Dana White and the rest of the crew, like I sneak into some awesome seats after I get done cornering people, so thank you. So I was sitting, you know, in the second row or some phenomenal seat that I'd snuck into. And because they throw you in the cheap seats when you're, when you're cornering people. You come out to watch the fights and, and yeah, your up in the nose bleeds, which isn't, isn't cool. So I just get aggressive and tactically move to better positions. Which is usually the second row right behind the press box.

• 1:54:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:54:01Jocko Willink?

  So I'm sitting down there and I'm watching the fight and Greg Jackson is cornering Carlos Condit. Now, if you don't know anything about Greg Jackson, he's, he's a pretty zen-like guy and I'm actually, uh, going back in the day, going way back in the day, when Dean and I were competing all the time in the kind of the SoCal scene of grappling.

• 1:54:28Jocko Willink?

  We would, we'd do every competition there was, we'd be competing all the time, grappling, I don't even remember, there were, there were so many of them that we'd do. And, and, uh, Greg Jackson would bring guys out to, to fight, to compete. And so like we wrestled against these guys, you know, or we did submission grappling against these guys, so I kind of knew him from that. And then surprisingly, one time when the UFC was in San Diego, I was at work at the SEAL Teams and someone called and said, hey, there's a, there's a guy from the UFC here, do you want to give him a tour? Of, you know, he wants a tour, the UFC set up a tour of the SEAL Teams, they want to show him around.

• 1:55:05Speaker 01

  Like the facility there?

• 1:55:05Jocko Willink?

  The facilities, you know, the whatever, show him some guns, you know, just the gear, whatever. So I show up and it's Greg Jackson. And, you know, we kind of had a little bit of a recognition. But, uh, anyways, Greg Jackson and, you know, you kind of hear this stuff about Greg Jackson all the time, that he's this really nice guy and that he's super mellow and that he's really humble. Well, it's all freaking true. He's a super nice guy, he's super humble, he's just a fantastic guy. And, uh, I gave him a tour and so we kind of got to know each other. And then, you know, going fast forward, now in the UFC, I, I've, I've cornered him several times, I don't know how many times, I've cornered against him, you know, like my fighters are fighting his fighters.

• 1:55:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:47Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and, you know, like I said, he's a really- Like a really mellow and a zen-like guy. If you watch him in the corners of his fights, he's always like that, just very steady and hey, this is what you need to do. You need to watch out for this or whatever.

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:56:01Jocko Willink?

  So I'm watching this fight. And like I said, Carlos Condit versus Rory McDonald, Carlos is not winning. Right? He's not winning. And in between, uh, the second and the third round, Greg Jackson goes full Berserker mode on Condit. I mean, he is yelling at him, he is in his face, he's pointing at him, he's waving his finger. He's just going nuts on him. And I was like, damn, Greg Jackson is bringing the heat. And sure enough, he amped up Carlos Condit. Carlos Condit came out and finished Rory in the third, which of a fight he was definitely gonna lose. So what you see there is emotion

• 1:56:46Jocko Willink?

  helping to win in that situation.

• 1:56:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:50Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, actually, when the fight was over, I saw Greg and I just kinda said something to him, you know, like, "Hey, you went full Berserker mode on Carlos." And he said, "Yeah," he's like, "I had to do it." And it's funny, it's, you could see, it almost seemed like he'd never done it before. I don't know. Maybe we'll have to have Greg on at some point, he can tell the story. But he said something along the lines of, "You know, I, I had to do it." And, and, and it worked. He had a big smile and, and that was working it. And it definitely, indeed, it did work.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and those, would you, do you think, I mean, this is total guess, but do you think that's because those just happen to be the exceptions? Or is it, cause really the formula kinda seems like, here's the emotion and then here's all the logic and the skill and the planning, implementation of, of, you know, game plans and all the, all this stuff that you're gonna use in your, in your mind. And here's the emotion and it's like, it's like a little spark plug or something. And then, um... Sure, the emotion can go up, but the skill gotta go up proportionately. And once you start to do this, when the emotion takes over, that's when, you know, when you're gonna fail or people will take advantage, so.

• 1:58:07Jocko Willink?

  But I think there's a sweet spot in there. Where for moments in time, emotion, and even borderlining on rage, which I think rage is a little bit strong, because I think rage, you lose your clarity, but anger,

• 1:58:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:23Jocko Willink?

  which is, you can still have some clarity of what you're doing, right?

• 1:58:26Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:58:27Jocko Willink?

  So, I, I think you can actually, that can be utilized appropriately at the right times. And I think these times, you know, like I talked about with Jeremy,

• 1:58:35Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:58:35Jocko Willink?

  You know, I had to provoke some anger out of him.

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:39Jocko Willink?

  You know, I had to provoke, and it absolutely helped him. He was gonna lose that fight.

• 1:58:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:43Jocko Willink?

  And it's the same thing with Carlos. Carlos was absolutely gonna lose that fight if he didn't do something different, if he didn't, you know, it's like, it's like hitting the turbo button. It's like hitting a nitrous oxide, right? It's not gonna, it's like hitting the blow, the nitrous oxide blower. It's only gonna get you, it's only gonna make you go hard for another,

• 1:59:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:02Jocko Willink?

  what is it, another two minutes, or, well, without nitrous oxide, it's not very long at all. But, yeah, but with, but with anger, you know, it can make you go for another, mm, you know, whatever, maybe it's, maybe it's two minutes. And this is something else. Have you ever missed, like, a heavy single? Like, like, okay, you're lifting, you're deadlifting, or you're doing power cleans or something, and you miss a heavy signal?

• 1:59:25Speaker 01

  Uh, no, I never have, but I've heard, I've heard.

• 1:59:28Jocko Willink?

  So, so this is another easy way to prove it.

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  Mm.

• 1:59:32Jocko Willink?

  Man, I miss a heavy signal sometimes, and sometimes I just get angry.

• 1:59:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:59:38Jocko Willink?

  And I just have to bring the anger.

• 1:59:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:40Jocko Willink?

  And I start getting fired up, and I start thinking about things that make me angry.

• 1:59:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:45Jocko Willink?

  And I get over to that bar and I rip that thing off the floor like I hate it.

• 1:59:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:59:49Jocko Willink?

  And it absolutely makes me stronger in that moment. So, is that, that's probably adrenaline. And that's probably the same thing that pumped into Marcus's, or, or into Jeremy's head. It's probably the same thing that pumped into Carlos's head. But it's crazy, because despite getting punched, despite getting beaten, despite having someone, you know, trying to destroy you in front of a large crowd of people, none of that was able to spark the, was able to spark the adrenaline as much as some kind of a. A tap into the emotional portion of your mind to bring out just enough rage to get out there and get that job done once and for all.

• 2:00:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and yeah, and that's really the key there, just enough rage, especially when you're talking about um, something that requires. Technique, when you say lifting your, your, like power clean, for example, and um, I remember. It was in, in college and I was going for my one rep max and yeah, you fail a couple of times, but. For the sake of saving time and stuff, you can, they only give you three times. Well, in my case, they, they were like, you have to get it three times. Um, so the first time I'd gotten all of them. I was, I was pretty solid at power cleans at that time. So I was getting all of them and then I got to that point, um, and I didn't get it. It was three hun- it was three hundred, I weighed one eighty-five at the time, uh, two ninety-eight.

• 2:01:07Jocko Willink?

  Are you looking for props right there? Okay, we'll give you props to echo everybody, props to echo. Remember when he was talking earlier about when you name drop and stuff?

• 2:01:17Speaker 01

  No, I did that on purpose. I did that on purpose because if I, if I were to go out of my way to leave out that number.

• 2:01:23Jocko Willink?

  True, true.

• 2:01:23Speaker 01

  You know, you wanted to know, you wanted to know how much I was doing.

• 2:01:26Jocko Willink?

  I knew you were gonna say it, it didn't matter if I wanted or not.

• 2:01:28Speaker 01

  You wanted to know, right? Anyway, doesn't matter. Nonetheless, the first time I failed.

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  And everyone's like, no, you got this, you got this. And I had, had this guy named Ron Wood, who's his name, uh, real blonde hair. He was like, he's this tough guy, could hit real hard and he'd, he would always get nuts and he'd be like, you got this, you didn't, you know, you're this and that. You know, making me mad or whatever. And I didn't outwardly express any kind of anger, but I felt that anger. And power clean takes technique, that's the thing. It's not like it's just, um, you know, like, I don't know, like, even bench has some technique.

• 2:02:02Jocko Willink?

  Deadlift is, is, I mean, everything has technique, but.

• 2:02:08Jocko Willink?

  Power clean takes a little bit more technique than other lifts, yes.

• 2:02:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was just the perfect amount of rage. You know, and that's gonna depend on what kind of person you are. Like Jeremy Stevens, you could tell just even the way he trains, he uses some rage in there. Yeah, yeah. You know, as opposed to, uh, Rory McDonald, for example, seemingly, I don't know, I don't watch him train all the time or nothing, but it seems like he's super methodical. You know, and rage or anger or whatever isn't as much of a part as someone like, um, Jeremy Stevens.

• 2:02:36Jocko Willink?

  Fight with, uh, with, uh.

• 2:02:41Speaker 01

  Robbie Lawler.

• 2:02:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, oh my god.

• 2:02:43Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 2:02:43Jocko Willink?

  Bro.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:44Jocko Willink?

  What a, what a just.

• 2:02:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Yeah, Rory's nuts, man. He's... The way they train up there at TriStar, I spent like the, the, the weekend, or it was like half a week or whatever, with them, with Fraz and, um, and Rory. And it's, he, Fraz has this head. You know how guys will hold mitts? I'm sure they hold mitts and stuff, but he has this head that you hit the head instead of the mitts. I was like, fu- It seems like, oh, that's not that, like, it seems kinda obvious, so I never seen no one do that. And it made way more sense, because I've hit mitts before, and then when you go to spar, it's like, it's kinda weird. You gotta get used to the difference between hitting mitts and hitting someone's head. So I thought, man, that's fucking clever, man. These guys are, these guys are smart up here in Canada.

• 2:03:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, respect to those guys. I mean, I respect all the guys that get in the, get in the UFC and fight, man. It's awesome to watch. And that, that Lawler, uh, McDonald's fight was just, uh, was just insane.

• 2:03:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:43Jocko Willink?

  It was insane. You should watch that fight if you haven't. Anyone that hasn't watched that fight, go watch that fight. If you wanna see a couple warriors just bringing the, bringing it all and leaving it all right there in the cage, go watch that fight. Uh, so, did you get the power clean?

• 2:03:57Speaker 01

  I got the power clean, yes.

• 2:03:58Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:03:59Speaker 01

  And then, here's the thing about that power clean is, so you, I, yeah, I got it, right? And so you go up, and you're like, alright, you gotta, you go up in weight. The next one was like 303, like, super small weights, you know, cause you wanna get it. Yeah, yeah, just so you can get the 303. Not even close.

• 2:04:15Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:04:16Speaker 01

  Everything was spent on that, the 298.

• 2:04:18Jocko Willink?

  We missed that one, didn't we?

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, big time.

• 2:04:20Jocko Willink?

  Was that the all-time life, life, uh?

• 2:04:22Speaker 01

  No, I just disengaged. That's all that, uh, I just disengaged.

• 2:04:27Jocko Willink?

  I see where it's at.

• 2:04:30Jocko Willink?

  You can be good with that.

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  Alright, I feel like we should go on to the next question.

• 2:04:34Jocko Willink?

  I think we got time for about one more. What do you think?

• 2:04:36Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah. Okay, Jocko. Is the ability to switch on and off a personal feature? Or is it a trained skill?

• 2:04:50Speaker 01

  Is this confused with the term beast mode?

• 2:04:54Jocko Willink?

  What causes that switch to flip?

• 2:05:00Jocko Willink?

  The overdrive? The beast mode? The full on destroyer?

• 2:05:10Jocko Willink?

  That will not stop. I think it's actually, this is, it is something that's learned, I think. And I think it's a hard lesson. I don't think everyone gets it. I think some people go through life without ever getting it.

• 2:05:24Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you, it's, it's an important lesson. It's a, it's a critical lesson. It's a thing that allows you to go the extra distance, to dig just a little bit deeper and

• 2:05:38Jocko Willink?

  to push a little harder, to get after it.

• 2:05:44Jocko Willink?

  And

• 2:05:47Jocko Willink?

  like many other things in life, there's a dichotomy, because it actually takes, in my opinion, two opposing forces to bring it to life. It takes both emotion and logic

• 2:06:04Jocko Willink?

  for you to reach your match, maximum potential, to, to really give everything you have and go beyond your limits. Because both emotion and logic, they're gonna reach their limitations.

• 2:06:22Jocko Willink?

  And when one fails, you need to rely on the other one.

• 2:06:30Jocko Willink?

  So, when it doesn't make sense, logical sense to go on, that's when you gotta use your emotion. That's when you gotta use that anger, that frustration, that fear, to push yourself harder, to push yourself to say,

• 2:06:49Jocko Willink?

  "I don't stop."

• 2:06:54Jocko Willink?

  And when your feelings are screaming that you've had enough, and when you think you're gonna break emotionally, you gotta override that emotion with the concrete logic and willpower that says, "You know what? I don't stop." So you, you fight the weak emotions with the power of logic, and you fight the weakness of logic with the power of emotions. And in the balance of those two, that's where you find the strength and the tenacity

• 2:07:38Jocko Willink?

  and the guts to say to yourself, "I don't stop." And you won't. And I think that's about it for tonight. So, thanks to everyone for tuning in and listening to us. If you wanna continue these conversations, you wanna join in these conversations, you can connect with us through the interwebs.

• 2:08:23Jocko Willink?

  On Twitter, I'm @JacoWillink, and of course, Echo Charles is @EchoCharles. Thanks for leaving reviews of the podcast on iTunes and of the book on Amazon. And most of all, to everyone that's out there tuning in, listening, you got your headset on, you're getting in the zone, thank you for getting after it. And so, until next time, this is Jocko and Echo. Out.