Jocko Podcast - 176: Morale is the Most Important Thing on The Battlefield? From Bernard 'Monty' Montgomery.

Episode Date: May 8, 2019

0:00:00 - Opening 0:11:05 - Bernard Montgomery on Morale on the battlefield. 1:57:27 - Final Thoughts and Take-aways. 2:09:03 - What is THE PATH?  And how to stay on it. 2:30:32 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 176 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Usually when I write a letter, it is very much overdue, and I make every effort to get it away quickly. This letter, however, is different. It is a letter that I hoped you would never receive, as it is verification of that terse black-edged card which you received some time ago and which has caused you so much grief it is because of this grief that i wrote this letter and by the time you have finished reading it hope that it is done some good

and that i have not written it in vain it is very difficult to write now of future things in the past tense so i am returning to the present tomorrow we go into action as yet we do not know exactly what our job will be but no doubt it will be a dangerous one in which many lives will be lost mine may be one of those lives well mom I am not afraid to die I like this life yes for the past two years have planned and dreamed and mapped out a perfect future for myself I would have liked that future to materialize but it is not what I will but what God wills and if by sacrificing all this I leave the world slightly better than I found it I am perfectly willing to

make that sacrifice don't get me wrong though mom I am no flag-waving patriot nor have I ever professed to be England's a great little country the best there is But I cannot honestly and sincerely say that it is worth fighting for. Nor can I fancy myself in the role of a gallant crusader fighting for the liberation of Europe. It would be a nice thought, but I would only be kidding myself. No, Mom, my little world is centered around you and includes dad, everyone at home, and my friends in Wolverhampton. is worth fighting for and if by doing so it strengthens your security and improves your lot in any way then it is worth dying for too now this is where I come to the point of this letter as I have

already stated I am not afraid to die and imperfectly willing to do so if by my doing so you benefit in any way whatsoever if you do not then my sacrifice is all in vain Have you benefited mom or have you cried and worried yourself sick? I fear it is the latter. Don't you see mom that it will do me no good and that in addition you are undoing all the good work I have tried to do? Grief is hypocritical useless and unfair and does neither you nor me any good I want no flowers No epitaph, no tears.

All I want is for you to remember me and feel proud of me. Then shall I rest in peace knowing that I have done a good job. Death is nothing final or lasting. If it were, there would be no point in living. It is just a stage in everyone's life. To some, it comes early, to others late, but it must come to everyone's sometime. And surely there is no better way of dying. Besides, I have probably crammed more enjoyment into my 21 years than some managed to do in 80.

My only regret is that I have not done as much for you as I would have liked to do. I loved you, Mom. You were the best mother in the world. And what I failed to do in life I am trying to make up for in death. So please don't let me down, Mom. Don't worry or fret, but smile. Be proud and satisfied. I never had much money.

But what little I have is all yours. Please don't be silly and sentimental about it. And don't try to spend it on me. Spend it on yourself or the kiddies. It will do some good that way. Remember that where I am, I am quite okay. and providing I know that you are not grieving over me shall be perfectly happy. Well, Mom, that is all.

And I hope I have not written at all in vain. Goodbye. And thanks for everything. Your unworthy son. Evor. That was a letter from Private Evor Robey, who served in the British Army in the South Staffordshire. and the letter can be found in a book called last letters home and it was his last letter home he was killed in Ohnham on 17 September 1914 in the opening action of Operation Market Garden which was

conceived and planned and championed by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. In this massive operation, overall, it's generally assessed as a failure. Although history has been kind and some people look back and theorize that it did have a more positive impact on the battlefield than was initially thought, but nonetheless, it didn't achieve its objectives and there was a significant amount of casualties. And as I said, this was Monty. Monty's plan is the plan that he pushed. And as I said on the last podcast about him,

this is one of the things that makes him controversial that he led this operation, Market Garden. And as I said, on the last podcast, he was able to redeem himself somewhat in the Battle of Bulge. but this negative was pretty impactful. And with that, that doesn't mean that there's nothing we can learn from that situation. We've covered it on the podcast, that battle from that perspective. And we have to learn.

We have to learn from people's successes and people's failures, just as we have to learn from our own successes and our own failures. And on the last podcast, we talked about, Monti's view of leadership. And if you haven't listened to that podcast yet, it's number 174. That kind of talks a little bit more detail slightly about Monty and his thoughts. And we debated a little bit the meaning of the word dominate,

which he kind of puts as one of these driving forces as a leader, is the leader's ability to dominate. And I talked about how I'm not quite sure where he falls with that word. You know, because dominate can have a very negative connotation and I actually asked for feedback and a bunch of people gave me feedback and I think I landed somewhere

kind of in the middle. I don't think it's then dominate with the hey I'm just going to rule over my people I don't think that's how he meant it I think he but I don't think he meant it in like hey I'm just dominate I dominate my skills and that's why I'm good

I think he meant it somewhere in the middle and And then I talked about the fact that one of the other major important factors that Monty talks about is morale. And he wrote another little thing about morale called morale in battle. And I think I actually wish I would have covered this one first. And this one almost trumps the leadership, his thoughts on leadership, because I think this is even more applicable and relatable. but it's it's good solid stuff from someone that led massive numbers of troops in battle and saw a lot of war war in world war one and world war two obviously so with that morale in battle and we're going to jump right into it here we go this paper is an attempt to

analyze what is at the root of morale and battle and thereby to discover how it can be developed. High morale is defined as endurance and courage in supporting fatigue and danger. In other words, the quality which makes men go forward in an attack and hold their ground in defense. It is the quality without which no war can be won. So this is a, this is a, and I'll get to this in the end. He talks about morale being the most important factor on the battlefield. Obviously, I think leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield.

And I'll break that down a little bit later. But from his perspective, as a guy that had led massive operations, he feels morale is the most important thing. So without a doubt, it is important. Here we get into his thoughts on it. And again, I think you're going to see this, the stuff that he talks about morale, he seems to nail this, I think even better than he nails leadership. So here we go, the quality of morale. In war, the moral stature of some men increases and their characters grow stronger

and more closely knit in proportion to the discomforts and dangers which they are called upon to face. I said this over and over again. War, war can make you stronger. War can make you a better person. This is something that Peter Attie and I talked about when he first came on the podcast and we talked about families that were slightly fractured. And if they have a major incident, a medical emergency, somebody gets wounded, somebody gets cancer.

If the family's close, it'll make them closer. If the family's fractured, it'll blow them apart. He's saying the same thing here. Back to the book, such men will occasionally perform in battle remarkable acts of selfish courage and daring and will endure with extraordinary fortitude and patience, the burdens thrust upon them. Other men, however, will, under the stress of hardships or dangers, surrender to fear or fatigue

and will allow their characters to disintegrate. So the same thing that Peter Attie was talking about with families. And this is the same thing with any team or organization. You have a team that's pretty close and they go through something rough. They get even closer. You have a team that's kind of fractured and they go through something tough. They're going to explode. Same thing happens with people's personalities and character in war.

This disintegration is usually will usually take the form of a loosening of the moral fiber which results in timidity of action and slackness in appearance He talks a lot about appearance He's one of these guys In battle men who have kept a firm grip upon themselves where it will appear clean and vital in their appearance While those who have gone to seed will be dirty and their appearance will be Slavily Guys. Hey, if you don't look at and this is obviously this is the much of the military They will judge you on how you look. That's not always true sometimes you get a guy that looks like a rogue

Street person and he's a good operator and sometimes not it depends Similarly timid officers will be found during quiet periods in the line groveling in the filth of some sense While their signalers and runners separated from the light attempt to do their jobs by the flame of a guttering candle In these latter cases, there's been a general loosening of the character due to a partial surrender to fear. So you get these timid officers that are out there and They cower and they're scared and they while their troops are up trying to do their job In extreme cases men who have become afraid have sunk to the level of beasts. No longer in full control of themselves, they have become as sheep or rabbits unable to act alone or think rationally. Their instincts have become those of the herd.

They are either paralyzed by fear or gripped by unreasoning panic. Such men are exceptions, but they are a reminder of the value of high morale. The good soldier, the man with high morale, has not surrendered to fear and has maintained his personal standards. The bad soldier, the man with low morale, has become incapable of dependent action, of independent action, and has to some extent shed a part of his human individuality. So this is what you get. People are all freaked out and they don't act for themselves anymore. They're going to fall to hurt. Morale is a mental and moral quality.

It is a quality peculiar to human beings because it is essentially the product. of a mind with a conscience. It is that which in battle keeps men up on humanity's level, as opposed to being a beast. But humanity's level is not high enough, because the strongest human instinct is the instinct of survival. Moral is also that which develops man's latent heroism so that he will overcome his desire to take the easy way out and surrender to fear. So you've got to be a little bit beyond human. Because the human instinct, the strongest human instinct, is I'm just going to stay alive.

That's my goal. You've got to be more than that. You've got to be better than that. It is necessary now to make clear what high morale is not. It is not contentment or satisfaction bred from ease or comfort of living. Both of these contain a hint of complacency and acceptance of luxury as an end in itself. High morale is far more than any of these For it implies essentially the ability

To triumph over discomforts and dangers And carry on with a job So if you're one of these leaders You're in a leadership position And you think well you know How do I raise the morale of my men? Give them luxury days Give them Theo Vaughan luxury days

Theo Negative not happening That doesn't do it Back to the book Nor is no because I'm sorry Because what you have to do is you have to give them a challenge you have to give them discomfort or not you have to give them but they have to face discomfort They have to face danger and that's what increases morale when they face and they triumph over that. That's what that's what increases morale Pizza and fine satin sheets do not increase morale

They might give a little surface nudge but they don't increase morale Otherwise your morale would be through the roof through the roof all day. So the morale is so it's like not to be confused because you do need like the rest between sex. Yes, right. And you can't just beat people down all the time. Right, right.

You can't, you can't, you know, you have to get sleep. You have to get rest. You have to have some level of comfort or your morale will get beat down. But that can't be the primary aim. Right, right. Of you as leaders to provide comfort. Yeah, yeah. It's not like, hey, let's boost morale by letting people sleep.

or whatever right or not letting them sleep but you know yeah give them love give them give them two days off how about one day off and we come back and train hard and right yeah it seems like you wouldn't you wouldn't you wouldn't give them the day off if they don't need the day off like you need the day off or something very specific like some sort of a fatigue situation or whatever bottom line is it's a dichotomy right can you go too far with comfort and pleasure and leisure yes you can you can you go too far with discipline and hardness and sternness and scarcity of resources yes you can You have to find a balance somewhere in the middle. I think the point here is that people lean towards, well, if I want to increase morale,

I just need to give luxury to the troops. That's the wrong way to lean. You should actually lean. I'm not saying go full bore, but you should lean in the direction of hard training, discipline. Lean in that direction. Don't go full more in that direction. Yeah. It's almost like, I mean, you think about it.

It seems like making them feel what? like empowered or strong, right? That's kind of the result you're going for. Hey, let me just break it down for you. Real simple. If you go and you have a good training jiu-jitsu, how do you feel when you're done? How's your morale?

Pretty high. Moral is high. If you sit there and watch TV all day and you eat a pizza and a donut, how do you feel at the end of the day? How's your morale? Shabby. Morale's shabby. Now, if you train jihitsu nine hours for 14 days straight,

how do you feel broken down? Yeah. Right? And then how do you feel when, It's like, hey, man, day off today, Echo. All good. Hey, guess what? I ordered some pizza for you, too.

It's coming. It's going to be here in 15 minutes. We're going to chow down. We're going to watch the fights. Cool. That's a good morale boost. We're all good. Yeah.

But you've got to find that balance. Yeah. All right, back to the book. Nor is high morale achieved through fitness or healthiness alone. It is important not to confuse the idea of physical happiness with morale. The happy faces of men after a good game of football are not necessarily the faces of men with good morale. Morale is a mental rather than a physical quality. A determination to overcome obstacles and instinct of instinct driving a man forward against his own desires.

Driving a man forward against his own desires. That's a good one. That's a good one. And he detaches the physical and the mental part a little bit more than I do. I think they're a little bit more closely related. I think that when you're in good physical shape, it helps your mental morale. but he goes on to say this, which is spot on. High morale is not happiness.

Happiness may be a contributory factor in the maintenance of morale over a long period, but it is no more than that. A man can be unhappy, but can still regularly and without complaining advance and defend within the terms of the definition. So that's an important thing. And again, this is a trap that leaders get suckered into. Hey, if I can make my people happy, then morale's good. No, no.

Pizza will make your people happy, but it won't increase morale. It might increase morale if you get it at the right time for the right reason. Do you eat Hawaiian pizza? No. Check. Is that just a lie? Yeah, that's a complete violation. We don't even eat that kind of pizza in Hawaii.

Generally speaking, correct. Well, there you go. That's the thing. It's like Canadian bacon. What does, what does, what does, Hawaiian pizza due to your morale. Apparently it's an inhibitor. Yeah, it's an inhibitor.

Well, you know, like Canadian bacon? Yes, like Canadians, like, hey, is this Canadian? You know, Canadian bacon. It's just a little piece of ham basically. Yeah, yeah. You go, hey, to someone from Canada, I'd be like, hey, this is Canadian bacon. They'll like, no, that's ham. You made that up.

Have you ever had an English muffin before? Yes. You can't get them in England. Because they're not. They don't, yeah. Yeah, they just call them. Just like French fries, right? Yeah.

Or wait, is that? In France, in France, they're called something else though. Chips. They're not called French fries. No, that's England. I think they're called pomfries. All right. Yeah, that makes sense.

Same deal then. All right. This is an important, another, this, again, you can see I'm, I was, in going to go through this to figure out what I was going to, what parts I was going to single out. I ended up doing so much of this one. Yeah. Because almost every line is like, yes, you need to know that. Yes, I need to know that. I need to remember that.

So here's one. High morale is not. Toughness. This one caught me a little off guard. Some very tough men in this war have turned out to be very disappointing in action. Toughness is a physical and not a mental asset. Tough men will occasionally perform an isolated act of bravery. Morale, however, is not a quality which produces a momentary act. It influences behavior at all times. So that's completely true. And it's true. And it's true. It's true. in combat it's true in training even like some somebody like going through what basic seal training there were some tough guys there like tough where you go though that guy seems like a tough guy quitter

and then and then there's guys that get through buds it's like oh they were tough in buds like they did some good job in buds but it has nothing to do with how well you're going to do as a seal yeah like it does it's i would say there's some correlation but it's it's a very loose correlation being a good seal buds has very little to do with being a good seal in a seal team and I think that sometimes surprises people but then again it shouldn't really surprise people because being good at buds buzz is a physical evolution has very little to do with you with your mentality and has very little to do with leadership and unit cohesion and so to show up at a team what's the most important thing when you get to a team the most

important thing when you get to a team is to be a team member and be a leader in that team or a follower in that team. If you aren't those things, you're not going to be good. You can be super tough. That's great. And there's times when it pays to be tough. And you definitely, as a seal, you can't not be, you can't not have some level of toughness. You know, when I think about being a seal, there's stuff that you just do on a regular. basis that when it's your life when it's just the way your life is you don't really think about it but when you take a step back and you think about what you like when I think about my old job and I'm talking about going back to the 90s right oh we're going to go we have

dive week which is or dive training so you go for like four or five weeks of dive training and you're diving two times a day it's your wet suit your your your your your A wetsuits wet when you're putting it back on and then you're going to go get in a boat and you're going to drive for an hour and a half up the coast and then it's going to be dark and you're going to put on your Drager rebreater and you're going to get in that water again and you're going to kick in the darkness with bioluminescence flying around you for three and a half hours. You're going to get into this random harbor. You're freezing cold. You're going to plant a limpid and fake limpet mine on some Navy ship somewhere. Then you're going to pass.

paddle, you're going to swim, thin your way back out. You're going to run out of oxygen. Once you're going to come to the surface, and then you're going to swim on the surface for another 48 minutes, and then you meet up with that little zodiac boat. You get in, you're freezing, you're exhausted, and then you drive an hour and 20 minutes to get back to Coronado. When you get back, you're going to debrief, you're going to take care of your zodiacs, then you're going to take care of your dive rigs, then you're going to take care of your personal gear. Then you're going to take a shower and then you're going to sleep for three hours and you're going to wake up with another dive mission tasking you're going to do the same thing again just cold wet miserable that's the

life that's the life so do you got to have some level of mental toughness sure you do and every seal's got that but this part talking about like you know when you start talking about leadership and being a team player and being a being a good leader and being a good leader and being a good follower and being smart and tactically sound and being a good decision makers. Those are the things that matter. When you start talking about just the idea of being tough, it's like, that's cool. And it's important. And everyone in the teams has that, or most people in the teams have that baseline.

Because it is a little bit challenging to make it through seal training. If you don't at least have some level, it does happen. You get some guys where you think, man, what happened to you? Or, you know, you just break down. Some people have the idea that once they get through seal training, they're done. You know, you shouldn't be in seal training to go through seal training. You should be at seal training to get to the seal teams to serve your country,

to go into combat, to take the fight to the enemy. That's why you join the seal teams, not to see how tough you are. So, next. In brief, high morale is a quality which is good in itself and is latent in all men. It maintains human dignity. It enables fear and fatigue. to be overcome. It is involved with the idea of a conscience,

but it should be not confused with fitness or happiness or toughness. So he goes to pretty good lengths to make that distinction. Section 2, basic factors of morale. It is now necessary to consider what factors constitute the morale of the soldier in the heat of battle. Certain factors may be described as essential conditions without which high morale cannot exist. These four basic factors are, one, leadership. Two, discipline. Three, comradeship.

Four, self-respect. A fifth factor, devotion to cause must exist, but need not necessarily influence all of the soldiers. Finally, there are numerous contributory factors, which are of great importance, but not essential conditions. So that's what he's got. The four things that you have to have in order to have high morale. Then the first factor, of course, is leadership, which again, he's supporting my

argument that leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield because if you don't have leadership you're not going to have good morale right so right there I already got you beat Monnie yeah and guess what his second one is discipline where does that come from leadership sure what about comradeship that's comes from so all these things come from you do anyways we'll get to that leadership morale is in the first place based on leadership good morale is impossible without good leaders the quality of leadership is one which must be studied. Human beings are fundamentally alike.

In that very common characteristics apply to all men in varying degrees. This is such a great dichotomy of humans. Is that all humans are the same and all humans are different? Right? Like, you know it's true. Yeah.

How can that be true? All humans are the same. All humans are different. And that's a completely true statement. In battle, the most important of these characteristics is fear. All men are afraid at one time or another and to a greater or lesser extent. In moments of fear, they band together and look for guidance.

They seek for a person to give decisions. They look for a leader. In times of war, the leader has opportunities denied to him in peace. The difficulties, dangers and discomforts inseparable from the battlefield make men cry out for the leadership they can do without in peace. At such moments, men are too weak to stand alone. They find the burdens too great to bear and their own selves unequal to the task the leader himself accepts the burdens of others and by doing so earns their greatest and the right Earns their gratitude and the right to lead them. So challenging times things are going sideways bad things are happening

That's when people are most susceptible to leadership This is completely sure. Have you ever seen a team dynamic where like when everyone everyone everyone everyone everyone? Everything is going good. Pretty much, like, you can, it might be hard to tell who the leader is. Mm-hmm. And then all of a sudden something happens, something that's chaotic or something that's challenging happens. And then you can see that leader just rise to the top. Yeah.

I've seen that a million times. I've seen that a million times putting platoons through training. Yeah, you kind of not really know what's going on. Who's really, who's really running this? Boom. You start hitting these guys with some down men and some IEDs in the training battlefield. You'll see the real leaders will start to step up hopefully. Sometimes they don't step up at all.

But and this is totally true. You see people want to be led. People want to be led. There's going to be sometimes a little leadership vacuum. And sometimes you've got to step in and fill that leadership vacuum. Back to the book, consider a platoon, i.e. 30 men in action in the line. The men are drawn from all classes and all types. They are there in the line because they have obeyed a long series of orders,

which it was easier to obey. than to disobey, but now the test comes. It is easier for them not to obey orders. It is easier for them to stay where they are behind the hill and not advance over the crest into full view of the enemy who lies in weight of beyond. The dominant motive force, which drives them over the hill, is the leader.

It is his quality of leadership above all things which inspires the men to action. And this is one of those. He paints that out very clearly when people talk about, well, you know, in the military, everyone just does what you said because you're in charge, right? Well, try that once everyone's going to die. Well, once your lives are at stake. People just don't Roger up to say, oh, that's, hey, Echo's plan is kind of lame to go charge the machine gun nest,

but you know what, he's in charge, so I'm going to go do it. No, it doesn't work. You have to lead. These men recognize in their leader some quality which they themselves do not possess. That quality is decision. Fear makes men sluggish and indecisive, unable to decide and act for themselves. This is, this is, you know, people talk about being frozen by fear or, or have you ever had that thing where you're not quite sure what you're going to do? Like, I don't know if I want to do this.

I don't know if I want to, even like, like something stupid like, not something stupid, but, you know, buying a house, right? That's a big purchase. You're going to lay down a bunch of money. The market could go. up or down. You're committing to a payment for 30 years. There's not so many things in life you commit to for 30 years. Basically, there's only one other one. You're getting married, right? Is there any other commitment that's 30 years? I guess you get a tattoo. That's a lifetime, right? So there's these decisions that you have to make. And sometimes we don't, sometimes you see people

don't want to make decisions, right? They don't want to make a decision. What's making them indecisive? If you think about it, what's making people indecisive is fear. There are a of what that outcome might bring. So if you find yourself being indecisive, instead of asking yourself, is this the right decision or a wrong decision, ask yourself, what am I afraid of? Back to the book.

The leader's power over his men is based on his ability to cut through this fear paralysis and in doing so to enable others to escape from it. The rightness of the decision taken by the leader is irrelevant. Think about that from a leadership perspective. If there's a decision that needs to be made, whether you're right or wrong is irrelevant. What you need to do is be decisive. What matters is that the decision should be taken and that the leader should shoulder the responsibility for that decision.

The leader must convince his men of its rightness, even though he himself may be uncertain of his own judgment. If the leader will decide, the men will follow and fight. If there is indecision, they will hesitate and flee. In short, fight and survive or fear and be slain. The leader decides. Yeah. The leader's power of decision results from his ability to remain imperputable in the crisis.

His calmness prevents panic and his resolution compels action. It follows that this, it follows from this that the leader must be less fearful than his men. He need not be impervious to fear since men require a human figure to lead them. What he must do is radiate an atmosphere of confidence which will show his men that he is less afraid than they. He must have the moral courage to stand firm when his men are wavering. In this respect, they will judge him by his power of thought and action in crisis. Fear destroys the faculty of thought and paralyzes action. The leader must continue to think longer than his men and his thoughts must lead to action.

So there you go. Don't panic. Don't freak out. You got to stay calm. And how do you do that? You train for it. And when you train for it, what do you learn from the training? You learn how to detach.

That's what you learn how to do. That's how you keep your emotions in check. You don't let him get a hold of you. The leader's greatest asset is the ability to act normally in abnormal conditions. This is normal face. 101. To continue to think rationally when his men have ceased to think. to be decisive in action when they are paralyzed by fear.

So this is a, that section is something you should always strive to do from a leadership perspective. Stay calm. Don't panic. Think about what's happening. He didn't say it, but I'm going to say it, detach mentally so you don't get caught up in the emotion and the fear and the chaos. Next, the object of training must be firstly to select.

those who possess within them the potentialities of leadership and second to develop these potentialities so yes you got to look for who's going to be a good leader and then you got to hone that leader this is accomplished by giving the leader responsibility boom my favorite cure for leadership problems is put people in leadership positions a leader's character will develop in proportion to the responsibility with which he has been entrusted the more responsibility you put on someone, the more responsible they're going to become. Think about the little kids, right? Think about a little kid.

The more responsibility you give a little kid, the more mature they're going to be, the more responsibility they're going to take. It starts with making your own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You should be doing that on your own. As soon as it's physically possible, you're going to make a mess. Guess what?

Then you learn to clean up the mess. Every time you break down and you make that piece, B and J for your little child, you're taking responsibility away from them and you're making them a weaker human being. And they feel it. And they feel it. I made my, she's six, my daughter. I made her set the table. You know the old classic one.

Set the table. And she knew what it was, but she hadn't really gone through the whole deal before. So sure enough, she's like, you know, she didn't want to. But I'm like, hey, you know, you set the table. This is what you do. you know, you're kind of, you know, this is your job. This is your duty kind of thing. So once she set like the first one.

Yeah. And she did it correctly. She was rolling with it. It was her table. She was like, hey, I'm here. Boom, she was making decisions. Taking ownership. Oh, full art.

Stepping up. Oh, yeah. And you could tell just in her tone kind of like she was super empowered, little six year old. Yeah. You know, where and kind of to look on the whole situation where this was someone who didn't want to do it. It was a chore.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She didn't want to do the chore. but you know, you implement it. I mean, in my case correctly. Do you give them ownership? That's what you did, Echo Charles. You gave your daughter ownership. This is your job.

This is your responsibility. This is how you do it, but you do it. You make it happen. Yeah, and I use that term a lot. Make it happen. It's weird. I don't know what it is about that term with my specific kids. Because that's, well, that feels good.

Yeah, like you have influence over this whole situation. Because think about it. When you're, as a human being, it's kind of weird that you can make things happen. Make things straight up happening. Yeah. Yeah. It's a positive thing. Yeah, man. And yeah, that's a good one.

Make it happen. Make it happen. And you know, like, because adults do this too. I do this. We all do this. Maybe you don't know. But you know how like if you say, hey, can you do this? And then whether you don't want to or you don't know how to, you're just sketch about, you know, the whole thing.

You ask a lot of questions. Well, what if this? And, you know, like people do that. It's almost like they put a bunch of. excuses preloaded yeah where to indicate hey I can't really do this you know kind of thing and it's almost like just maybe it's like them being hesitant maybe it's everything you know all this thing so my kids will do that a lot you know like oh but what is you know all these questions kind of thing indicating they don't want to do it they want to throw up all this smoke so you finally just go hey I'll do it

or whatever and I started saying that I was like I don't know make it happen yeah and they just do it They just make it happen. It's all they, I mean, sure, the job won't be the greatest, the first time kind of thing, but they have that attitude of just making it happen, you know? You ever, you ever heard like the old guy that's like, when I was your age? Yeah, sometimes that's me. Yeah, I was going to say, no, you just made me think that because I do that. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'll be like, when I was your age, I was in a seal platoon, are you kidding me?

Yeah. That doesn't work in my case. Does that ever work for you? Yeah. It does. Man, it never works. Because, you know, when one of my older kids that are, you know, my age when I was in a seal platoon, it's like, you know, you're asking me how to do, like, some such simple life thing. Yeah.

Or asking me to do it for you? Yeah. Like, are you serious right now? Yeah. Are you serious right now? Yeah. When I was your age, I was in a seal platoon. I was going on deployment overseas.

I had guns and radios and encryption devices. And you're telling me, you know, whatever the thing is. You can't make that happen? Is that where you're at right now? Yeah. Are you kidding me? What I was your age? I always feel like when my dad or whatever would say that,

and I feel like if I say it to my kids, they're going to be thinking like, yeah, yeah, but you look. It's not cool. It's not, it's,

it's, I'm actually saying this, putting myself like in a little bit of check. It's like we talked about last time, you know, you can't just be like, when I was, yeah.

No, you need to be, I need to do a better job. But it is good. The thing is, it is good to, because the way my, And it'd be usually my older daughter because my oldest daughter because she's the one that actually is of age that I was in

She actually takes it in a in a positive way like She'll have a look on her face like dang I am actually being like really Really dumb right now to be even asking this like I can obviously figure this thing out Whatever it is you know some you know the DMV How do you set an appointment at the DMV? Are you serious right now? Are you serious right now? Are you serious right now? Make it happen. Yeah, you can't figure that out you never heard of something called Google yeah think of how easy things are now yeah but you can't even do that no not happening I was in this

I was in a damn seal platoon when I was your age I think I was responsible for stuff you're telling me you can't figure out of set an appointment at the DMV are you kidding me this is what I think is the hypothesis yeah I think that you say enough like stuff to your older daughter in this case where she can relate where it resonate like I get what you're saying yes but I think that once you say When I was your age, I was in a sealed platoon, she goes, she checks out. No, that's what I need to be careful of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I need to be careful of. The other thing I'll get from my kids, which is, well, you know what you? They kind of, yeah, I'm not like, well, that's, of course, you did that. Yeah. And I'm like, no. No. Not true.

It's not just like, oh, I did that because I'm more squared away than you are. No, you're actually more capable than I ever was. You just need to step up your game. I know, Russi. And this is my whole point. The thing is you're correct with what you're saying, you're correct. But from the kid's standpoint, they don't believe that. Like, if my dad would tell me that kind of stuff, I'd be like, yeah, I'd literally think that's it.

Because you're you. Not to say that you're tougher or you're whatever. It's like, Brian, you're you. You lived in the caveman days. Leave me alone about like figuring. But then if you're like, hey, go make the DMV appointment, go and Google, figure it out, kind of thing. That relates to them. It's like, yeah, he's right.

And if she's a grown up, essentially. You know, she's gonna relate. When my son was like 10 years old. Yeah. And my son's a good surfer. And I was out surfing with him and I was watching him surf. And I said, you know, he was paddling. I just caught a wave like beautiful wave.

And he's paddling out. And I said, in a little while, you're gonna be a better surfer than I am. And I thought he'd say, oh, that's cool. He looked at me like I was completely insane. Yeah. And like it was the craziest, like, it'd be like, You could see in his eyes he thought that that was not a Humanly possible thing that would ever happen I mean imagine that like that's the look in his face and he kind of just completely shrugged it off and he's like yeah right

Yeah, and I mean six months later he was better than me and now he's just like infinitely better than me yeah But through your point when you know when you're looking up at dad Yeah, then sometimes it's this is an unachievable thing Yeah. And actually, that's not true. And the young kids got to recognize that they can outperform their lame parents if they put their mind to it. Yeah. And the same thing that happens with subordinates, right?

You have your subordinate on your team and you think, hey, you have more skill than I ever had. You have more talent than I ever had. If you apply it correctly, you will be able to outperform me without question. And sometimes people look at you like, oh, you're crazy. That could never happen. It's like, no, it can happen. Yeah. It can happen, but you've got to train.

That's another thing is people think, oh, well, you just, this is natural. It's like, no, no, no. Oh, yeah, on the other thing. No, and that's one, that's another thing, like when we, when I was on with, when we had Captain Plum and Jim Conkelon, and they were like throwing me in the basket of being like them. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, hey, guys, this, hold on.

Just check yourselves. I'm 47 years old, and I'm barely hanging on. to like figuring the stuff out. I'm not in the, I'm not in the game with you guys in terms of figuring out what you all have figured out. I mean, those guys are leaps and bounds

and iteration upon iteration of knowledge above me. And, and I'm just sitting there thinking, take it easy, cap and plumb. Yeah, but again, that's just kind of a matter of perspective, you know,

like that things can seem so much, like they can see, seemed like something very specific, but just because of your perspective, you know, you don't get the whole picture, you know. Yeah, yeah. All right, check, going back to the book, his position as the man responsible for the lives and well-being of his men must be impressed upon him. In battle, his preoccupation with his men's affairs will give him less time to think of his

own fears. The mere fact of responsibility will increase. the leader's powers of decision and make him confident of his ability to handle any crisis. So you've got to train people in these challenging situations. Training must also seek to equip the leader with the other qualities which will help him in his task. Here are those qualities. A leader should be efficient.

He should possess self-confidence. He should be firm and just in his dealings with his men. He should be clear-cut and definite in giving orders. He should pay attention to administrative details. He should prepare his men in advance for any new experience they may have to meet. All these things are important, but they can never be a substitute for. A, decision in action and B, calmness in crisis. Yeah.

Stay calm. Now, one thing that I get a little nervous about talking about decision and action is sometimes what that means, the way that translates to a young platoon leader. is I'm gonna make a decision right now. Hey, everyone, you know, boom, I'm gonna jump into it. And you can't do that. You have to do assessment. You have to look at what the situation's going. And actually, you gotta have a protocol

of how you're gonna make those decisions, right? You gotta think about the way, the way it's gonna go down. You can't just jump at the first thing that pops into your mind. You need to think about it. You need to think about the options. You need to think about the consequences of those options.

And then you need to see if you can move in the right direction without full commitment. Right. Do you have to occasionally make full commitment on decision? Yes. If you got ambushed and you're in the kill zone, guess what you're going to have to do? Assault through the ambush. That's what you're going to have to do it.

You're going to have to do it decisively and powerfully and with full 100% commitment. But if you take some rounds, but you're not sure if it's an ambush, well, you might not want to necessarily assault through that position. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you need to think, you need to allow things to develop. So it's a very, it's part of the art of leadership. Yeah. Was teaching young seal leaders, okay, you need to let the situation develop.

Here's the problem. Once the situation starts developing, if you let it develop too far, it's got, it's out of control now. Right? It's a, it's a little problem. Yeah. Right? When you look at it, then you need to look at the problem and make sure you understand the problem, Meanwhile, the problem in some cases is growing.

If you allow the problem to grow too much, now you can't control the problem anymore and you're going to get crushed by the problem. If you see a small problem and you jump right into solving the problem, the problem might not be what you thought it was. And you went at it the wrong direction. So there's a fine line. Like decision and action is important, but thoughtful decision is what it should be. Thoughtful decision. And the reason I keep trying to stress and articulate to. people that you don't necessarily need to make a full commitment to a plan, you can take them,

you can take a smaller step, an iterative step in the right direction before you just jump in. So that's just important to think about. How does all that compare to making no decision? Well, making no decision is the worst thing you can do, right? Making no decision standing there in the kill zone, getting overrun by the enemy and everyone killed, that's the worst thing you can do. We want to at least make some kind of a decision. So that's why I think he stresses so the importance of decision in action so much is because he's probably seen people be indecisive in battle and it's a horrible, horrible thing.

So yes, you want to be decisive. But let's take that one little step further. We want to have thoughtful decisions. Do we want to have a mental 20 minute debate over the decision? No. a thought can take five seconds. You can let a situation develop for eight seconds, and you go, wait a second, I think this is what's happening.

Let me confirm. Do I see anyone over there? Yep, the enemy fire is increasing. You know what? We need to make this move. Boom, you do it. That's what we're talking about. Back to the book.

These are two vital attributes of a leader with which he will succeed and without which he will fail. These two vital qualities exist in varying degrees in every leader. Those men who possess them to a limited extent can nevertheless become adequate leaders by being trained in the qualities already enumerated. Such leaders must in the first place be efficient. This efficiency will impress itself on the men, thereby creating an atmosphere of confidence with which will partially compensate for any lack of personality. By this means training can make men into competent but not outstanding leaders. There is another aspect of leadership.

in its relation to morale. The best type of leader earns the respectful admiration of his men because he possesses certain good qualities which they lack. A brutal leader who disregards the feelings of his men will not infuse them

with the quality of self-respect. The morale of the troops he commands regardless of his qualities as leader will not be the highest. So even Monty, who kind of comes across, as being, you know, aloof to the troops, he's, there you go. The brutal leader is not going to have good morale.

Factually. An element of self-respect. Self-respect. There's a whole section on self-respect that's coming. Yeah. But yes, if you have a dog and you beat the dog and you're a brutal leader, the dog will not have any self-confidence. It'll be a broken dog.

You can do that with human beings too. Yeah. If you bark at your people and you break them down all the time, they won't be able to stand up. Another way to do that in a more, or should I say less brutal way, is to do everything for them. For sure.

Same thing, man, no self-like. Yeah, if you're setting the table all the time, your daughter never realizes that she has the capability of doing that, handling that job. She's tying shoes, carrying backpacks, like all that, you know. Everything. It's like, man. If you're helping your kids, you're hurting your kids.

Yeah. Yeah. And that clarifies it even more. And it's so true. I mean, once you kind of latch on to that idea, you just see it everywhere. Yeah. Like, man, you ever see these kids like, I don't know, like a TV show or documentary type, where they're in, I don't know, somewhere in Asia or some village where the four-year-old girl goes and like,

just kills a snake and skins it. And then walks like in the mud for another mile back home, cooks it for the family, you know, like the end you're like dang there girl's four yeah and she can do like I can't even do that stuff you know kind of thing it's like man yeah kind of put it into perspective where it's like these are kids who are just like making it happen human beings are so adaptable like you see the little gymnast kids oh yeah yeah they're six years old iron cross they're crazy doing athletic feats that are just insane yeah and why is that well because they were put in that position yeah and and trained hard. Now, some of those, sometimes those kids train a little bit too hard.

I think so, yes. And they can lose other aspects of their life. But dang, if you wouldn't like to be able to do an Iron Cross, you're six years old, come on now. Yeah, the point still totally remains. Yes, exactly. Right. So let your kids develop and let your subordinates develop. Give them responsibility. Build them up. Back to the book. Moreover, it is important to realize that while men are dependent on the word of the leader, they are capable of much independent action on their own and are even capable of making their own decisions. So this is kind of, this is kind of funny, right? It's Monty basically saying, look, I got a little surprise for you. A little surprise. Your troops can actually think for themselves. Yeah, yeah. Imagine that. Yeah, imagine that. And so obviously this is a decentralized command,

right? This is it. And you have to let your subordinate leaders lead. He goes on to say British soldiers have much native character and individuality. What is required is that the leader shall give the initial and vital decisions along with which the men can work. So, yes. And you know what? This is actually, I'm glad that Moni said it in that kind of funny way.

It's the same thing that we're talking about with kids where you think, oh, well, my kid's probably not capable of doing that. Your kid is capable of doing that. Your kid can go out there and kill a snake and bring it back and skin it and cook it. Oh, yeah. You just have to allow them the room to let that happen and give them the authority, empowered them to do it. Yeah, fully.

And it's so night and day to the other, actually last night. I was making chicken. Yeah, I make chicken. And I usually make rice. In Hawaii, you make rice with everything. Anyway. So I'm like, okay, make the rice. I go, hey, I tell my daughter, she's six again, by the way.

I was like, hey, make the rice. Here's the thing. I showed her how to make rice. Making rice isn't hard, but it's not like, I mean, in most... There's some steps. Yeah, there's some steps for sure. And it wasn't, well, for me anyway, before I taught her how to make rice, it wasn't real obvious that a six-year-old should be making rice, you know?

Like, not in a rice cooker, too, by the way, just like on the stove regular. But I thought at that point, I was like, hey, why can't I just show her how and teach her how? Even if I don't teach her in one day, okay, the next time we make rice, which is going to be soon, we'll go over it again kind of thing. Why should she not know how to make rice right now? Why should I have to do this for her? Whatever, I teach her how to make rice. Super simple.

Boom. Last night was the first time where it was her responsibility to make rice. She makes rice. Six years old makes rice. Boom. She's capable. But you know what? No, correct.

In the right direction. Exactly. Right. So the point is, too, is that as a leader, as a leader is the same thing. You let your guys run the operation. Let your troops step up and take control of something that you and your egotistical maniac mind think only you're capable of Guess what your boys can get it done too Yeah, and if they if they bat of 88 instead of a hundred cool

Yeah, next time they're gonna get a 92 and the time after that they're gonna get a a 96 yeah because that's a big obstacle too right mentally it's kind of like sure I could teach him how to do it But why would I well yeah you see that you see it even more see in parenting it's like cool my kid can make the rice Oh yeah You know, I'm, I'm, I'm, but in, in a team environment, our ego, our ego flares up because we want to be the one, right? Yeah, especially if you can do it at a 10. Yeah. And this guy's only due at an eight at the end of the day when the job's done.

You know what? And you feel, you feel like that's your little power. Yeah. You know, that's my little power. It's like, well, you know, you really not do this. Hey, I better come down and check out how you're prepping this stuff because, you know, I'm kind of the man. You're not. That's where it is.

Yeah. I kind of like when you, like, let's say they had to like screw on some stuff or, okay, I used to work at a moving company, right? You know this. And at the end, you load up the crates and you put them on the truck and you have to tie them with a certain kind of knot, right? Learn how to tie that knot, the kind of super tight, but all you got to do is pull one string together. Cool little thing. So I learned how, right? And yeah, I wanted the supervisor or whatever.

We'd be like, yeah, go tie it off or whatever. And I can totally do it. We've been doing this for months or whatever. But he'll go and he'll check it and he'll like, then he'll pull it just a little bit more. You know, like, as it's a little signature on it. A little signature from the mass. See what you're doing right there. But we do that all the time.

We like to just, we like to have our own little rice bowl, speaking of rice, right? That's a weird term. But you've heard that term before, right? Like, hey, you don't want somebody messing with his rice bowl, meaning like this is mine. Like, oh, I'm the guy that does this part of the job. And I don't want anyone else to know how to do it. That's my little rice bowl. Stay out of my rice bowl.

There's a lot of rice bowls. I was never into that. Well, at least at least once I was actually in leadership positions, I was very, I'm not, I don't care. Like, oh, you're, you come on, come on and grab some of this rice. Because if you can, if you can take my rice bowl from me, guess what? I can go find another rice bowl. I'll bring it in here and we'll start, we'll have more rice. That's good, man.

Yeah. Because that's not as, like, intuitive, you know, as far as the feeling goes. Everyone thinks that they're, everyone leans towards, hey, I want to be the guy. Yeah. The ego flares up. Good morale can be created in a narrow sphere by a good leader. But a platoon or company is obviously influenced by the general feelings existing in a division or army. So now we're talking to it.

You've got multiple layers, multiple layers above the platoon or the company. You've got the army, you know, the division. Good morale implies confidence in the high command and in the plan. And he capitalized plan, the plan. A strong leader on a high level can have a powerful, on the general attitude of the men of a platoon. He cannot, however, influence their movements over the last few vital yards of an attack. On the other hand, a strong leader on the low level can make his men carry out a single fine

attack, but he cannot sustain their morale indefinitely if there is a lack of confidence in the high command and its plan. That's a challenge. It's a challenge. if your troops if your troops are looking at the strategy going what the hell are we doing like you can get the guys through one attack or two

three missions but eventually they're saying hey what's going on why are we doing this this doesn't make any sense and vice versa a leader cannot do without discipline do you ever think about when I say discipline on the podcast you should put some little like a sound effect

every time I say it especially when I say something like this a leader cannot do without discipline his aim must be to create such a disciplined body of men that all his orders will be obeyed instantly this habit of obeying the leader's orders must be so instilled into his men that they will carry on and fight even though he himself falls there's a problem with that statement right there right the aim this aim cannot be achieved without discipline the second factor of morale is disciplined.

So a couple things here. First of all, I don't want my team to instantly obey all my borders without question. If I tell them to do something stupid, I actually want them to tell me no. On top of that, if you think for one minute that all your people do is obey you,

that when you die, they're just going to suddenly sprout leadership skills and start leading, you're wrong. You have to raise them in a way and treat them in a way that they are being challenged, as leaders themselves and they're being allowed to lead and they're stepping up and leading and they're not waiting to instantly obey everything you do because if you're, if all you're doing

is waiting for orders, you're not being proactive, you're not leading. Decentralized command isn't happening. And if something happens to me, you're going to freeze. So this little section from Monty, no, I don't like it. Discipline is something that is important. You have to understand, you have to have discipline, standard operating procedures. You have to have discipline to stay within those procedures, but on top of that, you have to have the freedom to when those procedures aren't working to say, hey, boss, this isn't a good call. Here's what we should do instead. Now, does this mean you and I are going to have a debate in the middle of a firefight over what the plan is? No, because we work together. We trust each other. You know what I'm coming from. I know where you're

coming from. And when I make a call, you're going to do it. And by the way, if you make a call, even though I'm senior to you, if you make a call, guess what I'm going to do? Guess what I'm going to do? Follow. Yes, I'm going to follow you. If you're like,

hey, jocco punch right, get ready to flank these guys. And I'm the senior guy, but you just told me to do that. Guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to do it. I'm going to support you. So that's what you want.

You have to be careful because as people, if you have someone whose personality is sensitive to that. Yeah. Right? and you say hey jaco punch right

get on their flank and my response is excuse me a minute just who do you think you are actually I'm in charge of this platoon why don't you just lock it up we're not going to punch right we're actually going to move you know what I mean

that's we can get into that situation all day long guess what's going to happen to all of us we're all going to die so we have to figure that stuff out we have to figure out that that we have to work together, but at the end, one of us has to submit to the situation,

submit to the other person's leadership. And by the way, there's 16 people in a platoon in a seal platoon. There's 30 or 40 in an infantry platoon. It's pretty easy to get in the habit of like, hey, when the boss speaks, we're all going to submit to what he's saying. Oh, if my platoon sergeant speaks,

okay, well, he barks out something. Guess what? We'll submit to that. Occasionally, someone else will write. up and see something we have to we have to work and train together so that we know when we need to submit to someone else or when we or when we need to say hey negative we're not doing that we're going over here these are these are challenging things right yeah it's think of how easy for think of how easy it is to to have

the Monty attitude and be really easy for me to say right now like hey listen this is what happens you'd have to have your men so disciplined when you tell them do something they do it that's the easiest solution right okay great chocolate was put out the word oh by the way if I get hurt fall the guy that's in the second chain of command okay cool that's easy that's easy day right now we're gonna win every time no wrong because guess what occasionally me I'm the leader I'm gonna make a bad decision and somebody needs to check me now are you gonna check me every single time no you're not are you

gonna check me you know what we're gonna work together so much that if you think you know what I'm not sure jock was making the right call but at least I'm gonna start to execute it I'm gonna keep a heads up I'm gonna move forward and then if I see what I think might be a problem happening I'm gonna say something but my response out of the gate is we're gonna go that's the kind of thing that's going on here this is a dynamic environment interaction of human beings it's freaking challenging yeah but to blanket everyone when I tell you to do something you do it yeah I want instant obedience to

everything that I say again that works great 94% of the time 6% of the time it's an utter disaster and everyone dies so we don't want to allow for that we want to allow some flexibility in there. That is harder to do. It's harder to have that flexibility. It's much more challenging. But it gives you such better capability and survivability that that's how you want to set it up. It takes a lot more. That's why the more advanced you get in, the more tactically advanced you get, the more there is of that. So if you go to a Marine Corps infantry platoon, they're going to have less pushback and less, they're going to have more obedience more just straight, rote obedience, as they should.

Because guess what? An 18-year-old Marine doesn't have as much knowledge as a 25-year-old staff sergeant or the platoon commander that went to the basics, right? So there's, you're going to have these situations that are going to, so in a normal infantry platoon, there's going to be less pushback. You get into a seal platoon. Well, now you've got a bunch of experience guys. Just about everyone in there has a few deployments.

The new guys aren't going to say anything. But the guys with two or three platoons, they're going to say, hey, boss, not a good call, or they're going to give you some pushback. Why? Because you've got a more experienced field of people. So it takes more practice to get that, to get to be able to interact together properly and have that flowing chain of command that's docile and can expand and contract and can move from one person or the next dynamically as a mission is happening.

I mean, there's times in close quarters combat where basically there's a person at the front of the train and that person rotates out every few seconds. There's tactical situations where there's a new person making the calls every 10 seconds. Think about that. That's radical. To have a new person making a call every 10 or 15 seconds, there's a new person doing it. How do you do that? Well, they understand.

Everyone understands. They understand the tactics. They understand how we work together. That's what we want. As opposed to there's only one person that can make the call. That's just centralized command. So again, it's very, it's hard for me to, to throw this out there, right? Because I don't want an 18-year-old Marine thinking, well, you know, if I found like what the

platoon commander says, I'm just going to tell them no. Yeah, that's not what I'm saying. Not what I'm saying. I do want you to think. Yeah. I do want you as an 18-year-old Marine to think. I want you to be understanding what decision is being made to the best of your ability. And yes, if you see something happening that is absolutely not good.

and you know it, you're damn right. You should speak up. And your platoon commander should be happy that you're speaking up. But if you're a guy that's going to speak up every time a decision gets made, because you think maybe of a different way that might be a little bit better in your mind, you're going to suffer the consequences of, number one, the whole platoon being indecisive. And number two, your boss is going to tell you to shut up. Because your idea that might be 8% better than his idea, we don't have time to discuss that right now.

So unless you see something that's real. significant yeah shut up and do what you're told if you see something that's really significant okay hey boss negative can't do that there you go the second factor discipline the object of discipline is the is the conquest of fear that's this is new perspective for me that the reason we have discipline is to conquer fear it's interesting right yeah factually true too what is it that gets you to do that thing you're afraid of you have the discipline to just drive through it adequately to determine the best method of doing this requires an analysis of fear to be made there are two aspects of fear fear

can suddenly attack a man through his imagination a corpse in a ditch or a grave by the side of the road will remind him of the peril of his position he will suddenly realize that he himself is liable to be killed it is a function of discipline to fortify the mind so that so that it becomes reconciled to unpleasant sights and accepts them as normal everyday occurrences. Fear can also creep in upon a man during periods of monotony in the line. So this is the other type of fear. There's two types, right? The one that just jumps on you and the other one is creeps on you.

At such a time, he will have the opportunity to appreciate the dangers which beset his life. Fear acting through his thoughts can so reduce a man's hardcore of courage that he will become nervous and fearful. Discipline strengthens the mind so that it becomes impervious to the corroding influence of fear. It teaches men to confine their thoughts within certain definite limits. It instills the habit of self-control. Keep your emotions in check. Keep your fear in check. That requires discipline. The basis of fear is the awareness of danger. In itself, this is healthy. for a man who is aware of danger automatically takes steps to provide against it. It is only when fear dominates the mind that it becomes unhealthy and leads to panic.

So fear is good. We know that. Fear is healthy. We know that until you let it dominate your mind. And then it's a problem. Men must be urged to fight fear with courage so that they will advance or defend and not take refuge in flight, in action. Man becomes aware of danger when he feels himself, opposed to something more powerful than himself.

Right? Sure. Man becomes aware of danger when he feels himself opposed to something more powerful than himself. In other words, when he feels that his own armament is unequal to that of the enemy who oppose him. It is important for a man to lose his individual feeling and to become an integral part of the battalion division and army to which he belongs. The larger the unit of which he feels himself to be a member. the larger will be the estimation of his own armament and the less will be his fear. It is here that discipline shows its value,

for it can help a man to lose his own identity and become a part of a larger, stronger unit. It is in this way that discipline will conquer fear. Got to relate to that bigger group. Yeah. You see this in like gang fights. The one person by themselves is a coward, but then when they have 10 of their friends, all of a sudden they're courageous.

It's a horrible example, but it's a reality, right? It's a total reality. Yeah. I used to see that in the streets. Back in the day. Like, yeah, you know, like one person, myself included, you know, two or three of us, okay, we're a little bit.

We got a little, we got a little froggy, right? But when there's 18 of us, all of a sudden you're real tough, right? That's me when I was 15 years old. Oh, I'm super tough with all my friends. Yeah, right? Sure. Bad, it's a bad example, but it's the reality.

Yeah, I liked it. Big scraps. This corporate sense, which discipline creates, helps men face the unknown. At night, men in the line become afraid of the unknown, which stretches out in front of them. At all times in action, they are afraid of new and terrifying weapons which may be used against them. They realize that these unknown, quantities may bring danger to them. Their ability to face these dangers is immensely strengthened by feeling themselves to be

part of a group. The group is known and a certain quantity which they feel is strong enough to stand up to the unknown dangers which surround them. Strength and numbers. The method by which the conquest of fear is achieved is the unifying of men into a group or unit under obedience to order. So he rolls right back to obedience to orders. Monty does.

And part of the reason is he's talking about conscripts a lot. Draftees, not volunteers. So there's a little bit of a, that's what he's dealing with. Now, as we know from hack and from General Mukayama, like, hey, if you treat your people right, it doesn't matter that they're draftees. Men require to be united if they are to give of their best. Discipline seeks to instill into all ranks a sense of unity by compelling them to obey orders as one man. This obedience to orders is the indispensable condition of good discipline. Men learn to gain confidence and encouragement from doing the same thing as their fellows.

They drive strength and satisfaction from their company. Their own identities become merged into the larger, stronger identity of the unit. You know what's interesting? I'll even go a little bit more hardcore against Monty. You know what, to me, is an exceptional unit. is the unit where you don't even have to give orders Where you just where everyone knows what the intent is or you give them a way of it's like hey this is the intent And people just do what they're supposed to do with no orders

Yeah that's what you really want you know there's a A chapter that Leif wrote where he's talking about prioritize and execute and He's talking about how it's when one of our guys fell through the roof They were on a mission they were in an Overwatch, they ended up having to a sledgehammer through a concrete wall. And Leif and I were talking about, he's like writing the chapter. And he was going to talk about like what his priorities were

and how he told the guys like, you know, you do this, you do this. And he's like, yeah, well, the thing is I didn't tell anyone to do anything. And I was like, yeah, check. Because his guys knew, oh, wait, we got this going on. We're going to set security. We're going to move. Like everyone knows what's, that's what you want. And then what that allowed Leif to do is like think about,

okay, now bigger priorities, and that's what he wrote about. But your troops, they shouldn't, you shouldn't even have to give them orders because they should be trained well enough to respond based on the situation and knowing and understanding the standard operating procedures and knowing very quickly what it is that your intent is as the leader. So all you need to say is set security. And the guys get into position where they're supposed to go. That's how it should be.

I'm not looking for, I'm not looking for obedience. You know what I'm looking for? I'm looking for what we used to call thinking shooters. You know, I want a platoon full of thinking shooters, meaning that they're thinking for themselves, they're making things happen, they understand what it is that I want done, whether I said it to them or whether we pre-briefed it

or whether we've been through this, we've drilled it, but whatever, they know what it is that I want done and I want my team to be thinking. this is decentralized command. When you get into just wrote obedience, we're losing the aspect of decentralized command. And as Monty said earlier, believe it or not,

believe it or not, your men might be able to make some decisions on their own. It's like, yes, take that many, many steps further than that. Check. Men must learn to obey orders when all their instincts cry out for them not to be obeyed.

They must learn to obey orders in times of stress so that they will do so in times of danger. They must learn to carry out their tasks under any condition and despite all difficulties. In this way, the mass of loose individuals with their fears and weaknesses can be welded together into a united whole ready to act on the word of the leader. So, again, what I'm saying is I don't want them ready to act on the word of the leader. I want them ready to act on the thought of the leader. discipline helps men to display fortitude in the face of fatigue and discomfort while at the same time it helps them conquer fear it enables them uncomplainingly to triumph over difficulties which would have overcome them in times of peace this constancy in enduring hardship and fatigue is the quality which is most frequently required of a soldier individual fortitude and corporate courage are the twin products of discipline so there we get that's the

That's the just straight positive aspects of discipline that that I think of Hey things are gonna be we're gonna be tired whatever discomfort whatever fear whatever we have discipline discipline conquers all those things Discipline implies a conception of duty nothing will be accomplished in the crisis of by man without a sense of duty The century in an outpost holds his ground in the face of an attack because he has a sense of duty to those behind him This sense is instilled by discipline because it teaches men to obey orders as a matter of course to know that it is wrong not to obey them and write that it is their duty to do so. For the soldier, this conception of duty does not embrace abstractions such as freedom or empire or democracy.

In battle, a soldier's sense of duty extends only to the friends who are around him. It is the job of the junior leader to encourage this sense of duty. abstractions are the sphere of a politician. So he goes real extreme in this one. And we all have heard this before. Hey, when you're in combat, you're not fighting for this political ideology. You're fighting for the man to your left and to your right. Absolutely true.

Absolutely true. I would say, well, I know that it's not just that. You have to, when the immediate battles over, you need to look and say, okay, well, why are we doing this? Oh, we're doing this because we believe in our cause. So to me, it's both. You can't just cast out, you know, in my opinion, abstractions are the sphere of politicians? No, troops need to believe in what they're doing.

A certain type of training may induce men to go forward in an attack simply out of fear of the consequences of not doing so. This applies only to the weakest and most feeble of men who are of little value in battle. This type of training is an essential part of discipline, but is never to be mistaken for the whole. So he kind of goes one way and then the other. It's like, yeah, sometimes you're just going to have to,

you have to make people do what you want to do because they're afraid of you or they're afraid of the consequences. If you have to lead through fear, if your team is doing something only because they're afraid of the consequences, that's a losing battle. It's a losing war, right? You might win the battle, but you're not going to win the war. Continuing on, the type of training mentioned in the preceding paragraph, which implies a certain harshness and hardness has its value.

Material comforts are now so insidious that there is some danger that this is the old-fashioned idea of discipline and it will be allowed to disappear. This must not happen. Soldiers will not win battles if their training has not been hard. That's a little lesson for your entire life. Soldiers will not win battles if their training has not been hard. The softening influences of civilian life must be replaced by the exacting demands of military training

Soldiers must forget the pleasures of peace and concentrate on the realities of war Isn't it funny that this this could be written right now and some of the little you know training is getting easier and all that It's like that we always think that got to keep it hard You always got to you always got to fight against the slippery slope of things getting easier In brief discipline seeks to conquer fear by welding men into a cohesive whole united by obedience to orders yeah no I'm not with you money it aims to create a body strong enough to carry each of its members through dangers and difficulties which they themselves would be unable to face alone in this way it promotes comradeship which is the third factor of morale

okay I much more important in my opinion than the blind obedience of orders morale so we're talking about Comradeship now morale cannot be good unless men have come Unless men come to have affection for each other a fellow feeling must grow up which will result in a spirit of comradeship an army is made up of human beings So that however much a leader may inspire his men however perfect the discipline Moral will be hard and unsympathetic If the warmth of comradeship is not added to it War the hard business is not necessary

necessarily a grim one men must laugh and joke together must enjoy each other's company and must get fun out of life even in times of danger check the spirit of comradeship must begin at the section or tank crew level and work its way upward to army level the importance of encouraging men to band together and identify themselves with their units has already been emphasized this will be necessary to make considerable efforts to further this spirit of comradeship. Junior commanders must plan to create this spirit in the same way they plan to train their men and fire their weapons. Men must not be moved from unit to unit or even from platoon to platoon unless there's good reason for doing it. And these reasons must be made clear to the men.

A man who has served among friends in the same platoon for a long time will be helped by them to face the trials of battle. He will feel around him his reserves of courage and purpose upon which he can draw. There will be a feeling of solidarity, and out of this feeling there will grow up a determination to advance together and defend together and even die together. In wartime, with such heavy casualties and constant reinforcements, it is always found that this comradeship can be built up most quickly by ensuring that new arrivals as reinforcements belong to the part of Britain from which the unit is originally drawn and to which it belongs

in peacetime. So that's what you've got to have your team joined together and then he's saying look if you've got new reinforcements coming in and they came from Derbyshire and there's a unit from Derbyshire send them to go work with the guys from Derbyshire they already have a connection. Comradeship is and you know who didn't do that the Soviets the Soviet Union was famous for not doing that because they didn't want there to be a really strong unity in the in the forces because then that Unity might turn into You know a movement So they didn't want that They would they would notoriously split everyone up You would never be with a guy from your hometown

You know they'd split everyone up This is the opposite of that Comradeship is based on affection and trust Which between them produce an atmosphere of mutual Goodwill and feeling of interdependence Men learn to have faith in each other and to depend on each other According to the abilities of each In a tank crew gun team or infantry

section, men do not work well together merely because they are disciplined and well led. They do so because they trust each other and because they are bound together by an affection which is never expressed in words, but shown itself in deeds. Commeranship is a great antidote to fear because it gives a man friends. A man must make friends in his platoon, friends whom he respects and admires. In battle, these friends will prevent him from feeling lonely. A man alone is a man who will find it hard to stand up to the dangers of the line. A man alone is a man afraid. If he has friends, he will derive strength from their presence,

and he will be anxious not to let them down in battle. He will seek to do his fair share of all tasks, which come to his crew or section. He will feel ashamed if he cannot assist his friends in their duties and maintain his place with them in the line. All men have a, within them a touch of streak of generosity and unselfishness, a touch of nobility. And these qualities will be brought out in the attitude to their friends. Friendship causes men to give their best.

So, you know, I guess we started talking about this a little bit in the beginning. If you're not, if you don't want to be a part of the team, you are going to miss this whole section. of what makes a unit have high morale. If we're not friends, that hurts our morale. So they have these things and the Rangers do a really good job of it. You can peer someone out. Meaning we as peers can look at someone that we don't like or that doesn't wanna be a part of the team

and we can get rid of them. So it's called peering someone out. We don't really, There's not an official system in the SEAL team. It's like you can do it, but it's like it's a little bit case by case. So in the in Ranger school and forgive me Rangers if I don't get this 100% right, but basically you have to rank your you have to rank everyone in your patrol. So you got 20 guys in your patrol.

You rank this guy was number one meaning performance wise. This guy was number one. This guy was number 20. If you're number 20 like multiple times in a row, three times a row or something, they kick you out. So what we have to do is we have to work together. as a team and say, okay, you know what? It's my turn to be the last guy. So put me as number 20.

Okay, Jockler, if you put you as 20, okay, cool. Next time it's going to be Echo. Next time it's going to be Bill. Next time it's going to be Mike. So that way, if we all want to stay, what we have to do is we have to coordinate work together to rank ourselves accordingly. So it's real easy. If none of us like Echo, it's real easy just to put Echo at the bottom, three patrols

in the row, then you're gone. In the basic seal training, we don't really have a system like that. It takes a little bit more, you have to be a little bit more proactive because it's not just an existing thing. We did have my SEAL training class. We had one guy that we basically peered out. Like my officers, you know, got feedback from everyone and said this guys shouldn't be here.

And they went up to the instructors and the instructors got rid of them. So it happens, but it doesn't happen in quite that official way. And the only reason, it wasn't performance. It was like, hey, this guy doesn't, for lack of a better word, and this doesn't sound real good in this politically correct world that we live in now,

you get someone that doesn't fit in. Yeah. Right. Like this guy just doesn't fit in. Cool. We're going to get rid of them. Because we don't want to have someone on the team that's not, that doesn't want to be part of the team. Yeah.

And believe me, this happens very seldom. Like, you've got to be a real, you got to fit in in a real big, not fit in a real big way to stand out with a crowd of seals. There's all kinds of different guys. Yeah. So can, I heard, I don't know, it seems like anyway that you could do that, like, Like in a roommate situation, it'd be less official. Like you're talking about a system, what, that it's sort of official? Like you said, hey, you would do like.

Yeah, like you say, hey, let's just, wait, what's the ranking based on on the Ranger thing? Well, they're saying, hey, Echo did a great job on this patrol. I rank him as the number one guy on this patrol. Jocko was number 16, so he's number 16. And Bill was horrible and he's number 20. But you do that every patrol you go on. So let's say that we weren't going to phase anybody out or peer anyone out. Then what we would do is we would just rotate.

Hey, I'm, I'm the bottom guy this time. Okay, echo the bottom. But you wouldn't really perform at the bottom necessarily? No, no, no, no. Oh, just on the record. You have to force rank everyone. Okay. So you rank, hey, we're just going to rotate who's the bottom one.

So none of us get eliminated. Gotcha. And then, yeah. Yeah, it's weird. I thought what you meant by peer someone out, which kind of might even be the same thing in a way, where let's say you have three roommates or let's say four roommates. Okay. And they're like, hey, like, this guy's not fitting in any.

He's, I don't know. He snores or, I don't know. whatever and you know how roommates were friends typically right yeah when you room with someone and then after a while you just sort of like not invite that one friend all the time you sort of peer him out peer them out like yeah like just in more than anything i mean in a nutshell basically you just make his experience with the group just a little less enjoyable yeah so he's sort of on his own just sort phase himself out he's gonna find some new friends yeah you know just slowly just naturally kind of thing but eventually you're just like hey bro we're peering you out you know you don't

tell them you don't tell them I mean I guess you could break you know when you break up with your friend you ever had to do that or you know be there I'm a dude no no no no breaking up with people it's an expression no it's an expression like where you know how you ever had a friend who's like they want to be your friend and everything but man being friends with this person is just kind of too much you ever you read that first of all I don't have a lot of people that want to be friends with me and I don't have a lot of long list anyways so I really haven't had that happen right I don't know, like if your friend, every time you go somewhere with him,

he gets in like arguments with people or he gets in fights or like, I don't know. You know, the kind of guy is just too much to be a friend with and you got to break up with him or he just calls you too much. Bro, leave me alone. You know, like that kind of friend. Anyway, sometimes you got to do that.

I don't have a lot of, this is making me feel real lonely over here. I don't have anyone that does it. Maybe you're the one who got phased out. I got phased out big time. I got peered out across the board over the last. 47 years. Fazed out.

Could be, you're too intense. You're too intense with your 40s. Let's not invite Jocko. He's going to be all fired up for this. Yeah, we can't drink around him because that's weird how people think they can't drink around you. Maybe some people do,

but no, no, I'm pretty mellow about it, you know? I'm not trying to get peered out over here. Oh, you're too later, Eddie, brad,

you're peered out. But there's some people, I think, feel internally guilty. Right? Yeah. Like, so they don't want me.

around because they know like oh well I want to get I want to do horrible things tonight to my body yeah right yeah and if I have jocco here I'm gonna feel guilty about it yeah yeah might be judged or that's what it is I think they think always judging yeah always judging it's funny it's funny it's funny because I'm I'm I'm saying that sarcastically I like I really don't care yeah I don't think you've even indicated that you cared like not even in a little yeah a little way it's funny yeah And actually, I think I don't like to indicate because then the person might tighten their track up a little bit. Then they're going to be, like, tougher to deal with on the mats of justice. Yeah.

All right. See, that's the whole plan. I mean, I'm bringing donuts, bro. Yeah, yeah, have some of these. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, yes, I think it's a good system that the Rangers have. And like I said, we have an unofficial methodology.

And certainly once you get it to a SEAL team, there's the same thing can happen, right? you get a guy that just doesn't quote unquote fit in. And that's a real thing. And like I said, it's a real broad spectrum. Like there's very few people that I know, that I know or that I saw got peered out. I don't think I ever, I think we might have peered out one guy in like my second or third platoon. We actually had a guy that was just like, yeah, you really just don't belong here. And, you know, the idea was like, hey, we need to.

And what will happen is the dude will probably get some safety violations, which, Which is by the way, one of the reasons why a guy is going to get peered out, like, hey, this guy just doesn't, can't keep it together in the house. You know what I mean? That's not good. We don't want him here. So, yeah, you don't want it. Because, and I think it's because, and it's not like anyone, not like anyone says, well, you know, comradeship is a real part of morale. And morale is very important on the battlefield.

Never said that. But you feel it in an opportunity. You got some guy that just doesn't fit in. Yeah. Yeah. I can see how they could be, especially with you guys in the teams where it's, it's. It matters. It matters like way more.

You know, it's not like you're, you know, at the, in my case, as a mover. You know, you're going to little cruise, you know. And it's like, well, it's just way less at stake, you know, being like a cohesive team. There seems to be a bit less at stake. A little bit different. But, yeah, so it makes sense, man. Totally does. Yeah, it's.

And again, I don't want people freaking out. But I will say this. What was it? I was going to college when I was going to college. out of the single teams for a little while and this one of my professors was you know like look you know it must be so nice to just be going to college and I'm like no it's hell I want to go back to the teams immediately right now like this minute because in in this professor's mind you know she's thinking oh gosh think of how wonderful this must be here and being educated and

learning and expanding your brain and you don't have to do all that hard work military stuff with guns and meanwhile I'm literally the exact opposite I don't want to do anything at college and I want to go back to the teams immediately and I said no I if I could go back right now I would immediately give me an F in every class if they let me go back and still be in the teams I'd do it because what is it he likes so much about it and I said well everyone's kind of like me you know you're hanging around with a bunch of guys that are kind of like you not exact but like they have the same mindset they laugh at the same jokes there's they have the you know that it's like just a bunch of similar type of people which of course that's who you want to hang around with you want to hang around

with you don't know the opposite of you now you're not hanging around with like hey this person's nothing or this person's different than me now i don't want to hear their input no actually i like getting different people's input but there's a nice kind of solid base of like hey you're a team guy, I'm a team guy, and we kind of have the same kind of just broad life perspective. Yeah. And that's nice to have.

And it doesn't really matter where you came from. Because in the teams, you get all kinds of people from all kinds of different backgrounds, right? You get guys from Hawaii. You get guys from the ghetto. You get guys from the farm. You get guys from the city. You get guys from everywhere.

And yet all those differences are like surface differences, but the core dude is pretty much like, this dude you know what I mean like we're all pretty similar doesn't matter what you know kind of how you grew up or what race you are or what religion you are it's like oh yeah I just like you're always a team guy so we we kind of get it I kind of I know what you're thinking yeah and you know what I'm thinking and that's kind of cool to to to be around and that is part of comradeship and that is part of what makes a unit tight and when there's a person that doesn't then that's that's problematic it's not just problematic it's

problematic for the team. Yeah. It starts to hurt morale. Yeah, it's weird and not weird, but in football, it's the same thing. But it's not the whole team, though. People gather in positions, like the wide receiver in my case. All the wide receivers, same deal. They all come from different places.

Hawaii guys, mainland guys, different parts. You know, such different people. But for some reason, they all just sort of gravitate towards each other. You know, when you go to the cafeteria or wherever you go, like, in football camp, you see you can tell a lot by where people sit there's the quarterbacks yeah yeah the quarterbacks all sit over there and it's so interesting given this concept that you're talking about where you would think most of the people from a certain area maybe a certain race would gather together and there is some of that for sure but for the most part it's it sorts it sorts itself out by position

that's interesting like you see sort of the linemen kind of go over there and you know the receivers are kind of like over here. Yeah. And it doesn't matter like they're where they come from or their little background or whatever because there's this underlying interest that they all sort of share.

There's a core, like a core part of their personality that's the same. And that's, I guess, the thing here. Got that core part of your personality that's the same. And some fundamental characteristics of the good team guy.

You know, like there's a fundamental like, hey, this guy's going to work hard. Hey, this guy's going to take care of his gear he's going to take care of the platoon gear he's going to not going to not looking out for himself that's a it's like a real it's a real problem like if you're a yeah you don't want to be that guy and so if you have those you're you know then it doesn't really matter what you're like whatever you layer on top of that it's fine yeah it's fine no one cares part of the game no one cares check next section the fourth factor self-respect no man can be said to possess

morale if the quality of self-respect is lacking soldiers must be encouraged to respect themselves at all times under all conditions this quality is involved with those of discipline and comradeship to such an extent that it is perhaps wrong and certainly difficult to separate them but no man will have high morale who does not possess a greater a quality greater and wider than comradeship and discipline Self-respect implies a determination to maintain personal standards of behavior. A man who respects himself will neither allow himself to become slovenly nor his quarters dirty. Right. This is this is the root of, you know, the stereotypical adult saying to the kid,

don't you have any self-respect? Right. How could you walk around looking? like that how could you wear that how could you grow your hair like that how could you you know like all those things how could you live in this pig sty right it's all all those things boil down to self-respect even in action he will take care to see that his personal appearance suffers as little as possible Monty's a bit of a fashionista I think representing that beret that's Monty it is the job of the NCO to maintain this aspect

of discipline. It is the function of the officer to encourage and instill self-respect. So once again, who's instilling self-respect? It's the leaders. And how do they do that? It's the little things that we just talked about. I believe you instill self-respect by doing things you just talked about, which is giving people responsibility, letting them figure out jobs themselves, letting them do things.

Here's how Monty wants to do it. The officer must ruthlessly insist on maintenance of personal standards. And then he says this. This is why you got to, you know, Monty's coming off hard, but here we go. At the same time, however, he must let his men understand that he appreciates and respects them as human beings. Soldiers must be treated with humanity and controlled by discipline. So there's a balance in his dichotomy here, right?

Treat them good, but control them by discipline, but treat them good. So he's got a dichotomy here. If the officer does this, he will gain the respect of his men and at the same time he gives them self-respect. efficiency is inseparable from self-respect the sense of a good job well done of hard tasks successfully accomplished is indispensable to good morale men must take pride in their ability to carry out all jobs allotted to them they must feel that they are good soldiers and therefore a value to other people that's a good little good little thing to sprinkle in especially kids

right yeah like making have you ever been around kids that have been told you know that They're worthless their whole lives. Yeah. Like that's not, it's a horrible sight. And what do they not have? They don't have self-respect. Men can be persuaded of this fact by being trusted.

A man who feels he is trusted will feel that he's efficient and will, he will at once begin to respect myself. This is like critical. Leaders, I mean, subordinates, kids, either one. When you start giving them that trust, like your daughter's not old enough. But eventually you're going to be saying, hey, you're going to stay at home. I'm going to be gone for about a half. half an hour going to the store right and she's gonna like stand up a little straighter

yeah because it's like all of a sudden that's a big deal right that's a big deal and that same thing happens with your subordinates hey listen I'm gonna be gone for a little bit hold down the fort yeah you got this they stand up a little bit straighter their self-respect increases when you give them trust a man who feels he's entrusted a man who feel he's entrusted will feel that he is efficient and he will at once begin to respect himself. He will have confidence in his own ability to fight.

Men who are trusted gain self confidence. It is the job of the officer to convince his men that he trust them. So once again, it's a leadership scenario. That's so true. I remember learning to drive my dad. That's a big one. Oh yeah. So he

first he taught, we learned on a manual transmission. Are there any manual transmissions nowadays? Rare. Hardly, huh? And it was a truck, too. Which is just harder. I mean, in my experience, the one that we learned on wasn't that easy to get.

And so we learned how to just do it, you know, just use the manual transmission for a second, third, fourth. But still not necessarily driving, like, on the streets. So the first time he told me to drive, like, on the streets, I knew how to do the shift and all that. He just jumped in the passenger seat, and he put, you know, put me. And he said, take us there. And we're going to, you know, we're at the store or whatever. And he was just like, take us there. It wasn't the kind of like, okay, now what you want to do is do all, you know, he was nothing.

He just said straight up, take us there. And I felt that. I felt that like, yeah, I'm the driver now, you know, and I went. And yeah, a little bit nerve wracking. But man, way more confident than I would have been if you would have been like, okay, be sure check your mirrors. Check your mirrors. Yeah. Okay.

Easy. You know, like that kind of stuff. None of that. He just said, take us there. Yeah. Boom. I took us there. It was good.

BC. I liked it. Yeah. Dropping knowledge even that's then. Check. Self respect is a quality which will develop inevitably if the three essential factors already considered are present. It is true to say that without self-respect, good morale is impossible.

It is equally true to say that if the standards of leadership, discipline, and comradeship are high, the quality of self-respect will also be high. So this all boils down to leadership. Additional factor, devotion to a cause. It is impossible to make a, is impossible to make devotion to a cause either a basic or contributory factor to good morale. It must stand by itself between these two categories.

It is important to clear the mind of some misconceptions connected with the influence of a cause in shaping morale. Men do not fight primarily for a cause. They do not have, They do not advance over dangerous ground in pursuit of an ideal. They do not now fight as crusaders may have done long ago. They fight because they are ordered to do so and they do it well or badly according to the strength of various factors which have already been considered

So yeah, this is one that I'm again. I'm not really I'm not really down to down with Monty on this thing I think if you've got troops that are no idea why they're they're fighting and they're not fighting for a cause you're gonna have a breakdown you know you're gonna have a breakdown in your units as a matter of fact he kind of said that he said it earlier he said if you don't have remember this if you don't have respect for the plan and this and the higher leadership well that's what a cause is a cause is like we have a plan we have we are higher leadership who's that that's the leaders of our country that's the highest leadership so if you don't believe in that, then you're going to have a problem.

And then he says this, and this again, this is a little arrogance coming from, coming from Monty. This is not so in the case of leaders. Some men fight, some fight for the same reason as the men, the more intelligent because they have, because they at heart believe in what they fight for. Such leaders are usually the best in the army and wield the greatest influence. Thus, numerically, cause is of little importance,

but it is a powerful factor, because the leaders are greatly influenced by it. So he's basically saying, listen, you know, the senior leaders have an understanding of the cause. And so, whereas the men are just fighting because they're ordered to, he literally says that. Like, come on, bro. That's not, that doesn't work.

That doesn't work in America. And you know, you talk, like, look at that letter I read from the beginning. That's kind of why I wanted to read that letter as a contradiction to this. And as an, I mean, what he says in that letter is like, look, I'm not fighting for the great of England. He says that. But he's fighting for the cause. The cause is security for his family.

Mm-hmm. Right. So people are thinking about that. You don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't say I'm willing to die just because some random dude ordered me to do it. No, you have to have a connection to something greater than that. Otherwise, you're, you're suicidal, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Remember saving private Ryan? Yes. There's a movie. Yeah, he's Tom Hanks, right? He was like, I don't know who Ryan. You know, they got to save Private Ryan, obviously. And they're at this part where they're kind of questioning things, you know, guys, you know, morale is breaking down. And, you know, things happen. And what he says in part of his speech was like, hey, I don't know who Private Ryan is. I don't know him.

So basically questioning that particular cause. But he said, but if going. and rescuing him earns me the right to get back to my family, then that's my mission. So same deal. Same deal is the letter right there. He had his cause. Oh yeah.

And that was the one he was fighting for. Yeah. Back to the book. Nevertheless, nothing which has been stated here must be interpreted as minimizing the influence of cause on those officers and men who are moved by it. So then he brings it back a little bit. For these few,

cause will be a sustaining and strengthening factor and maybe of greater importance. to them than any of the other four factors. There are times when a few men will be gripped by a cause and will perform astonishing deeds of heroism to further it. Such men do not require the ordinary bonds of discipline which unite and strengthen others. Their devotion to the cause is in itself all sufficient. Nor do they require the same kind of leader that has been described.

They themselves will all be leaders. Such men may be properly described as guerrilla or irregular fighters, fanatically. devoted to a political religious or national ideal they must not be confused with conscript soldiers to whom this paper applies so there you go I mean in America you know we have all volunteer yeah but I'm telling you even it doesn't matter if you've got it you people have to understand there has to be some kind of a deeper cause as to what you're doing or else you're gonna have real problems sure you can order people if they're constricts and you can punish them if they don't do you

what you're gonna tell if they don't do what you tell them to do you can punish them that is a way but that is not going to be a successful way you know that is not going to be the ideal way yeah and by the way if you're not using the ideal way you may win but if you're going against somebody that is using the ideal way that has a cause that they believe in and on top of that cause they have all these other things that the the group that has a real cause will win every single time yeah now there's some other contributing to factors that he brings up here one is success this is a real obvious one success high morale is is possible in defeat but not during a long period of defeat on such

occasions confidence in leaders will never be wane and the first basis will be undermined success will aid good morale by creating confidence in the leader and in the command this factor requires no enlargement next one is regimental tradition the regimental spirit can be a powerful factor in making for a good morale. The more a soldier feels himself to be identified with his regiment, the higher will be his morale if the four essential conditions have been fulfilled. It must be realized, however, that not only that there can be a good morale without strong regimental feelings, but that regiments with great tradition do not necessarily always produce good battalions.

So the tradition, which there's some units that have awesome traditions. And, you know, being with some of those units overseas, I mean, the first of the 506 obviously comes to, comes to light. And their tradition, the 101st Airborne tradition was so thick. That pride was in every soldier, that war, that ace. of spades that that spade on their gear it was like yeah there's pride there there's tradition but he's saying it's not going to replace these other things but it is a factor that you can use another factor again contributory factor personal happiness a man should be happy in the sense

that his personal life should be in order nothing weakens a man more than trouble at home It encourages him to think of home and all that it implies when he should be occupied with the enemy. It turns his mind to peace and his desire to live at the moment when it is necessary for him to steal himself to face the possibility of death. He must never be allowed to forget that it is his job to fight. The function is to kill the enemy and in doing so he must expose himself to danger. Anything which weakens his will to fight and expose himself must. Be considered to lower his morale a soldier is only a family man after he is a soldier He must look forward at the enemy and not back towards home

Some realism of that definitely I think it can go either way I think there's times where people can be driven To success by their family back home and by thinking of their family but it can definitely become a distraction Yeah It seems like situation. Yeah, it seems like when there's a lot of risk involved, it'll be a distraction. Maybe. Yeah. I think it depends on the individual.

I think it depends on the circumstances. Yeah. I think what may be better to look, whether it's a distraction or not, is like what's going on at home. That's what's more important. If there's disruption at home, that's a problem. Yeah. Right. If you've got a guy that's overseas and there's problems in the family life, that's going to hurt.

Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. Because, like, you know, guys at work sometimes, anyway. Sometimes. You know, something bad can be going on at home, and they'll use work to sort of cover it up, like, blank, in their mind. You know, they'll be like, hey, that, like, again, sorry for another movie reference. But there's this movie called True Lies, Arnold Shortson.

I've seen that movie. He goes, yeah. So Arnold. I haven't seen it enough times. It came out 20 years ago to be pulling a quote. from it and a storyline, but hey, let's go with it. It's kind of beside the point of this one, but he goes, you know,

Arnold finds out that his wife is, or thinks that his wife's cheating on him with the guy. And then the partner, Tom Arnold, who goes, he's all, let's just focus on work. That's what I always do.

When my life turns to dog shit, I just focus on work, you know? Well, but, and the point is like some people, that's how, you know, something's going wrong at home. They'll be like, you know, I'm just focused on work.

Screw that. Forget about it. You know, I'm immersed myself. Yeah, because it's nice. You can control work. Yes. You might not be able to control your relationship the way you think you should be able to. Yeah.

So continuing on, all soldiers do not have morale affected by home troubles. Some men thrive on on happiness and fight all the more fiercely because they hold a bitter, a secret bitterness within them. Such men are the minority. That's the person you just talked about, right? Hey, I'm just going to go work harder. But such men are the minority, but they are a large minority. They are a reminder that happiness cannot by itself produce good morale. Next is administration of man's ordinary day-to-day life must be well organized.

Thus, hard conditions imposed on him in training to inculcate discipline, do not rule out the desirability of good living quarters. And in the line, a soldier's morale will be much improved if the administrative arrangements are good, and if he is assured of proper conditions with a reasonable amount of leisure and comfort when he leaves the front. Leisure day. Where are you at? Where you at the Ovan? And then he says this, but here a warning must be given. There is a danger today of welfare being considered as an end in itself and not as a means to an end.

one of the means of maintaining morale. Welfare by itself will not produce good morale because it is essentially soft. And it has already been stated that morale cannot be good unless it contains a quality of hardness. Man, you got to remember that, right? You got to remember that. You're not ever going to have good morale unless there's like an element of hardness to it. And continuing on, hardship and privation are the school of the good soldier. Idleness and luxury are his enemies.

Men will endure great hardships if they know why and are convinced of the necessity. Blood, toil, tears, and sweat is not for nothing. One of the great rallying calls of the English race. Goring's cry, guns before butter expressed the same truth. If men believe in the need, hardships are in themselves stimulant to morale. But the opposite is also true. Let there be any suggestion that butter can come before guns and the men will at once choose butter. If this happens, there will be no morale in this sense of the definition.

Then we get propaganda. The uplifting effect of modern propaganda on a soldier is perhaps a new development. A brand's morale is raised immensely by the feeling that his efforts are appreciated and applauded not only by his comrades and his officers, but also the world at large. You've got to get that propaganda working for you. I've had a couple companies I've been working with lately, and one of them was being assaulted by its competitors, and it had a better problem. product.

Its product was doing well, but they were getting assaulted. And they were getting assaulted, by the way, with lies. Like the competitors are just making stuff up, right? Just making stuff up, putting that word out there, putting out their rumors unofficially. And, you know, here's the thing. The CEO was kind of, didn't, wasn't quite sure what to do. And I said, you have the most powerful tool in your arsenal. It's the truth, but you got to weaponize that truth.

You got to weaponize it. You got to turn it into a weapon that you can use to crush the lies. Because if you're doing great things and you're not telling anyone, you're not putting out any propaganda. Well, then guess what? No one's going to know about it. You just lost your most valuable weapon, which is the truth. If you're doing good things and your product is better and you can prove that it's better and people know that it's better, but you're not telling anyone, you're going, it doesn't matter. You have to weaponize that truth.

and get it out there. So that's what propaganda is. Now we are moving into the conclusion right here. In brief, high morale has been defined as the quality which makes men endure and show courage in times of fatigue and danger. The cultivation of morale depends upon the training of leaders, the inculcation of discipline, the encouragement of comradeship,

and the infusing of self-respect. The leaders must have a belief in their cause and they must pay attention to numerous contributory factors of considerable but secondary importance. And here's how he closes out. Man is still the first weapon of war. His training is the most important consideration in the fashioning of a fighting army. All modern science is directed toward his assistance, but on his efforts depend the outcome of the battle. the morale of the soldier is the most important single factor in war.

So there he is saying it again. The morale of the soldier is the most important single factor in war. And as I said, I will argue with that. Because as far as I'm concerned, without question, leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield. And I'm actually, like I said, I'm thinking, I'm right. So no offense to Monty, but I think I'm right because his fact is, to review them leadership that's the number one factor well that's leadership

discipline where does that come from discipline comes from leadership comradeship where does that come from it comes from good leadership self-respect where does that come from and this I'm not I'm not saying that's what Monty saying Monty said that discipline comes from leadership Monty said that comradeship comes from leadership Monty said that self-respect comes from leadership so as far as as I'm concerned no offense Monty as far as I'm concerned leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield but that being said let there be no doubt that morale without question is a necessity and a requirement for victory and I will add this

morale is important extremely important not only for a team not only for a military unit or a business or any kind of organization made up of people but morale is also a important for individuals, for us day to day. How is your morale? Where's your morale at? Think about how you approach the day when your morale is good. Think about how you go into the day. Just like you're going into attack. If you're going to attack the enemy and your morale is high, you're going to attack with vigor and you're probably going to be successful. If you go in to attack the enemy and your morale is low, you're going to attack without vigor, without enthusiasm. You're going to attack. And you're probably going to fail. Well, what about you as a person? If your morale is low, guess what? If you roll into the day, you roll into your mission and your morale is low, likely you are going to fail. So then the question is, how do we increase our personal, our individual morale? And I think it's the same way we improve team morale. We improve our personal morale with,

Discipline with hardship and with privation and with efficiency and with emotional control and by facing our fears and of course Most important is leadership leadership leading yourself and not allowing This leadership vacuum in your head right when I was putting seals through training broken the day if there was chaos broke out there was sometimes where no leader would step up and take charge and that would create a leadership It was hard to tell it was happening because no one would be saying anything. It would just be silence and you didn't hear anything and so it's hard to recognize that all of a sudden wait a second there's no one's leading you don't recognize it because it's not happening It's like seeing something that's not there. It's not there so you don't think about it well when no one's leading you take sometimes it can be hard to notice that And I'd call that a leadership vacuum and I teach these young seals like hey when that happens you need to step up Well the same thing can happen in your head you get this leadership vacuum in your head when you're not leading you're going to to start to slide down the path of least resistance you're going to you're going to slip on down

that slippery slope you're going to walk away from discipline you're going to not impose hardship and and privation on yourself you're not going to push yourself and your morale is going to go down as well and if your morale fails well becomes very easy for you to fail so don't allow that don't allow your morale to fail lift up your morale increase your morale by inflicting yourself with discipline by doing hard things by controlling your emotions by controlling yourself and by leading yourself on the path of discipline which as we know leads to freedom i forgot for tonight so echoed Charles.

Yes. Speaking of controlling ourselves and leading ourselves down the path. I know you've got some, let's say some guideposts on the path, some markers on the path. Some signals pointing in the right direction to get us down the path. Yeah, so I was thinking about this today. I'm watching my daughter's performance, little singing performance. Check. This morning.

So for whatever reason, good, fine. It was a big group of people. What grade? No, what grade did you give her when she was done? I didn't give a grade. How's she going to know how she's going to improve her performance? I'll give her a grade when she gets home. Check, okay, good.

What you're going to give her for a grade? But probably F for sure, because it's a long story. That's beside the point, by the way. Wow. An F? Yeah, probably. What'd she do? Yeah, you know, just, it was.

There were some things that happened post-performance. What? Tears? That I didn't approve of the reason for them happening. Okay. Tell me a little bit more about what happened. Anyway, so we'll go over that later.

So the point is, I'm thinking, like, what is the path? This is probably the first time I've ever wanted you to go into detail of the story. It doesn't matter. Did she freak out?

Was she shy? Just give us a little debrief. Okay. So she was, yeah. So she was shy. She was performing good fine like you know the whole class though you know like what do you call it an assembly Okay yeah and so we're talking a hundred kids on stage or is it just one class and there's only 25 kids on stage one class

25 or 30 and it's not really a stage it's like okay it's in the cross yard you know Okay check so it's in a real official scenario yeah so she go yeah they go they perform good as far as performance goes fine You know she remembers it's the song she performed it in front of us yep you know be the night before and the night before that All good. Preparation. But then they had to sit down. And then the assembly sort of went on. So they're sitting down and I look over and I see her crying, which I didn't.

I was confused, but I know my daughter. Like she's like, she's softy like that. My fault. I know. So she's looking back on me. She's looking back to me all salty. And I'm like, I'm not concerned because I know something didn't go wrong. Something's happening that she just doesn't like.

Like she's tired of sitting there or something like that. So she's looking back in me. I'm just like, you know, I don't give it that much attention. Later on, I find out as she's walking to her class, because after assembly, they go to their class. And she's like, oh, yeah, I didn't like how long the assembly was going on. That's what she said to me. That's why she was crying.

That's why she gets an ass. Well, and here's the thing. She shouldn't feel that strongly about it. You know? There's something else going on, to be honest with you, bro. She's like a softy. She's like when things don't go her way in certain ways, you know, and she's uncomfortable or whatever.

So if I were you, how'd break it down like this? I wouldn't just give her an F across the board. I would give her, like I'd break out maybe some different categories. I'd give her like an A for singing or maybe a B. You know what I mean? Because I'm not hitting every note, right? Maybe a B minus or whatever. And then give her, you know, presence.

This is how I used to grade my kids when they would do stuff like this. I'd give them presence. I'd give them attitude. I'd give them clarity, enunciation. Like, there's a bunch of things you can break it down. And you don't want to give her five o's across the board, obviously, because she didn't know 5-0 performer. Not an age 6 don't exist.

Nope. Not by hard. Standard. Right. So, but then you say, listen, by the way, all your performance, which you have a, you know, you got a 3.8 on. That's your average score. Post performance behavior

Had to give you a zero Yeah Tears Yeah weakness Don't ever let these other kids know that you've been you should be having the attitude I could stand out here. I could sit out here all day and this is simply bring it Check. All right So there you go so as this is unfolding

Oh this more to the story. Okay, well that wasn't the point. Yeah, yeah, that was just the setting Yeah, okay, but I was just thinking like you know What is the what is the path like what is that? Is it just the stuff that jaco does and now we do it? No, it's not that not at all actually. Granted, some of the stuff you do in my opinion is essential quintessential. Yeah, it's like ideal right. Okay, that's what I think that's my

I'm trying. I'm missing by a lot my you know coming in a solid two two most Well, yeah, but that's just you being hard on the scale, on the, on the, on yourself. Put it this way. The path is something specific, but more than that, I just realized, not realized, but more like consciously thought of what's not the path. That's what, that's important. So it's like, okay, if you're doing jiu-jitsu, are you not on the path? Not necessarily.

You have to be doing or neglecting very specific things to not be on the path. Like, if you don't care about what you're eating, like you're just like, what? ever feels sounds good tonight. That's the total standard in which you base your meals on. You're probably not on the path. That's a big indicator. That's one of the factors. It's an area where you need to tighten things up.

Yes. We know you're not performing optimally if you're not eating correctly. Yeah. So we'll just say that element is considered not on the path. Check. So that's just one example of many. You know, like if you just straight up don't exercise at all. Yeah.

You know, and I'm not, and some people have active lifestyles in general and they don't consider it, quote unquote, exercise. I get it, but then that's different or whatever. But if you're like inactive, you're sedentary. Yeah, that's bad. That quality is not on the path. True. See what I'm saying? So basically what is not on the path is if you have most of the elements of your life is not on the path.

You'll know. Also, there's also a really broad thing because you could, you don't, even if you're, even if you're, even if you're, even if you're, even if you're, Trying, right? That's what the path is, right? The path is like, hey, I'm trying. Now I guess, yeah, I guess that's a little bit strong. Because I could say I'm trying to work out, but I just didn't make it again today. You know what?

You're not on the path. That's a good point. Yes. But you don't have to be, you know, doing the nine-hour workout. Yeah. With a six-hour jiu-jitsu session afterwards. No. Like, oh, you only had an hour.

You only had 30 minutes to train today. Cool. Got it done quick. did it pretty quick where I did it 20 minutes today. That's what I got. I got flu in late last night. Woke up this morning. I had another call.

So I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to hammer this thing out. I had that window closing too. You know, the window's like, well, maybe I'll just put it. Oh, yeah. It's real. You know, no, you can't let the window close. That was a really good concept.

We talked about the jiu-jitsu window. Yes. It happens with working out too, right? Even though that's mostly self-imposed. It is mostly self-imposed for working out, but it does happen. If you have work to do, legitimate work to do, you have meetings, you have calls, and you're like, well, you know, I took that one call or I woke up this morning and, oh, well, you know, I got that call and wait a second. I, you know, I'm brushing my teeth and wait a second. I'm not just going to check my email.

Oh, now the window. It's all. No, the window just shut. Now I'm going to have to work out later, which will never happen. Yeah. Don't let the window shut. Yeah. Just, yeah, jump through it, man.

Jump through the window. Jumping. But, hey, man. And to recognize what the path isn't is just important as recognizing what the path is. Because if you're like, hey, are you trying to like, I don't know, what do people say? Like, are you trying to improve yourself or whatever? Most people will say yes. Yeah.

They'll be like, oh, yeah, look at all the things. But it's like you kind of know, you know, like it's different. You just sort of know. Like if you're doing jiu-jitsu, you're sort of on the path with that alone, maybe not fully, but that is a legitimate element. So when you do J-Jitsu, if you're new or not new, whatever, you're going to need a ghee. Yep. What gear are we getting? I think we all know origin, because they are the best keys.

So how are they the best geese? Okay, so if you just put one on, you'll sort of know. But here's an indicator. Won't go too deep into it. But Coach Adam, the same coach in Way of the Warrior Kid, by the way, there's a real coach Adam. So Coach Adam puts on his rift gee, inside out, top. Yeah. The geet top, inside out.

I think he thought it was correct. Yeah. And that was indicative of just, because it shows the stitching. You know, when you have it on the inside, it shows the stitching. And I looked at it.

I was like, dang, that looks kind of cool right there. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because Pete was saying he took the genes, origin genes,

which are now out. And he was, he turned to me, he said, hey, if you want to know what the quality of these genes turns him in,

he turned him inside out. And he's like, look at what they were going from the inside. So now you have Adam who sees the, he puts his gear on inside out because the quality is so high

that you can't even tell he thought that was the correct way to do it you thought that was cracking meanwhile the logo is all backwards and stuff so you know he really should have known that but you know hey teach their own and it looked good either way so that's where we're at with origin we got clothing including jeans geese t-shirts sweatshirts uh other stuff and then we got supplements as well yeah supplements are good joint warfare i think i'm talking to gregg train right one of our training partners and he has an AC joint situation two sides by the way and I'm telling him if you put together the joint warfare with the super krill oil disciplined every single day that thing will heal straight up faster measurably faster

than just you know look at my knee situation which man I'm a believer now you're now a believer yeah I'm I'm increased my beliefs of my own personal kind of like Wolverine healing powers, which I joked about before, even though it wasn't really joking. You know you joke about something, but you kind of mean it. Yeah.

I feel real lucky, man. Real lucky because my knee was straight up. Oh, yeah. Injured and it's not healed yet, but dang, if it hasn't progressed a lot. Yeah. Yeah, and it's not like, you know,

when you're like 18 years old, maybe a lighter weight person or something, it's like you tend to sort of heal faster. Yeah. Let's face it, you know, you're old school. And you're not very small. Old school or old?

Yeah. You're old school, man. And, you know, what are you walking around at 2.30, 235? I mean, I'm just saying that's not an easy racket for the knees all the time. Meanwhile, you're just boom, boom, boom, bouncing back that fast. That's saying a lot. Yeah. Well, joint warfare, krill oil, get some of that.

Also the discipline and the discipline go. I had a scenario the other day. That's actually yesterday. Sure. Crazy flight situation, thunderstorms, rerouting, landing, buses, trains is ridiculous. Yeah. Anyways, I'm going into an interview on two hours of sleep. Oh, dang.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is just after, you know, Peter Attia is telling me about all the horrible, like, cognitive problems that are going to give you caused. Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, I took, I took, like, I took like two disciplines. go right when I woke up. I was like, all right, I got the interview and like, and then I got there and I did a little bit of, you know,

playing around or not playing around, but they're like prepping for the interview. And then I took like three more. So I took five discipline goes. Rocked it. I went to know, I was like, a what? You got a question? Let me tell you. So,

so anyways, try that discipline, go out. If you need something to focus your cognitive skills. Skills for sure. You can get some of that. Or you can get the discipline to go. You can get the discipline powder. Yeah. Should we have just called that pre-jitsu powder?

Yeah. That's sorting itself out to me that. Yeah. It kind of seems like something where you are going to jujitsu. You know you're going to need cognitive skills. And you know you're going to need some physical skills or some physical enhancements. Sure.

So you just jump on a couple scoops of discipline, maybe three, if you need to. If you want to get nuts. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. That's part of my. Every day now I'm pulling the Dave Burke every day. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's I was look. There's one thing that's good about it. It doesn't have some crazy amount of caffeine in it right. You don't want to be all amped up on caffeine when you take something. Oh, this stuff that makes me feel really good. Well, you just took a big hit of caffeine and you're going to get what's that word. You're going to get a tolerance to it and then it's not going to have the effect that you want. Discipline has like 15 milligrams of caffeine in it per scoop. That's not that much. So what you feel when you feel like the. You're not really feeling you're feeling the other ingredients in there. So don't fool yourself and to getting all amped up on caffeine, you know, or otherwise you might as well go do meth or cocaine Or just drink some coffee, whichever, you know, I mean, I don't know what the meth, you know, that's kind of off the whole game.

No, I'm just kidding, children, don't do meth or cocaine, don't do drugs, period. However, if you want to do something that gives you sort of a addiction, try some strawberry mulk, which is now out for adults. Absolutely delicious if you want some extra protein in your body so you can get bigger stronger Faster yeah true and you and or or if you just want dessert yeah if you just want some dessert Have some strawberry milk or some peanut butter milk or some vanilla or dark chocolate There you go and jocco white tea if you're into tea or even if you're not into tea really and never was really into tea I'm not, you know, against it. But, you know, it's one of those things.

So the OG original, Jocko, white tea, pomegranate. Yeah. Right? Not a pomegranate chai. No. No. White tea. Jocko decides to make his own white tea with side effects, deadlifting 8,000 pounds.

All right, I'll roll with it. It's actually pretty good. So, yeah, get that. It is available on Jocco store now, by the way, and Amazon. And, you know, just go on the Internet. basically and get it. So yeah, that's a good one. Speaking of Jocko store,

Jocko does have a store. It's called Jocko store, just like this is called Jocko podcast. Jocco store. So jocco store.com, that's where it is, online store. This is where you can get rash guards

for your jiu-jitsu to supplement your geese from origin. Also, t-shirts. Or if you're doing no ghee. Correct. You can wear a rash card. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Or if you're doing ring workouts using your rings if you're doing dips if you're doing ring pushups if you're doing muscle ups you're the what is it the what would Greg chain say like the outside of your arm he's got he was always got the medical terms right right your radial yeah whatever you'll get all like chafed up yeah when you're doing a bunch of muscle ups or a bunch of ring dips or whatever if you wear rash guard you won't oh jacu going for comfort over here speaking of comfort if you like even so i got into riding bike a little bit not totally but If you were a rash guard riding bike, like cycling, it's like surprisingly, I'm going to say it's surprisingly comfortable.

Functional. It's functional. So, you know, there's a lot of other things we do with our rash guards. And actually, I forgot to say this. We forgot to say this for a while. It does add another 19% performance. And literally everything you do. Literally.

Yeah. Scientifically proven. Yeah. 100%. Also, T-shirts, if you want to represent discipline. equals freedom, good, any of the layers that we've come to exploit. Is that the correct term, terminology? Maybe.

Exploite the layers. Anyway, explore the layers. Explore for sure that. Sometimes you exploit the layers, which, you know, is questionable behavior. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, wherever you subscribe to a podcast. I wouldn't think that you would listen to this whole podcast and not subscribe to it, but maybe you did. Don't do that.

Subscribe to it. I didn't leave a review so I can read your funny review about getting after it and whatnot. You also were your kid podcast.

Speaking of subscribing. Yeah. So that's not just for the kids. That's for everybody. If you want just simple, straight up, simple answers to your questions that your kids

happen to beat you to the punch and asking, my daughter has a question for Uncle Jake, by the way. Oh, nice. Nonetheless, you,

even if you're not a kid, will like this Warrior Kid podcast. Don't forget check out that Warrior Kid that's making soap, Aiden, IrishoaksRanch.com making trooper soap, making jaco soap.

You can use that soap so that you can stay clean. Yeah, stay clean. Also for the video version of this podcast, if you want to watch it, rather than just listen to it, we do have a YouTube channel. Also, excerpts on there. If you want to, you know, share some

elements of the podcast that are good takeaways individually. Share them with your friends. It's not like, hey, I saw, I got a cool idea for you. Here's a four-hour podcast. Watch the whole thing. Just listen to you. You'll catch it. I forget where it is, but, you know, it's in there somewhere.

Yeah, they're not going to listen to that on a whim. Yeah. So you can just, you know, so we send them a little hitter. Oh, that's what we should have called them. Little video hitters. Sure. There you go. I like that better than McNuggets.

No, Brad. You're the one who made up Jocco McNuggets. It doesn't mean I can't change my mind and come up with something better. A little video hitter. Right, there it is. Make that video hitter. You need to make more of those hitters.

Yes, sir. There you go. But nonetheless, if you are interested in any video things, hitters. Hitters in regards to this podcast. It's probably an acquired situation. It just sounds cooler when Theo says it.

Yeah, I know. I know. So I'm like, I'm used to you saying it. So that's cool. But me saying I'm not ready yet. Mm-hmm. I'll get there. Also, psychological warfare that has a bunch of little short audio hitters that you can listen to.

If you need to power through a moment of weakness, it's on iTunes, Google Play, or other MP3 platforms. Flipsidecanvas.com, my brother Dakota Meyer, he started a company. Why? Because he's a badass and he wanted to start a company. The company that he started is making things to hang on your wall. art will call it with layers little art with layers the art has layers little art hitters that you can put up on your wall I can tell I frustrated you with that no man keep it going it's good and you get those you can get them from fun beside canvas dot com makes all kinds of cool stuff one that says good one that says all your

excuses are lies one that says time is running out one that says discipline equals freedom yeah so You can get those. Flipsidecanvus.com. Support my brother, Dakota Meyer. Also, when you're expanding your home gym, your home exercise situation,

really, go to Onet. So go Onet.com slash jocco. You can get your kettlebells. Good kettlebells. Artistic kettlebells. A lot of art floating around here today. Oh, yeah, big time.

The primal bells. They got the Star Wars ones now. Anyway, got that one. I think I'm making another one, man. The kettle bells have been a huge part. of my recent workouts.

That's good. Oh yeah, building that functional strength. Unless you can get rings there as well. Some immunity stuff. I say that because I've been on that recently. You see little kids running around with colds. You know,

running noses. Yeah. When your kid's going to school, your kid is just a host for disease to bring back into your house. A little lab. Especially when they're crying. Snifling.

I know, man. I know, man. F minus. Anyway. So, yeah, I've been on that's the Shroom Tech immune. It's a good one. Anyway, they got a lot of good stuff on there.

So yeah, on it.com slash jocco. We got some books. I have a new book coming out. It is called Way of the Warrior Kid 3, Where There's a Will. It is available for pre-order right now. The publishing company needs to know how many of these books to print.

The publishing company is me. Sure. So if you want to have this book, please pre-order it ASAP so I know how many copies to print. The name of the book is Way of the Warrior Kid 3, and I'm actually putting that on the cover. Now, when I made Way of the Warrior Kid 2, I said to the publisher, hey, can we put Way of the Warrior Kid 2 on the cover? And they said, no, we can't do that. And I said, well, why not?

And they said, well, if people know it's the second in the series and they don't have the first, they won't buy it. So we can't put that on the cover. to hurt sales. So I said, oh, I thought to myself, oh, we're just trying to confuse people. So they will buy more. I'm not trying to confuse anybody here. Way of the Warrior Kid, three on the cover.

It's the third book in the series. John Bozak, the artist, thinks it's the best book in the series. Lessons to be learned. Interesting. There's also Way the Warrior Kid 2, which is called Mark's Mission, and there's the original way of the warrior kid. and then on top of that for your children and possibly for you too

we got Mikey and the Dragons you can order that one now for your younger kids also the discipline equals freedom field manual already talked about that one the audio of that is on iTunes not on audible so it's on MP3 and then extreme ownership and dichotomy leadership

which I wrote with my brother Laif Babin and we talk about leadership from our perspective going from the military combat taking those lessons learned bringing them back and now turning them over to the civilian sector and on top of that we also have a leadership consultancy called echelon front where we solve problems through leadership if you want us to come to your company and help you with your leadership go to echelonfront.com if you want someone on my team to come and speak to your company including me don't reach

out to a speakers bureau Don't Google jaco speaking and click on the first advertisement that pops up. Go to echelonfront.com, which eschonfront.com will pop up as well, but you might not recognize that. So come straight to the source, echelonfront.com, if you need leadership help at your company team or organization. We've also got the muster. May 23rd and 24th in Chicago, sold out. September 19th and 20th in Denver, getting to be sold out.

Sydney, Australia, December 4th and 5th, looking forward to all those. Checkextreamownership.com if you want to get in the mix at the muster. If you can't come to the muster, but you want to get in the mix, go to eFonline.com. This is interactive leadership training. It is based on what we do at the muster, on getting granular on the principles that are in the book, extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership and everything I talk about on this podcast, it's in their concise, clear ways so people can understand it. And then on top of that, it's interactive. So you get put into leadership situations. You have to learn to make decisions.

It's a great program. And if you want to check that out, it's eFonline.com. And then last, we've got EF Overwatch, which is our, basically, it's our manning company where we will take, individuals from special operations and the combat aviation communities and put them into leadership positions inside of companies that need leadership inside their organization. So if you're looking for leadership, which you are, because every problem that you have in a company or on a team is because of leadership. So if you need help with your leadership, go to eFoverwatch.com and fill out the information. And if you want to cruise hard with us more, we're on the inner webs, Twitter, Instagram, and the Facebook.

The what? The Facebook. You know that the Facebook is the original name. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know that. Justin Timberlake was like, hey, don't, sorry, not Justin Timberlake. Sean Parker. Anyway, you ever seen the movie, it shows.

I have not seen it. What was the reason? He said drop the the just Facebook who said that cleaner Sean Parker the Napster guy Oh, okay played by Justin Timberlake in the movie oh got it got it very good well if you're on those Platforms sure yeah I'm at echo Charles Jock was at Jocco willing on all of them Boom keep it simple like that and Thanks to all of our military folks out there who Keep their morale high

keep their bayonets sharp out there on the line and thanks to the police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret service and all the other first responders thanks to all of you for standing up and facing evil so that we don't have to and to everyone else out there your your your It might be low from time to time. They can happen. Anyone, and it does happen to everyone,

and when it does, start to slip, recognize it, and then remember that you can actually do something about it. Like young Evor Robbery said in that letter, don't grieve, don't cry, don't worry or fret. Surely there's no better way of dying. said than fighting standing up and that is what you do you fight you stand up you impose discipline on your life you face the things that you fear the things that are crushing your morale you face them and you lift up your morale through force of will by leading by going out and getting

after it so until next time this is echo and jaco