Pod Insights Jocko Podcast Jocko Underground: Are We Raising Soft Kids? Good Samaritan VS A Snitch. The Single Most Difficult Time. About this episode Are we raising soft kids?
What's the single most difficult task/event?
Fixing a family relationship that may be unfixable.
Doing the right thing VS Being a snitch.
Things not under your control.
Homeschooling kids and teaching leadership qualities.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Jocko Willink? This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 30, sitting here with Echo Charles. Yes, sir. This is Jocko Willink talking.
0:09 Jocko Willink? Starting off, we had a topic come up. A question submitted.
0:17 Jocko Willink? But it's like a discussion topic more than an actual direct question. Are we raising soft kids in this day and age? Or is that something every generation says?
0:31 Jocko Willink? You hear about this a lot, don't you? What is it? The thing is, strong men create good times, good times creates weak men, weak men create bad times, bad times create strong men, and you get this circle going. Some truth to it, right? Definitely some truth to it. So, are we raising soft kids? I think some kids are being raised soft. I think other kids are not. I think that there is definitely a way that you could live in this day and age where you could be very soft as a human. You could eat foods that make you weak. You could do activities that make you weak.
1:17 Jocko Willink? You could avoid activities that would make you strong and tough. You could avoid mental stressors that make you mentally tough. So, I think, maybe not necessarily, are we raising
1:36 Jocko Willink? purposely, but I think the environment is, will have a larger tendency, right now, to make kids a little bit softer. So it's something we need to watch out for. That being said, there's, you can never take away the fact that there's some freaking unbelievably tough kids. I'll tell you what, I go down to the, when I go down to the Dames right now, to the Dames. I'll meet young, young, young frogmen. They're freaking totally legit. 100% legit, as legit as any frogman I've ever met in my life. Young. Oh, what do you do? I'm a machine gunner. Like, straight up. They're ready to rock and roll. So, to sit here and throw, this is why we can't just throw the universal statement out
2:20 Jocko Willink? right now, "Oh, we're raising weaker kids." No. Go meet a young, I meet young team guys, they're freaking legit.
2:29 Jocko Willink? And go meet a young Marine legit. Go meet a young soldier legit. So to have this idea that we're just universally producing weak humans right now. I think it's not true, but you can take a path at this juncture in life where you may end up soft if you're not careful. And you may raise soft kids if you're not careful. So that's what I think it is environmentally. The opportunity is there to raise weak kids. But it is not a, it is not necessarily going to happen. And some kids today also they're smarter. They're, I can tell you that going through SEAL training. The kids that go through SEAL training right now are in better shape than the kids that I went through SEAL training with.
3:14 Jocko Willink? Cause we didn't have any program. We didn't have any supplementation. We didn't have any, we didn't know about recovery. We didn't know about working out. We didn't know anything. We were just, just knuckle draggers. And these kids now, they're, they're working. They understand. They study. So from that perspective, the kids are better.
3:39 Jocko Willink? Yeah. And then you might ask, well, what about the attrition rate? Cause the attrition rate stays the same, which is weird, right? So they do all these things. So I'm telling you right now, the kids, and this is not just my personal opinion. This is coming from guys that I know that work in basic SEAL training.
3:58 Jocko Willink? They'll be like, oh yeah, the kids, the kids are in way better shape than we were.
4:02 Jocko Willink? So that's the fact, but still the attrition rate, still 80%. Why is that? Well, you gotta push yourself a little bit harder. Cause you're in a boat crew now and everyone in the boat crew, the, the, the output is the same. You see what I'm saying? So if you took a car and if you, if you and I raced and you and I both had cars that had whatever, uh, 200 horsepower engines and we rolled them as hard as we could, that engine would be tired, right? It would be maxed out. And we only went however fast we, we only went a hundred miles an hour. If we both had 700 horsepower engines, we would both go use every bit of it. We might go faster, but we still make it just as tired. So.
4:47 Jocko Willink? The they're pushing themselves harder and and when you get to that push point doesn't matter how many horsepower you have when you go a car can only hold that whatever 90% of max capacity for how long and and this is the thing a seal a guy going through seal training can only hold that max capacity for so long and then they quit yeah so maybe it was 80 maybe you can hold 90% for a certain amount of time well the person that makes it can hold 91 the person that can hold 89 quits doesn't matter how many horsepower the engine is because there's some people that end up the they they they they are the loser they have the last place
5:27 Jocko Willink? of every run the last place of every run they're sometimes putting out even harder than the first place person yeah but they're coming in last place sometimes the first place person's putting out the same amount as the last place person they're both putting out 91% just just over threshold and they learn to get over that threshold the person that's only putting out 89 they someone's telling him hey you got to run 91% they don't do it they go 89 and they quit they can't keep going so got to watch out for that yeah and that's not to mention
6:02 Speaker 01 that the mental um essentially the mental part of it so you know like you can be and this is the old thing too where if you're a gifted athlete and this is this can go with like a highly trained athlete as well you you'd think anyways all theory obviously but you get to a point where mentally you're like you know you just cross the threshold it's essentially not worth it oh yeah that's what it feels like at the moment it's not worth it I quit so yeah you can be highly trained supplementation you can be all this stuff but when you get in there and you're hit with that thing that pushes you over the mental threshold when it's not worth it but there I can I could understand I don't know how they do it or what exactly everything they do whatever but I could see that had
6:44 Speaker 01 been a non-factor for the for the trainers or whatever being like no no we'll push them to this mental point I don't care how gifted these guys are like you have to be mentally strong no matter if you're a fast runner or slow runner fast swimmer slow swimmer It's easy to get to that point as a trainer, knowing you know what to do.
7:01 Jocko Willink? Let's say that you and I are both in SEAL training class. And they go, okay, we're gonna do bear crawls, which is on your hands and feet, and you're wearing your twin eighty aluminum or twin eighty steel scuba tanks. So this is just psycho, right? Now, let's say you're, let's say for this hypothetical situation, which we'll just, we'll say that you're stronger than me. Just hypothetically, which I know is be hard for people to imagine this. So, so you're stronger than me. And you can bear crawl with your twin eighties on your back, you can bear crawl for
7:42 Jocko Willink? a hundred yards. And I am weaker than you and I can only bear crawl for eighty yards. So guess how long they're gonna make us bear crawl for? They're gonna make me bear crawl eighty-one. They're gonna make you bear crawl a hundred and one. And there's twenty yards difference. And guess what? There's someone else that was capable of going, it doesn't matter, he could be capable of doing a hundred and ten yards. Guess how much he did? A hundred and nine. And he quit. And another guy was only capable of doing sixty-two yards, but he only did sixty-one, he quit. Another guy was only capable of doing forty yards, he did forty-one, he stayed in. He just was able to hang on long enough.
8:25 Speaker 01 Yep. Yeah, that um.
8:27 Jocko Willink? And you just suck it up and just do a little bit more.
8:30 Speaker 01 Well, the mental part is like, if you're not, if you don't have a mental approach, and this is again, back to the little theory. And you know, you, you mentioned little stuff every once in a while where you'll say, oh yeah, they'll do this thing. Well, they'll be like, hey, we pushed you, we pushed you guys a little bit too hard, so we're gonna allow you guys to rest. It's a unique situation. And then.
8:49 Jocko Willink? It's a big lie.
8:49 Speaker 01 So you know, get two hours of sleep or whatever, and then right when you like fall asleep after five minutes, like wake you up and do all this stuff like that. Mental, those mental things with all the physical stuff, like some people are not ready for that. Like your brain is like, it's weird like that.
9:04 Jocko Willink? And you don't know. And there's people that are incredible athletes that ring out all day long, all day long.
9:11 Speaker 01 That one that you say, um. You were JP's, I think both of you guys say this where they do a good job in making you feel like it'll just go on forever.
9:19 Jocko Willink? Oh, yeah.
9:20 Speaker 01 Like they don't say, hey, one more evolution, one more rap, one more whatever. They're just like, nope, again, like it feels, bro, with that feeling, that's like, almost like a claustrophobic.
9:29 Jocko Willink? You know what you have to do? You have to accept death.
9:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:32 Jocko Willink? Like you have to accept that, oh, we're gonna be doing this log PT for actually forever. It's never gonna stop. That's gotta be your mentality going into it. If you have the mentality like, oh, I can, I can just make it a little bit longer. It's, this is gonna end soon. No, you see me like that's never gonna end because they will, they're looking at you. They're looking at you like, oh, Willing's looking tired, looking like he might be at his breaking point. Oh, uh, do it again. Do it again. They would look at me, I'd just be like, what? Do it again. Oh, cool. Watch us doing it again. Doing it again. Never show that little bit of weakness. So.
10:04 Speaker 01 So that makes sense. Yeah, man.
10:05 Jocko Willink? Yeah. So I think, are we raising soft kids? I think this environment, you gotta be careful. Otherwise, the kids have a tendency to be soft. Let's face it. If you're looking at your social media as a 14 year old, or you're playing a video game as a 14 year old, whereas what you would have been doing 30 years ago would be hucking rocks at each other. And sprinting around and hunting and just getting crazy, like that kid is gonna be, have a little bit more than someone that's playing a video game or looking at social media.
10:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, the, the whole, every generation says that. I think a big part of that is true.
10:45 Jocko Willink? That is true.
10:46 Speaker 01 And, and of course that makes sense because the more, as the generations move on, the environmental like problems, for lack of a better way of putting it, are become more and more solved. So like, you know, with the, the old school, you look at old school like stuff, you're like, bro, we have machines for that. We have apps for that. We have like little gadgets to solve all those problems.
11:08 Jocko Willink? Bruh, never mind any of this. You press a button on this computer that you got in your pocket and food showing up to your door in 30 minutes.
11:15 Speaker 01 Exactly right. Man, remember like there was like.
11:18 Jocko Willink? And what else do you need? Water. Uh, what, what do you need? Anything you need is showing up your door in an hour.
11:25 Speaker 01 Right.
11:25 Jocko Willink? So, yeah, that solves a lot of problems.
11:27 Speaker 01 A lot of them.
11:27 Jocko Willink? You're not, not out with a bow and arrow trying to shoot a deer.
11:32 Speaker 01 No, you get to do, you can even get grass fed.
11:35 Jocko Willink? Oh.
11:35 Speaker 01 Beef.
11:36 Jocko Willink? For sure.
11:36 Speaker 01 Versus you can be like, no, I want the all natural one, you know?
11:39 Jocko Willink? You can be like, no, I want my, you know, I want this cow to have been eating just grass and I want him to be less. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen,
11:58 Jocko Willink? go to JacoUnderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this. We're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is, free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to
12:42 Jocko Willink? strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's JacoUnderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.
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