Jocko Underground: How to Live in Peace, Now.

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe How to live in peace. now. Memorizing moves in Jiu Jitsu. Getting input from others may not always be good. Concealed carry options. low pro. How to rebuild your reputation after a huge blunder. How much should you listen to other peoples perspective or advice? 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 the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 143, sitting here with Echo Charles. There's a quote I want to read to you.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  It says this, "If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present."

• 0:18Jocko Willink?

  Okay, it's, it's kind of self-explanatory. It's a bit of advice from Lao Tzu, the old master, believed to have lived in 6th century BCE in China, might have worked on the Royal Archives, might have written or helped write Tao Te Ching, might have lived for a really long time,

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  might have been the product of a virgin birth. There's a lot of, he's a mythical guy, right? A mythical individual, not much is known for certain about him, but he's definitely one of the most respected sources of ancient wisdom in Chinese philosophy. And here's the thing, I like this quote,

• 1:02Jocko Willink?

  but not exactly how it's prescribed, because I don't think you should only live in the present. I don't think you should only live in peace. Like, I don't think that's the crux of what we should be trying to do with this quote. I think it's more of a, of a teaching you some indications and warnings of what could be happening in your life, of when you could be leaning too far in one direction or the other. I think it's, it's a good way to understand your feelings and where those feelings are coming from. Because I think you should definitely think about the past. You should definitely remember the past. You should definitely learn from the past. You should definitely enjoy good memories of the past. You should definitely study

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  the past and the mistakes that you made, right? You should do that.

• 1:52Jocko Willink?

  But if you go overboard with that,

• 1:56Jocko Willink?

  and you live in the past, then you're filled with regret and remorse about what's happened to you.

• 2:03Jocko Willink?

  So, it's just to me an indication, let's say you're walking around today, Echo Charles, you woke up today, you're feeling kind of, you're dragging, you're like, oh, you're thinking about things, you don't feel happy, you feel a little bit of regret, you feel a little bit of depression, and you're, you just have these feelings. I think it's a good thing to think to yourself, oh, I remember Jocko was talking about this. He said, I'm thinking a little too much about the past, a little too much.

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  Should you think about the past? Yes, because if you don't learn from the past, we make the same mistakes. But if we're dwelling in the past, make that one. Dwelling. If we're dwelling in the past, it's problematic. So,

• 2:43Jocko Willink?

  stop thinking so much about the past. Just dial it down. And listen, I know it's hard, man. I know it's hard. The reason I know it's hard is because sometimes when I'm trying to go to sleep at night, I have, I have thoughts. Sure. And I can't stop them, and I can't go to sleep for hours, by the way. Yeah. And I mean, I had a long day. I trained. I lifted. I worked, maybe we recorded something like, maybe I went surfing, like the whole thing. I should be tired. But I mean, I'm thinking about this, this thing and this thread and this other thing leads to that thing, and I'm just, can't go to sleep. So I imagine when someone's having negative thoughts about the past, it's kind of like that. You can't just be like,

• 3:26Jocko Willink?

  stop, I'm gonna stop thinking about this, because if I could do that, I'd be falling asleep every night at, you know, nine thirty-eight, alright. But it doesn't work that way. So I get it. But I think understanding about that, you can at least actively say, alright, I know what this is, I'm identifying it. I find that if something's bothering me, I study it a little bit hard, you know, like focus on it, like, okay, what am I really talking about here? What am I really thinking about here? So, so, so that can happen to us. Now, the other hand is,

• 4:01Jocko Willink?

  it's good to prepare for the future, right? It's good to prepare for the future. It's good to think about the future. It's good to get things ready. It's good when you acknowledge the path that you're on, on, and you look to see where this path is leading and look to see how long it's going to take you to get there and what you can do to better prepare yourself as you go down this path. It's all good.

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  But since you can't control everything in the future,

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  if you go too far, you will be anxious about it. You'll be worrying about it. You'll be excessively focused on it, which is problematic. You can, and you and I did a podcast where I was talking about being a little bit paranoid. And I think it's good to be a little bit paranoid. I was, I was, honestly, I was a little bit extra paranoid.

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  When I was in the, when I was in the team's part, I was a little, I was a little too paranoid. In other words, I had to, you know, be, instead of being like 20 minutes early, half an hour early, I had to be 45 minutes out early. I had to be an hour early for something. I was good to go. You know, instead of like preparing for 20 minutes, I had to prepare for, for two hours. And I wasn't the only one. I'm not trying to say, there's like guys like me that were like a little extra paranoid. I think I missed out on stuff like normal life activities. Because I was a little pair, a little too paranoid. So

• 5:30Jocko Willink?

  I think, is it good to be a little paranoid? Yes, it is. Could I have been personally a little less paranoid? Yes, I could have. But that's, that's different than being a lot paranoid. Like obsessed, like OCD activity, like I can't sleep tonight because I'm going to be thinking about this thing that I'm, you see what I'm saying?

• 5:50Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta watch out for both ends of these spectrums. You got, you got, listen, you have to think about the past. You have to learn from the past. You have to think about the future, how the things are going to go in the future. But if you're feeling depressed or gloomy or somehow miserable, you might be living too much in the past. And thinking too much about the past. And if you're anxious or constantly worried or you're over paranoid, you might be spending too much time thinking about the future.

• 6:25Jocko Willink?

  So I'm just trying to give you an opportunity to see where these feelings, these negative feelings might be coming from, so you can make some adjustments. That's it. Think about what's happening now. That's kind of my, that's kind of my statement for the day.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  So when you're, when you can't sleep, right? The tape running in your hand over and over again. Like, what do you do about it? You just freaking suck it up?

• 6:50Jocko Willink?

  Um, yeah, I'll try and like pull the thread on it enough, but it, it, it like, I haven't found a cure.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:00Jocko Willink?

  My wife listened to something or read something that was like, you count, you count your, you start with 20 breaths and you count each breath going backwards.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:11Jocko Willink?

  And it quote unquote, gives you something to do. This is very believable. You're, or I agree with this.

• 7:20Jocko Willink?

  Letting your mind wander is way harder to control than if your mind has something to do. That's why it's like, when you were a little kid, did you ever get told like, count sheep?

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's why. Just like count sheep, count your breath, count this thing. My problem is with the, trying to count the breaths, it takes too long to breathe.

• 7:41Jocko Willink?

  And so I have like, I'm supposed to be thinking of a number, but I have, it's real easy for me to have 98 different thoughts in the four seconds.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:48Jocko Willink?

  And so it doesn't, so what I've, I've tried to do like, um, counting each breath as it goes. You know, like I'm timing my breath now, 1,001, 1,002, 1,003, 1,004, 1,001, 1,002, 1,003, 1,004, 1,002, 1,002. Yeah. I can see you're getting confused.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 8:15Jocko Willink?

  Basically, I just try and occupy my mind with some menial task that will prevent it from thinking about all these crazy thoughts that I have.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  And does it work?

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes, not usually.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  The so you know, people ask you a lot like do you meditate? And then you know, and I've heard you say this, which I agree with, but when you say, oh yeah, like Jiu Jitsu is like kind of one of my forms of meditation, right?

• 8:41Jocko Willink?

  Which is lifting, surfing, yep. But I but it's not true. I know there's like all this other stuff about meditation.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, actually, really, when you want to go deep enough, it kind of is true. Because think about, I mean, that's why Jiu Jitsu is so therapeutic.

• 8:55Jocko Willink?

  Right, you and I are brothers, and I think that's blinding you right now. I think there's a bunch of stuff about meditation that I'm just not, not doing.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  I think you're correct. And in fact, and this is why I even bring it up, because Jiu Jitsu kind of forces you to do this, what meditation has you do as well. So you know, like, okay, uh, who was I talking, I think Kalipa, maybe? I don't know, maybe you, I don't know. Where Jiu Jitsu, if you're stressed about home, you got an argument with your boss, whatever, when you go to Jiu Jitsu, you don't have the attention span, for lack of a better way of putting it.

• 9:29Jocko Willink?

  You have the mental capacity to think about that fight. You just got to think about not getting choked.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Not getting choked, how freaking tired I am, like I sweat, like basically everything right in front of you, which is a lot. It's like, that's the only thing you have the attention span for, bandwidth mental man, right? And then your body gets into this pattern, this rhythm. Let's say you do five rounds, right? I feel like five rounds is like the perfect cutoff of like anything less than that, you feel a little bit like you didn't get your fulfillment. Anything more than that is like.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  But if you figure where the five rounds, let's say, let's say they're five minutes, six minutes, whatever, that's about 25, 30 minutes of straight up not thinking about anything else except for what's in front of you, right? So meditation, from what I understand anyway, the beginning, you know, there's different levels of meditation. So there the the fundamental part of it, from what I'm told, is just focusing on your breath, right?

• 10:24Jocko Willink?

  Yep, that is one of the fundamental parts of it, for sure.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  And then so think about that, where essentially you're doing the same thing, but instead of focusing on what the guy's trying to do you and what you're trying to do to the guy in Jiu Jitsu, you're focused on just your breath. You're actively.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  monopolizing your mental attention to your breath. Just so you don't think about all this other stuff.

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  Jiu Jitsu does.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, just naturally, you know. So when you're, I asked you because this happened to me pretty recently where I'm like thinking about stuff. And it's not even bad stuff. Actually, a lot of it was good stuff.

• 10:57Jocko Willink?

  For me, I could be thinking about a book plot.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:59Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? And it's just like.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, just don't stop. Yeah. And so I'm like, Brian, I'm kind of up late right now. Like, I'm not, like, I've been here for, I, I think it was like two and a half hours of just that.

• 11:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've done that.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  So I'm like, alright, so, so I did that. I tried to do that. I was like, hey, I'm gonna do this.

• 11:18Jocko Willink?

  How is it 12:48 in the mo- in the morning?

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, for me, it was a lot later, but yeah, exactly right. Same exact question. And it was Sam Harris who said, like, okay, the being the focus anybody. So I'm, I'm like focusing on my breath, right? And it is weird how hard that ends up being if you're not used to it. So I'm like, shoot, I'm already thinking about something else, like freaking 20 seconds in, I'm already thinking about something else.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  Just total lack of mental discipline.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, bro. It's true. It's true.

• 11:45Jocko Willink?

  I'm right here, dude.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  But after a while, when you're like, oh, I see what's going on and you start to get used to it, you start to kind of, kind of pick it up. You know, pick up the, the skill or whatever. And then it does help. Like you, you don't realize it, but it's like, dang, I haven't really thought about anything. And then before you know it, you're kind of sleepy.

• 12:01Jocko Willink?

  I think that's a good call.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's a, that's a, um, a good way to kind of zoom out, detach, if you will.

• 12:09Jocko Willink?

  I think that eat those sleeping scenarios can often be like either thinking about the past or thinking about the future, right? Whereas if you make yourself think about like how many breaths you're taking in a second or whatever, it can be like, oh, now you're just thinking about right now and hopefully you can fall asleep.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, because really, when you think about it, and I don't know, look.

• 12:30Jocko Willink?

  By the way, for me, it's not like every night I'm like that.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:33Jocko Willink?

  It just has to be. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen.

• 12:45Jocko Willink?

  Go to jockounderground.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 strengthen

• 13:30Jocko Willink?

  this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jockounderground.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.