Most Replayed Moment: Your Excuses Will Destroy You, To Be Disciplined Is To Be Free!

Jocko Willink is a former US Navy SEAL commander, leadership consultant, and bestselling author known for his work on discipline, responsibility, and leadership under pressure. In this moment, Jocko challenges how most people think about discipline, balance, and personal responsibility, arguing that what might sound restrictive is actually a powerful source of freedom, clarity, and direction. Listen to the full episode here: Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/0tKcIMNBC0b Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/mqo8YXQBC0b Watch the Episodes On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Jocko Willink: https://jocko.com/

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

• 0:04Steven Bartlett?

  And at nineteen years old, you applied to be a Navy SEAL.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:09Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so I have to ask a very dumb question here, which is what is a Navy SEAL?

• 0:14Speaker 01

  So there's special operations, which I guess, you know, from England, this is the SAS and the SBS. So those are the two sort of units that we get compared to the most. And so a Navy SEAL is a part of the Navy, but you're the special operations component of the Navy. And the term SEAL is actually an acronym, which stands for sea, air, and land. Because even though we're in the Navy, we are trained to operate in the sea, in the air. So in the sea, meaning we dive, in the air, meaning we parachute and rappel, and then on the land, meaning we conduct land warfare operations.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  And you take all those things, combine them together, and that's what our job consists of.

• 1:01Steven Bartlett?

  I was under the assumption that to become a Navy SEAL or to be in the SAS, you had to have ten, twenty years of military service. You had to have like an established military service. And then you get some like pop-up on your computer and it says, like, "Come to this building over here." And so to hear that you applied at nineteen years old, I was like, "Oh, I didn't know teenagers could apply."

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I was eighteen years old when I joined the Navy, and I joined on a contract that got me sent to SEAL training, and it took a year to get through, so I was nineteen when I finished that up. But there is, there's always debates about, "Well, don't you want someone that's more experienced?" And I actually loved the fact that I was basically raised in the SEAL teams. It was just awesome. It was an awesome way to grow up. It was an awesome way to spend those, those years of your life, learning the trade that you wanted to learn. And so I thought it was awesome, and I think it worked out pretty well. There is a, usually, the percentage of people that make it through SEAL training is about twenty percent.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  People that are under the age of twenty, it goes down to about five percent. So, yeah, I was one of those like small percentage of people that are very young, but still make it through.

• 2:11Steven Bartlett?

  And what is the characteristics that they're ultimately testing with the design of that training? What are they testing for?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Will you keep going?

• 2:22Speaker 01

  In the face of whatever.

• 2:26Steven Bartlett?

  Well, they they call the one of the weeks hell week, don't they?

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:30Steven Bartlett?

  So they try and simulate hell by the sounds of it.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, they try and simulate hell. It's it's.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  They actually were trying to simulate combat initially when they created that week. They wanted to take as much combat simulation from World War Two at the time and put it into a very compressed schedule so they could create these frogmen to go overseas and conduct operations because World War Two was going on. And so they needed to compress the training cycle. So they compressed a bunch of that combat simulation into it's about five and a half days. No sleep, lots of physical activity, lots of stress, lots of pain, and lots of people quit.

• 3:11Steven Bartlett?

  How many people quit in that particular week?

• 3:13Speaker 01

  I would say most of the people that quit probably of of.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  It's probably eighty percent of the quitters quit in that week.

• 3:25Steven Bartlett?

  It's been long discussed. I think there's a book called grit where they discuss what it takes in terms of character traits to get through these kinds of endurance tasks. And people often think it's those that have the biggest muscles or that do the most. I don't know cardiovascular exercise. But from what you've observed, and this is maybe a broader point about adversity in life. Is there any similarities in the people that are able to get themselves through adversity?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  It's it's there's there's some internal drive that you either have or you don't have. And if you have it, you won't quit. And if you don't have it, you're going to quit. And it breaks people. The other thing is you might be an exceptional swimmer.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  And you might be exceptional upper body strength, but you're not that fast a runner. They're going to find that out. Or you might be a fast runner, but a bad swimmer. They're going to find out what your weakness is. You might not like the cold. They're going to see it. You might not like the boat on your head. They're going to see it.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  They might see that you have a bad temper. They're gonna find that and they're gonna pick at that thing to either make you come out the other side or make you quit. It's a pretty, it's a pretty amazing thing. It's a, it's a pretty amazing thing. It's a pretty profound thing to look at from the outside and, and, and see it. Cause when I was going through it, it was just sort of, I was young. I didn't care. I was gonna do it. There was nothing that they were gonna tell me that was gonna make me quit. I never thought about quitting. If they told me to get back in the water again, let's go. They told me to put that log on, on my shoulder, let's go. Put the boat on my head, let's go. I, I, I didn't care.

• 5:05Steven Bartlett?

  Can you teach that, that let's go? That we're gonna jump back in the water, let's go.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  I think that, I think that's one of the few things that you learn in basic SEAL training is to shrug your shoulders and go forward. Like, uh, one of the things they do is they'll, they'll line you up on the ocean. And this is in California and sometimes people think that California is nice, warm water, but it's not. It's 55 degrees and I don't know what that translates to in centigrade, but it's cold. And one of the things they do is they'll, they'll line you up and they say interlock arms and you get arm in arm with the guy next to you and they say forward march and you walk, march in the water and they say take seats and you sit down and they leave you in there. And it's called surf torture and you just sit there and they'll, after a while, they'll pull you up out of the water, they'll line you up and the doctor will come down and see

• 5:55Speaker 01

  if anyone has hypothermia. And if no one has hypothermia or signs of hypothermia yet, get back in the water. And they just keep doing that. And so, yeah, it's, uh, you, what you learn to do is, okay, I'm gonna go forward. There's no, I can't get out of this. I'm gonna go forward, I'm not gonna quit, so I'm gonna go forward, bring it on. And I think if there's anything that you learn, it's to, to keep pushing.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Through things that suck. And I would love to say like, oh, so keep pushing through adversity. But this isn't adversity. This is just things that suck. It's one level below adversity. Adversity is when you're having a challenge. This is just something that's gonna suck. And you're gonna have to push through it.

• 6:37Steven Bartlett?

  You talked about the role that having a why plays. And I was thinking about, you know, if I just, if I just lost my girlfriend or someone I'd gone through some severe rejection or someone in my life had died and their part, my parting promise to them was I was gonna do this. The role that having some kind of reason to carry on plays in how we handle adversity or things that suck. Did you see, have you seen any patterns in that? Is it important? Because there's books behind me that literally say, start with your why and those kinds of things.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, that's a,

• 7:10Speaker 01

  anything from, oh, my girlfriend dumped me and I'm gonna prove her wrong, to something that much more significant, which is, my girlfriend died and I told her I was gonna do this and I'm gonna do it for her. Both those things, depending on the human being, can be a strong enough, I, a strong enough why to get through. And I've, I, I have friends that were, I have one friend that was in the Vietnam. He was in Vietnam. And when he showed up SEAL training, he didn't know what it was. He thought he was volunteering to be like a diver, a diver that would do construction under, under boats. He thought that, well, that, that what it was. And so he showed up and they're like, this is SEAL training. He's, what's a SEAL? And they kind of explained it to him. And then he went and made it through.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  All that torture, all that mayhem. And why? Cause that was what they were telling him to do. And he was, okay, that's what we're doing. Let's go. So again, I would love to be able to, you know, give you this profound anchor that people need to have. But it's like, oh, do you wanna do this or not? Which is what I think a lot of it boils down to. Do you actually wanna do this or not? Do you actually wanna do this or not? Cause if you actually wanna do it, what's gonna stop you? Nothing. And if you don't really wanna do it. What's gonna stop you? Just about anything that comes up. Just about any obstacle that gets in your way becomes an excuse. It becomes a reason. It comes a rationale for not proceeding down that path.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  And, and, and this is interesting too. You, when you talk to people that went to SEAL training that didn't make it. Most of the time it's some reason. There's a medical reason. There's a family problem. There's very few people that look at you and say, oh, I quit because it sucked. Which is what, by the way, which is what happens to the vast majority of people. The vast majority of people that don't make it through SEAL training. And by this, I mean 80, 90% of the people that don't make it through SEAL training. They didn't make it through because they quit. Then there's a small percentage that had a medical problem. Then there's a small percentage that got performance dropped. Meaning they couldn't perform the runs, the swims, the, the, the technical aspects of the job. And they failed and they get dropped.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  But the vast majority of people, they quit, but they don't usually say that. And even in their mind, they probably don't believe it. They probably believe, well, you know, it was my leg. And once my leg was hurting, I knew I was gonna have a hard time on the runs. And since I wasn't gonna be able to make the runs, I just, that's why I quit. But it wasn't really quitting. It was because my leg. So it's, it's, it's like I said, it's a very, it's a very strange and, and, and really kind of a mystical thing.

• 9:49Steven Bartlett?

  Excuses. You're talking there about people making excuses. What have you come to learn about the nature of excuses? And if they are our friends, our enemies, if they're other useful.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Your excuses will destroy you and take everything that you ever wanted from you. If you let them.

• 10:07Steven Bartlett?

  Doesn't sound like a friend.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  No, it's definitely not a friend. It's definitely not a friend. It, it can seem like a friend, just like your friend that keeps feeding you drinks at the bar can seem like a friend. But are they really helping you in any way, shape or form? No, they're not. They're not. So when, when your excuses make you feel a little bit better about the fact that you didn't execute on what you needed to execute on.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Then they can make you feel better, but they're not helping you. They're not helping you at all.

• 10:36Steven Bartlett?

  Is that what you, when you think about extreme ownership, which is the title of um this book here in front of me, is our excuses the opposite? Excuses and blame, is that the opposite of extreme ownership?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  That is the opposite of extreme ownership. Extreme, extreme ownership is this went wrong, this failed, didn't accomplish this. And it's not the fault of my boss, it's not the fault of my girlfriend, it's not the fault of my parents. It's not the fault of the weather, it's my fault.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna take ownership of it and I'm gonna fix it. That's what extreme ownership is. And this is a very difficult thing to do because it hurts. Because when you look around at your life and you look around at your job and your financial situation and your relationship and your physical health, and when you look at all those things and all the problems that you may have with those things. And you say, the reason I have all those problems is because of me?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  That can hurt, that can sting. And a lot of times our ego rejects that and makes excuses and lies. And then we don't have to change anything and then nothing changes.

• 11:49Steven Bartlett?

  If someone was on the extreme end of that disease of excuse and blame and all of those things, is there anything that you could do or you would advise them to do to kind of walk back from that? To get over the other side, because I think we can all think of people in our lives and maybe even ourselves at times, who have gotten into a chronic pattern of using excuses and blame as a form of self-defense. Because we don't want to turn that mirror back at us and have to confront reality. Like, I think sometimes, if I think about some of my closest friends, those that have the lowest self-esteem will use excuses and blame the most because it's.

• 12:28Steven Bartlett?

  You know, personal responsibility might not, in the short term at least, do anything for my already low self-esteem. So I'm going to blame the world as self-defense. What's step one to get out of that?

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Well, unfortunately, what happens a lot, and you may or may not have seen this, but I would assume you've seen this at some point in your life.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  People, and this is a term, there's a term, it's rock bottom. But this is a term that we hear for someone that's addicted, someone that's an alcoholic, someone that's physically let themselves go, someone that's put themselves into a situation with their finances or their work or whatever, where they reach rock bottom. And that, that rock bottom, what happens is you, I believe what rock bottom is, is as you look around, all the excuses that you've made, they're not there anymore. And so now, what rock bottom is, you realize that this problem, whether it's alcohol, whether it's your finances, the problem is you. And normally, or hopefully, in the best case scenario,

• 13:34Speaker 01

  rock bottom is the beginning of the upward climb, the upward path. Sometimes rock, rock bottom leads to disaster and complete abandonment of hope. But when it, when it, when the excuses all go away and people can actually confront the fact that this is all because of me, and this is, it hurts, but is also unbelievably empowering. Because if these problems are because of me, then I'm capable of fixing these problems. So even though extreme ownership hurts and is painful,

• 14:16Speaker 01

  it's also liberating because now you have control over your fate and over your destiny, and that is a glorious thing.

• 14:24Steven Bartlett?

  Discipline is freedom. The title of your, um, your book here. Discipline equals freedom. Now, that seems like it's untrue because when people think of discipline, they think of rigidity and taking away their freedom, having to be disciplined. Why is, why does discipline equal freedom?

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Because the more discipline you have in your life, the more freedom you will end up with.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  So if you lack the discipline to exercise and eat healthy, you will end up being

• 15:07Speaker 01

  a slave to disease.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  If you lack the discipline to work hard, save your money, you will end up a slave to finances.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  If you lack the discipline to manage your time correctly, you will end up with no free time.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  If you have self-discipline, if you have the discipline to save your money and work hard and invest your money properly, if you have the discipline to

• 15:44Speaker 01

  manage your time correctly and not waste a bunch of time, if you have the discipline to exercise and eat healthy, you will end up with freedom.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  And it's, I know it's a counterintuitive, it's contrarian, but

• 15:59Speaker 01

  I've seen this over and over and over again. If you want freedom in your life, you have to have discipline.

• 16:09Steven Bartlett?

  There's gonna be some kid listening to this now. I always think about the personas that are listening and they are, you know, eating Doritos off their belly.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Spit them out.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Spit them out. Start now. Because if you're a kid right now and you're eating Doritos off your belly, I know they taste good and there's some immediate gratification and I get that. But I'm gonna tell you, it starts right now. Throw that bag of Doritos away. Get rid of it. Go do some pushups. Go spend $12 at the hardware store and hang up a pull-up bar in your room. And start doing pull-ups. And if you can't do one pull-up, hang on that bar. And you're gonna start to get a little bit stronger. You're gonna start to get a little bit healthier. You're gonna start to get more focused. You're gonna start to become more resilient. And you're gonna start to be able to do a pull-up and you're gonna start to eat healthy all the time. And you're gonna start to understand the world better.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  And you're gonna start to progress in every aspect of your life.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  And you'll see that if you have that kind of discipline right now,

• 17:22Speaker 01

  you're gonna end up with freedom.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  And if you don't have that kind of discipline, and you keep eating those Doritos, and you don't work hard, and you don't exercise, and you don't apply yourself, you're gonna end up,

• 17:44Speaker 01

  you're gonna end up shackled.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  You're gonna end up shackled by a boss that you don't like, doing a job that you don't like to do, with sicknesses and diseases that you don't want, relying on people that you can't even count on,

• 18:04Speaker 01

  alone.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  And you don't have to.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  But if you have discipline,

• 18:15Speaker 01

  if you have discipline, you will attain freedom.

• 18:24Steven Bartlett?

  And it starts with just spitting the Doritos out?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Starts with spitting the Doritos out. Yes, indeed.

• 18:30Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things you do, which is, I mean, you're super famous for it, is this idea of waking up early. Now, I'm not someone that wakes up early.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  I know, you, no alarm clock, and you're usually up by 11.

• 18:41Steven Bartlett?

  Well, so, no meetings before 11.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:43Steven Bartlett?

  So, I stay up quite late.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:48Steven Bartlett?

  What's the best case you could give me for changing that? And do I need to change that? Because I, what I, what I do is, you know, I flew into LA, I'm jet lagged, I'm flying back in a couple of days, I'm gonna be jet lagged when I land as well. So, what I'm trying to do is just protect my sleep at all costs, because I've come to learn that it's really the foundation of my performance. So, if I, if I'm unslept and I show up at work, the chance that I'm not gonna show up correctly, in a variety of ways, emotionally, creatively, whatever.

• 19:15Steven Bartlett?

  Is high and that for me is the greatest risk. So I just, in the last sort of year or two of my life, I've just said, okay, prioritize sleep because then everything else seems to follow. But when I heard that you wake up sometimes at four forty five or four thirty, like pretty much all the time and you, I've literally seen you on social media upload your, your alarm clock day after day after day. Okay, shit, maybe I should rethink.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  No, I think if you're, if you've got a system that's working well for you and then I wouldn't change anything. Right? If you feel like you're performing well, you're physically healthy, you're getting all the work done that you need to do. You're a naturally more of a late night, late morning type person. I'd run with it. It's.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  If you were telling me, yeah, sometimes I get up, sometimes I don't, sometimes I work late, sometimes I don't, I'm not, don't work out every day. You know, sometimes I feel groggy. If you were telling me that kind of thing, I'd say, okay. Pick a time and start waking up at that time every day. Doesn't have to be four forty, it could be eight o'clock, could be seven o'clock, doesn't matter. Could be eleven o'clock, but try and go to bed around the same time and try and wake up around the same time. And that's going to be a great foundation for everything that you're doing. And I would say when you wake up in the morning, do some kind of exercise. Because I think that is very helpful in getting your day started correctly.

• 20:38Steven Bartlett?

  What are your non-negotiables in your life in terms of habits, routines, disciplines?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  I wake up early and I work out every day. That's, that's kind of my, that's, that's, those are the minimum requirements in my life. Train jiu-jitsu. I, I don't get to train, train jiu-jitsu every single day, but if I can train jiu-jitsu, I'm going to train jiu-jitsu, I'm going to work out every day.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  If I can surf, I'm going to surf, you know? I, I obviously have to work every day. I, I work every day doing something, you know, I've got a bunch of different companies. I gotta write books, podcasts, I, I work every day.

• 21:20Steven Bartlett?

  Are you ever undisciplined?

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, um, chocolate chip cookies. They're a, they're a, a discipline lapse for me. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm, I'm not a cyborg.

• 21:37Steven Bartlett?

  Struggle sucks.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Depends on how you frame it.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Right? Depends on how you frame it.

• 21:48Steven Bartlett?

  Because I'm thinking about you stood at the beach, you know, and they say, "Walk out, Jaco." Link arms and walk out. You described that as sucking.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:58Steven Bartlett?

  But what you're also saying is there's huge value in

• 22:02Steven Bartlett?

  things that suck. On the other side of something that sucks is something worth cherishing.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  I would say not just huge value, but the value.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  The value.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  You want to know if you're a you're talking about young men that might not have any direction right now? Go do something that's hard. Go try and accomplish something that's hard. You may win, you may lose, you may succeed, you may fail. I'll tell you what, you'll be better.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  If you avoid those things that are hard, if you don't accept that challenge, if you don't step up and step into that cold water and you sit on your couch and eat Doritos,

• 22:46Speaker 01

  I can tell you, this is not a good move. This is not a good move. Don't do that. Don't do that. Just get up. Move towards that challenge, whatever that challenge is.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Move towards that challenge and go attack it. And you may be successful and you may not be successful, but you will be better. And the next challenge? You're going to be more prepared for.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  And the next challenge after that, you're going to be even more prepared for.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  And you're going to fail. And you're going to fail. And you're going to fail. And you're going to fail. And then you're going to win.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  And that's life.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Life without those challenges?

• 23:38Speaker 01

  It's just existence.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Don't just exist.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Go live.

• 23:49Steven Bartlett?

  What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.