Pod Insights Jocko Podcast Jocko Underground: Your Next Mission | How to Build Self Discipline | Best Questions About this episode >Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe
How to find a worthy mission.
How to Build self discipline.
Talk politics without repercussions of turmoil.
How to be a Hard target in the streets.
Excel in the team and be the top player. This is how.
Overcome mysterious unexplainable depression.
Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Jocko Willink? On this episode of Jocko Underground, we discuss how to find a worthy mission when your last one is complete. We cover how to build self-discipline when you can't seem to make it stick. We explain strategies to talk politics without causing turmoil, as well as how to stay safe in the streets by presenting a hard target. Then, we explain how to excel in your team, and finally, how to overcome unexplained depression. Jocko Underground, best questions answered.
0:34 Speaker 01 You have talked before about finding a new mission for fellow veterans after their service ends, so I was hoping for some help with a similar situation. I'm 24, married, and have a very blessed life. However, I feel there is a part of me missing as I played baseball for about 17 years of life through college. My career ended due to COVID in 2020, so I felt as if it was taken away from me and I didn't get a final say in the matter. It has now been two years and I do not feel the sense of drive or purpose that I once felt. I'm a real estate agent now, but have a hard time fully committing to this position, even though I think I would be good at it. I miss the camaraderie and drive to be the best from being in athletics. My whole
1:16 Speaker 01 life, being in athletics my whole life, and I feel as if nothing can fill that void completely. I feel that there is many, there are many student athletes in a similar position as me who struggle with this. Any advice on trying to find a new mission after our playing careers have ended and trying to stay on the path when things out of your control occur? Thanks for your time.
1:40 Jocko Willink? Okay, well, of course, I'm gonna start with just start training jiu-jitsu. Because you start training jiu-jitsu, man, there's how many crossover athletes are in jiu-jitsu? Echo Charles? All of them. It's like crazy how many people come from football, baseball, wrestling, soccer, just any, any sport. It's a crossover sport, and you can come get into jiu-jitsu, and you'll love it. So, start training jiu-jitsu. And you know what? Beyond jiu-jitsu, there's other sports. Baseball, like you could still play baseball, some kind of pickup league. You play softball, you play basketball, you can play flag football. They have a freaking kickball league, right?
2:24 Jocko Willink? And again, you got jiu-jitsu. There's also individual stuff that you can become kind of part of a tribe for running or triathlons or CrossFit or something like that. Like, there's so many things that you could do to go out there and freaking get after it in the same way. And I can guarantee you, as hard as you train for baseball, you start competing in jiu-jitsu, you're gonna have, you're gonna be training just as hard, if not harder.
2:50 Jocko Willink? So that's, that's the, out of the gate, man. Don't give up on athletics because you didn't say you broke your, you blew your knee out, or you freaking blew your back out or something. Sounds to me like you're a military aged male, healthy military aged male, which means you are good to go. So go get in on the mats. Go get back on the field of some kind. You're gonna meet new people. You're gonna be able to train hard and you can take it to, the thing that's cool about jiu-jitsu, look, if you're playing kickball, you're playing softball, it's competitive. You know, you can be part of a competitive like softball team.
3:32 Jocko Willink? But not everyone on the team is going to be taking it, you know, as serious as you are. And how far can you go? Dude, in jiu-jitsu, you can legitimately go compete in the world championships. The world champion, you can become a world champion in jiu-jitsu. At white belt, at blue belt, at purple belt, at brown belt, and at black belt. So it's a great crossover sport for you. Okay, so there you go. Real estate. Hey, is this the right job? This could be the right job for you. Look, real estate is competitive. It takes a lot of action. It takes a lot of effort, takes a lot of team, right? So it could be the right job. But I'm feeling like there's a void. So what's
4:16 Jocko Willink? that void? Is there another, is there something else you should be doing or could look at? I don't know. But if real estate is the deal, awesome. Then you have a new team right there as well. Build that team, grow that team, win together.
4:32 Jocko Willink? And that's kind of what we need to do here. And let me give you some good. Everything I just said, you're probably like, oh, okay. Yeah, I guess so. Let me, let me close the deal right now. You don't want to be Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite, right? You don't want to be Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite. Well, when I was in college, I threw the winning whatever, right? You don't want to be that guy. You want to move on in life. You want to get past it. Dude, you were competitive athlete, man, in college, a college competitive athlete. You're an elite athlete. That's awesome. You're not in that sport anymore. Those days are over. Don't live in the past.
5:10 Jocko Willink? Focus on, you know what you can focus on? Look, even if you didn't do jujitsu or other sports, now you have a new career that you can go out and dominate and kick ass in.
5:21 Jocko Willink? And then you can make money and build that team and buy houses and flip houses. There's all kinds of badass things you can do. All kinds. Now, look, did jujitsu or anything replace the the hole in my heart for my career in the SEAL teams? No, of course not. Of course not. I'm Uncle Rico when it comes to that, right? That was the highlight of my life. But I don't sit there and dwell on it and think, oh, gosh, no, I don't do that. It's like, guess what I do now? I have Echelon Front, have Jocko Fuel, have Origin, have Jocko Podcast, have all these things going on, train jujitsu.
6:00 Jocko Willink? Train jujitsu all the time. Run, bow hunting, got into bow hunting. We're out there shooting the bow, out there hunting, like doing all these things. And look, they might not measure up to what I did at the highlight of my life, but I'm not worried about it.
6:19 Jocko Willink? I don't feel down about it. Man, I was freaking stoked I had the opportunity. You should be stoked you had the opportunity to play ball in college. That's badass. I'm stoked I had the opportunity to be in the SEAL teams and deploy and be in combat. That's badass. Great. But I'm cool. I'm thankful, not regretful.
6:36 Jocko Willink? So let's not be Uncle Rico. Let's start training jujitsu. Let's become a dominant, kick-ass real estate agent that's taking over the world with your team. That's what I got.
6:47 Speaker 01 This is, um, I could, I could not agree with you more with the jujitsu part of it. Because, I mean, Coach C, cause so baseball, there's an element of money and fame that I'm not saying that's what he's like embracing is why, but there is an element of money and fame that's not quite gonna be there in jujitsu as much. Is there money in jujitsu? Sure. Is there some fame in jujitsu? Sure. But not like baseball and these more mainstream sports or whatever. So there's that. And here's one thing you do have, need the heads up with if you come from freaking 17 years of killing it in baseball. You're gonna have to start from the beginning.
7:24 Jocko Willink? And you're gonna get your ass kicked.
7:25 Speaker 01 Yes.
7:26 Jocko Willink? You're gonna get choked, man.
7:27 Speaker 01 You're gonna be a white belt.
7:28 Jocko Willink? By a little scrawny little kid, a 15-year-old kid. Depending, look, if you're, if you also wrestled and you weigh 260, you might not get choked by a 15-year-old kid. But if you're 180 pounds and there's a 15-year-old kid in there and he's pretty good, he's gonna choke you.
7:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, don't be surprised when that happens.
7:51 Jocko Willink? Don't be surprised.
7:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:52 Jocko Willink? Don't be bummed out.
7:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:54 Jocko Willink? It's gonna be okay.
7:54 Speaker 01 And that's the point where it's just not, there's a heads up. You're gonna be a white belt. Alright, so you're gonna be doing white belt stuff and getting white belt happenings to you.
8:02 Jocko Willink? Here's what's really cool. You are, you are already down-selected as a athletic human. By, by that, I mean, you've already proven that you're an athletic human.
8:14 Speaker 01 So you got selected.
8:15 Jocko Willink? Yeah, it's, it's like when you select stuff for military usage, you start off with 20 guns and then they down-select to 10.
8:23 Speaker 01 Oh, okay. So you already made the cutter.
8:24 Jocko Willink? Yeah, they down-select, down-select, down-select. Finally, we get two guns left and we pick our final gun that we're gonna use. So you already made it through selection that you're a legit athlete, right? You played college baseball.
8:37 Jocko Willink? So that means you have the capability of being really good at jujitsu. So brace that.
8:42 Speaker 01 And you know about getting tired, you know about training hard and working hard even outside of actually playing the sport. You know about that kind of stuff. So yeah, down selected probably in a couple of ways. Um, if, but if you, like I said, miss the camaraderie and drive to be the best, bro, jump right in, Hoin. Jump in that competition freaking training.
9:01 Jocko Willink? Yeah.
9:02 Speaker 01 And yeah, you can, and you can, and you'll have everything you need. I mean, obviously it depends on where you go, of course. But yeah, you go competition training, you get better and better and that'll make you better. You go compete, you win, you got coaches, you got teammates pushing you. Oh, man.
9:16 Jocko Willink? Oh, all day. All day.
9:18 Speaker 01 All day.
9:18 Jocko Willink? All day. Awesome, man.
9:21 Speaker 01 Hey, Jocko Echo. I want to say that I really appreciate your work you guys do. Uh, put out and try to help people reach their goals and better themselves all around. I'm 16 years old and lately I've been having a really hard time getting myself to do things by myself. I sit or also sit around and watch YouTube or TV shows all day because that's the only thing that I feel comfortable doing by myself. When it comes to any work that needs to be done or exercising, I'll, I'll try for a little bit, but ultimately stop because the entire time I'm fighting the urge to do something comfortable again. However, when I'm doing work with friends or doing something that others rely on me for, it will get done no matter what and in timely manner too.
10:01 Speaker 01 I feel that this is self-destructive behavior because I don't think I'm worth enough to work on myself, exercise and be healthy. But when it comes to others, I'm always on it. My question is, how do I become comfortable working on myself for my own or, or on my own? The last couple of weeks I've been wondering what to the point or what the point is to everything. I know that no one can do it for me and I must help myself, but I would just like some advice. Thank you very much.
10:30 Jocko Willink? So, check this out.
10:35 Jocko Willink? At 16 years old.
10:38 Jocko Willink? There's something that I don't think you've realized yet. So I'm going to tell you, and that is that you
10:48 Jocko Willink? are a human being.
10:50 Jocko Willink? You, you are a person and you have agency and power to 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 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.
11:31 Jocko Willink? 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 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.
Previous 458: Things Will Not Go As Planned. W US Navy SEAL, Sean Murphy. Next 459: No Matter What Happens, Keep Moving Forward. w SOG Warrior, "Dynamite" Dick Thompson Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated