Jocko Underground: Turn an Inferior Mindset Into an Iron Mindset

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< https://app.redcircle.com/shows/64a89f88-a245-4098-8d8d-496325ec4f74/exclusive-content 00:22 – Turn an Inferior Mindset into an iron mindset 18:03 – Military mission-planning principles to the emotional and financial challenges of other missions in everyday life. 24:58 – How do I cope with the death of my son, support my wife and surviving child, and find a way forward through grief? 30:37 – How do I detach from a difficult marriage while remaining fully committed to my responsibilities as a father? 41:27 – How do I distinguish between fulfilling my duty to my family and using responsibility as an excuse to avoid taking risks and pursuing my ambitions? Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast number 234. Sitting here with Echo Charles. We have questions from the front lines, from the trenches, and we will provide answers, or recommendations, or at a bare minimum, courses of action that you can take to navigate through your challenges, your issues, in this little maze. Well, let's get into it. Let's get into these questions.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  First question, Jocko Echo. I can't seem to get past severe medical trauma, PTSD as a kid, and it has crippled me with fear, and I can't seem to defeat it. I've been going to therapy, but it's not helping. I've been going to church with my girlfriend, praying, etc., and I still just pace the floors with unrelenting horrific intrusive thoughts I can't seem to control. I cry a lot now, which is not like me, and I'm completely overwhelmed. I also have a lot of chronic health issues, and I'm facing surgery that is sending me over the edge. I was, I was just throwing a Hail Mary to see if, if somehow I could talk to you guys through email, maybe.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  You guys are such mentally stronger than me. It's a disgrace how weak the PTSD and OCD has made me, and I want to get better, but I'm just not sure how. I guess I would be like one of those guys in BUDs, training that hit the panic button and lost all control. I have a surgery coming up that I don't know how I'm going to face. I want so bad to quote unquote, "just go," or "step," like Jocko says, but the PTSD and OCD latch on to me and cripple me with fear. I've been like this since I was a kid, and I never felt safe. So it's like, it's in, it's hardwired in my brain. Hope to hear from you.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, that sounds, uh, that sounds rough. And that being said, it sounds like you're doing the right thing by getting help from professionals, right? I'm certainly not a professional mental health expert by any stretch of the imagination. And I think what really you need to remember here is that therapy is not something that just works overnight, right? Is a campaign, not just a single battle. It's not, it's not just an inoculation that you just get a shot. No, now you're good to go. What you're facing is something that's very real and very difficult to deal with, and it's something that I really have not dealt with. And that's why I think you getting help from a professional is the

• 2:32Speaker 00

  path, and it's the, the most important thing to do. You know, what, one thing I can say about your, your statement here is you should not feel disgraced or weak because of the current situation that you're in, right? That's like, if you break your leg and you feel like you're weak because you broke your leg. It's like, that's what happened. These mental health issues like this are things that trip a lot of people up, and you just happen to be the guy getting tripped up in one right now. And just like any other severe health issue, it's going to be difficult to deal with, right? No one feels weak because

• 3:12Speaker 00

  they got cancer, you know? No one feels weak because they got some other disease. So you, you shouldn't feel that way at all. This is going to be just like any other health issue that is difficult to deal with. Um, the good news is, and this is pretty actually awesome news, is that there have been plenty of people that have gone through this type of suffering and made it out the other side and gotten control of their lives. And there's a bunch of, I mean, there's all kinds of therapies, right? Exposure therapy and eye

• 3:49Speaker 00

  movement and desensitization and reprocessing and neural focusing, and there's medication that you can take, and there's integrated care. And there's all, there's a bunch of things that you can explore, and you can look into, and you can get second opinions that will help move you down the path to getting through this. So when you have the idea in your head that you just have to just step or go, and that just step is going to go, go bring you from zero to healed, that's not an accurate assessment. That's like saying, "Oh, I want to run a marathon. I'm just going to step, and now I'll be ready." Nope,

• 4:34Speaker 00

  that, that's totally unrealistic. I'm gonna, I'm gonna bench 450. I'm gonna bench 450. I'm just gonna step, just gonna go and make it happen. Nope, doesn't work that way. It does not work that way. And nor is that going to work in the situation that you're in. But what you do need to do is just step or just go in taking the small steps over time that will lead toward healing. So every day, you're gonna have to just step. Every day, you're gonna have to go, but you're, you're not gonna just step and be healed. You're

• 5:17Speaker 00

  not just gonna go and be healed. You're gonna just step and make a little tiny bit of progress. You're just gonna go, and you're just gonna make a tiny little bit of progress. And by the way, sometimes you're gonna go backwards. Some days, you're gonna go backwards. This happens to everybody in every situation. Trying to get stronger, you overtrain, or you get sick, or all of a sudden, you went backwards. You lost your gains. It happens with, with businesses. We do all this work to make progress and, you know, increase our profitability, and then we look up and we made a mistake or something. The market changed, and now we're upside down. So what do we do then? We get back up and we go again. We

• 5:58Speaker 00

  just step again. We just go again. So that's the path that you're on. You're on a path of consistency over decades, decades. And where, where decades might sound daunting and so huge, it's like the same idea of going through SEAL training. When you hear some guys talk about going through SEAL training, they say, "Just make it through this thing that we're doing right now. Just make it through the next 45 minutes," or however long they're gonna stick us in the freezing water for. Just make it through that. And then, when you get done with that, we're gonna put the boats on our head. We gotta go somewhere. I'm not sure how long it's gonna be, but I'm just gonna make it through that. I'm

• 6:37Speaker 00

  just gonna take another step. I'm just gonna go right now. And you look up in six months, and you're done with SEAL training. And so it's the same thing for you. You're gonna look up in six months, and you'll have made some kind of progress. And then what do you do? You keep going. And over time, things will get better. People have gotten through what you've, what you're suffering right now. People have gotten through it, fully through it, fully through it. I've known people that have gotten through this kind of stuff. Now, they're a hundred percent good to go now, and they were not. They were far from that in the past. So keep taking that step on a daily basis, and things will get better over time.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of times the, I'll think of certain things where you're trying to physically improve or change the way, you know, you are, or mentally, or whatever, right? Anything where you have to kind of fight against your, your, say, normal protocol of thinking or being, or whatever. I look at it as like this, this escalator, slow escalator that you're going the opposite direction. So you're trying to go up, the escalator's coming down, like, kind of slow. So you're just like, hey, if you just take one step after the other, and just put just enough effort to go slightly faster than the escalator's coming down, and you do that one day, you're not gonna be at the top of the escalator one day, just like I said, like, probably you're not, you're simply not gonna. And knowing that means a lot. It's a big deal, because just like how you said, it's like,

• 8:06Speaker 01

  oh, yeah, you think, like, therapy, for example, right? I, this is from what I understand, that some people, they go to therapy and think, "Oh, I'll just go to therapy and problem solved." But it's like, no, no, no. Therapy is kind of like a directional thing, where you go one day, they're gonna start to, and you gotta put in that effort as well. See what I'm saying? It's not like some magic pill or whatever.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Have you ever been to therapy?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Did I tell you I got sent to therapy?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I got sent to therapy. I think, I want to say it was in seventh grade. It might have been sixth grade, though.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  And I wrote a poem, and it was about death. And I, I wrote a poem about death because it seemed cool.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  And I, and I wrote a poem about death, and I had a picture of the Grim Reaper, and under his sickle was the, was the poem.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  Now, look, when you're a kid, like, let's face it, look cool.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  And so the poem was like about death, and like, it's coming to get you, right? This kind of thing. And it was pretty cool, you know, kind of cool. And then, um, all of a sudden, I got like called into the counselor, and, and they're like, you know, is it, "Hi, Jocko, how are you feeling?" I'm like, "Oh, good." They're like, "You know, have you been going through anything lately?" And I was like, "Hmm, not really." And they're like, "Well..." And then they pull out the, the, the poem, you know? I wish I still had it, because it was pretty dope. But she pulled out, it's like, you know, what is, what is the meaning behind this? And I was like, "Um, it kind of looks cool, doesn't it?" You know? Because even, even, you know, what's the, you know, the Grim Reaper, right?

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  It's like, what's the, uh, what's that monster truck? Gravedigger, right?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, Gravedigger, hell yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  Like, why do you like Gravedigger? Is that a cool thing?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  Yes, it is a cool thing. That's why we like it. When I got the Grim Reaper talking about death, let's face it, even when you're in seventh grade, kind of cool.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  So that was the, so that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jacood underground.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,

• 10:35Speaker 00

  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 this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jacood underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email assistance@jacood underground.com, and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.