Jocko Podcast - 001 Jocko Manual: Switch From Auto To Manual.

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

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Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 So we got to podcast 500 and there was a lot of information put out. I think it was over 1,000 hours of information being put out. Clearly, some of it. Just historical documentation. I mean, some of the people that we had on that had lived through things that were just part of history. And we got the oral history from them. So that was very cool. Obviously, we did the original staple was historical book reviews out of print military books from back in the day, which was awesome and very enjoyable to do.
Starting point is 00:00:51 And then some of them, you know, we're just interviewing people with various experiences. And I in the beginning, a lot of time I would talk about, you know, looking at human nature and through the eyes of leadership, through the lens of leadership, through the lens of history. So those, those things are still things that I enjoy doing a lot. And I think we are still going to release the straight up Jocko podcast number whatever. I guess the next one will be 501. We'll do that. Are you still good with doing those?
Starting point is 00:01:32 Echo Charles? Yeah, thanks for that. You still press record. But also, you know, it was, there's a lot behind those. You know, it's interesting when people say, oh, say thanks to your team. We don't really have a team. Like you and me are the team. And one of us does the bulk of the work.
Starting point is 00:01:57 So that was the team. The team was just us too. You know, you're doing all the technical side, me doing all the research and all that. So, you know, we're still going to do those podcasts, just not as often. And part of the reason, too, is because it's a lot to ask of people to find the lessons and calculate and correlate those lessons that. are often deeply embedded in stories and there's lots of context required and sometimes the lessons are delivered indirectly over the course of time. You know, there was a time where someone could say, you know, I'm having trouble with leadership and someone else could tell them, oh, you should start
Starting point is 00:02:45 listening to Jocko podcast. And they'd listen to it and they'd go, oh, cool, there's 22 episodes. They can listen to them and start to get a good handle. But then after a while, when there's 500 episodes in the thousand hours, some of that is it's it's too hard to gather the information and plus to parse out like oh is this just a history lesson because sometimes people just want a history lesson they want to talk to you know they want to hear from a guy that landed at Tarawa or a guy that was on Iwo Jima or someone that was in Auschwitz or you know someone that was in the Korean War they want to hear from that person what's their perspective And sometimes they want to have like, oh, wait, what about just straight leadership information or, you know, any type of sort of human nature that people want to learn about.
Starting point is 00:03:35 And so I and after, you know, probably after about 100 episodes, you couldn't just say to someone, hey, just start listening to Djago podcast and you're, you're going to learn a lot because there's too much. So I know that people, myself included, want information in a simple, clear, concise manner. They want it directly, right? I mean, that's one of the laws of combat leadership, simple, clear, concise. And from the time aspect and the information aspect, there's nothing simple, clear, concise about over 1,000 hours of stuff being put out there. So I figured what would be good would be to distill some of these lessons down into a more simple format. And I figured since there are very dedicated people that enjoy the original podcast, the Jocko podcast, we probably need to separate them a little bit, you know, so people can say, oh, this is a Jocko podcast and someone that likes to hear an interview. or likes to hear a historical book review.
Starting point is 00:04:48 They can go, oh, cool, this is what I'm, this is what I'm here for. But then there's also people that are like, oh, you know, I don't have time for a four-hour historical podcast today. I don't have, I don't have a room for that in my day. I still want to learn some lessons. So I was thinking of, you know, okay, well, what do we, we have a Jocko podcast, maybe something, a new name for it. And again, this is all iterative because I got to.
Starting point is 00:05:15 to breathe a little bit. You know what I mean? You might think, oh, you know, hey, we got something with this one. Here's the plan going forward. But actually, no, like, okay, let's, it's like in combat when there's something happening. You don't just make a call. You know, you just go, oh, attack or, oh, retreat. No, you say, oh, look, we, I used to teach this. Sometimes you got to let it develop a little bit. You know, you got to see what's going to see what's happening. So I think we got to do a little bit of that, breathe a little bit. And listen, you know, because people are going to give us feedback, which is cool. Um, but as I think about, like one of the, one of the things that popped in my name, it popped into my head for a name was the manual podcast.
Starting point is 00:05:56 And what I liked about is because there's layers. Mm-hmm. For one thing, there's layers. Sure. Uh, the layers being, you know, I've, we've reviewed a lot of manuals on this podcast. I've, myself have written what I called field manuals, the discipline and freedom field manual, leadership strategies. in tactics field manual. So I've written some manuals.
Starting point is 00:06:19 But in that same vein, same word, different meaning. Lately I've been talking a lot about having to switch into manual mode, which means we're not just going through the motions on something, but we are going to be in direct control of our thoughts and our actions. And this is something that I've thought about for a long time. You get into, you know, you and I have talked about cruise control. right being in cruise control being cruise control being cruise control sounds cool and especially if you have a modern vehicle with adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist you're kind of not driving
Starting point is 00:07:01 you know your Cadillac does that doesn't it I you know it does a lot of things yeah sure do you have to put your hands on the wheel no I don't but you know I understand what you mean I got a Ford it's got something called blue cruise and you don't have to have your hands on the wheel sometimes Yeah, yeah. It's cool for driving, right? But let's face it, you're, things can go wrong. Yeah, fully. When you're in this blue cruise, what's the Cadillac thing called?
Starting point is 00:07:29 Super crew. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's cool when you're driving, but it's not the best way to operate in life. One of the things, one of the earliest places that I experienced this was in the SEAL teams is a new guy. You're a new guy in the SEAL teams. And when you're going through close quarters combat training, CQC, it used to be called CQB, close quarters, battle.
Starting point is 00:07:57 And then they changed it. No mean creature is very important. They changed it to close quarters combat. CQC. Well, when you're a new guy, the manipulation of the safety on your weapon is very important. So you have to put your weapon on safe at the right time, take your weapon off safe, put it back on safe. And there's people watching.
Starting point is 00:08:17 you. And in the beginning, you're very conscious of it. You're like thinking about it. But pretty quickly, your brain is taking over. And what's weird about being a new guy is you're not used to being in that auto, automaton mode where you don't have to think about it just happens. So as a new guy, you like go into a room, you shoot a couple targets, you take your weapon off safe, you shoot a couple targets, you get done. You, you start moving. moving to the next room and as you're moving, you're like, oh, wait a second. Is my weapon unsafe?
Starting point is 00:08:52 Because you don't remember doing it. And luckily you did. And but it takes a little time to get used to, but that's how quickly, even something as important, like you can get fired from the seal teams, they can kick you out of the seal teams if you're not safe. You get safety violations.
Starting point is 00:09:09 So even something that is important, is as important as safing your weapon as a new guy, the most important thing in the world. and you're like wait a second do I do it or not because you went into this automatic you went into this cruise control mode so
Starting point is 00:09:24 and then eventually you get to a point where you just know you saved your weapon it's just part of your system um eventually you have to learn what you need to think about
Starting point is 00:09:41 and what things can be kind of automatic and this ties into a word that I have, I don't know if I've officially adopted the word yet. I may or may not have adopted the word. The word intentionality. Even you're getting nervous when I say it, right? Because it's like a hippie new age thing, right?
Starting point is 00:10:05 Yeah, yeah. You know, be intentional. Right. Even you have to, you have to kind of whisper it when you say it, you know, so you can give the right mana. You know what I mean? Sure. Be like, I like to live. intentionally right so so that kind of scares me that kind of stuff makes me nervous but I
Starting point is 00:10:22 I was talking about it I was talking to a group of people and I I trapped myself where the only word I could use was intentional yeah I like trapped myself yeah and what I said was you know whatever I said hey when you're doing this in this situation you've got to be intentional about what you're doing right yeah and then I thought about what we do in the military because if you think about what you do in the military being intentional is absolutely required and there's actually there's actually a protocol for being intentional and it's real obvious plan execute debrief that that's how that's how you're intentional so we come up with a plan right we assess the situation we we come up with various courses of actions
Starting point is 00:11:14 we grade those courses of actions and figure out which one is going to work best. And then once we've, once we've decided which course of action we're going to use, then we come up with a plan. So that's part one. That is being intentional, right? I am going to come up with a plan. Then you go and execute the plan. We go and do the thing that we said we're going to execute. And obviously this is going to be challenging.
Starting point is 00:11:38 This is sometimes the hardest thing about doing something is actually doing the thing. and then what we do is we debrief, which is what we do with, we debrief to the point that it's almost a little bit ridiculous sometimes in the SEAL teams. We debrief everything. So, but then we figure out what we did right, what we did wrong,
Starting point is 00:12:00 and what we can do better. So you combine those three things, and now we're being intentional. We're being intentional. We plan. we execute and we debrief. Now, where can you do this? This is the same as not being on cruise control, right?
Starting point is 00:12:23 Because if you're on cruise control, you're just going through the motions of whatever your habits are. So you don't want to live like that, right? So where can you do this? Where can you take yourself out of cruise control and where can you become, when can you shift into manual mode? Before you go bed at night.
Starting point is 00:12:47 write down what you're supposed to do tomorrow. Think about the advantage that that gives you when you wake up and you don't have to figure out what it is you're supposed to do today. Because when you wake up, you've got brain fog. It's confusion. You were dreaming about random freaking pickles. And like, you know, who knows what you're dreaming about? Sure.
Starting point is 00:13:08 Just chaos. And well, but when you actually write down what you're supposed to do, and I do believe this when you write down what you're supposed to do First of all, it allows you to sleep because you're kind of like, okay, cool. I know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow. And I think there's some kind of brain activity that starts solving and calculating those things while you're sleeping. Yeah. Yeah, there's the.
Starting point is 00:13:33 Concur? Oh, yeah, yeah. There's a priming effect 100%. It's kind of like, I mean, I don't know if I'm if everyone's like this or not. But you've ever been like focusing or working on something and then someone just out of the blue comes in with some other stuff and you're like bro like I dig it but right now it's not the time I'm doing this it's like a feeling you know so because you're not primed for this thing you're primed for the thing in front of you or the thing you're that you're about to do whatever whatever
Starting point is 00:14:00 your schedule is whatever but um yeah if you're already kind of like maybe like on a weird subconscious level or on a certain level of you know certain mental level you're primed already or you begin the priming process And it's not like super active. It's not taking that much energy, you know. So you kind of, it's kind of like if someone said, hey, you have a, you have a jiu-jitsu match right now. Then you're like, oh, well, right now, really? Like, you kind of scramble mentally a little bit as opposed to or when compared to, hey, you got a jiu-jitsu match in four weeks.
Starting point is 00:14:38 You know, then you can begin the priming process. You know, that really, that jams up people when they're competing. Yeah. And, you know, we think we have. An hour and all of a sudden it's time to go now that jams people up So yes writing down giving yourself a little time to process that isn't that is an that is an area where you can manually take control of your life Same thing with like with working out right? What are you gonna do tomorrow in your workout? What's the plan? What are the goals? What are the numbers you want to hit right? What are the what are the sets and reps?
Starting point is 00:15:12 What time are you gonna make? What's the mandatory what's the minimum mandatory that's happening? You know, you can do it for fuel, right? You can say, okay, what am I going to eat tomorrow? Because leaving these things to chance, that's Cheetos. You know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. Yeah, my wife will be like, hey, what do you want for dinner? Right?
Starting point is 00:15:39 I don't know. I'm doing this other thing, you know? But if we, but if she or we, whatever, and this is just in principle, obviously it's not a huge deal. But in principle, if we had that written down the day before or two days before, you see what I'm saying? If these things were written down, you don't have to think about that kind of stuff. You already know. You just refer to your notes. You see what I'm saying?
Starting point is 00:15:58 And you can like the detached assessment of what you should eat tomorrow is way better than the I'm hungry. I'm going to open the fridge and see what's happening. Yep. The auto mode. Yeah, just the cruise control mode's pulling out the crap. So that's an area where if you take control and you go into manual mode, you're going to do a better thing. You can do it for conversations that you're going to have, right? You're going to, you know, have a business meeting with a partner or a potential partner.
Starting point is 00:16:31 Why not take five minutes to come up with a damn plan before you roll in there? Maybe it's, you have to meet with one of your employees. Why not come up with a plan, three minutes of what you're going to talk about, how you're going to say it to them what contingencies do you need to have maybe you can do this protocol for your saturday you know what i'm saying instead of just letting saturday happen to you what time you're to wake up what are you going to do for a workout what's the workout going to be well when are you going to spend time with your kids when are you going to spend time with your your spouse when you get going to get the stupid chores done around the house that you got to get down and if you if you
Starting point is 00:17:16 actually plan what that saturday is going to look like i guarantee you It's going better guaranteed to go better if you let cruise control run your Saturday Saturday disappears Yeah, so this is all these are examples of switching to Manual manual manual mode getting control just don't let your Saturdays happen to you Take control your Saturdays take control your Sundays your Mondays your Tuesday went Thursday Friday see what I'm saying go don't don't go to cruise control going to manual mode what's what's what's natural is cruise control because look as cavemen we're only supposed to survive like you know till tomorrow we're we're just thinking about we're just thinking about right now right so it's and those animalistic instincts that you have they're going to keep you alive
Starting point is 00:18:09 for right now right now they're going to keep you alive because you're going to eat something because it's in front of you're going to eat it or if you get a chance to rest you're going to rest you're not going to expend any extra energy right So the natural mode is cruise control, taking the easiest route, using the least amount of energy, getting through whatever situation you're in with minimal friction. And unfortunately in modern life, that just leads to a disaster. So this is, we want to get in that situation where we can switch to manual mode, but it's not easy. It's not easy.
Starting point is 00:18:54 One thing that's that makes it not easy is it happens without recognition, right? Like when you're driving and all of a sudden 15 minutes went by and you don't remember it. Yeah. But you didn't you didn't switch into cruise control. It switched on you. Or did I turn off the toaster oven? Did I lock the door or not? Right?
Starting point is 00:19:19 Where did you park the car? Right? You go to the, the mall, and you don't remember where you parked the car because you were in full cruise control. Did I, this is one that happens to me. Did I pack that thing that I need for the trip? You know, I don't even remember. I always have it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:38 But I'll be going to the airport. Like, wait a second. Did I bring time more? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's, and it's there, but I did it in. full cruise control. So going into cruise control happens without us consciously deciding to go to that mode. And there's actually different like psychological names for this.
Starting point is 00:20:03 Automatic processing procedural memory. Just procedural memory. You're just doing doing the thing. Here's a good, a good name, good term. Cognitive offload. Cognitive offload. This is when you just let your surroundings or your routine or your, you know, devices carry part of your mental load. Now we can use this to our advantage, right? With that let making a making notes about what you have to do tomorrow, that's cognitive offload. You don't have to think about it anymore. You already have it. Right. The to do list that to do list is cognitive offload. That's a good thing. But when you let your phone be the cognitive offload, when you let let Netflix be the cognitive offload,
Starting point is 00:20:47 when you let the, we just go with the flow, I was just driving and there was a detour. And there was a car in front of me and then there was a vehicle that was clearly like part of the whole construction process in front of that car. And that construction vehicle
Starting point is 00:21:10 is delivering some material to like the construction that was happening on the road. And the, that kind of like in this detour, that vehicle pulled off to like start offloading. And the car in front of me was just so in cognitive offload. It just followed the car. It followed this truck into the construction site. And there's a dude like waving his hands, you know, guy with a slow sign.
Starting point is 00:21:35 He's waving his hands at the car. And he's looking at me. And we like locked eyes and he kind of gave me like the look of like, dude, I'm glad you're freaking have a brain. Yeah. But the person in front of me, total cognitive offload. Procedural memory. Just follow the car in front of you. and we're going to be good.
Starting point is 00:21:48 Yeah, that's real. Oh, I just literally saw it 15 minutes ago. In fact, there, and I told you the story before where, because like when I got my bouncer, you got to get certified to be a security bubble box. I didn't know you were certified bouncer. Yeah. And they teach you this with in, in the event of a fire,
Starting point is 00:22:13 two things that they say, you got to keep in mind you need to be like a leader scenario, right? Because there's two things that phenomenon that will, that'll happen and it's that it's like people just automatically follow crowds and then the other one was people will automatically go out the way they came in so basically it's like hey you got to be the follow the crowd thing is like hey you got to be calm because if some one person panics and the next person panics and everyone panics because their brain just automatically goes into well there's
Starting point is 00:22:39 a panic situation and then the other one was yeah they automatically go where they came in yeah the exit is right here yeah big red exit or whatever And they still do that. So yeah, that's real. That's really in so many situations. Yep. And this is what I'm saying. This problem that we all have is very common.
Starting point is 00:22:57 Here's another word. I would say it's an adjacent term, inattentional blindness, failing to see things that are happening because you're focused elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah. You ever heard the idea of we only use 10% of our brain? Yeah. Right?
Starting point is 00:23:14 They say, I mean, and I don't know where we came down on now. And if that's true or not true, whatever. But I think it's like 10% of your attention. tension. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's even less, but because maybe for you for me. But you, okay, so I was changing a battery in a smoke detector yesterday. And so in this particular room, the ceiling was really high. So I had to get a ladder. So you know it's high. You get a freaking one of these huge ladders. So I went up and I was barefoot on the ladder. And I was changed. And the, the battery in there was like taped in there. So I don't know if you remember what
Starting point is 00:23:49 a smoke detector battery. You got to undo it. And the wires are so connected. So my hands are up above, right? So I'm got up, bro. I got to focus because the tick, the time is ticking because my shoulders get tired, you know, all this stuff. So I'm like, folks.
Starting point is 00:24:03 These are people that are here for the combat stories will be freaking fired up to hear this one. These are everything. You have a battery in your hand in your shoulders. We're getting tired. I'm telling. Okay. So this is an attention story, like how you literally won't pay attention to like what's
Starting point is 00:24:18 going on. if it's a loud signal, we'll say in principle. So I'm changing this battery, right? So I got to undo the tape and then I have to make sure like the battery fits in perfect. And then and it's upside, you know, you're upside down, right? So the battery can fall out because you've got to take off the tape. So anyway, I'm trying to focus on this like freaking full on bomb diffusal, freaking mental scenario. Fine, I'm getting it in.
Starting point is 00:24:40 EOPEE EEOP. So I get it in. Finally, I switch the other battery. Boom. I put it in. Right? I put it in. Boom.
Starting point is 00:24:47 Boom. Done. And you don't worry. You know when you get a little task done, it's like a little mental, like gratification. And you can almost like you can exhale, right? So boom, I exhale. And then all of a sudden I realized my feet hurt real bad, just right then and there. And I'm like, freak, because that ladder had this weird rough, like surface to it, you know?
Starting point is 00:25:06 And I was barefoot. Feet were kind of sensitive. And Brian, it started hurting. Just all of a sudden, right when the battery went in, I clicked it on, my feet started hurting bad. I'm like, bro, I'm like, oh, this thing is that I climbed down or whatever. But I was like, wait a second. I didn't even feel that while I was putting the battery in because I was so attention,
Starting point is 00:25:23 my attention was so attentive to that freaking task. See what I'm saying? But I'm telling you, that's how life is. Like you have any idea how much stuff you're missing in life because we're focused on this or that or whatever? See what I'm saying? Yep. Another good story of raw survival for you.
Starting point is 00:25:43 Check. Here's another good one. pre-conscious processing mental operations and information handling that occur just outside of immediate conscious awareness but the readily accessible they're ready readily accessible it can be brought to consciousness with little effort or the right trigger right so things can be happening and you they're right just outside of like the conscious they're just kind of happening and all it takes is wait a second what's at what i need to get focused on this thing which again to me this is this is important because if you're not paying attention to it you won't see what's
Starting point is 00:26:23 happening if you're not paying attention to it you won't see what's happening you'll just be falling that car in front of you and you'll be sitting inside of a construction site but I think I think my favorite of these different terms is one behavioral inertia behavioral inertia inertia is just that you know inertia does not cause anything to happen. It's just sort of like it's just the steady state of what's happening. You know, the body at rest tends to stay at rest.
Starting point is 00:26:56 The body of motion tends to stay at motion. That's inertia. That's inertia. And inertia is a passive thing. It's just happening. It's not making the thing go, but it's going and it's going to keep going. Or it's not going to make the thing stop, but it's stopped and it's going to be hard to move because that's inertia.
Starting point is 00:27:11 So the idea that you have behavioral inertia, just the tendency, just to keep kind of doing what you're doing is scary. It turns you into an NPC, which I know you're familiar with this term. It turns you into a non-player character because non-player characters can only like go through the motions that the whatever seven, you know, things that they can do with their hands. You ever seen those videos of people being NPCs, like real life people being NPCs. Have you ever seen those? the the where they're like physically acting like that and they'll like say the same thing again like they're like they're like they're an mpc but they're in real life yeah i always think those are
Starting point is 00:27:54 pretty funny but it's strange that there's that we do that we just get into the mode of we're just a habitual behavioral inertia we're just going to keep doing the same thing well we just do it just do the thing now can some of those things be good yeah and you were talking before hit record today you know, you have some behavioral inertia that's good. Like when you wake up in the morning, you're going to, you're going to lift. At least you're in that mode right now recently. Yeah? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:25 Well, I'm fully in that mood. Like when I wake up, there's just behavioral inertia. I'm going to get up, get out of bed, going to go work out. Yeah. Sometimes a little bit too much. I needed some pre-workout the other day. I didn't take it. I wished I would have afterwards because I was like, I kind of, I was very tired.
Starting point is 00:28:41 I was very sore. I kind of wanted to chill and I should have just gone full pre-workout, you know, 5 o'clock in the morning pre-workout, let's go. But I didn't. But sometimes you need that hitter. Yeah, yeah, fully. Yeah, fully. And I think that and assuming, like, you know, I'm not an expert on
Starting point is 00:28:57 behavioral inertia. I just learned that today. You know that about me? But the principle still remains regardless of when it happens or what you need or it's still part of your day because it's just been part of your day. There's no like, hey, I need to pattern, pattern, interrupt my whole thing and start working out now. You know, working out is just normal.
Starting point is 00:29:17 That's normal. Regardless of when it is, like, yeah, I'll wake, like me, I'll wake up. Yes, I'll work out, but it'll be like the run or walk or whatever. And then, you know, it's like a routine. But if there's no workout, that's the weird stopping of the inertia. Yeah. Yeah. So exactly.
Starting point is 00:29:33 We look down on NPCs. That's like an insult on Twitter X, right? It's an insult in the world to call someone like, oh, that's just an NPC, just a non-player character. They've just been programmed, right? Yeah. It's like they don't mean nothing. They're meaningless, insignificant, irrelevant. If we're not careful, we become them.
Starting point is 00:29:53 We have to engage our brains. And I think when I was thinking about this podcast, you know, I think sometimes I need that. I need to break my own behavioral inertia. I need to make sure I'm not being an NPC. And I think other people are the same way. And I think that, you know, doing something where we can help people switch into manual mode, right? Doing something where we can help people snap out of the behavioral inertia, make me think, make you think.
Starting point is 00:30:34 because here's the deal. If we allow behavioral inertia to be in control, many of the things that we do will be wrong. Because we have bad habits. We have bad behaviors. And like I said earlier, we're programmed as humans to take the path of least resistance. That's what our genetic programming is to save energy,
Starting point is 00:31:00 to follow familiar patterns. We're from a physiological perspective, We're programmed to overeat. We're programmed to have a bias towards physical inactivity. Like we're programmed for that. That includes avoiding physical activity if we can. It includes over-indexing on rest. It includes avoidance of discomfort, right?
Starting point is 00:31:31 We don't want to be too tired. We don't want to be too hot. We don't want to be too cold. We don't want to be too uncomfortable. That's all that's all something that is programmed into us, you know, and, and then from a, from a psychological perspective, we're programmed with impatience. We're programmed with selfishness. We're programmed with jealousy.
Starting point is 00:31:55 We're programmed to have a closed mind. Like, you are programmed psychologically. You don't hear anybody else's ideas. We're programmed to avoid responsibility. Clearly, we oppose taking ownership. we're programmed for a lack of concentration because in the caveman days, if you got to focus on that one thing, you would get attacked by a saber-toothed tiger.
Starting point is 00:32:22 So you're just constantly kind of looking around, going from this, going to that. Here's another thing. We're programmed to think negatively. We're drawn towards negative information. Why? Because positive information doesn't kill the caveman. Negative information kills the caveman.
Starting point is 00:32:39 I want to know what happened. I walk up on a scene and there's bad stuff and good stuff. I want to know about the bad stuff. Because the good stuff isn't going to kill me. The bad stuff is going to kill me. We're programmed to avoid change. We're programmed to conform to social pressure. We're programmed.
Starting point is 00:32:58 We're programmed to procrastinate things that are going to be good in the long term. Because we're programmed for immediate gratification. That's what we're programmed for. We want to get food right now. We want to feel good right now. We want to get warm right now. That's what we're programmed for. That's how we stayed alive.
Starting point is 00:33:15 Before we had freaking Instacart and Uber Eats and controlled temperature in our house. Before all these things, you had to just, oh, look, if I can get warmer right now, I'm going to get warm right now. If I can get food right now, I'm going to eat it all, all of it. That's the way we're programmed. So if you don't engage your brain, you will follow your human programming. I will follow my human programming. And in order to resist that, we have to shift into manual mode.
Starting point is 00:33:54 We have to take control of our minds, mind control. And that's what I'm thinking about doing here, helping each other get our minds right. So all these, a lot of this overlaps with the cognitive biases, right? You know, we're programmed to do these things or whatever, and you're right, they're kind of, they're basically a defense or protection,
Starting point is 00:34:17 like mechanism. But so this comprehensively this is auto mode or automatic mode right so at any given moment Switching to manual you'd be surprised how much that helps you actually you said this a long time ago and it applied to something a little bit different But to me the principle like literally is this when you said I made a shirt about it said. Oh What are you doing right now? You know that like I know I? I know it's slightly different because you applied it to like your guys right when you're training guys and it's like hey you got to be Like to do whatever like what are you doing right now? But when you said that it's stuck with me and every once in a while like you know you can kind of feel it you can kind of feel yourself in that auto
Starting point is 00:35:05 inertia mode especially when it builds up a little bit you know yeah and then bro i use that well be like hey like what are you doing right now like literally what are you doing like it's almost like and then you kind of have this weird mental detachment from like your whole life everything you did today yesterday last week anything that you, you know, like, do you, are you planning on anything? Like, do you have a goal right now? Like, what are you doing right now? It's like the whole thing. Br, it helps.
Starting point is 00:35:29 And then you can be like, oh, yeah, look, I've been doing this just automatically. I'm going to stop that. Let me do this other thing instead. You know, you can start making these conscious decisions. Yep. Yeah, that came from being out in the field, training guys. And you'd see some young seal or old seal. And there's chaos.
Starting point is 00:35:47 There's confusion going on. And just walking and say, like, what are you doing right now? And they would not know. they would not know what they were doing. And so if you don't know what you're doing, they're just going with the flow. Well, there's problems out there. And then I used to say the same thing to my kids.
Starting point is 00:36:01 It used to really piss them off. Yeah. You know, and say, what are you doing? What are you doing right now? They took great offense to. Why did they take offense to it? Well, because they knew they were cruising.
Starting point is 00:36:12 They knew, well, look, I don't want to get into a whole thing. But you have a certain, there's an element to your presence that kind of magnifies certain, and think you're right at the end of the day you're right but i think a more accurate way of putting it is it's not because they knew they knew they were doing the wrong thing or they knew they were not doing the right thing it was that they know that you think they're doing the wrong thing or not
Starting point is 00:36:37 doing the right thing and they have a lot of value in your you know opinion and your dad and you're the authority and you're you and all this other stuff so it amplifies you're right though you're correct like what you're saying is correct but that's why yeah and that's why it's important to ask yourself that over and over again. What are you doing right now? And that will help you shift into manual mode. And if you shift into manual mode and you take control of what's happening,
Starting point is 00:37:09 it thinks you get better. And that's what we're doing here. This is the manual podcast episode one. If you want to support, go to joccofuel.com. check out origin usa.com jocco store.com and echelonfront.com. Thanks for listening. Until next time, this Zheko and Jocko out.

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