Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Joker willing, he's a retired, United States Navy officer in Seal Team, three, an author and a podcaster finding discipline. In the modern world is hard a hyper convenient. Existence rarely encourages radical responsibility or extreme ownership. Thankfully Jocko has spent an entire life learning how to love discomfort and also teaching others how to love it too. If discipline, equals Freedom, then Jocko must be,
One of the freest man on the planet. Expect to learn what Jocko thinks about the Detroit self-defense guy. Why discipline always beats motivation? The similarities between elite special forces, an elite Brazilian jiu-jitsu athletes Chuckles opinion on Jordan Pederson, how to get over an ex, whether he regrets being famous after working in the shadows for so long, how he used a Jim Carrey impression to chat up his wife, whether he wants to try psychedelics and much more.
This was a lot of fun to record. I flew out to San Diego with the entire production team and it's just so special doing these big episodes with people like Jocko or human, or Jordan Pederson or whatever. It's it's such a dream to be able to travel around and create something that I genuinely think, is special. So I really, really hope that you enjoy this episode. It took a lot of effort, a lot of planning and a lot of investment as well, to get it to look and sound the way that I wanted it to. And the guys, just now,
And it so sit back and enjoy this one. And if you're new here, hit the Subscribe button. There are some even bigger guests coming later this year and you're not gonna want to miss them in other news, this episode is brought to you by athletic greens. You are not eating enough fruit and vegetables, in your diet. And, you know, it and this is going to help one scoop of athletic greens contains 75 vitamins, minerals and Whole Food. Sourced ingredients, including a multivitamin, multi-mineral, pre and probiotics green.
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But now, ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome jakka willing.
Joker will Inc. Welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, appreciate
it. You flew to watch the UFC with Tom Haines and Chris Pratt. I want to know what a night out with Joker will ink looks like,
well, actually I didn't fly up there with cam. Cam was already up there. I think he flew in from Oregon, where he is where he lives but we did. We did meet.
There and, but I did fly up there with Chris Pratt and Jack car. And some of the other folks from the terminal list, which is a TV show that Chris Pratt is in that Jack car, wrote the book that the show is based on and we went up there. Watch the fights. It was a very cool night. Yeah, it's fun. What time did you get up the next day?
I got up, I don't know, what cam was giving me a hard time. He says, what, you know, what do you are you gonna get up tomorrow morning? And I said, I'm not having to get home until three in the morning and that's where I that's when I got home. I got home at 3:00 in the morning. I think I got up around, maybe 8:00 8:30, something like that.
The fact that you don't do the full 30 am thing. After a night out, makes me feel at least a little bit more
model if it's going to be less than four hours of sleep, then I'll make some kind of adjustment you'll just push it the next day. Yeah. What was
it? Like to see the UFC live if you seen that
before.
So many UFC's, and I don't know how many times I've been to, but I've been to a lot. I specify when I was younger, I spent a lot of time coaching and training Fighters. So I'd corner of cornered a bunch of fighters in the UFC. And so I've been to, I don't even know how many you have seized up into, but I haven't been in a long time. I haven't been in probably three. Four years. So it was cool to go and see one again and get back up there. You have see.
Seeing the UFC Live is awesome. And look, you know, people will say and even I'll say this too, it's great to sit at home and, you know, get all the different angles and hear the commentary that's cool. There's there's a benefit to that but there is a lot of a lot of hype and alot of energy that's in the room or in the in the stadium when it's going on. And so being there live, definitely definitely is is worth doing.
Occasionally to make sure you don't forget what that what that's all about.
How do you handle the next day? Now, if you've had a few drinks the night
before
I actually don't drink. So you know, does this really know factor for me? You know, I drank a drink more than my fair share when I was in the military and then when I retired from the military and I kind of just
over time over over time I just kind of wasn't drinking anymore. Now I just don't really drink anymore. There's not much in it for me, you know, I'm a I'm an old man with I'm married with kids and businesses and all this other stuff going on. So I'm not going to get much out of out of drinking
anymore and a big price to pay the next day as well. If you did decide to do it, maybe
I guess. Sure, I guess that that might be some of it but there's just, I just don't know. I'm not getting anything out of it.
So two of the biggest elements.
In your life, have been your military training and your martial arts training.
What would you say are the commonalities between the best BJJ athletes and the best Special Forces operators that you've worked with?
There's a probably the, the biggest commonality between the two is some kind of strange contrast between being extremely disciplined and being extremely creative. So clearly, if you're going to get good at Jiu Jitsu, you got to be the you got to be disciplined enough to train all the time. Same thing with being in the military, if you're going to be a good operator, you have to have the
One to push yourself in training but you can't be a person that you know, lean so hard towards a disciplined structured life that you don't have any creativity because both in Jiu-Jitsu and on the battlefield you want to. You definitely want to have to be creative and figure out Creative Solutions and things that people haven't thought of and things that the enemy is not going to think of or that your opponent's not going to think of. So you got to find that person who has a good balance between discipline and kind of a wild Freedom creativity.
Petit that they can make adjustments.
It's interesting to think that
More Focus or more efficiency isn't always the solution to everything. So I the analogy I use is if you think about an artist's creative Studio where they need their creativity, it's not orderly. You know there's half coffees and easels and sketches and paint and all sorts of stuff all over it. What does that engender? What's that environment? Creating for them? But then when they need to go and file, their
Isis trying to file their taxes. In that same room is probably not a good idea and I guess that flip-flop between off and on right between focus and play it seems like a very interesting thing to think about especially in a military context what what does that mean? When you're talking about a special forces operator being creative,
you know, there's a certain level of inside the military in general is if you're going to you have to be a person that kind of
The rules and stays within standards, and that's great and you're going to, you're going to be a good solid.
Soldier, if that's what you are, but if you have a mindset, that's very, that's so highly disciplined. So highly structured. Like I just said, then you're not going to think creatively when there's a problem that needs to be solved. So you want to have people that don't mind the discipline and can actually access the disk discipline in a way that they can utilize it. But you don't want people to be trapped by discipline and it's the same thing in Jiu-Jitsu if you have someone, that only knows how to do.
A certain move and they can't think creatively about other ways to employ that it's not that they're not going to be good because they are going to be good.
But there's going to, they're going to reach limitations and you know, is one of the interesting thing is in the SEAL Teams is we didn't have, especially when I was coming up, we didn't have any Doctrine whatsoever. There was no, there was no written doctrine of any kind. So everything that you learned was Word of Mouth, you learned from the guys that went before you and that meant. If the guys that went before, you weren't didn't really know what they were doing. You're probably learning a bad way and if you don't think if you didn't think objectively about it, then you might follow someone down a path.
That doesn't make any sense. So you ended up with a bunch of guys in the SEAL Teams that were pretty open minded, and they could kind of look at problems and figure out how to solve them in the Army and the Marine Corps. They have docked Doctrine for just about everything. This is how you do a raid, this is how you conduct an ambush. They had written Doctrine for this. So if you didn't know how you could, just look at a book, which is actually a huge benefit for them because if I'm a new platoon Commander not know. How don't know how to do an ambush, I can just look at this book and I can learn how to do it. And so there's some huge benefits to
Not to to having a very disciplined doctrine that you can follow. But that's one of the odd advantages of the SEAL Teams is that since we didn't have any Doctrine, we had to be a little bit more free thinking, and that made us a little bit more adaptive in, in some situations. So, it's just like anything else, your strength can be weakness, your weakness can be your strength and you have to be aware and if you're aware that it's a strength and if you're aware that, it can also be a weakness. And if you're aware that, it's a weakness and you're aware. There can also be a strength.
And you can probably optimize the way that you're going to think, which is pretty
beneficial. You think that can be trained that
creativity? Yeah, I think creativity can be trained. It just like any other natural trait. Some people are going to have more propensity to be creative than someone else. And some people are more rigid than other people in the way they think. And you can take someone that's more rigid and you can make them more creative.
But everyone's going to have some kind of a limitation, and some people might have a pretty pretty, pretty subdued, limitation of how creative they're going to get. And some people can really be trained to get a lot better at that.
Why did you fall on that Spectrum?
I would say it's a I fell I would say I fell pretty hard in both directions. So I was, you know, a disciplined person that believed instruction I like structure. And at the same time, you know, I was I would definitely think of things in a different way and I was very rebellious kid and I think Rebellion could be somehow tied to creativity and looking at things in and saying, hey, that doesn't make sense to me. So,
I'd say that I had a, I had say, I was pretty a pretty strong degree of both of those things. And that's what made me who I am,
especially the music. Do you listen to, as well growing up, right? I don't think almost all of the kids, I know that grew up listening to metal or hardcore
They've, you can't listen to that and not have a rebellious streak in you.
Yeah, you definitely can't listen to that, and not have a rebellious streak in you. And that, that's that, that did kind of drive my way of thinking, a lot when I was growing up. And, and not only to drive my way of thinking. I think I found that kind of music because that's the way I was sort of engineered in the first place. So yeah, he listening to when you grow
Bad Brains, Black Flag Agnostic, Front kromaggs. Black Sabbath is my favorite band of all time.
Yeah, those kind of bands.
A lot of your work is it's focused on encouraging people to take ownership and responsibility for things. One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot recently is whether it's possible to take too much responsibility or too much ownership where you start to believe that you're at fault or you're accountable for things and blame yourself.
Too. Frequently. Blame yourself too much. You think that's possible.
There's a way that it can happen. Usually, from a leadership perspective, when people ask me this question, hey Kent, is it possible to take too much ownership? The answer is yes, and that is, if I'm in charge and you're working for me and I take so much ownership over a mission or over a project that you don't feel like you have any input at all. Then I've taken too much ownership as far as. As like as an individual person, there's going to be things in your life.
Don't have control over.
And you know, one of the one of the early questions that I got asked about this.
You know, like for instance, someone gets a terrible disease and you'll order kids gets gets a terrible disease. A random disease that's at through, no fault of anyone. The kid gets sick or the person gets sick. And no, there's nothing you can do about that, what you can take ownership those, how you respond to that situation. And so, that's what you have to do. There's things you can control. There's things you can't control. Now, I will tell you that human beings can control a lot more than they think they can. And
And times, it's pretty easy. Just to say, oh, that's not me, that's not on me. And I think that's, that's the whole Genesis of the idea of extreme ownership is most of the time or much of the time. People say, that's not my fault, there's nothing I can do about that. And more often than people think, there is nothing you can do about it and you can end. It is your fault.
I enjoy, I find it interesting to think about, it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility as well and how that sits in amongst this.
My concern with it is, I don't get me wrong. I think the right now, the vast majority of people need to take more responsibility. I think that it is a great counter to a victim mindset. I think that it helps people with agency and sovereignty.
I can see elements in my life though of times when I've blamed myself for things which I'm in no way even remotely associated with. So, for instance, let's say that I'm doing a podcast with someone or I'm doing a live event right now. I'm facilitating some discussion and I ask a question and the guest fluff the response like Q gives a poor response, a lot of the time. The first place that I would go is that was on me somehow I should have asked a better question and even if
Ask the absolute perfect question and you could roll that forward into a relationship. You know that you're in a relationship with a bad partner or you something, something occurs.
I just I'm trying to find that line of how people can balance it, so that they don't end up putting so much pressure and weight on them that it crushes
them. Yeah. Well, here's two examples of what you're talking about. You mentioned one relationship. Another one is just if you're working for me. So if you're working for me and you don't show up on time, or you're not professional when you're conducting, your briefs,
I need to say something to you, and I need to take ownership of the fact that I haven't made it clear that. Hey, you need to show up on time and hey, you need to be more professional. And hey, you need to wear the right uniform or the dress, the part I need to take ownership of that and maybe if I do, and I talked to you and we discuss why it's important and you say, I really didn't think about that and you change your ways and you get on board and you start showing up on time to start acting more professional straight, we solve the problem. There's also a chance that you're late again or you show up, you know with with booze on your breath or whatever. And we're meeting with a client and
I say, hey Chris, you can't do this, this is look, I'm serious. You cannot act this way, this reflects bad and all of us, and maybe you. And I might even say, listen, if you keep this up, you're not even be working here anymore. I'm going to get rid of you. You say I know I do, I love working with you, it's gonna be great. I won't do it again and maybe that solves your problem, or maybe you're late again, or you continue acting professionally and I'm gonna get rid of you. I'm gonna say, hey, Chris look, I talked to you, I tried to explain this to you.
And at a certain point this job isn't for you so that can happen. And I have to take ownership of the fact that you are actually not capable of doing this job that I've asked you. So that's fine. Same thing, happened in relationship, right? Look, if you're in a relationship with someone and you're bickering about where we're going to go for dinner or you came home late from work and all you do is, well, I've been working all day, you should respect the fact that I've been working on it. Like, that's, that's actually on you that's actually on you and you can
Adjustments to that. Now can you get to a point in relationship where the other person is not a good fit for you? And at some point you say, you know what, I've made these adjustments, I've come home, you know, on time I've texted you when I was going to be late and these other things are coming up and you say you know what, I don't think this is working and I don't think this is a good relationship. So at a certain point you say okay, I've made the adjustments that I can make and I've take ownership of the fact that we're not a good match. So yeah, there's there's
Plenty of times, we're taking ownership means, actually solving the problem not continuing to to pour the problem down your neck every night because that's not very helpful to anybody. So yes, at a certain point, you have to, you have to make adjustments, and you have to move forward.
There's a lot of similarities, I think between your personal philosophy and Jordan. Peterson's, I know you've spoken to him a couple of times. What have you learned from
him?
Well, the the most interesting thing that I learned from Jordan Pederson and I mentioned this, the first time he came on my podcast was that, you know, he's a trained academic that studied this stuff is whole life. And we came to a lot of the same conclusions about things and I just came to those conclusions through living, and the experiences that I had and he came to them through studying this stuff in a very rigorous way. And, and the cool thing is luckily for
Me, I had written books. That sort of predated
I got that first. Yeah
wasn't that? I got there first but I mean this these were the thoughts that I had. I mean discipline equals Freedom, that book came out. I think before I before Jordan Peterson was on the scene, it's the book extreme ownership which is about taking personal responsibility. What's about taking responsibility? And you can up the definitely apply to personal responsibility. So luckily for me those those books kind of predated Jordan Pederson coming onto the scene and and
Everything that he did. But again, it's not like I created any of those things. Not like I created it before he created and it's not like he created it before other philosophers had figured these things out. So I'd say the most interesting thing about Jordan Pederson that I found. And I think it was pretty interesting to him to was the fact that we both had kind of come to the same conclusions and we had lived very different lives. I mean, I'm sure there's more disparate life that we could live but they're pretty different lives. And
That's that was a very interesting thing. And it made me feel like, well, it made me feel good about the fact that the things that I had figured out were in line with things that he had figured out. And that means maybe there's a little bit more strength and universality to these things that I believed which, which felt pretty
good. It's nice to know or to think that something that's been proven in the field of battle on the field of play is backed up in Academia, right? That someone can go through the annals of philosophy history and come to
Similar conclusion as you.
Yeah, absolutely. And you know this stuff, this stuff that I say is in the Bible, the stuff that I say is in stoicism and and
Jordan Peterson's, you know, says the stuff that I say, or I say the stuff that he says, again I'm not trying to compete with Jordan Pederson on any level, especially some kind of an intellectual level, but we have similar thoughts about things and that predated either one of us knowing who each other were. So I think that's pretty cool.
Why do you think people are drawn to advise? That's telling them to do hard things.
Kind of seems
counterintuitive.
Why do I think people are drawn to advice telling them to do hard things? Because I think P any person any human realizes that if you want some kind of a good outcome, you're going to have to work hard for it. And if you and if you don't work hard for something, you're not going to get an outcome, that's really worth much.
Well, that is the thing. That separates the achievements, on the other side of it, right? If it was easy, everyone would do it. If it was either easy, everyone would achieve it. So, this is one of the things that I, I try and rely on when trainings been getting hard to, I ruptured, my achilles a couple of years ago, that sucked. I wouldn't advise it as an injury
generally. Then it's like a random, you know, the times of noble just do it, you know, getting out of their car or
say it was playing Cricket. Yeah. Most British way to snap an Achilles
a
Wait, I snap your Achilles for sure
during that during the rehab for that. It's pretty just uncomfortable. It's endless calf raises, right? Which not fun,
and
the discomfort that you feel and the paint, the fear of it rear up during, which is the number one thing you do honor to have happen. The thing that I went back to in my mind was this is why I'm here. The discomfort that was feeling the
Effort, the pain, the sweat thankfully. This was during covid, so it meant that if I had to do a workout every single morning for half an hour on just my carbs. So what else are you doing, right? There's a pandemic going on. This is why you're here was the reminder take a look. This is the reason why the re-rupture rate is 5 to 10% because people don't want to do this thing. People don't want to do the thing because it hurts, because it takes half an hour every single day for nearly 12 months to full 12 month recovery.
That's why this is why you're here. And I think that you're right. I think that the selection is people, deep down know that picking up heavy things physically psychologically, existentially, culturally is good for us and I think that that's why it's attractive.
I agree.
Another thing that I think is that it's one of the reasons why people can become a little bit triggered triggered they can become a little bit uncomfortable when they see somebody else. It's got a lot of discipline because I think deep down, they know that if they had that thing, that that would fix a lot of the problems that they have in their life is this is a dynamic that you've
seen. I'm sure that's a bummer for someone to look at someone else that's working really hard and and achieving some positive things. And they
Old that they're not may be working as hard as they could be and they're not really achieving what they want to achieve. I'm sure that stings a little bit.
Another thing that Jordan said recently is that the problem with Twitter is that the price of being, a prick has fallen 20? I feel like you'd agree with that as well.
Yeah, yeah, I guess I'd agree with that. If you're going to spend a bunch of time on Twitter, you're gonna you're going to run into a bunch of people that don't like you and they're going to say it and there's nothing you can do about it. So
and the ability for people's words and the consequences of those words to become detached as well is something that's only
Pretty recent, I mean I guess he could have sent a mean telegram. 100 years ago?
Yeah.
I would recommend that you don't let the random Bots or people on Twitter bother you that much. That's my recommendation. I would recommend you, you know, the first time I kind of experience that it was when I was on. I was on Rogan for the first time and the YouTube video came out and I sat there with my oldest daughter who is probably
Maybe 14 or 15 at the time, and I sat there and read these heinous comments about me and laughed. I mean, it was kind of, you know, someone pretty good, just kind of funny. So, yeah. I'm not, I'm not getting bothered by somebody that wants to talk smack about me, for whatever on Twitter. And also there's there's probably some truth to whatever they're saying, you know, they say I'm a big knuckle-dragger am probably right, you know,
They say I'm an idiot. Yeah, there's definitely some of that. What else?
Do you swear much? I don't think I've ever heard you. SWA,
I don't swear at on and look, we're now there's a, there's a term. We have an Americano. If you have this in in England, but swear like a sailor, meaning people in the Navy, swear a lot. Yeah, and certainly, when I was in the SEAL Teams, I probably swore every 7th 5th to 7th word that came out of my mouth especially talking to a seal platoon about something but
No one, I don't swear ton. I mean if you listen to my podcast all the time you'll see that when there's an appropriate time to swear then I will but even it's interesting you know if you swear all the time it kind of loses its impact. And so when I do swear on the podcast, people usually say oh he's this is this is an important thing or is this, this is a this is obviously very, very powerful emotion that he's feeling, right? Because he just said a swear work. So yeah, but I don't care. It's where tan
When I'm and even when I was in the SEAL Teams, I'd come home at night and when it's where I don't swear in front of my wife and I wouldn't swear in front of my kids so I would just turn it off and that's
up. It's like when you hear some Harris swear. If you ever hear him do? Yes. Yes. Sprinkled very infrequently, but when it happens, you were okay. It's an attention getter. Yeah, I have a friend, Daniel, Schloss comedian and Scottish. So that combined is like a multiplying force and I actually think that he probably uses more sweat
Words and actual words, they're just that Salt Bay guy. It's kind of like that but just threw out every single sentence deprogramming that I think is important. It's something that I've really tried to work on, you know, just being a working-class lad from the UK, is it's part. And parcel of the language perhaps has being in the seals listening back and he especially hearing yourself speak a lot which you've done over the last six, seven years or whatever. And now there's something about it that I just I would rather save it for the times when I need
it.
yeah, and there is if you're doing something like where people are going to listen to it,
Sort of detached from the moment that you're living in. Then it's different as well. So it doesn't have this. It doesn't come across the same and you and I having a conversation over lunch talking about whatever that that's different. And you know those those words are a little bit more fitting in those situations but if you watching the UFC. Yeah if you're watching the UFC. But yeah. Yeah. Look I don't really if people swear. It's not it's not like a huge concern of mine.
Really care that much but maybe your could improve your vocabulary, a little bit and
you can always rely on the same five
sweaters. Yeah. But some people use them well, and they're hilarious when they use
them. That no. Daniel uses his spectacularly. Yeah, I would say he's probably got a black belt in swearing right on. I want to revisit your good video for the people. Haven't seen it. It's a two minute long.
Edit that was released seven years ago on your YouTube channel and its got like nearly 10 million plays or something. Now, and in it, you're encouraging people to respond to setbacks and things that don't go well by saying good-bye leaning into the discomfort by you should sing as an opportunity. Was that anything you think that people misinterpreted about that video or about good? Generally, as a
concept look,
If you take any idea and you take it to an extreme then that idea is going to become bad. I mean, even the idea of extreme ownership, if you take it to an extreme where you're like, as you pointed out earlier, you're blaming yourself because your daughter got a disease, or you're blaming yourself because your husband is abusing you. Like there's a point where you think anything go too far? And, well, you know, I mean, there's there's some pretty good memes.
About that on the internet almond. Yeah, there's some good memes about that on the internet. Oh crashed. My car. My dog died. Good. I need a new car anyways. So yeah, take it to an extreme. It can be can become pretty silly or funny depending on how you take it. But for the most part you're going to run into challenges in life and if you curl up into a ball and complain about it, that's not going to help you. And if you say okay cool good here's some adjustments. I can make to move forward. That's going to be a better move then.
Then cowering.
Is there anything that you wish that you dated in?
I don't know. I mean, I said it during one of my podcasts and my friend Echo, turned it into a video. So, so that's it. If I wanted to, I probably would have expanded on it or done something else. I don't know. Deep you tell me. Did I miss
something? I don't think so. I mean, it's pithy and, and obviously one of his you've said the
Its extensive not exhaustive as a solution. And this is, this is Twitter in a nutshell that you have to sacrifice how explicit you're being for brevity right for it being sufficiently succinct that people can understand it, you can get it in in a 1 minute 55 so that people can actually watch it and one click off or whatever, and people will then use the lack of detail.
To expand that out and say, get dog died in the car, crash and good, right? You can see how that's easy to criticize, but I think overall, this is really great story. Actually is about Zeno of city. And the guy that founded stoicism and often, he was criticized, that he was very abrupt when he would speak to people when he was giving his because he was around in a time of the sophists, right? And sophistry was all about these big long.
Stravagant philosophical Treatise and they would use these super super long words and stuff. And what he found was that people didn't like the fact of how abruptly was didn't like that. And someone once criticized him for it and he said, yes, I am. Thank you. If I could I would even shorten the syllables as well. And I like the idea of someone that uses brevity in an effective way and this sort of links in with something I've been thinking about recently,
Which is to do with the outcomes that we get in life. So
All of the concerns that we have, all of the sleepless nights, and the neuroses, and the overthinking, and the confusion, and the uncertainty in the self-doubt, and all of that stuff all combined together, I think probably netis about maybe five or ten percent better outcomes in life. It's my belief that most of the qualities that you have, your integrity, your virtue, your discipline, your hard work, your growth mindedness, your humor, your resilience, all of that.
A forces that are very very difficult for you to slow down and that once they've got started, it incredibly hard for you to stop them. And what you're doing with all of the extra concern that comes over. The top of that is just making a day-to-day experience of it a lot more miserable. And I've been thinking a lot about, how can you how can you? I more fatty, right? The love of Fate, the love of the destiny that I have is the one that's going to come. I understand that have control over. I understand that have agency that I have.
Sovereignty that I can impact my destiny.
But also the all of the work and the effort that I put in previously is going to carry me through and if I've been successful so far that worrying about success going forward whether or not it's going to occur.
Just, it doesn't seem super smart and then relating that to good. Is that not only do you need to, or can you accept something and say that it is good? You can also have the sense of resiliency, that, you know, that you've got through something that's worse than this before. How did you get on last time he faced something that was difficult.
You're still here by virtue of the fact that you're listening to this. You're still here.
There's a part of that that makes me makes me think about good is an active philosophy, right? It's actively saying something happens. I'm going to lean into it. I'm going to be Forward Motion, right?
And then the backup that you seem to have behind that as well is.
Look at all of the things I've dealt with before.
Look at all of the effectiveness that I've come through with previously. I think that those two combined together pretty
powerful.
I agree.
Speaking about speaking about motivation and stuff as well, which is obviously kind of the other side of what you
do. You know why I'm laughing. Right? Why? Because you are telling the story about this guy who gave really brief answers and then you talk for six minutes and I said I agree. So just having fun. Good luck
even Xena. I've got a lot in
common, Maybe
Do you think the people overcomplicate motivation? Yes.
I find that.
Discussions about motivation. A lot of the time I mean, you are the soundtrack to a lot of motivation compilation video. That's right. Yeah. Motivation Universe 40-minute. Get up and get after it Jocko video. And so, I think that a lot of the discussions about motivation can cause people to believe that there's some magical state that they need to be in before they do something.
Yeah. And as I've said, since day one, it's motivation is a feeling that comes and goes and it doesn't matter whether it's there or not discipline, is infinitely more important? So, no matter how you feel, get up and do what you're supposed to do. That's it. And that's discipline. That's not motivation. If you only did what you were supposed to do when you were motivated to do it, that's leaving it to chance. But if you're disciplined, you go do what you're supposed to do. That's the way it works.
I went and listen to an episode you did with some Harris seven years ago. Now long time ago he came up with this a really interesting idea where he said that you can't fake
courage. Yeah
that's one of the most interesting ways to look at it. He said courage or bravery I think is actually what he was talking about. You it's an emotion that you can't fake if you fake bravery when you're terrified that is bravery.
And I kind of feel like motivation is the same thing. If you do the thing when you're feeling unmotivated that is motivation, that's it. So you saying that all of the Jocko videos of motivation, they can just go off of
YouTube. Well, I seen a lot of those videos, and sometimes that's what it takes for people to get motivated. Is to realize that, that
motivation, doesn't matter nation of. It doesn't matter to self-defeating
video, just shut up and go do what you're supposed to do.
Yeah, I mean the difference between the person that spends all day weren't
wondering about whether they should go to the gym or not and the person that just goes to the gym or not. Even if they both go, they net out at zero apart from the fact that one person has spent the entire day obsessing over it.
Yeah. And probably wasting some brain power on it
does this thing called the eye, Bro, Science called the anxiety cost. So, you know, opportunity cost right that you because of doing one thing you can't do. Another thing anxiety cost to me is the wasted mental effort that you go through obsessing over something, when you could fix it quite
Lee by just doing it. It's one of the most compelling reasons for doing a morning training workout for me. If you got to train every day, every morning, when you wake up, your daily to-do list, resets, right? You get out of bed and then your to-do list of meditate and walk the dog and answer emails and do all that. The sooner that you can front load that stuff. The rest of the day is just
Yeah, discipline equals Freedom that's it. I mean if you have the discipline to get up and get the things done. Well, I've I've usually our I often tell a similar story. This is same thing that you just said, which is, you know, the weekend where you really only had two things to do for the weekend. Whatever it was, you had to write this thing and you had to answer this other thing.
And on Friday, like, I'll do it tomorrow and on Saturday like I'll do it. And it's basically hanging over your head. The whole weekend where have you just done? Friday afternoon. The whole weekend would have been a lot better, so just do the thing. I agree with you just do not just do the thing. The thing, man.
What discourage mean to you is that a good definition from Sam? Do you think doing doing the thing in spite of the way that you feel?
Yeah, I think that's I'm got solid II. Somebody asked me a question the other day does courage have to involve risk and I thought about it a little bit.
Haven't thought, I don't sit around and think about all the stuff, which might be obvious, I guess. But yeah, I think if you're going to, if you're going to get credit for courage, then there has to be some level of risk. Whether it's, you know, Capital risk in doing something in a business or physical risk. If you're doing something to run into a fire to save somebody. Yeah. So I think, I think courage has to have some kind of risk involved and then yes, I agree with Sam Harris when he pointed out that if
You're acting if you're doing the thing then that's courage, no matter how you feel inside you your little brain.
You sure that you don't spend that much time sat around thinking of stuff because I know that you you do a ton of prep for each of your podcast episodes as you're reading through a book. I mean, the insights that you pull out of that that you dragged across between your, I think you might be doing yourself a bit of a disservice there.
Well, yes, when I'm reading a book, I'm certainly applying the context of my life and my experiences and what I know, and what I think I know too that. So, I guess, but that's different than sitting around and thinking,
Oh, you mean like the sort of the yeah,
stroking. I don't do a lot of that. Maybe I should do more. I probably need
to. I'd be interested to see that I could see you sat in a smoking jacket, somewhere
cigar. Yeah, I mean you know I think
I run. I think when I'm doing Jiu-Jitsu, I laughing. Yeah. Think when I'm surfing and those are just, that's, that's a great kind of empty mind. And and there's times where I'm running, and I have to stop and write something down, you know, I'll pull out my because I'll be listening to some music or something. I'll stop and take a note in, in my iPhone about something that I just thought of
So, it happens,
courage is very hard to find when life gets comfortable for people. How can they stop their bravery from eroding when times are easy?
I guess, I guess what we already talked about do something, that's hard and do it every day. That's what's one of the nice things about Jiu-Jitsu. You're going to get choked. You're gonna be uncomfortable. You can get smashed. You're going to have to tap out. Your ego is going to get abused. Your go do that. Go do that. You go for a run, lift, deuce, deuce. Just do hard stuff. And that's a good way to keep that, I guess.
Fresh. You think that mobster?
Us on to other areas of life as well.
It certainly seems like it does but there's no guarantee on any of this stuff, the really there's no guarantee and it depends on what, you know, what kind of Courage you're talking about? Are we talking about courage, where
You're going to die or you could possibly die or you touch, you know, is that what? We're calling courage. Because there's people that have come from every Walk of Life that have stepped up in that situation. And there's people have come from every Walk of Life and you failed in that situation. So if you're talking life or death? Yeah, I mean I think you actually have to get to someone that has sort of good with dying and they're okay with it and then they're gonna have a lot easier time pushing into that fold.
If it shows up,
have you seen those Detroit self-defense
videos? Yeah, I think. Oh, I know, I have, I'm trying to think how I saw him, but, yeah, because a lot of jujitsu, people will repost those things. Yeah,
what, what do you think that people misunderstand when it comes to life and death fights street fights? What do you think most normal people who haven't been in one miss
believe? I don't know what that has to do.
Those Detroit videos, long trip videos are definitely
It's a pantomime.
Yeah. So I guess.
So I guess to answer your question, what do most people not understand about a street fight? They're probably not used to just the level of violence that's going to occur. They're not there. Maybe this is maybe this is what you're getting out with the Detroit self-defense videos or whatever, they are the choreographed Maneuvers that you that work when you and I are going through them and sort of dancing. Those aren't going to work in real life and so if
I think that you're going to be able to drop someone with one punch. Are you thinking about all these things that are sort of the old traditional martial arts, doing Kata? And I, you know, I do this to you and it causes this reaction then my next move is over here. Yeah, that stuff doesn't work in a street fight. Just yeah.
The growing cake and the palm of the hand to the nose, to run away from the the female to run away from the attacker and stuff like that.
Yep, it's not going to work well and it's not very reliable need. If you want to learn how to fight, you gotta learn how to fight. You know, you got to do Jiu-Jitsu Muay Thai wrestling Boxing. That's what you need to do. If you want to learn how to fight,
if you been to go and see what Tim Kennedy's doing a put his place with his self-defense
courses. I
Not been to one of his courses. It's called sheepdog response but I've seen what he's doing and of course, you know Tim's Tim's up, not only his e well-versed in martial arts. Clearly, he's also well versed in weapons and he's also well versed in violence and so I know what he's teaching is legit stuff.
I'm pretty sure that using live handheld tases as well during that to just show people precisely how difficult it is to whatever do the
The facepalm and the eye gouge, and the Fish Hook and run away. And
I think he runs I think it must be monthly. He does a special one for not military personnel for the police and even them the amount of training I think. I mean we've seen this recently, right? That the training seems to
be
insufficient rather training for police officers is totally insufficient and it's horrible because it's a very difficult job that you should be training. I've been saying for the last several years that police officers should train 20% of the time, 20% of the time that they work they should be training. And right now it's not even probably not even a measurable percentage of time that they're working. It mean it's probably in the fractions of a percent that they're training their dig, it horrible training and they're in really Dynamics.
Relations and in doing incredibly hard job.
You don't know how to do that stuff. No, that's when you talk about the misconceptions of the street fight is the person that thinks. Well, you know, when I, if someone messes with me, I'm just going to get wild and they think that's going to work and that's not going to work especially when someone that's trained. So, if you think that you're gonna have some magical powers because you're angry or because your adrenaline's going, that's not, that's not true. And it's going to it's going to cost you in a big
way. Especially if you come up against somebody like Tim Kennedy is genuinely trying to
know for sure. Yeah. And you know this day and age
Well, I mean, I live in San Diego, California. A lot of people trained a lot of people train. I wouldn't say it's the majority of people train, but there are I lot if you get no fight in San Diego, there's a decent chance. You're fighting against someone that knows how to fight. And the look there's Jiu-Jitsu on every street in San Diego, Jiu-Jitsu academies. So, yeah, if you just think you're going to be a tough guy, it's it's going to be rough. It's gonna be a rough to her.
I saw a video the other day that you may have seen as well.
With Tim talking about changes, he was making to his
everyday carry. Mmm, you see this. I don't suit. I don't think
so. It was changing the weapon that he was using the pistol because recently some of the active Shooters have been using body armor. Mmm. So he's now gone to a relatively small caliber but a armor-piercing round. Yeah. Are you concerned about this increasing sophistication? That seems to be coming from people that are shooters.
Yeah, there's a little there's an escalation there, right? But
that's a the the military went through this with the people we were fighting. They start wearing body armor. Cool. Roger that you want to wear body armor will get armor-piercing rounds.
You know, that the it it's just a natural escalation of things, unfortunately, but it's the way it is.
It's kind of like the predator-prey dynamic, right of
evolution. Yeah. Yeah. The enemy's going to make adjustments. And we're now after adjust back,
what are your principles for an everyday eight? You allowed? Can you have an everyday carry in San Diego? Yes, right. What are your principles that you follow for
that? The the same as a normal person that wants to protect?
Elves.
We had this recent Fourth of July shooting, right? And then before that, we had Uvalde, and then before that, we had buffalo. Have you got any idea if this is the sort of thing that can be stopped or can be restricted in
some way?
Yeah, I did. I did some podcasts on these things and
some of the biggest or what I would say, one of the most startling things and the about, as you watch the evolution of this. So in in 1955 in America, there was 340 inpatient beds for people with mental health issues per 100,000 people. So for every 100,000 people in America, there was 340 inpatient beds.
for those people from people, with mental health problems in 2007, it was 17 beds per 100,000
So there the the mental health.
Capacity for treatment in America, is gone down in a, what a 95% and the and there are some legitimate reasons why this happened. And a lot of it had to do with the fact that people were getting put in these institutions. And they there were some horrible abuses that were going on. In some of these mental institutions. People being committed that didn't want to be in there. People that were abused once they were in there, people that could never get out of there and there was a backlash against that and it all of a sudden became in the
70s. Hey this this mental health, these mental health facilities are evil. They're bad, there's abuse going on. We need to shut them down and they shut down a lot of them. And so in doing that it's certainly appears to me that they threw the baby out with the bathwater. And now we've got I mean you think San Diego there's two or three million people here. There's a lot of people that need help that need help. Mental
Health help. And there's just not a great place to get it. I don't talk, please officers a lot police officers. Come upon people all the time that they don't need to get put in jail. They need to get put in some kind of a mental health facility, but they don't exist. And so they go into jail for a little while they come back out and it's a problem. So, so if you take just the numbers of the beds, right? What does that done to all the other aspects of mental health? Like what about the outpatient people? How many doctors used to be ready to
Somebody that was feeling depressed or was feeling angry there. Probably were a lot more doctors back, then that had the capability of treating those things. So we've, we've really shut down our capacity to help people from a mental health perspective. And then on top of that, we've added all these things into society that create more mental health problems, IE drugs, alcohol social media. The fact that someone can stay in their house all the time but then we put covid on
People where they had to stay in their house all the time, they're getting stuck in Echo Chambers. There's all these things that add to mental health problems. And we've, we've really done away with a lot of the treatment that we had before. So hopefully, in the coming months and years, we can start to get back to a place where we start to build up our capacity for heat, treating help people that have mental health issues, because these these shooters in these scenarios, they clearly are.
They have mental health
problems but it's a trend is wild. It's dominated by young men, it seems and that that seems especially sad because these are men, that could be out working a job or starting a business, or being in the armed forces, or contributing to something. And instead, they're off on a rampage,
Zelma terrible to see
one of the differences. We were talking before, we started about the differences between the u.s. and the UK and spend a lot of time late nights in City centers working nightclubs and
I spent a lot of time around homeless people to in the morning, the only people that are out of Club promoters and and homeless people and partygoers and the difference between homeless people in the UK and homeless people in the u.s. is more Stark than the difference between the cultures by distance. They are
significantly more Aunt, the evidently in discomfort and and talking to themselves shuffling along rocking backward and forward much more forthcoming significantly more forthcoming significantly. More aggressive even though I've never had anything. Super bad happen, downtown San Diego downtown. Denver downtown Austin. I've been spent
Of time in America. But I mean, there are a lot of them and the safety net that we have, in the UK to sweep up, people who fall through the cracks like, that is, it seems to work, right, you know, someone someone ends up in a really bad way. Mentally away, you go will pop you in the ward. You'll be looked after will be given the medication that you need. There's no insurance that restrict that, but as you said earlier on, it's like a vicious cycle of the people who are the ones that are the most vulnerable.
Are the ones that maybe get sent to jail perhaps to get hooked on drugs. The drugs, make the mental health conditions worse, which means that they can, they further ingrain themselves into a life of either crime or homelessness, which takes them further away from a job in a balanced life? And yeah, I mean it kind of doesn't surprise me but it's pretty sad to
see. Yeah, I'd be interested to know the numbers of inpatient beds per 100,000 in the UK because if you think about the homeless people that you've seen in San Diego,
And there's two million people here, right? There's a lot of those people that probably would be swept up and put into a place where they're getting the right mental health treatment that they need and mental health treatment is not an easy thing to do. It can take an extended period of time to get someone sorted to a point where they're able to be go out and contribute to society. So yeah, I'd be interested to know those numbers and even from what you're saying right now my guess is England's, probably doing a better job of getting people. The help that they need. How long have you been married now?
I think 25
years and you not yell life in Bahrain, right? Yep. Remember the story about the first thing that you said to her? Yes. Would you tell that?
Yeah, so I was on a on a deployment in the Navy I was on a ship while we were on a ship. This is back before internet on ships. And we to occupy our time. When you're a seal on a ship. There's nothing to do
Do you don't have a job, so you just sleep. Eat and lift is our joke and you can only sleep eat and lift so long. And then we, we had certain selection of movies on videotapes. And so, one of the movies that we had was Ace Ventura, Pet Detective with Jim Carrey. And so, we did a lot of imitating, Ace Ventura Pet Detective and when I so we eventually went to Bahrain. My the other Squad, there's two squads and seal platoon. The other Squad had actually gone to Bahrain before us Squad, 2 into Bahrain.
A few days they were ahead of us and we don't know anything about Bahrain. We didn't know what was going on there because there's again, there's no internet, you just know, some will go into some random place in the desert and squad. One had work to do so we stayed on the boat for a couple extra days and then when we finally flew to Bahrain, Squad to is waiting for us. And they were saying, hey, this place is like there's good times to be had. There's bars and girls and the whole nine yards. And so they had like they were staged and ready to take us out.
Out. And yeah we're going to a bar and I will big giant packed kind of Club, / bar and I saw a tall. Beautiful blond woman.
And actually actually one of my friends in Squad to had said to me oh there's these two girls you're going to be. He's like I know you're going to talk to him and he was kind of a shire guy and I said oh I'm sure their work out with you man. Your you'll do fine. And sure enough Walked In This Bar, some I saw my future wife and I just want I walked up to her and I said in like a Jim Carrey tone. I said, should I just call you Aphrodite's goddess?
Love. And she looked at me, like I was an idiot, which was accurate. And then, you know, I bought her a drink and the rest as they say, is history.
How did you save that? I do, I want to know how you turned that opening line around.
You know, it was, I did in a ridiculous enough way that she could taste, probably tell. I wasn't taking myself too, seriously. I mean it, it wasn't serious, right? So, if you're not being serious, she laughed and we were good. I didn't I didn't.
It's a it I didn't say, should I just call you Africa, is our goddess of love. Now if I decide that I probably wouldn't have ended up with her. Yeah, I was having fun.
What have you learned since being married to a Brit?
Is there anything that you think has been a unique
insight?
You know, Britain England, the UK long allies with America even though I guess originally it would didn't start off that way. Clearly
look the fault of July was a very difficult day for me. Yeah, it's very difficult day. Happy trees and date. All of it and grateful
colonialists know, I love the historical aspects of England. You know, the the the, the military that I've worked with the Brits that I've worked with
Kind of to me represent what I think of when I want when I think of England and when I the way, I the way I kind of holding land and the UK in an elevated way in my mind, the, the British military that I've worked with have maintained that standard completely professional stiff, upper lip squared away, ready to work and just just, just really just professional. And that's the way I always think of
Island.
I'm interested here in the disciplining process of getting married and becoming a father, because you were, someone who had already worked hard on being disciplined, but this feels like a very different type of discipline to the discipline to put up with a baby that won't stop crying. It's the discipline to be able to comfort somebody while you're away from them.
that to me feels like a different sort of frequency of discipline and I'm interested in what you found as a challenge and what you found is whether your military career had prepared you for marriage and fatherhood
effectively,
well, first of all, insane amount of credit goes to my wife, who is
Just she one of the things I'm explore, try to explain to people about her is that she was emotionally independent meaning. She didn't need me to to bolster her up and she handled everything she handled everything on the home front, literally everything. And I would just go and go do my job and she never complained about that. She never
Ever made any comments about it. It was she knew kind of the priority for me was my job and that later on in life and and that strategically in our lives, the priority was the family but she also knew that while I was in the SEAL Teams that was my number one priority, she knew that and I told her that and she said yeah, I know I get it.
You take care of your team, you take care of your platoon. You take care of your task unit. And I got this, I got these kids and this house and all that other stuff. And she never complained. She never, she just she just did it. And so the majority, the vast majority of credit goes to my wife for being, an awesome human being, an awesome mom to our kids. And I was, I would love to give you some kind of
This is what you need to look for. And I that's probably the best I could do, but I can't say that I looked for it. I got very, very lucky. I got very lucky in that my wife was was, look. You can judge her looks and I obviously she was and is a beautiful woman, but the luck part was, she was like I said, emotionally independent. She was strong to be able to handle
Just just Mayhem Mayhem on a pretty regular basis, you know, not, you know, from from having a bunch of kids to I'm gone on deployment and my wife is going to visit my wounded guys in the hospital or going to my guys funerals, that's what she was doing. So
You know, team effort for sure. But she's the MVP and I'm just sort of, you know, the the bench, the bench warmer over here. The
Now, all that being said, the, the you know, from the military look, taking ownership of things, which are already talked about a little bit, but there's nothing really that goes on in my family that I don't that that I would say no to my wife. No, that's your fault because I can just about guarantee that everything is my fault. When there's something that's not right. When there's
Something going wrong. It's something that I've, it's a mistake that I made. I did something wrong D escalation, right? Because my wife, while borderline st. There, you know, she's a human being. A lot of my friends would argue that she's just a saint but she is a human being and you know, she might get mad about something, she might get frustrated with me about something and
Being able to dies, deescalate those situations and not, not escalate them is very, very beneficial and one of the best ways to do that is by taking ownership when something goes wrong. So I would say the D, escalation part taking ownership is definitely beneficial
If you're blaming your your wife, you're probably, that's not going to work out great. And just the idea of
You know, trying to win trying to win an argument. I mean first of all, honestly I don't really are, I don't really argue with my wife. I probably have been in less than a handful less than three or four arguments in my life with my wife. And I can't even, I can't even really think of any right now. I'm just don't want to, you know, try and try and make myself out the door. Make our relationship out to be something that's not but we don't really argue very often and
So I can't even really say that. Hey don't try and win an argument with your wife because I'm not really having an argument with my wife. I guess my, I guess my synopsis of this is pay attention to who you're going to get married to and try and pick someone that is
Emotionally independent that has their own, has their own that can handle Life by themselves. And that can be, that can make some people feel insecure, right? I want someone that's relying on me all the time and I want them to feel like they need me and that might be a trap for you if that's what you set yourself up with. So
That's what I do. Find someone. That's emotionally independent. Find someone that you get along well with find someone. That's that's
Calm, you know, someone that's not, you know, that's not going to get get bent out of shape about little things. And if they do it Little D escalation, can kind of get the problem solved.
And then just have fun, you know, my wife and I have fun and I think that's
important. It's very interesting to think about the fact that some people rely on a partner who is overly vulnerable or overly, anxiously attached as a way to bolster their own sense of reassurance. In a relationship. I've seen this quite a
lot. Yeah, that's probably not going to be a great move and look, you a person, I don't know.
All I can do is talk for myself and I would recommend you find someone that's more your equal, someone that you can engage with someone. That's someone that you're part of a team with rather than someone that you're sort of domineering over.
I learned this the other day that there's only one sentence in the Bible about how you should choose a partner. And it says that you should choose someone that you could go to war
with, I like it. Now that works best
legit.
It's a team effort, the relationship, right? And would you purposefully choose a particularly vulnerable team mate because you're always going to be the person that's out in front. Probably not. Yeah,
yeah. Now to push back a little bit about that. Look you, there's guys, I would be number one on my list to go to war with
That probably are not going to be the best spouses, and you would get in a relationship with them there. They're gonna be, they're gonna be tough for female to be married to because they're, they're wild right there, are wild animals. And they're the exact type of person that you would want to go to war with. And that I've gone to war with them. A lot of times, they're they're not going to be great as as husband's
FairPoint. Yes. Yeah.
People as well. I've been thinking recently, I spoke to Andrew human last week and he was explaining to me about the similarities between the grief process and the breaking up process. Only neurologically. It's incredibly similar so distance in time and space and something else I think and he was talking about how when you go through a breakup, it is the same networks that are activated as through grief.
And as somebody that has been to probably far more military funerals than we can, remember, I would have liked to how does that inform your advice for people letting go of people that they lose in their life? Whether that be through a breakup or through them, passing
talked about this on my podcast, one time. And speaking of Jocko videos that are out there and people have made videos of this
Yes, I have definitely lost too many of my friends and it took me a little while to start getting pattern recognition on what what happens. And it's a very clear pattern and once I kind of put that out there I've now heard from many many scores of people that yep that's what it feels like. And I think if you know what it's going to feel like just like anything else if you know what to expect then it's easier to contend with. So it's
A storm that is hitting you, you know, you lose someone someone that, you know, dies, you are going to get put into a storm and what's scary about it is. It's an emotional storm, and you have no control over it. So you're going to break down star crying. You're going to remember bad things. Good things you're not going to be control of your emotions, which is very difficult for adults because we're used to having some level of control over our emotions. So for a period of time, you're going to get hit with waves of emotion that you have no control over and they're going to knock you off your feet and you're not going to
to finish the sentence. You're going to. It's very very difficult.
But over time that storm is going to fade a little bit.
And those those waves are going to get weaker.
And and those waves still may come. So I don't know if you've lost anyone, that's close to,
you know, which is one of the reasons that I'm, I'm an only child to parents like dogs, dogs, is it? So I have a
particular
Interest, right? So there's going to be times where it's been a month since your friend died and you're going to be sitting there, and you're going to hear a song, or you're going to smell a burger that you, you once had with this individual and you're going to get overcome with those waves of emotion again, and you might start crying right there. You might have this massive wave of emotion. Hit you
It'll end in it'll subside and over time, the waves will become weaker and they'll become less frequent. And and here's where people also get in trouble. They think that that means that they didn't care about that person and that's not true at all. It's just that your mind is processing it and it's okay. So that's what happens. You start off with these huge, uncontrollable emotional storm that storm will pass. That's number one. Just know that, that storm is normal and it's going to pass.
And then it's going to still hit you. But over time, those waves of Sadness and Sorrow are going to get weaker, and they're going to get less frequent. And that's okay. That's a good thing. And look, I haven't broken up with a, with a girl in a long time. But I'm, you know, when people ask me about breaking up with girls is, you know, I've what you have to do when it's not working with a girl.
Is wish them luck.
Give them the best of luck. Wish them luck walk away. And don't look back and you're still going to get those emotions. Those things are still going to hit you, but walk away and don't look back and there's two reasons for that. Number one, if there's any chance that it's going to work out the best possible way for you to get it to work out, is by walking away, by wishing them luck walking away, and don't look back. That's the best way, how? So because if there is something there,
Then she will let you know, eventually.
And if there's nothing there, you're going to know that too because you never hear from her again. That's fine. The protocol for getting her back is to walk away and don't look back. That's the protocols to move on the protocol. If she doesn't want you back is to walk away and don't look back. So I look and I know it's hard but you'll you'll get some of those waves but those waves will become less frequent and they'll become less powerful and eventually you can move on. And then you know the last thing I'll say about this is in both of these scenarios.
Roses remember, but don't dwell.
So you got it, you look you remember your friends, you honor your friends. You remember, what they gave you, what they taught, you what you learn from them, what was great about them, what you miss about them, you remember all those things but you don't dwell in the past and and dwell on those thoughts and dwell on the loss all the time because that's not healthy either. And it's not going to help you. It's not what your friend would want you to do. Anyways,
I like the Insight around when you are going through grief.
and then you stopped the sense of guilt that comes through because you feel now somehow that your
Doing a disservice to their memory, like, you didn't really care or something like that. Yeah,
it helps to, you know, it helps to write about for what I've told people to do is write that personal letter and tell them what you loved about them, what you're going to miss about him, how you felt about them what you are, gret, you write all that stuff in the letter, put an envelope, bring it to their grave and put it there.
And and that will help you process as well. I mean, I've
Unfortunately, or fortunately, I've given a bunch of eulogies for friends that I've lost, and in the beginning, I didn't really recognize that. That's a way of healing, but certainly writing down your emotions, your feelings, what? You're going to miss, what you love about them is very therapeutic and it's very good. And so, that's another thing I recommend is you write that stuff down and you you bring it to him.
That's another Peterson ISM from his rules for life. He says if memories still make you cry, write them down.
Yeah, that's a you know I talk a lot about being able to detach from your emotions and it's very important. Well, when you write something down, you are literally detaching from those thoughts because they're going out on a piece of paper that you then you can see. So it's a very important thing to do to write down if there's a motion that you have to deal with right down and I'd just like to give someone some kind of an objective.
So instead of just saying right down the emotions, no, here's the right that person, tell them and that will kind of be like a writing prompt to get you to write the right. Things about that situation.
I'm pretty interested in your impact on kids. So I had a comment from a father saying how much he couldn't wait for this episode because it's Sons read all of your books and we're timing. My nine year olds mile, run times every week because
Jocko. So if if nothing else there is a nine-year-old out there with his dad, stood of the stopwatch as he spreads around a park and a Saturday morning or something at the moment. What what business does? A seal have writing kids
books one I don't know necessarily if any seal has any business doing anything, I know that I have four kids and that I wanted to, when I was raising my kids, there was there wasn't really any books that carried the message of the values.
That I wanted my kids to have and so I just wrote my own. And there you go pretty straightforward.
Is that similar to you? Do you think entering into the? Is it a reflection that from the seals the fact that there wasn't a guidebook or a handbook for operations? When you first came in and you've almost had this twice you've had this in both your career and didn't find it as
well. Yeah. Like there is there is some weaknesses to not having Doctrine and there's also some strength when you do
Doctrine. And, you know, you know that boiled down to I was very lucky that I joined the military because when I joined the military
It was, I had a structure, a pathway to execute on. And that's very, very beneficial for a young idiot. Kid, that's filled with energy and rebellion and aggression. That's, that's awesome. Here. Take all that energy and aggression and rebellion and and focus in this direction, it's going to be beneficial and you'll actually get rewarded for it. You'll get promoted for it. That's amazing.
And kids didn't really have any kind of a code.
Where hey these are some general rules that will help that you will benefit from in life. And so there you go. That's the warrior
kid.
What about kids or the parents of kids that are being bullied in school? This to me seems like a very unique challenge for generally for people to come up against because a lot of the time, you're able to have an impact on a situation, you're able to do something that moves it forward. But
You know, you can go and have a conversation with the head teacher or whatever, but that doesn't necessarily fix culturally, sort of what's going on within the school. There's only so much that teachers can do in terms of oversight and he, you can't go into the school and punch the other kid in the face. So that's also not the solution as much as you might want to do that. Well,
it's not going to help your kid any either, right? You have to train your kid to be able to contend with the world. Not tell your kid that you're always going to be there to back them up and beat up anyone that gets in their way. Like that's not going to
Your kid become a better human. So know what you want to do is teach your kid. What you want to do to actually teach your kid how to fight you want your kid to train Jiu-Jitsu. You want your kid to train boxing, you want your kid to be an actual force to be reckoned with. And what's crazy about this is that you know, as you mentioned earlier
If there's a bigger a much bigger person than you, they can still beat you up, you know, and that's the thing with kids. You know, if you're 10 years old, you can be a really well-trained ten-year-old, but a fourteen-year-old is probably going to get the better of you and maybe 15 year old, but they're still going to be situations that it's going to be. You're going to lose a fight. That being said, the risk for the bully goes exponentially higher when he knows that he's
Got someone on his hands that can actually actually knows how to fight. And so the probability of bullying taking place goes way down way down. And even if that bully wins the fight, he's not going to look good. It's going to be a problem. He's gonna, he's gonna get a victory worthless Victory, because he's gonna beat up some, he's gonna barely get the better of someone that's a lot smaller than, than the bully himself. So, and all this stuff,
all this stuff I guess we get to talk to Andrew huberman.
But this is stuff, you recognize. There's a, there's a primal recognition of someone that knows how to fight and someone that doesn't and this is this is kids can recognize this. They recognize. Oh, I'm getting in this kid's face and he doesn't seem to be bothered by this and he's got a little bit of a smile on his face. I might not want to push this any further and and that's a real thing. So jiu-jitsu
Boxing wrestling meet. I will Elevate that primordial confidence in a young man or a young boy or young girl, that is going to prevent so much bullying from happening that it's incredible. So look, can you still get beat up? Yes, you're absolutely. Can, are you probably going to do okay. Yes you most likely are is your now what's lame?
is, you know if you go back pre UFC
There be martial arts instruction that would hey we're going to help your kid with their confidence.
And they would kids would get more confident but it wasn't based on reality, you know, going back to the Detroit, you know, your friend at the Detroit defense tactics hilarity calling my friend going back to that guy, he's teaching things that might help someone's conference but they're not going to help in real
life. Yes, so is that potentially even more danger?
Oh, it's infinitely, more dangerous, because a kid, that knows Jujitsu a 10 year old kid, that knows Jujitsu. And and there's a 14 year old kid, that kid knows. Hey, even though I know Jiu-Jitsu it's going to be a problem, this kids a lot.
Bigger than me. He's probably stronger than me. And this is going to be a problem. I need to figure out a way to deescalate this as opposed to getting told, hey all you have to do, is this strike and that that strike and then you'll want to fight now, that's actually not true. So yes, that is more harmful to have somebody with fake confidence that that's a real problem but in training and in becoming stronger and being able to do pull-ups in being able to run you know for the young kid that's running that kids got some good cardio if he's time in his mile runs, right? All
Those things are going to help make a more capable human. Who is a lot less likely by the way, he's more confident. Guess what else he has? When he's more confident, he's got more friends. His friends are now looking at this bully going, hey man, you don't want to mess with our friend and now we have a situation where it's probably going to get D escalated just because of schoolyard politics and Primal politics that play out between any group of human
beings. I'll never forget when I was in secondary school, one of my friends, Carl his Grand.
Towards a judo teacher and had been for a very, very long time. And Carl had done it since he could walk soon as he walked he was, he was doing Judo and he's now 14 15, Nosa one of those kids in school that must have hit puberty at 90 something and this guy's huge and he was one of the big bullies in school and I'll never forget that he squared up to him and car was grinning in his face smiling and his face, just couldn't wait for something to happen and I think that that kind of highlights
One of the main differences are getting in a fight is probably not that bad as a kid. In fact it could be a useful formative experience to make you to educate. You in the future about what it feels like to be in a physical altercation with people.
The thing that's concerning it is the fear around the fight, right? It's the anxiety and worries about the bullying. So, in a way,
Yes, the skills you need to have the skills that actually back up. You don't want to have a reality which is detached from what you predict is going to happen. But one of the most important things is to just feel comfortable in a situation that is going to become
Dynamic 100%. You know, I tell this, when I start talking to women about self-defense
If you have never had someone grabbed hold of you, the mental hurdle, you have to get over just to be able to respond in an adequate way. Is immense that mental hurdle is immense. If you do Jiu Jitsu, someone's grabbing ahold of you 27 times a day on the mat. There grabbing your neck, there, grabbing your arm. You're totally used to this to this close proximity combat that you're entering into. So yes, a huge benefit.
Of training to fight is that you don't have any mental hurdle to get over your friend that trained, you do his whole life, he was just ready to rock and roll at that point. There's no fear whatsoever. This is what he does every single day. That's again a great reason to get out there and train.
It's kind of like a super power.
Yes it's 100% Jiu-Jitsu is 100% a superpower, there's no doubt about it. I mean it's 100%. You don't like that one of my kids ask me when it was
My son, he asked me when he was a little kid, the movie, The Incredibles came out and he said, hey, Dad is there really such a thing as superpower and I said, hmm. Yes, there is, it's a little thing that you do every day, it's called Jiu-Jitsu and eventually he realized that, oh, I can actually fight anybody and it's going to be fun and that's a very beneficial thing to have because
There's always I guess I'm a little bit biased because of the way kind of the go how I grew up. There's always violence. There's always some sort of inferred level of violence. I mean, a seal platoon, there's a pecking order, you know, and it has to do with with fighting. And, and that's the same with any group of of, of knuckle-dragger Neanderthal. Men that aren't a group. There's always a guy that's that, yeah, that guy's kind of, he's the one that can kind of beat everyone up.
The weight is so I'm sorry that it's that way. I'm sorry. It's not a cerebral contest. But
man, there's only two forms of communication. One of them is words and the other one is violence. And when the first one fails, that's when the second one comes about and I absolutely think I'd dude. I'm stood on the front door of a thousand club nights, right. I've met about a million people. So that on the front door of nightclubs I have seen
Literally hundreds of fights occur when people have had a bit to drink and I spoke to a an anthropologist and he was drawing parallels between the ways that particularly guys when they first start to fight, especially if they've their Renovations are lowered a little bit. And he was drawing a parallels between that and the way that other animals fight as well. So he said, one of the first things that you'll see men do is that they'll start to Circle each other. He said what the dear do, you know when they've got the
The runner antlers and they'll soak in what they're doing. The kind of sizing each other up, and they'll Circle and they'll Circle and they'll Circle and then they'll come in and they'll push first. Maybe and what's that doing? Or it's getting kind of a feel for what's going on. It's getting a sense of just, how big is the do I really really want to go? Do I want to go do, right? I'll give it a and then maybe come back, and do it again and then a circle a little bit more encircle a little bit more. I thought was so
fascinating, do I really want to go? Do, they really want to go down to? Like, maybe I can just get away with a push and they'll realize that. Yeah.
There's some definite comparisons there. There's I'm sorry to inform everybody, but we're animals and that stuff Shams as well as another. Yeah, some of us more than others.
I just thought that were you talking about women doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu? Is there. Some is there a particularly unique challenge? I mean, women are
Very hard wired to avoid being grabbed and and laid on by a man. That's much larger than them. Even if it is in a controlled situation, right? Even if it isn't in a class or whatever but there's some particularly unique challenges that the girls have when they begin to do Brazilian jiu-jitsu or of you, have you found that there are hurdles that girls have to get over. Just generally is there something like innate in their programming that kind of causes them to to react in a
different way?
Yeah, I would say it's not normal for a girl or a woman to want some dude, all up on them. And that's what Jiu-Jitsu is. You are all up on each other and, you know, it's it's a very, for lack of a better word. It's very intimate contact that you're having with another human being. So there's it is a hurdle. It's absolutely a hurdle for for women and girls to get over.
And once I get over it it's like okay cool and then it's much better to get over it on the mats, in a Jiu-Jitsu Academy than it is, to have to contend with that psychological hurdle. When you're in a problematic scenario and you're being attacked, that is not the time to try and figure out what matters and what doesn't matter and what this feels like and what that feels like and yeah you want to train and you want to overcome that hurdle in a nice safe environment
thinking about the bullying.
The topic I was considering about what that causes in later life. So I had a bit of a tough sort of school upbringing with bullying and stuff like that.
Thinking about it reflecting on it a lot. And I realize that a lot of the things that that created Downstream in later life, the things I most value in myself and this has been a very difficult thing for me to kind of pass to just work out like
I'm going to vote do I need to thank the bullies in a way. Have they created?
Some of the things in myself that I most value. So for instance, moved out to America to come and do the podcast. That is only been afforded to me really because I don't care about being solitary. I don't care about being on my own. I don't care about taking risks because for a very long time, I was in any case on my own and everything was a risk going to school was arrested for going out, for lunch, was a risk or whatever. And then
Thinking about
how
thinking about how I noticed certain things, right? I went to a party not long ago and was obsessed about the fact for about the first five minutes. Obsessed about half of the people are taking their shoes and socks off, but half of the people had only taken their shoes off and left their socks on. But the reason that I was paying so much attention is because in school, I would obsess over the way that certain kids had their hair cut, or the way that they would carry that bag or the way that they would do that.
That high because I was sure that that was the reason that they had friends and I didn't, I was trying to deconstruct another people socially what was going on with them that meant that they and obviously, I didn't realize it's that they were sociable probably and were communicating well and whatever you know, classic only child with like sprinkling of autism or whatever. So like but I really value that I value the fact that I paid that much attention
and it got me thinking more and more about a lot of the things that we really value in ourselves as adults, are the light side of something that we probably are a little bit embarrassed about
and I was wondering whether
First up, where do you see that dynamic in yourself? Whether there are, there are things that you must value. That that have costs that you need to pay, and then, also whether perfect childhoods create week adults.
So, going back to the conversation, I had with Sam Harris, he kind of called me out on the fact that I had said something along the lines is of combat, was sort of when I most felt alive and
I wouldn't trade it for anything and I also would say the worst days of my life were in war, losing my friends and Boris horrible.
And the way I responded to it and I asked him if he had any want and had ever known anyone that had cancer and had come out the other side and he said, yes, and I said often times those people say I wouldn't wish it on anybody, but I'm glad it happened to me because it gave me such a better perspective about life and about value and about the fragility of life and all those things. And that's the way I feel about combat. I don't wish it on anybody, but I wouldn't wouldn't give it up. I wouldn't trade.
For anything. And so I think what you're talking about is a great way of looking at your past to say, oh, okay, I had some hardships and I benefited from those. It's basically the same thing as saying, got bullied good. Now I know how to handle myself a little bit better. I didn't have a bunch of friends. Good. Now, I feel more comfortable when I'm alone. I think that's the same sort of attitude in in both those situations. And then as far as as far as
How people are raised and what you get. It's an interesting thing and probably the only thing I can talk with any level of
understanding of, and it's actually a lack of understanding is basic SEAL training because basic SEAL training,
You would think, well, you know this person comes from hard background. They didn't have much growing up. They're hungry and now they have this opportunity and they're never going to quit. Or you say, oh, you know this person went to a nice private school and they grew up with a silver spoon in their mouth and when they get to this harsh environment, they're probably going to quit. And the fact is, that's not true. In either one of those cases. Some kids that grew up in very, tough environments, you know, working 18 hours a day, on a dairy farm, they show up the buds and quit.
And, and some kids that grew up, you know, working 18 hours a day, on a dairy farm, they'll never quit. And some kids that grew up with a silver spoon in their mouth, they show up and quit, and some kids that show up with a silver spoon in their mouth, they never quit. So I think there's some inherent characteristic of a person that your environment plays a role but it can be overcome by determination. And I think you probably have a lot more control over what you do in your life then
Your
background us.
That is the, I think the Genesis of why I love agency so much, why I love the ability to live your life by Design, not by default, the fact that you get to forge, whatever the path is that you want to go forward like that to me is especially as someone that like, I say, maybe grow up, feeling feeling a little bit helpless. The fact that you realize hang on, if I put this amount of work in and I dedicate myself and I'm committed.
Did and so on and so forth, the fact that you can come out the other side of that and realize that it has real world.
Returns to you is it's phenomenal. It's it's one of the most rewarding most empowering. I hate that word but you know what I mean? Like it's kind of it's what it's just been ruined. Like Empower empowerment has been ruined as a world which actually really useful and I can't use anything else but it's good. It's a great feeling.
Yeah, that kind of recognition is what allows people to move on in life and take control of their life and make things happen. And, you know, going back to your earlier thing about, you know, if you're in a relationship with someone, it's not working saying
I want this isn't working and I'm going to move on. That's a good thing. You have to take ownership and that doesn't mean ownership. Meaning, I'm always at fault. And therefore, I'm going to sit here and do nothing, it's like, oh, I'm at fault for even being in this relationship with this person. I'm gonna move on no Factor.
I've heard you say that, you wouldn't be doing anything that you're doing now if it wasn't for surfing also,
well,
Surfing. I started surfing when I was 10 years old, I was very lucky that our guy decided to teach me how to surf of a lifeguard said, hey, I'm going to teach you how to surf and he did. And yeah, that's a huge that completely directed my life. Because when you're looking at all, the Special Operations unit, two units to go into.
You know, there's Rangers their special forces, there's Marine Corps, Special Operations. There's all these different things that you can go and do. And one of them is primarily focused on the water and one of them, you can get stationed, either in San Diego, California, or Virginia Beach, Virginia. And it was just such a no-brainer for me.
So you saying that pot, if your military career was dictated by whether good surf was 100% 100%,
and making it through training, if I wouldn't have served or may not have made it through training because
Your comfort level in, the water is so high from surfing and you know I grew up surfing in New England and it's freezing cold. And so the cold water to me was a joke and the water problems. Were relatively easy for me compared to someone that didn't spend a bunch of time in the water. So surfing is a great thing to have in your background. If you're going to go try and be a seal or you know if you played water polo, if you were on the swim team, something that makes you super comfortable in the water is going to be highly beneficial.
And that's probably the biggest separator in people that make an. In fact, it is people that make it in, don't make it. If you're comfortable water, you have a much better chance of making it. If you're, let me rephrase that. If you're not comfortable in the water, your chance of making it through SEAL training is very small.
So people that were swimmers in high school or whatever. Massive, massive,
Advanced, massive Advantage. Surfing massive Advantage. Water polo, massive Advantage. Yep.
I heard someone say the other day that if they
Could if they could give the kids three sports to do throughout the childhood, one would be a martial art. That's effective one would be gymnastics to learn their body in space and one would be some sort of swimming water based event to learn the body of water. I thought those
are those are solid picks right
there. Seems Seems like you're going to create a bit of a beast of a kid though. Yeah, yeah. It's um the whole world is I mean you see this? Look at any of it. Look at CrossFit Games or something, right? And there's always one guy because there's usually a
Swim run by chorus paddleboards run. Something else event in there. There's always one guy that swam in college and you go, okay? So these people train six hours a day five or six days a week for forever and they're the elite of the elite when it comes to Fitness and a homeboy is he's half the time of the rest of the field. It can't be just you to Fitness. It's got to be due to something other people with more capacity. He'll come 15 through in a field of 40.
Over the overall. But on that event, you really do see the experience that that someone, that knows how to swim has exact Worlds. Apart
technique, its technique, just like anything else. Just like Jujitsu technique will win rock climbing. Technique will win. It's interesting that people think you'd be able to fight without training, but you why wouldn't you be able to play guitar without training? It's the same exact
thing but no. But when I get really angry the, a guitar here
Charlie comes out. Yeah, is that?
That's that's what people think. Same thing with leadership, people think. Oh, well, you can't really learn leadership. It's like no leadership. Is a skill, just like guitar has a skill. There's moves that are just like playing chords and people don't understand that. And, and that's, you know, one of the reasons I am able to have this private company teaching leadership because it's like, Oh, you mean you're not but just born with this, you mean, you're not just born knowing how to swim. You're not just born knowing how to play guitar and you're not just born knowing how to lead.
Did you have to learn how to do
it? And you can learn how to do it. Oh, you can absolutely. They're not as opposed to a fixed mindset of. This is me. This is where I'm at. I don't know guitar. Now, therefore I'm never going to know guitar, right? I'm not a leader now. I don't have creativity. Well, you know, first thing that we spoke about, can you explain to me? I've always wanted someone that knows surfing to explain this to me, let's say that you're surfing a big swell and you go under. Can you explain how you get out from underneath a large?
Each wave, when you're below the water, I've heard about you swim out sideways and there's like a particular.
Well, so in what you're talking about sideways, I'm assuming what you're talking about is certain breaks have a channel, meaning the waves break in one area. But there's deeper water on either side of the break and therefore, the waves don't break there. And you can see this in any, any of the big famous surf spots or many most of the big famous surf spots you can look. And you can see there's
A boat sitting here, taking pictures of people that are surfing, the waves that boat is sitting in deep water, and the wave is breaking and shallow water. So generally if you get if you fall or you're trying to paddle back out, you go into the deep water and you paddle out and there's no waves breaking there.
Yeah, I thought it was. I thought it was something to do with the fact that if you would down, if you would take an under the water relatively deep below where the waves were that trying to swim either toward land or back is a bad idea. I'm going to guess that.
So what you're talking about is is a is a rip current.
Or rip current is an area of the beach where the the waves are coming in and a rip current takes all the water that's coming in towards the towards the beach and it all kind of funnels in one area and goes back out to see. It's called a rip current and if you try and swim directly into the beach, you won't be able to get there because that rip current can be going three knots or four knots can be strong and you can't swim that fast and so you'll sit there and swim to exhaustion and you'll die. So what you do is you swim parallel to
to the beach and then you'll drift out a little further as you swim parallel. But other eventually, this one out of the rip current, then you can swim in the beach. That's what I meant. Yep there you go.
This two ways that life seems to be short to me. So one is in the fact that the days go by pretty quickly and we seem to get old a lot sooner perhaps than we expect and the other is that tomorrow is not necessarily promise to us and that things can end pretty quickly.
How do you think people can remind themselves of this shortness of Life were very distracted. At the moment, there is always something that can take us away from the present moment and there are things that we're moving toward that are in the future. How can people remind themselves of the urgency that life has to it?
I mean, you know, for me, it's real easy because I know that a lot of a lot of my friends that are not here and
That's all I needed. That's all I need to know. And I mean,
I think about that every day so there's no for me personally. There's no, there's no lack of urgency when I wake up in the morning to think. Oh, don't worry, I got all the time in the world, because I know I don't and I'm lucky to be here and I'm going to try and live in a way that will, at least do justice for my friends that aren't here.
Tim Kennedy said that he looked back at a photo of maybe the graduating class that he was in or certainly some unit that he was a part of and he looked at it and he realized that he was the only person that was left from that photo. The only one
And, you know, it's one of those things that's kind of like the the I got cancer and I sort of didn't want it, but I'm glad that it happened to me because on the other side of its kind of feels a little bit like the same energy as that. That you go well, do I want to lose all of my friends? No, absolutely not. Have I been able to like Alchemy have I been able to take something from that like the bullying thing in later life, right? Have I been able to
Turn that transmute that into something that I really value. And I suppose that that's one of the ways as well, it is about, as good of a forget eulogies, forget the service. Forget the nice words. It's okay, because of what this person did for me, while they were alive now that they've passed, look at how much more I'm living. Look at that. I mean, is there any about a tribute to somebody?
Definitely makes you appreciate the sunset
tomorrow.
We watching it last night. Very, very nice over here. It is indeed.
Another thing I've been thinking about with the shortness of life is the Sam 34 and it's only been within the last maybe two years or so, two to three years where age has started to actually feel like a thing. Now obviously it was a it was a new age was a thing and but for most of your twenties what you're doing is you're becoming Stronger Faster. Smarter everything continues to get better and then there's a point kind of like at the top of a roller coaster, where the inertia comes in and you feel everything be a bit wait.
And he's such a relevant recovery from workouts is taking just a little bit longer than it used to and injuries are taking a little bit more to get past. And I mean, The Hangover thing has been happening since I was like 20 forth like that, just the linearly got worse since I was 24, but there is a point at which you become kind of aware of your own mortality, not in a, my friends have died way but in a
Entropy way you have any advice to men that are getting older and becoming chronically aware of
that. Yeah. Lift weights. Do Jiu Jitsu. Go for runs stretch out. He could stop drinking.
It's pretty straightforward. If you don't, if you don't use it, you're going to lose it.
Every day that you don't do work, you're going backwards and it and it definitely will hurt you and it'll show up. You can't get away with what you got away with when you were 23, you key doesn't work. You have to, you have to stay ahead of it.
I had Nate Zin sir dr. Nate since Ur eyes it's one of the Special Forces he was there. Their mindset, coach the psychology coach. And he was telling me I was asking what what age is it that you can finish applying for the seals, it
2825? It's it's 28. I think it's 28 or
29. And I asked what what's the reason for that being an upper bound? I mean there's guys in their 30s that are super fat guys in the UFC and the 40s that super fit. They said wait.
About what the body can tolerate, especially during selection, he was telling me the story. About one of the climbing rope climbing sections, 30 feet, high over sand, some 20 21 year old kid fell from the top flat on his stomach and apparently just bounced off the floor and got up and started running. He thought actually yeah if he was 38, that's that's a very different reaction after you've dropped foot 30 feet on the
sand.
Yeah, the training is going to, it's going to destroy this destroys kids. And so if you're not ready to recover very quickly, it's going to be a problem. And I think you know, are there people that could pull it off. Sure. There are. And there are there are guys that get waivers that are 32 years old and they're super studs and they make it. But if you did, if you ran the numbers which I'm sure the Navy ran the numbers and is like oh the I mean of quite frankly, I just learned.
Figure the other day people that are younger than 20, have like a five percent chance of making it through of make it through basic skill training, okay? Because they just don't have the maturity and they might not be strong enough yet. And I mean, I would say the optimum age is probably like 23 24, you're stronger. But I mean, I was like, I went through when I was young I was 19 years old and
You know, we were
pretty light slight compared with now. Right?
When you've been through, I started it, I was 174 when I went
through, what do you 6? 1 6
2 5 11. Okay? Okay? Yeah and 185 when I graduated so I gained like 11 pounds going through SEAL training and then. Yeah and and which is you know, when you're young I mean my body is just you know seeping testosterone. You know 19 years old you working
All day long, you'll have a chicken nuggets. Yeah, chicken nuggets getting after it. Just all the food you can possibly eat. It's awesome, but it's an abusive training program. It's hard on the body. It trashes guys for
sure when hearing Goggins stories about his three times through. I mean he got it was not due to quitting, right? I mean his mentality was prepared to take him further than his body was twice. I mean, that must be brutal to think about the fact,
I often think about this to do with athletes that get injured. How unfair it is that you get injured because it's you are ready to do the thing and you may have done everything perfectly and there's something, something outside of your control, in your physiology that said, no, no,
you don't get to do this. Yeah, the Seal training is not fair at all. It's not fair at all and there's I'm sure there's good guys that
Don't make it because they just physically can't handle it.
that being said the the way the program works
For the most part. If you don't make it it's because you didn't make it.
Like they have guys anymore. People that bring the Belding. I've blown out knees. Oh, it's
it's 80. It's probably 85 90 % that ring out, ten percent that, get some injury that is incurable.
Because they'll let you heal up. They let guys stay there for a while. To heal up. Yeah, it's an abusive program.
say that with a smile on your face,
are there any other special forces selections that you're aware of that are comparable in terms of the
difficulty?
They're all, they're all hard, they all have their own tests and they are all screaming out a bunch of people. And I've only been through one and they're all, they're all different ways of beating you up. I mean, you know, for instance, Ranger school, you don't eat a lot. So people lose, 20 pounds during Ranger school.
That's preparing them for being Wilderness, isolation in the
field. Yep. Special Forces. Has its own things to push you start. Everyone's got
Little techniques of getting rid of
guys SAS is a lot of orienteering. It's a lot of brecon beacons. It's up and down Hills heavy. Bergen
packs. Yep. On your own. No, you don't know how much time you've got. They just do your best, you know, you're going to let us catch you. You didn't make the time you're out.
Which many didn't know what the time was,
but you didn't know at the time was but it wasn't fast enough.
The in Seal training. You you're not allowed to wear a watch. So how how fast you have to run as fast as you can. At least for me I had to run this fast
training. You're not allowed to are what
not a lot of where watch. You know how long anything is going to take? You don't know how long you've been swimming for. Your only choice is to go hard. That's, that's good, right? We just want you to go as hard as you can.
I did a reality TV show, but seven years ago, and on that, they removed all of our watches before we went in and all of the clocks.
Guys that came in to change the batteries on our microphones, they change them all. So they didn't tell the right time the watches of the drivers, the cars that we got in and we never found out why that was the case. I thought I think it was because they didn't want us to know when we were going to bed and waking up because everyone was excitable and 18 or whatever.
How long were you in the field for?
I was in the show for about a month.
But I mean, I'm
what were the what, what kind of tasks were the time tasks that you were that you were executing.
So unfortunately, this isn't as reputable as doing a reality TV show about forces. This is a dating show and dating, like dating like a bachelor. I like your nail female. Yes scenario. Yes, Jack.
I'm not equating the two between doing Buds and going on love Island. But my point is that I think what they were trying to do was just put the take the power from the people that were the subjects to the people that were in control and disorient the people that were there that they're actually it wasn't like a challenge thing where people were having limited food or doing challenges to stay in and stuff like that was exclusively about romance. But what they found was that there was
Something there must have been something that they thought there was effective by doing that and thankfully, I just didn't have to. I didn't have to swim as much as as you guys didn't. So I came out the other side of that, feeling. All right, I'm glad you made it. I did what I mean, like, I'm here today. It was, it was difficult.
I spoke to Michael punke Higgs, your him seal commander, chief Master Chief, I spoke to him and he's doing some stuff with psychedelics at the moment, which I found absolutely fascinating and he very carefully walked me through the reason that he felt he needed. I mean, he'd had a gun to his head. I think two or three times separately he was really, really struggling and
He's doing, I think it's in Mexico. Is his place where he's doing? Psychedelic therapy for veterans. What's your, what's your thoughts on on that?
Punk is awesome. Awesome guy. I'm glad you said Michael punke Higgs because otherwise it was said, Mike. I would have taken me a minute. But yeah, punk is an awesome guy. I've never tried that stuff and I have definitely talked to a lot of guys that it's helped out and if something is going to help guys out my think it's good to go for people to go try.
But I haven't tried it myself and I don't, I don't know, I don't know too much about it. I've had some friends that have done it, my friend Dakota Meyer, had him on the podcast and he talked about his experiences, I've talked to Tim Ferriss a decent amount about it
because yujin to it, the moment he is investing and yeah.
And before I had Dakota on and I knew Dakota and I were going to talk about it, I actually called Tim and like took notes so that I had a better understanding because I don't
No, I don't know, I don't know enough about it to be able to comment on it. For me, it's just being on the outside, trying to trying to explain or at least share. I guess. Share the story of people that have utilized them and it's been helpful for so I don't know a lot about it
was it was it Dakota that was talking might have been on Rogan about, it's a type of patch some sort of patch or a single time thing that they may be due to
neck. Yeah that's that's another
Thing. That's a that's a Stella ganglion. Blocker, believe it's called it. Yeah, and that's another thing that people use absolutely wild. It's a
single time thing
you do have to get it, you know, periodically, you know, every six months, every year, I forgot the data is. But, yes, that's another thing. That's been very effective for some people. So, again album, I'm not in any position to talk about this stuff with any with any knowledge whatsoever. Other than hey,
I've had some friends that have done it and they've said it's been useful. That's been helpful
seals, were very publicity-shy for a long time and that trend of The Quiet professional was pretty strong. Do you ever regret being so recognizable or
well-known?
I mean.
I spent my whole life.
Just kind of being very, you know, unrecognizable and and there's some, there's some very nice things about that. And, you know, when I now that, I'm now that I'm more recognizable, you know, some of those advantages of being unrecognizable are gone, but for me, the being able to help people out
Has been worth the the pain. And I use that term very Loosely worth it worth the small inconveniences of you know being recognized by by people and most people that recognize me or cool people that say, hey man listen your podcast thanks and I say, hey man, no problem, you know, appreciate it. So it's, you know, I'm not in some weird scenario. I don't have, you know, most people that listen to the podcast are pretty cool people.
And you probably want to
meet ya that are that are we wanted me to hang out with and they usually have something positive to say or some insight that they can give me something that I missed something that they could clarify for me. So it's all good. No Factor really.
I walked down Broadway in Nashville with Jordan Pederson on a Friday night last year and that was, that was a sight to behold. That was like, I mean he managed to accumulate a queue of people
I'm to see as he walked down the street. He was, whose what's that is that Jordan Pederson arm? And then he ended up buying a Stetson hat and doing like the Michael Jackson thing like the walk in an attempt to like get through the crowd. But yeah, I just thought it was interesting because you'd spent all of this time. And again, you had this culture in the seals of the, the quite professional and stuff. And I was interested in the price that, you know,
It's kind of like being in service again in a weird way, right? Yeah I mean you know compared with going to war people coming up to you in the street or wanting to take a selfie and stuff like you know we're not even in the same universe. But my point being that there is still this things that you have to put up with or do in order to get the message out there. And your sense is that it worth it?
Yeah, it's fine. I mean, again the amount of feedback that I get
From people that are that have benefited. Greatly is well worth. You know, any small inconveniences that I might have in my life, it's no Factor.
What do you think it was about your task unit that ended up caused it to contain? So many particularly Elite operators? When it seems to me, like, there's been a lot, I mean, you know, yourself life. Chris Kyle, it was the trial in there as
well.
No, he was
not, but my point being like it that's like a fairly illustrious
list. Yeah. I mean, and I don't struggling to see to remember what word you just used to describe the level of operators, but I mean we were kind of normal kind of a normal task unit, nothing spectacular. We had a we got put into a combat environment that was a target-rich environment and went hard in in in
A deployment. And, you know, that's, that's kind of how it turned out, you know, Seal Team, a seal platoon, you're going to get, it's a bell curve, like any other group and there's some awesome guys in every seal platoon there's a bunch of really good guys in the seal platoon, there's a couple, you know, it's not so awesome guys in a seal platoon but they're going to, they're going to do their job to sometimes. And you know there's that's the way it is. And
And, you know, we that deployment had a lot of visibility on it because it was because there was a very kinetic deployment. And, you know, we also, you know, just from a, from a historical standpoint, you know, Mark Lee was in, was it was with us and he was the first seal killed in Iraq, and Mikey monster Roars with us. And Mikey, you know, was was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously and, and so, those kind of things.
Sort of definitely drew the spotlight to what had happened and that deployment.
What was Chris Kyle like in
real life?
Just awesome funny guy. That was a good patient sniper and cared about his job and cared about his family and was a, you know, was was a good damn good sniper that would stay on his gun for a very long time and
You know, he was also very funny, very gregarious, always doing pranks.
Just a good book, a good guy. Like we're talking about the kind of guy you want to go to war with.
How did it feel watching that
movie?
You know, it's a Hollywood movie and I kind of went into it with rudimentary understanding that this movie is not going to be some documentary depiction of everything that happened. Yeah, they have to take a guy and take his whole life and take multiple deployments and condense that all down in a very short time period. They got to take a
Very complex, combat situation and bear and distill that down into like good guy, bad guy. And and and that's what they did. And I, you know, also trying to show the the sacrifices that the families make and how hard it is on the families. That's was probably the most important part of the story.
and so it was, you know I watched it and I'm kind of as I watched it, I kind of understood those things and you know, like that was
that to me, the conversation around the family of servicemen and servicewomen families is definitely one that
15 years ago, I don't remember thinking about as much and now is one of the things that the front of my mind that when you have somebody that goes on operation and serves, it's not just them that pay the price and it's not just them and the support units that are out there and the drivers and the people on the ground and the fixes and the translators and stuff does and literal Army of people back home as well.
That have to pay sometimes, just as high of a
price. Yeah, I'm in some cases higher, you know, when you, when I'm on deployment, I know what's happening. I know what is going on. I know what the risks are. I know what I can do to mitigate those risks. My, my wife, my kids were too young to understand but my wife,
She knows what the risks are she and will let me rephrase that she doesn't know what the risks are. She doesn't know how were mitigating risk. She doesn't know what it's like on the ground, so it's very easy for someone in the family to start, you know, believing the worst things that are happening in every, you know, when you see that there's a casualty in l.a., there's two marines killed in Al anbar Province or there's four Marines killed in Al anbar Province. And, you know, that the vast majority of those casualties are taking place in the city of ramadi.
which is where your husband is, that can create some that create some
That create some drama in your head and that can make that deployment worse for the family at home than it is. For the guy that's on
deployment, think about whenever you've got a missing kid and what is it that the pair are missing anybody right when the family of that person doing the Press tour, trying to appeal the thing that they all say, even if it's been five years, I just want to know because the open-loop yeah.
Being uncertain about something is literal torture. And yeah, I can imagine that by not knowing it's not like your WhatsApp messaging every couple of hours. Yeah, good just got to ramadi bit hot. Here is a selfie like that's not, that's not the way that it works.
Nope. So they don't know what's going on and fear of the unknown is a thing. And so for the families back home, it's can be very, very difficult for sure.
Will you ever run for office? Does that call to you?
Hi, I certainly hope not. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't want to get involved in politics and, you know, I don't think it's just such a disgusting sort of life and, you know, my five friends that are involved in politics and it just doesn't seem like that.
Doesn't seem like what I'd want. I'd want to do in my life.
What about running a school? Obviously, you've got the stuff that you already do with kids. Yep, you have that. That foot in the door. Tim has got his thing up in Austin. Yep. It does that call to you.
Yeah. And I've got people that are, you know, again, Tim and I talked about this and Tim's doing law something with his school apogee Cedar Park. So, and look at its outstanding. So with the warrior kid thing, I've got some
Some irons in the fire on that right now. Yep.
What would you want in 20? What would be the there? Any big differences that you think would be made in a school, syllabus typical to what you're aware of at the moment. If, if you were to be the person that
was, oh, yeah. In charge. Yeah. 100%. Of course, changes to this civilian school. Yeah. Syllabus yeah. Like absolutely basic survival skills. Right? How to start a fire? How to
Put out a fire basic, basic, trauma medicine. How you do first aid? Just those kind of things how you change the tire on a car, basic Plumbing, basic electrical. Like some life skills that are very beneficial working on engines, those kind of things and
Those, those are things I would add to the curriculum. Obviously Jiu-Jitsu would be in the
crib was going to say if you were to do that. I would be so interested. If everybody was if PE don't know what you call it out here, yeah, we can't pee if P was heavily pushed toward learning combat and learning martial arts. I would be fascinated to know what happens to bullying rights in schools. Yeah. Well, I thought everybody knows that everybody can
go
Yeah, well there's also there's a natural pecking order that gets established and it is what it is. The thing is I've said this Jiu-Jitsu will not only help you from get getting bullied. It was also prevent you from becoming a Billet bully because when a kids doing Jiu-Jitsu they realize, oh I'm a little bit bigger and stronger. I can take this person but there's someone that's bigger and stronger than me and they can take me and so it helps on both both fronts
What about
working on movies? Obviously, we've had cowboy Cerrone Gina, Carano, that people that have moved across into the movie industry. Would you be interested in that as a writer or maybe even as a person in front of the
lens? Yeah, I mean I've got some some forward motion on both Warrior kid right now and on the novel that I wrote called final spin. So the both of those are being are moving forward in the in the movie.
Arena. That's pretty cool. Yeah we and those of its take Warrior kid. It's taken a while to find the right people but that's that's moving forward. And same final spin took less. I mean final spent only just came out and it was almost immediately was getting requests for a movie adaptation or your kid was the same thing, but it took a while to find the right people. And it's a project that I didn't want to kind of just haphazardly throw out there to the world, so yeah.
Those are moving forward in the and and
they're going to come. How does that feel as someone who didn't grow up with no desire to be a writer throughout seals throughout Brazilian, Jiu Jitsu and surfing and stuff like that. And then you just appear with a fiction novel and now it's being turned into a film with. How does that feel? Was that mean to you?
I mean I have so many stories in my head that's kind of crazy. That's the one that bubbled to the surface and there's a bunch more that come up for on a daily basis that it just a matter of which ones I'm going to take the time to put on the paper and you know, I don't know. I don't
I don't think about that kind of stuff too much. I'm stoked. You know, it's very cool. It's cool. I like it. It's going to be cool to watch this thing get made and I'm stoked about
it. That is a byproduct. The fact that you don't over think you don't think too much about the situation itself. I think is a byproduct of someone that has a lot of forward momentum. I think that when you just got lots of things that are happening, you
By necessity, you've just focus on whatever's next
in front of ya. Earlier, you were talking about thinking about whether you can be successful or not and idly, know, if I don't really, I don't really think about that. I don't think about. How's this book? Going to do house? This is it going to get turned into a movie? I don't think about that. I just kind of go and I so I guess. Yes, I agree with you, you're the forward momentum. Peace. I'm kind of moving forward and people that work with me. They know that I'm like on to the next thing. Alright. Hey cool. That things.
That thing's got some trajectory it's going in the right direction. Cool I'm going to go on to the next thing and keep moving forward.
I spoke to he been a couple of weeks ago and I brought up with him about the fact that he's got tattoos that very few people have have seen although there are photos on the Internet is one of them in an octopus t-shirt. Looking like this. Have you got any tattoos right in thinking that you've got one? What is it? What does it
mean? II got a tattoo when I was a kid like you know, I was in the hardcore scene and and
And you know, we all were getting tattoos and and so yeah I got a tattoo so I could just kind of a random design on my back. No real. It's kind of half finished and he's kind of dumb
but you have to finish it off. I just I don't care. Not bother. No I guess it is literally behind you.
Yeah. Yeah it's literally behind me and I think one of my daughter said the other you should get that thing finish in like yeah, I'm not gonna miss, I'm not going to miss three days of Jiu-Jitsu to let out a to heal up. So that is it's not happening.
So I know that you're a fan of the
Thomas Soul quote where he says there's no Solutions only trade-offs. And this is something in a roundabout way. That same concept is probably one of the most meaningful things I've learned this year.
What does that quote mean to you? I wuv you I wuv you reflected on that
well, especially from a leadership perspective. That's kind of where I talked about it for the first time. How the heck did you hear that quote from me? That's I don't know when I've said that I guess I could use some podcasts about it but yeah it's it's very helpful to people's mindsets, I think. And that's when I when I talked about that it was primarily to help people see that.
You're looking for a full-on solution to this problem and there's probably not a full-on solution that's going to satisfy every every aspect of this scenario. So what you have to do instead is you have to look for what's the trade-off going to be? I'm going to win a little bit here. I'm going to lose a little bit there but overall it's going to move me in the right direction. I think it's a good thing to understand as opposed to going through life thinking they're going to find a 100% solution because it's not going to exist. So you're going to have to make trade-offs in
life.
Douglas Murray came on the show and he was talking about this story, from Christopher Hitchens, what hitch told him that in life we have to choose our regrets and what he meant by that was the fact that opportunity cost demands that you're going to have regrets. And I'd always thought that regrets were a bug. Not a feature of life in realize that they were baked into the literal fabric of how we exist. So you could make the perfect decision and still look back and have regrets.
It's about not making the other one simply because of that open loop that we were talking about before. Yeah, you don't know what the other thing could have been as I. Okay. So that's interesting. That regrets are a feature, not a bug, but what's it mean that you need to choose them? Okay. Well, given the fact that regrets are baked into the fabric of life.
When you're making a decision, one of the things that you need to consider is which of these regrets can I live with, and which of these regrets can I not live with?
And that there's no Solutions only trade-offs thing speaks to the same energy
100% you do you want to house? Yes. So when you're a real estate agent told me this years and years ago.
When you're looking at house, there's going to be shortfalls, there's going to be problems with the house that you're looking at and whether it's going to be even if it's the perfect house. Well, that means going to cost a ton. So that's the trade-off that you're going to make. And so what you have to do is you have to break down like what you just said. Hey listen. I wanted a bigger yard, but this one has a huge garage. I'm gonna go with it. You just got to figure out those trade-offs. There's no Solutions. You're not going to get the perfect house until you build one, and even we build one, guess what? You're going to look at.
When you're done, and you're going to say, I should have moved this wall, 24 inches to the West, right? It's it'll it'll eat you up.
Talk to me about your approach with the long-term plans because I've heard you mentioned that. Real long-term plans are something that you don't necessarily optimized for you seem to optimize a little bit more for optionality and for kind of a medium term thing. What you thinking you're on?
Yeah, I don't know what I'm going to be doing in five years. People are, what's your Five-Year Plan? I have no idea what my Five-Year Plan is because I don't know what opportunities are going to arise. I don't know what things going to fail at. I don't know what mistakes I'm going to make so we're how am I going to sit here and tell?
Where I'm going to be in five years, I can't. And if I did, I'd probably be shutting off some opportunities that are there because I'm too close-minded and focused on some Five-Year Plan. So, I make iterative decisions about things, I move a little bit in some direction. I test, I get the feedback from it was it good? Was it bad? Should I put more resources, toward it or not? And then as time goes by I have either moved significantly in that direction or I've realized it's a dead end and I'm going to move away. It was it was more convenient.
Ain't a year ago. When I'd say five years ago, I didn't have a podcast. I didn't have a book. I didn't have any, I wasn't didn't have anything really thought that was five years ago. So my Five-Year Plan, if you would six years ago, my Five-Year Plan would have been like oh I guess I'll be training Jiu-Jitsu and I would be trained in Jiu-Jitsu and surfing and hanging out with my family
working with life probably doing a Shalom front but maybe a slightly bit bigger
maybe not even. Yeah I mean I don't know yeah we didn't jump in and
Some huge amount of money into a salon front. Know we started. Hey, does anyone want to learn this stuff? Oh yeah. It looks like they do. Oh yeah, it looks like a lot of people do. Oh, looks like it's very beneficial to them, although they're telling all their friends at other companies that they should do this stuff so they can get better and of that whole way down the path. Yes. Will spend more time will invest more into? It will write a book about it. Cool that made sense. So that's what, that's what I have to take the at the the approach with everything. What opportunities are going to knock on my door today? What opportunities have? I started that are going to close tomorrow. I don't know.
No. So I don't spend a lot of money invested a lot of time and energy trying to predict where I'm going to be in five years. When I don't know,
I really resonated with that, I really like it because especially in the online productivity world, you know, you should break down the 25-year plan into five-year blocks into one year. Sprint's into quarterly goals or whatever and it's just never resonated with me. It's never resonate doesn't appeal to my nature.
It doesn't appeal to the way that life is by Design, unpredictable and you don't know what skills you're going to acquire what setbacks are advantages are going to come your way and that was you it was you. One of the first people I've heard to is really succinctly put it together as look I don't have and you're someone that if people would think jacko's the kind of guy with the plan, right? You don't go into battle without a plan. Yeah, well yeah. But the entire war is something that requires us to respond as it
occurs. Yeah.
Look at the mistakes we've made a well. America is made as a country in war. Why? Because we had a long-term strategy that didn't make sense and guess what? No one was willing to say, hey this long-term strategy we've got is not working, we need to make some adjustments and we need to do it now instead. Nope, ignore those numbers, ignore the the feedback loop that we're getting just press forward with the strategy that we're on, doesn't doesn't work. So I don't want to have you have to go into battle with an idea of where you want to get to and then
You as you start moving in that direction, you've got to say, oh, that wasn't what I thought it was going to be. We need to make some adjustments.
That's the discipline and creativity Spectrum coming up again it is indeed
Looking from the outside is somebody that's black belt in Brazilian, jiu-jitsu the stuff that you're doing with origin, bringing manufacturing back to the US writing books, books being turned into screenplays and movies and stuff like that. And everything else that you do that from the outside can look like something which is incredibly desirable as a position to get in.
One thing I have learned over the last few years, especially since many more time around the people that are successful and have accolades and stuff. Is that often does prices that they pay for getting to this stage that they're at that. The people who want to be there wouldn't end up paying so
What I've come to believe is that a lot of the time. People have very very high bars and challenges that they need to get past. I'm interested in what the price is that you have to pay in order to sort of be Joker willing on a daily basis
work.
Work. A lot of work.
You know, when when you're watching TV or your, you know, looking at Instagram or you're, you know, going out for dinner on a date and you go to a movie, I'm not doing that. I'm reading a book, I'm getting ready for a podcast. I'm writing something. I'm preparing for something talking to a client. I'm designing something. I'm thinking about a new supplement like it's just
Just, it's just kind of all the time. And so, a guy asked me the other day, are you working more now than you were when you were in the SEAL Teams? And the answer is 100%. Yes, I'm working harder. Now, you know, I'm well, I should say I'm working more because I'm working more and more time, no weekends.
No weekend's, no evenings. Really? Luckily for me, I like what I
do I was going to say, so would you even want that in a? Would you want to spend an afternoon on the couch watching? Netflix, is that something after a very long time of driving discipline? Mmm. Is that a desire that you have any longer?
They sit on the couch and watch Netflix. Yeah, I mean, not not, that's not, that's not super. I'm not super stoked on that. Yeah, that's my point. Yeah,
you've managed to align what you want and what you want to want. Then I was sitting on top of each other,
right? Yeah. And I also don't do a lot of what I don't want to do and my partner Echelon front life Babin pointed this out to me like a year ago.
He just said, he said, you know, you oir really good. He was doing some stuff that he didn't want to be doing.
And you know, whether it was administrative stuff and you know, he said y'all got to do this and I'm going to be. So why are you doing that?
And he said, well what do you mean? I said get someone else to do that and then you know a week later he's talking because you know I was thinking about what you said, you're really good at not doing what you don't want to do and I am good at doing. I'm good at not doing what I don't want to do.
I mean administrative stuff, stuff like that. I don't do any of it. I don't do any of it. Do I have an accountant as an account cost me a lot of money. Yes, they do. Do. I worry about it? Nope, not in a single bit, not in the slightest way. Don't worry about it at all and I don't have to deal with it and my taxes are getting done. You know, it, that's a lot's of crazy amount of work and effort. I don't do any of it.
Logistics for my online store. Do I do it? I don't do any that aren't really that. I don't touch that stuff. So all the stuff that what I get to do, what I like to do. The weird thing is it is a lot and and and most it's going to be it's challenging for people to do. It's challenging for people to do. It's challenging, it's challenging, you know, you know, my wife, she's like, you know, I said well,
That's not. I said, you know, she'll say like, well what about what about this? And I'm like, oh, I'm not going to do that. And she says, you're not normal, you know? And I said, okay, fair enough, she doesn't think. I'm just think I'm normal, and I think she's probably right. I
fear, she may be right as well. Yeah. So what's the principle there that people can take away? Is it to try and Outsource the things that you don't want to do? Especially let's say that it's someone that's growing a business or that.
Is beginning to get themselves to the stage where they have the resources to be able to do this as quickly as possible. Give away the things that you don't like to do to people who can do
them. Yeah. And there's certain things that only you can do. Yes. Do you do those things? Yes. And that other people do things that other people can do. And, and, and look, I'm also, you know, if you want to get straight business,
Business tactical. I tell people all the time you know you keep things small and you let the demand signal increase and you grow as the demand signal increases and as opposed to walk. I'm not I don't jump in and say oh I don't like doing paperwork and I've got a business that I've had for three months so I'm going to hire someone as a as a CFO to run my accounting right now. No I'm doing that stuff. I'm doing that stuff until we have enough income.
To comfortably. Say yeah, we can get someone else to do this now and I can then focus on what I'm good at. So I've done that with all my businesses start small and grow as the demand signals their grow. And you know, I've done things that were didn't didn't work and luckily I didn't invest a bunch of time and effort into them because hey, I'm I'm going to be wrong a lot and so just because I think something is cool. Doesn't mean other. People are going to think it's cool. I happen to like some random
And some people might not know a lot of people might not like it. So I'm not going to overly invest in something that people might not want it all
thinking about the stuff that you can afford to Outsource in the things that you can't. I think good heuristic is what you just said that. So what are the things that only you can do? Only you can do your podcast only. I can do my podcast besides the only you can write your book but cetera. Another one that I learned the other day from Layla homo Z is a lot of the time. Let's say that someone
one's got a company, but sales company selling software RIT or whatever. One of the first people that they'll bring on is a salesperson and then they'll begin to do operations and she said, well hang on, that's the thing that brings the money in.
That's the thing that gives fuel to the engine which you're hoping will drive everything else. So I do think that there's another element that I learned from her, which is do not Outsource the thing, that drives the revenue, the thing that drives, the revenue must be protected at all costs. And if that thing is you and another element that links back to what you just said there. If that thing is your motivation, how can we protect the motivation? Well, my motivation is waning to do the thing to write the book too.
Podcast to give the speeches, whatever. Because of the amount of administration. Okay. Let's lean into that even more. There's that's the point of highest leverage for us. Yeah. Get that blockage out of the
way. Yeah, yeah. And I have all kinds of people that do all the stuff that I'm either a not good at or be don't want to do.
Which is beautiful. You know, it's a beautiful thing that's decentralised command. It's the fourth of combat leadership, you know, like, hey, what's going on in? We have five factories right now at origin, USA. Right? What are they three and Main to a North Carolina. So, that's an incredible amount of logistics and, and I mean, just leadership that's going on inside those. And the technical aspect of
Weaving cloth and sewing and setting up lines for production. That's incredible amount of work and effort and knowledge that I don't have any expertise in whatsoever. Guess what? I have team that does, I have people that are awesome and so that's what's going on. Ashell on front, we have scores of clients and they need help in leadership. I can't teach them all. Guess what? I have a whole team of people that has their own experiences and they're out there all every single day.
Teaching clients, the Leadership Lessons that we know Jocko fuel the same thing you asked me earlier, like, what goes into making these things? Oh am I giving strategic guidance about what I want. 100% a my taste sampling, which by the way, there's a good example of something that didn't work, you know, the first we made an energy drink, the first version of the energy drink was based on my taste buds. Well, my taste buds since I don't drink a lot of sweets, the first version that we made was not very sweet.
All to me. It tasted like maple syrup practically but we I had to open my mind and get feedback and people like no, actually this doesn't taste good. Okay. Well then let's change it. We just changed, we just changed every single flavor, starting now, but that took that took trial and error of me saying, wait a second, I love the way this tastes. But 7 out of 10 people will do. Yeah, it's okay. Three out of ten people say. This doesn't taste good at all. That's, that's not it. That's not a success. You got to have ten out of
of 10 people say this freaking taste delicious and look, you got different flavors and maybe nine out of ten. Love all the flavors and there's one that old. They don't like this one but I've got to take that feedback and and adjust to what I'm hearing. But that's an example of. Hey, we went down this road of this certain flavor and a flavor system that was based on my taste, which is why I know that I have to open my mind to take other opinions and listen what other people have to say.
Now we've got taste that are are delicious and universally delicious. And so now we can kind of go hard and getting it out there because before there's a risk of hey, if you how many times you can get someone to try but drink one time? If it tastes like junk, they're not getting it again. So now we've got taste that are delicious and now people. Yep, try it. Now, we're now we can win on taste which is awesome. We're already winning on efficacy and and health but you got to be going to win on all fronts.
It's so now we can win on taste
too.
What's coming up next? What have you got for the rest of the year that's coming up that you're excited about or interested in?
Probably one of the biggest things is, we've got a, a hunt line coming out from origin. So we're making a full line of hunting clothing, hunting apparel from the base layer all the way out to the outer jacket. So, that's been a huge undertaking and it's very aggressive. It was very
aggressive. What do you mean
trying to get that done in a short period of time was very aggressive and the
Able to do is because everything's in America, the reason we're able to do is because we are able to literally make and make a design change and have it 15 minutes later for testing. You can't do that when you're working with an overseas company. It's it's impossible. It's at a minimum, if you're flying it, it's going to take three four days. 45 days to get back. It's got to get in line either. You don't control the line. It's a travesty but we were able to, because we're all manufactured here.
And the material that we're uses from here. So we don't even have to wait for some material to ship from overseas. Everything is 100% American made. So that was a huge indoor undertaking. We're starting to get to that point where I think I'm getting my first set of the kit here and another week and then it'll be going into production. So that's pretty cool.
We have a an online Training Academy. So the leadership thing again, you know, we talked about leadership being a skill.
Just like you can't go to the gym and one time and get in shape where you can't change it to one time and now you can defend yourself or you can't pick up a Guitar one time. It's the same thing with leadership. You can't just sit through one seminar or read one book, and go. Okay, cool, I've got a mean. Imagine, if you picked up a book on guitar and you read it, and now you thought you were going to be able to play guitar or you read a book about basketball and now look, you would get the concepts down, you would understand what you're gonna be working to your toward, but it's a legitimate skill.
That you have to employ in scenarios to get better at. And so in order to in order to make that happen and it was a gift again, a little bit of a blessing from covid. We had created an online platform for a client that had a hundred and fifty seven thousand employees worldwide and they wanted us to train all their employees. And so I said, hold on a minute because that would have basically been the dedication of the entire team at Echelon front to make that happen traveling. And so we had created before covid, we created
An online training platform and then as that as covid hit, we immediately said, okay, looks like we're doing this stuff virtually. And what was beautiful was the entire world.
Was was made to do virtual interaction, whether it was talking to, I Knew in Easter, I had whatever Easter dinner with my parents via Skype, call or Zoom, call or whatever. And I said, Yep, this is the, this is the norm. Now everyone's going to understand the capability, the the benefits of being able to utilize video interaction because before that before covid, it was it was rare.
I mean, how many video calls did you do before covid
apart from for the podcast that it was my input from that up until covid video podcasting was seen as a second, right thing to do, right? Don't get me wrong. I would much rather sit down, but especially as a fledgling, create a coming up and didn't have Joe Rogan money, right? R. So I couldn't have a nice Studio or fly guest out or do whatever. So for me that was how I was competing. Then everybody had to do
You, you want to keep your show going? You want to keep publishing?
Completely flat in the field, right? Which meant that what are we competing on now or we're competing on the quality of the conversation? We're not competing on how fancy the studio is. Yep. Well that's interesting.
And so as that happened to you and as it happened to every family in America that's suddenly realized they were going to utilize and they understood the technology now because there's a technology barrier. So, now at Ashkelon front, we said okay, great. Now we can now we can train people on a much more regular basis. We can offer them. So so we made Extreme ownership.com which is
Online training platform for leadership and for life because if
you're, that's not just for culprit, that's also people can go do that
yourselves, it's individuals. And it's individuals is the thing that, you know, part of the thing that people people need to understand is if you're a human and you interact with other human beings, you're in a leadership position, it doesn't matter if you're the, if you're a Frontline, worker, and you're not in charge of any other people, but guess what, you're interacting with your peers, you're interacting and you have to lead your boss. You have to be able to lead your
Boss. Your boss doesn't know what's happening in the field. Your boss doesn't know what time that concrete should be poured. Your boss doesn't know what? What time those those that those forms need to be set up by this isn't do that. You have to lead your boss in that. Right direction, you have to lead your peers in the right direction. You have to lead your family in the right direction. You have to even if your youth by Leading your family. That means putting your ego in check and listening to what your kids have to say. So there's everybody's a leader and once people,
Saying that there's so much they can get out of actually learning leadership skills. So that's been, that's been pretty cool on the echelon front side. So that's the origin side. That's the echelon front side, the Jocko fuel side again. We rearrange these flavors. We've so that's been huge. And and the rest of the supplement line is just it's just making high-quality stuff and not cutting corners and we're look in the beginning when you're
Doing that. It's hard, right? Because you think well would it be just easier if we did this wouldn't it be couldn't we just cut this? Couldn't we use a little less of this this Protein, that's more expensive. It's
expensive type of sweetener right. Whatever.
And so you want to make those cuts early on and we didn't and and look quite frankly when my name is on the freaking label II can't I can't just cut corners but now people recognize that
They recognize that when they buy something from Jocko fuel. It's as good. As it's as good as you can get. It's the best quality stuff that you can get. So, that's starting to starting to take hold. And so, that's been, that's been great to see you as well.
Chuckling ladies and gentlemen, if people want to keep up to date with the stuff that you're doing. Where should they go?
Ja co.com
Jocko, I appreciate you. Thank you. Thanks man, appreciate
it.
That's was an experience that was two and a half hours of looking into the eyes of a man that has definitely kill people. I know, I really hope that you enjoyed it. It was so much fun to record that I found Yoko and Incredibly interesting guy, like I say, if you appreciate the effort that we went to to do this, all that would ask is that you press subscribe, just make sure that you don't miss the next few episodes that we've got coming up and all of the huge, guess I'll come later this year. If you're an apple podcasts,
If I just navigate to your up, open it up, press the Subscribe button. Thank you. Also, don't forget that you can receive free shipping a 60 day money back guarantee 53, travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D. From athletic greens by going to athletic greens.com /, modern wisdom, you can get 30% off your at-home testosterone test, by going to try, LG c.com /, modern wisdom and the code, modern 30, a check out and you can get a
Ten percent discount off your first month of counseling with better help by going to better help.com / modern wisdom.
I'll see you next time.
