Jocko Podcast - 228: Put Pressure on Your Mind, Be Your Own General and Be Your Own Soldiers. MCDP 7, Pt.2 With Dave Berke.

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening 0:35:49 - MCDP 7, Learning Pt.2  2:24:53 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:40:25 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:06:46 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 228 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And also joining us tonight once again is Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. So we only got through the first two sections of the Marine Corps Doctional Learning publication last time

or the doctrinal publication learning last time. So we're going to finish it up today. And I must say that. Since we covered that since I read this for the first time, I've been trying to pay attention to things from a learning perspective Learning things and I've actually talked to both of you about squeezing your brains And we mentioned it on the last podcast and we kind of breezed through it like I think I just said oh yeah, I've been talking to you guys about squeezing your brains kind of breeze through it Didn't really talk about what that actually means. So I wanted to

I wanted to kind of do a little discussion or dive into what does that mean? What does it mean to squeeze your brain? Because it's important. It is so important to put pressure, the pressure, put the pressure on your brain, on your thoughts, on how you're thinking, because that pressure creates heat. and pressure in your mind, therefore, creates energy. It creates ideas. And that is how we learn. That is how we get smarter.

That is how we get better from that pressure. And it ties back into something from the Disciplinar Freedom Field Manual, which is question everything, right? Question everything. no matter where it's coming from, question your own ideas, question other people's ideas, you've got to have that mindset, that kind of rebellious mindset where you're always going to push back against things. And I'm not talking about just being a contrarian where Dave comes up with an idea and I say,

well, what about this? I'm not talking about that. But I am talking about a subconscious dialogue that's happening where that's, I would say, my original form of applying pressure to my mind was. sitting there saying, is there a better way to do that? Is there, I'm not saying I'm going to confront you, but I'm thinking to myself, is there a better way to do that? Am I wrong about it? If I come up with it, am I wrong about this idea? Is the tradition wrong? Is the way, you know, the complaint about, oh, this is how we all do it? What do you? Constantly saying, well, just because we do it

that way, is that tradition wrong, is that standard wrong? And in order to answer those questions, In order to answer those questions, it puts pressure on your brain. It puts pressure on your mind. Because oftentimes the ideas that you're questioning, the ideas that you're questioning the standards that you're questioning, the tradition that you're questioning are things that have been around for a while. They've survived some level of pressure. So to think that you're going to come up with some new way is it's a little bit ridiculous.

But at the same time, You have to do it. You have to do it to free your mind, which I used to post that on a pretty regular, but free your mind. But in order to free your mind, you actually have to add weight. You have to add, you have to put a force on top of your mind and your ideas in order to, in order to squeeze out results in order to free it. And when you do that, then that's when you improve.

And I'm not talking about the kind of, hey, you know, constant self-improvement, right? I'm not talking about actually getting better. I'm talking about actual answers to real answers to questions. Actual improved understanding of the world. Improved understanding of the world. So I've been, you and I've been talking about this. Dave.

And this is just kind of happening. And I think I sensed a light switch flip or whatever you want to call it. EF Online, you were coming up with sort of the discussion point for the day. And so EF Online is we got a bunch of people coming on. They're interacting with us. It's a Zoom meeting, which I think the whole world is now familiar with Zoom meeting. So we've expanded our online. presence and were really putting a lot of time and effort behind EF online.

And so we're all we've been running these three times a week online community brigade of people. And so you were you were you were kind of leading the discussion on this particular one. And I think the question that spurned you to squeeze your brain a little bit was how do you adapt to a changing world? And you went through this story about when you were in the Marine Corps and when you were Top Gun instructor and what the Marine Corps was doing and what Top Gun was doing was preparing being prepared to fight the Meg 29 the Meg 29 f29 f-29 which is an aircraft that is correct me if I'm wrong the fulcrum is not as good as our aircraft and not as good as an f-18

yeah 14 probably better than the f-14 so better than the f-14 but not not as good as an f-18 yep and that's what you when you went to Top Gun as a student that's That's what they were telling you, okay, this is what you need to be prepared to fight. The MiG-29. That's right. An aircraft, that's not quite as good as yours. Not quite as good as your F-18. That's what they were telling you.

So then you leave, am I getting this right? You leave Top Gun School. And when you come back now to be the instructor, the senior instructor eventually, the Russians had a new aircraft. Yeah, that's right. That was the SU-27 flanker, which has. Actually, a little side note, that happens to be my favorite bird. I like, have you ever seen that bird?

No. It looks like a, it looks like a cobra that's getting ready to strike. Yeah. It's just an awesome looking aircraft. Yeah. And it was, now this aircraft is better than an F-18. Yeah. Were you in for the F-14s at all?

Yes. So I- Did they phase out F-14s? So the last F-14 class at Top Gun was probably 2004 is when we phased them out. They probably flew a little bit in the fleet, But I was there as an instructor during the last Tomcat class. Correct me if I'm wrong. In my mind, the F, the Tomcat has always been the muscle car of the fighter jets. Yeah, it's like an icon.

Yeah, the iconic muscle machine, yeah, for sure. Meaning I've got a lot of power. I can go fast. Yep. I'm not going to corner a great, right? Yeah, it's more of a brute force machine, really fast, really cool airplane. but a little bit dated by the time I was there at Topka. So you're used to the F-18.

Now the SU-27 is now a real thing. Yeah. And you come back as an instructor, and the people, the thing that you all were preparing to fight was still the mig 29. And you, I guess, looked at this and said, a not a good plan.

There's something better. We should be prepared to fight the worst-case scenario, which for us is the SU-27. Yeah. That's right. And it wasn't even just the worst case scenario. It was just the reality that this thing was being proliferated. So the Russians weren't just building it.

They were selling it. So it was going other places too. So you could have, well, we're not going to go to war with the Russians. Like, okay, maybe not. Maybe we're not going to go to the war with the Russians. But this airplane's going to find itself in places that we wouldn't even know. And if we showed up to meet that thing and we were unprepared, we're going to get rolled. And that was a big deal.

We're going to get rolled. So you saw this new world, basically. and you adapted to the new threat, you adapted to this new reality. And that was the lesson that you were trying to share on EF Online, which was, hey, when you get a new reality, which by the way,

this is all in reference to COVID-19, what's the new reality? And we've got every different spectrum of business on there. So it means different things to different people. And the bottom line is the lesson was you get ahead of the new reality. You don't wait for it. You get ahead of it.

And when we got off the, call or whatever and I and I talked to you about it and I said something like hey that was a that was a solid lesson like did you squeeze your brain to get that out and you said something like yeah I did I squeezed my brain I thought about you know what is this situation and how can I explain it better and when you do that you understand better like you Dave Burke when you when you when you put that thread out there and you you you carried us through that story you understood things better and that's why when I get all excited about understanding the world in a better way that's an

example of how even you this is something that you know it's something that you actually did as a human being and yet until you recognize it from that other perspective until you scream you squeeze your brain and put pressure on your brain you don't get that you the benefit of it, the real benefit, the next level of benefit. And then when you start to tie these threads to other things, other things that don't always appear to be related like COVID-19 and Meg 29s, but they are related, then you win. So every time you put pressure on your mind, you force yourself to think better and get better.

And this happened to me the other day. again and it happens to me I'll be honest with it actually happens to me a decent amount because I'm always got well again I'm always trying to put that pressure on there I'm always squeezing it and it was another EF online scenario and what's good about EF online is look when people send me a question over social media it's cool and we try and answer the question but you can't get any context around it on EF online you're getting the context the person there In this case, in particular case, it was a guy named Ben.

And he was talking about being on the path. And at the time, you know, it was something along these lines. He's been furloughed. He's not in charge of anyone right now. He's stuck at home. It'd be a good time to get in shape. But he's having trouble doing it, right? So I went down the path of, again, because of the way this story was unfolding from him,

he's normally at work. He's normally in charge of people. So we're talking about it from a leadership perspective. And I said something like hey, you are not in charge of anyone else right now, but you're your own CEO Which is something we hear all the time, right? You're your own CEO You're your own Supreme Commander You're your own general and he got it. He said thanks and that was cool And then I kept thinking about it because there was some like thing in my brain where it makes sense

But it's not that easy. It's actually not that easy. It's actually not that easy and Because here's the deal. You are your own general of your life. You're going to come up with a plan. You're going to make decisions. You're going to give orders, right? That's what's going to happen. Here's the part that I was kind of missing is that, yes, you're your own general.

You're your own commander on the battlefield, but you are also the soldiers. You are also the troops. You are. And we actually know factually that troops don't just blindly follow orders. That doesn't happen. We, hey, look, we would like that to be happening, right? Well, let me rephrase that. That's the scenario that people think would be totally ideal, that I bark orders and everyone listens to me.

But we know, we know that that doesn't work. It doesn't work in the military. It doesn't work in business. It doesn't work with your kids. It doesn't work. You have to get people to a certain point. They have to be trained. They have to be educated.

They have to be disciplined. They have to know why they're doing what they're doing. And if you don't explain these things to them, then they're not going to do what they're supposed to do, right? They're not going to do what they're supposed to do. If you don't build that relationship, if you don't have that unifying mission, it's not going to work.

So if you're too close to your feelings, all kinds of parallels, If you're too close to your feelings, right? If you're reacting to your feelings like, oh, I really don't feel like doing this. Then your feeling is going to start to drive the way you act. And we don't necessarily want that all the time. Just like a leader, if a leader is too close to his troops and the troops are pushing back, he says, oh, we don't want to do that. Okay.

You guys don't feel, okay. You see what I'm saying? It's like a perfect, it's a perfect parallel. At the same time, if you just bark orders at your troops and they don't know why they're doing what they're doing, then they're not going to commit to doing it in any meaningful way. And just like troops, you know, if I bar, if Dave, if you're a grunt and I bark orders at you, you go, yes, sir, you go do it. I do that to you the next day, you go do it.

I do that to you the next day, all of a sudden, you're not, you're lagging. I do that you for a month, you're not invested anymore. Same thing. So, so when you say to yourself, I'm just going to get up, I'm going to get up and do it. That's cool. It might work for a day. work for two days it might work for three days and sometimes I absolutely use that use that type of leadership with myself where I'm you know hey look there's no time to debate right now you need to

get up and go do your workout but if you try and make that the way that the only way that you're leading yourself functionally over time it's going to fall short if you push your troops too hard they're going to break right you can actually push yourself so hard that you you you break You can over train. If you're too easy on your troops, you can get soft. Same thing with the way you happens with yourself. The better you try. This is an important one.

The better you train your troops, the better they respond. So once my troops are used to, hey, this is how I do it. This is why I do it. Once they're used to that, they respond better. They know what it is I want from them. They want to give me that response. just like when you follow a routine every day and you know what you're supposed to do

and your troop, your mental soldiers know what they're supposed to do, they start to respond better. You know, when you realize when your mental troops know that, hey, jocco's gonna work out. It's gonna happen. And we could either stand around and procrastinate

or we could just suck it up and go get it done. They go, you know what? Hey, this is going that way. So the better you train your mental troops the better you're going to get a response from them the better the better you take care of your mental troops the more they're going to take care of you as long as you don't coddle them as long as you don't spoil them because once again they're going to be soft and they're going to be worthless so you are leading yourself that's the thing you are leading yourself you are in charge but you are also the troops

that have to do the work. And if you understand it that way, then you can actually start to pay attention between the relationship that you have with you as the leader and you as the troops and the connection between where you are and where it is you want to go. Because the general might want to secure a beachhead,

but that's meaningless. Without the troops taking action and actually making it happen. So the idea is, plans of the generals have to be executed by the chain of command. And they might do it out of fear for a minute, but they're not going to do it for a long period of time. They will do it out of honor. They will do it out of pride. They will do it if they understand the long-term goal. They will do it if the goal of the general is aligned with the goals of the troops.

If they're not aligned, we're not going to get what we want. So whether you're talking about the chain of command inside your own head or the chain of command in the military or the chain of command of business, leadership is leadership is leadership. And we cannot lead if we don't learn. And we can't learn if we don't put pressure on our minds to make them figure things out. learning. And with that, let's go back to the book. You ever seen the movie Goodfellas? Yes. So there's a scene, you ever seen the movie Goodfellas? I have. So you know, okay, so there's a scene where, uh, was Joe Pesci, I think, his girl just came from the airport,

smuggled some diamonds in her hair. Remember that part? It's a long movie for sure. And she's like, okay, let's get these diamonds out and she's doing this and she's rustling on. And they're all falling out. And she's like, yep, that's it, you know, right? And they're like, he's like, hey, you sure you don't got any, but there got to be more in there. There has to be. And she's like, this is it. This is it. So he's like, oh, there's no.

And he essentially squeezes her little hairdo and shuffles them and a few more diamonds come out. Oh, right? Oh, look at this guy with the metaphor. It's the same thing. Squeeze out those. You do a little bit of a brain. And remember how we were, because we were talking about this before where you're, essentially when you told me about the brain squeeze was essentially, essentially, a rebuttal to the idea that

if it's just not coming to me hey it's not it's time you know it'll come in time or not at all right like it then it's not meant to be almost kind of thing right that was your rebuttal because you thought that that's essentially what I was saying I wasn't saying that but that's what you thought I was saying and and that makes sense especially when you go about not especially but when you go back

to the Goodfellas analogy where you know in her mind yeah hey that's it's all we got you know what I'm going to do rip shave my head no right that's all I got you know and Joe Bechie was like oh man we're gonna do that little brain squeeze we're gonna get a few more diamonds

out of you that's uh that's that's sensible yes sir you get one credit for today I think I understood we're in the black already yeah well you talk to me about that

I forget you know you're talking about making videos which is your creative pursuit on the earth sure one of them and you were telling me that sometimes ah you know this this idea is a little bit of an idea whatever

and then it fades and you forget about it or you don't execute on it and I was telling you that in fact the little ideas just aren't going to grow to be outstanding without some pressure on them about putting a little squeeze on them you're not going to get those diamonds out you know otherwise they're going to hang out and you know I guess maybe part of me when I'm kind of thinking back on that whole scenario or a scenario scenarios like it where I'm kind of like or I was with the philosophy of like, well, hey, look, if there's some diamonds in there, hey, they're going to come out, you know, let's let them come out naturally so they can kind of, you know,

through their own volition, kind of manifest themselves kind of thing, you know? And I think after thinking about it, it's like, man, I don't know if that's the best way. I'm reviewing my entire life right now in my head, all of it as fast as I can. And I'm going to say that I think if I didn't put pressure on my head, I would be zero. My score would be zero. There would be zero diamonds on the table. Zero. Not that I'm saying I got diamonds on the table,

but at least there's some pieces of coal that have come out and they can, whatever. We can scratch some black marks on a page or whatever. Like at least it's something. It's bet. It's not nothing. Yes, sir. Right?

So we're going to have to do it. But this perspective of learning, and one of the things that I realized that I never thought about before, When they talk about learning, as we covered on the last podcast, they're talking about if I see the enemy do something that was effective, I learned. I've never thought about learning from that perspective before in my life. So this is a new development. But now I just took that idea and started thinking about how there's a lot of things I've learned along the way. and I was trying to pull the thread and see what the source of that was and a lot of it boiled back down to it like asking questions of everything that I see.

And again, I'm not talking about being a contrarian because contrarians, they have their time in place and I'm sure sometimes I might be a little bit. Actually, I don't. I actually don't think that. I don't think I'm a contrarian. I think I will, if there's an idea that is contrary to what someone is saying and I would like to explore whether it's right. or not, I will bring it up all day long. But I won't bring up an idea just to kind of be different.

For the sake of doing it. Yeah. I've worked for people like that. Yeah, yeah. It's like part of their personality. I work from one in particular, and it was just super annoying. You know, and I just have to be like, especially because he was a senior guy. And so his little contrarian statements would would send people in directions that I wished we were not going

because I knew that they were not going to prove, they weren't going to, provide any fruit on the other side. Definitely no diamonds were growing out. The brain squeeze also, it does like secondary stuff too, where let's say you're trying to squeeze your brain, right? I need this idea to kind of fulfill this last element of this comprehensive idea that I want to put out.

I need this one little element and I'm squeezing my brain, right? No diamonds yet, but other stuff is coming out. Getting some collateral. Maybe some, you know, maybe a Ruby over here or what, you call those blue ones, the sapphire, whatever, maybe over there. I don't need that right now, but that came out. Maybe I'll save that one for later. Maybe those will be part of a future idea.

You see what I'm saying? So boom, you got all these jewels essentially and then finally, let's say the diamond doesn't come out. Let's say straight up doesn't come out. You got all those rubies and stuff. If you didn't do that brain squeeze, you would A, have no diamond anyway without those other jewels. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah. I'm taking a like a sub-com. kind of note to myself or or I'm putting myself on subconscious notice because like you and I are sitting here just throwing around that we're just producing diamonds and it's so just not true you know but I it's a metaphor yes sir producing an idea which may or may not have value but the the thing is it doesn't exist unless you put some pressure on your on your mind And it's so, just like working out, right? You're not going to get stronger if you don't put some pressure on you. You're not going to get better at Jiu-Suzoo unless you get some pressure put on you.

It doesn't happen. So you have to put pressure on your mind. The thing is you can so easily go through life right now without putting any pressure on your mind at all. You can go through life right now. And I guess when I'm talking about my, you can be a 36-year-old, a 42-year-old, a 19-year-old, and put no pressure on your brain

and just resort to the modules of knowledge that you have. And if they don't fit that well, it's cool. Just, you know, put some spackle over it and call it good. All right. Dave, relatively quiet over there. Dude, I'm listening, man. That was pretty legit.

And, yeah, squeezing your brain, you and I talked about that for a while. And that particular case was kind of cool because I didn't know that I was going to be, leading that, you know, taking point on the initial conversation. But a couple days prior after we talked about it, I started thinking about it. And so Laif calm is like, hey, man, can you take lead on the EF online on Wednesday? I'm like, absolutely, I've already been thinking about it. Which was also a really cool thing that I didn't think about when we were talking about that squeezing your brain.

It makes you feel more prepared about things in life in general. Not that I was trying to produce. I wasn't thinking to produce something for the, for the EF online module. It wasn't why I did it. And then when he asked me, I'm like, yes, absolutely. And then I spent more time creating that, you know, but I'd already been thinking about things to make the connection because we'd been doing that so much.

And the world has been changing for a lot of people. Got it. And I just started spending some time squeezing my brain not to produce something that was for a deliverable or a client request. It wasn't about the outcome. It was about doing it. And it was pretty interesting how those two aligned. And he's like, hey, can you do this?

I'm like, actually, no factor, because I've been thinking about it. So you've been getting kind of broad questions from clients about how do we adapt to what's happening? And you started squeezing your brain to figure out a way to explain that. That would be very clear and would make people connect the process of doing it to a story, which makes it easier to understand. Well, the stories are important. But as we've, as we've been continuing to answer questions, you have to find more ways to convey that message.

Some resonate and some don't as well. And sometimes what's going on a month ago is actually a little bit different than what's going on now. So I wanted to think of more effective ways to be able to communicate things for people to listen to and do something about. And that was what the squeezing of the brain was initially for me

is I have to be better at explaining what I think is going on so people can do a better job dealing with it. And if I just kind of go with the same way I've done it, that little role with the X I've got, I'll just go back to module B company. Like, well, module B doesn't always work for everybody. It's made, it makes me smarter like you described,

but it also makes me more effective for those people. So I was just thinking about it in those terms. And then he's like, hey, man, can you do this? I'm like, yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. And of course, we've been talking about it, and I've been thinking about it a lot in general in a whole bunch of different ways. And it isn't always just like,

what can I do to convey for other people? This is actually more about me and just getting better at thinking about things and getting better at making decisions and getting better at solving. problems because I actually am not as good as I need to be on that, not even close. Yeah, the idea that what you're talking about is learning. That's what we're talking about.

We're talking about learning. And learning can be a passive thing where you're waiting for someone to show you the way or it can be something that you're proactively engaged your brain in. Yeah. And I think this book, I can't remember exactly, this idea of this learning being continuous process, the biggest weight against. me personally, and this is probably true for a lot of folks, continue to do this, is looking back and be like,

I've done pretty well for myself. You know, I'm at this stage in my life. I've accomplished these things. And that's the biggest weight against continuing to do this. And this is what keeps me from getting complacent. It's what keeps me from getting comfortable what I've already done. And we laughed about it the other day. I was telling you, like, I actually forgot I was in the Marine Corps for 23 years.

Because I'm so focused on trying to figure out a whole bunch of other things that I'm not good enough at yet. And it's actually healthy to not rest on the laurels of whatever I did in the past. Because that actually isn't enough to keep me moving forward. And if this actually is continuous, if you want to do this, you have to do this thing all the time, all the time. Don't you find, though, reverse kind of overlaying new information on what happened in the past? Speaking of EF Online, I did that today. I was talking about Mike Sorrelli. we covered up when Mike Sorley was on the podcast.

The first thing I did when Mike Sorrelli checked in a task, he was checking in late, is I gave him a counseling, a written counseling. And I was explaining why I did it. And I actually, like back then, whatever it was 15 years ago or something like that, 15 years ago when I met him, if you would have said, why did you do that?

You know what I said? Because he's checking in, he needs to be squared away, or something like that. I would have given this. But if you would have actually squeezed my brain at the time and said, wait a second. No, Jocko, you're, you're in a leadership position. You take action because, for a reason, tell me why you actually, why did you actually

decide of everyone that's in task unit Brugher, you got this new guy coming in, why is it him that you've decided at this point in time that you want to give him a written counseling the minute he checks in? And I was thinking about it. And I was squeezing my brain and I realized a couple things. You know, number one, he was coming from a task unit that just self-destructed and I didn't want any of that drama. Number two, I wanted him to know that I was serious about what we do. And the last one, the one that I had to squeeze my brain to get to is I didn't know Mike.

And we were going to deploy in a few months. And I needed to know who this guy was. I knew he was a prior Marine. I knew he was a prior recon. I knew who's a prior sniper. but I didn't know him. And so by me taking this young officer date, the minute I meet him and say, yeah, come talk to me.

And I hand him a counseling sheet. And what it said was something along lines of, hey, there's no drama in tasking a bruiser. So don't bring any drama to task you a bruiser. And Mike was like, Roger that. And he signed it. And that moment where I saw his reaction is what this whole thing was really about it was really just a test to see who am I getting is this guy have a big ego is this

guy have a bad attitude is this guy think he's smarter at everybody else is he when I say hey I want you to sign this counseling should he be to say this ridiculous why should I be or is he going to roll his eyes at me or is he going to you know huff and puff or whatever is his ego going to come out that's that's the purpose and I can now look back and see hey totally that that's that's one of the reasons why I did it and that all came from that all came from the fact that's the fact that I was talking to this other woman on EF online and talking about the Willy Wonka freaking example of how you test somebody the end of you ever seen the movie Willy Wonka echo Charles the original no sir I have not that's pathetic the end of the original Willie Wonka he goes

off berserk and tries to get the person to change his mind or to reveal himself as either being a thief and untrustworthy or being trustworthy so I had it Explain that to and so now I could see clearly why I'm doing this. So even though you might say I forget about being the Marine Corps and I get what you're saying like it's a it's a Yeah, I get what you're saying, but the reality is you take what you take this new thing that this new thing that came out of your brain and you overlay it on the past and you go, oh, this makes total sense now. Oh, I totally see why I would do that. And so it's a little reverse engineering. It's actually a lot of reverse engineering, but it also reveals, hey, where did I make mistakes? What did I do wrong? Why did I do? Why did I act this way when I shouldn't have? If you want to take. the things that you've learned and turn them into a little bit of wisdom that might be helpful for you or your kids or the people around you, you have to do what you just described. And that's been the part that I've been wrestling with is I look back and think, I did a lot of things, but I didn't think about why I was doing them nearly enough to be as wise or articulate

as I should be to look back. And so I'm taking those lessons now, and that was just one of a million different things I could think of and think, what were we really doing when we were doing that? And if you don't do that, all it is is an experience. And the thing that matters the most is what you took from that, not just for you, but for the people around you. If you want to create some wisdom from that, you have to do what you just described. And that was one of a million more things I have to do.

And that's part of the reason why I was so fun is I took this cool story from Topkin. I'm like, you know what? I didn't really think about why we were doing that. There was a big thing while we were doing it. And I didn't really think about it. And there is no way I would have thought, could what we were doing now somehow be helpful somewhere else down the line other than. then re-baselining top gun training for this next aircraft.

That's what I thought we were doing. That is not what we were doing. There was so much more going on there. And the squeezing of my brain is trying to create a much larger context for all these things that I did in those 23 years that I looked back. And I'm like, dude, if you want this to be useful, you have to think about it a lot more. Yeah. And it's crazy that when you see the patterns, the pattern recognition over time, you go, yeah, that's what I was doing there. Yep.

And for me, that a lot of that stem from jiu-jitsu. because that's when I started connecting the dots of, oh, you don't want to attack an area that's reinforced on the battlefield, in jiu-jitsu or as a leader. You don't want to attack an area. Okay, I got that. Oh, you need to maneuver. You need to be able to move, right?

Think about that. Just think about that concept in jiu-jitsu. When you get immobilized, you are on the way to defeat. the minute that you can no longer move, you are on your way to defeat. Well, on the battlefield, if you can't maneuver anymore, if you dig in and you can't move, you're on your way to defeat. And mentally, if you close your mind and you stop thinking and seeing other perspectives and keeping an open mind, you are on your way to defeat.

So when you start taking these and seeing them in other areas, it opens your mind up. frees your mind in so many different ways, and that is learning. That's what it is. All right. A little preamble. So chapter three, the learning environment, it is necessary for us to learn from others' mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself. That's Admiral Rickover.

Next one. Our knowledge of circumstances has increased, but our, uncertainty instead of having diminished has only increased. The reason of this is that we do not gain all our experience at once but by degrees. So our determinations continue to be assailed incessantly by fresh experience. And the mind, if we may use the expression, must always be under arms. So new things are going to come about and you got to be, he's using, He's using kind of a different metaphor.

I'm saying keep your mind open. He's like you've got to be ready, ready to adapt. Yeah, keep your mind under pressure. Yeah, under pressure, exactly. Yeah. Next here. Victory does not necessarily go to those who have the largest or most modern forces, but to those who are able to recognize the need to adapt,

generate intelligent decisions, and execute them more quickly than their enemy. Victory does not go to the person who's the biggest and strongest. Echo. Yes, sir. Goes to a person who can adapt, who can make intelligent decisions, and execute them quickly. Skipping ahead, in the progress, in the progression of learning, training should provide Marines with an opposing will to practice against. Through repetitions in a training environment, Marines learn to outthink adversaries and overcome friction prior to encountering these factors during real world operations.

Therefore, Marines must integrate less. learned from current and previous conflicts to adapt their learning environments, methods, assessments, and feedback to reflect evolving threats. Got a lot of questions about this one, right? A lot of questions of how do I get my mind ready to do this? It's easy to sit here and talk about it. Hey, you want to be adaptable. Hey, you want to be able to detach.

You want to be able to handle pressure. How do I actually do that? It's like, oh, you've got to put yourself in those environments. You've got to go against an opposing will. in order to practice. Sparring, right? That is Jiu-Jitsu, yes. You know what?

What is very, well, for you it might not be underrated because you guys seem to know the importance of it or the value, but role play, right? Like role-playing scenarios or whatever? Yes, we do 100% see the value. Right, but role-playing goes deep, though, because I don't want to say I learned it from me, but you really,

you brought it to light the importance and how of how good it works, but just how easy it is to do. So I think like, okay, so I was with my kid, he's three. And I'm going to say, hey, don't like whine or whatever. And don't be like what or don't be what I say. You say, you stand up straight and you say, yes, sir. When I say your name, you say, yes, sir, I don't require him to do that, but it was like a practice to have a certain attitude.

So I'm like, I say, if I say your name, you say, yes sir don't say what don't say like that I say when I say your name say yes sir and he's like okay you know no role player I'd be like okay so next time it happens I expect you to do that kind of thing but I say no no we're gonna go through it let's practice so I do it like two times took like what 30 seconds not even 30 seconds now every single time but I got to say it in a certain tone but still it's in his head now you know because he's sort of been there is you know what I'm saying rather than just some idea on a paper or out of my mouth or whatever yeah the value of role play is equivalent to the value of rolling

in jiu jitzu. Sparring. That's essentially what sparring is. It's role playing. It is role playing. With additional motivations, of course, but yeah. I mean, that's really the story that you led in with is what we were talking about earlier is everything we did at Top Gun was roleplay because nothing was live. You're not fighting against

a real enemy. And our problem is we were role playing against somebody who wasn't good enough to make us better. And like, hey, I'm doing everything right, I'm winning. And that meant I was going to be, but the roleplay, the other person in that role play wasn't role playing a hard enough situation

for us to be effective. And just like Jiu-Jitsu, you want to role play against the best possible opponent. You can. Look, can you overdo that? Yes, you can. If all you do is just get smoked, and I bet you guys at Top Gun as instructors had to back off all the time. All the time. And we had

dials. We dialed by design and we knew what we were doing. But ultimately, there has to be some place where the role play isn't designed just so you can win. The roleplay is designed so you can be challenged correctly. And we're going to talk about adaptation, but the more effective your counterpart is, the more you have to adapt,

the less effective they are, even more you can just stick to your plan and you win. And that's a really bad lesson. It's like, I just keep doing what I'm doing. I'm going to be okay. Yeah, the more effective your opponent is,

the more pressure he puts on your brain. That's right. And the better results you're going to get. Yes, the more you learn. The more you learners are going to shake out of your hair. Yes, sir. Learning environments. There's not a single correct design

for creating the ideal learning environment because each learning objective, marine team and condition will differ. Therefore, Marines modify learning environment to most effectively meet the learners' needs and reflect the conditions that they expect to encounter. Effective learning requires environments that foster flexibility of thought, reasoning, and the creation of the potential solutions to the problems and encourages Marines to explore alternative courses of action. I had to highlight that part because effective learning requires environments that foster flexibility of thought, reasoning,

and the creation of potential. So that, so if at Top Gun, what you did was said, okay, Bill, on this run, you're going to go up, you're going to do this maneuver, this maneuver, this maneuver, this maneuver, this maneuver, this maneuver, and you're going to do them in this required timeline. Like, you could create some false pressure with the required timeline. They would get good at doing this maneuver, this maneuver, this maneuver, and then as soon as a real thing happened and they got a wrench thrown into it or you came out of it, you just annihilate them.

Same thing with Jiu-Jitsu. Or the old school, the kattas. Yes. Right? The kattas in whatever, traditional martial arts, here's the move. You know, there's a downward thrusting blow from your opponent. You do the X block and then a lot, whatever, you do these coordinated moves, which is what, made those type of martial arts when UFC started or when they were doing NHB in in Brazil or Valletudo in Brazil,

Brazil, then the traditional martial arts that had been not learning in this way, not learning for flexibility of thought and reasoning and creation of potential and what they didn't train for that. They trained for a downward frosting whatever. And when they got an upper cut or a leg kick that they didn't know how to, work against, they were dead in the water. Same thing with when I was training the seals. That's how we train the seals.

We're not training, hey, here's the, here's the next maneuver that you're going to do is called a center peel. Now walk down the ravine and when the whistle blows, you guys do a center peel. Actually, that's how we start off, right? That's the beginning. And I'm sure there's maneuvers you guys taught at Topcon. Hey, here's the maneuver. Here's what you do.

Yes. But eventually you've got to figure out what's maneuver you're going to do, when you're going to do it, How long are you going to do it for? What's your next maneuver going to be? Yeah. And what little changes are you going to make to that maneuver in real time? Because it's not going to be the rote application of that maneuver you learned. It's going to be a variation of that.

Try and expand people's brains. Back to the book. An effective learning environment enables Marines to clearly understand the intended war fighting doctrine, concepts, tactics, techniques, procedures, and learning outcomes. It clearly identifies the expectation for the learners. Whether exercising Marines' critical thinking and problem-solving, skills or understanding circumstances where immediate obedience to orders or application of specific basic skills such as good marksmanship are required.

So there's times where you are going to just straight up, say, Roger that, got it. And then there's times where you're going to have to push back or get creative. Additionally, effective learning environments provide opportunities for Marines to execute the required repetitions under different conditions to achieve competency. Have you ever read the book? Outliers? No. Gladwell?

Yes. Yes. So one of the things that, one of the experiments that they go through in that book is they're training two groups of kids to throw a ball into a basket or something like that. Not a basketball, but just a ball into a basket. And there's one group of kids that do it at varying distances, five feet, seven feet, four feet, three feet, eight feet. The other kids are just doing it at six feet every single time.

Test day comes the basket's at six feet Guess who does better echo Charles The six feet people nope really yep It's the people that had the variety the flexibility They trained and they were able to outperform Yeah so that's counterintuitive yeah right we think hey just do the same thing That's why that's why like the multi-sport athlete Has this extra capability and they tend to do well I just watched a a doctor

about different really successful athletes that oftentimes not all the time oftentimes the player that does the best is not the best baseball player is not the player that just played baseball it's the player that played football basketball and baseball and then when he was 14 he focused on baseball but he had all this different athletic training he was he was more capable with his body in Yes. In moving his body through space. With force.

Wow. I had to go deep on that one. Yeah, that's good. First and foremost, the learning environment focuses on the learner's needs, enabling Marines to understand, develop, and retain the necessary knowledge and competencies they will use in combat. Fast forward, although Marines strive for learning efficiencies, improving the learning environment does not necessarily mean making it more efficient. For example, although rope memorization or reciting fath can be very efficient and useful for developing basic knowledge, such as memorizing standing orders, they are not effective methods for all learning.

Effective learning often requires approaching material from different perspectives, applying information in context and explaining how why actions occurred in addition to what occurred. How many times echo Charles, have you heard me say you learn an arm lock from, you know, a different professor and from different angles, it will make your arm lock better. So if Dean Lister teaches you an arm lock, he's gonna show you a couple of details. If I teach it to you, I'm gonna show you a different detail. If Jeffrey Glover teaches it to you,

it's gonna be an even different detail. And each one of those different those different perspectives is gonna make you better. Then if you, when you learn the arm lock from the mount, but then you also learn it from the guard, Both the arm lock from the guard and the arm lock from the mount, both to get better. Yes. Many times, yeah.

Many times better. So, learning from different perspectives. Important tool. Important tool you've got to have. Fast forward. Setting the conditions for success. Recognizing these surfaces and gaps requires awareness, honesty, and judgment because they are often unique. to the individual or the specific unit.

A surface in one learner or unit may be a gap in another. It is incumbent upon leaders, instructors, learners, and their peers to actively seek out these gaps through continuous and aggressive reconnaissance. Learners should not hide gaps in their knowledge. Instead, they should exercise intellectual humility to identify and fill these gaps, in order to improve.

Intellectual humility. I mean, that's huge, man. Yeah. Yes, sir. That is not easy to do. To infront of your peers, especially if you're in charge, if you're like the leader of a team

or an organization or even the instructor, which, you know, my time at Top Gun, anything I can think of where I was the leader of the team, that intellectual humility, we call that a brutally honest self-assessment. Yeah. And what's interesting is that if you think if you're not going to be humble and you're not going to admit your mistakes, you're going to look stronger to your troops, you're completely and utterly wrong. Yeah, that when you say it's not easy to do, if it's not easy to do and you choose subconsciously or consciously, you choose not to do it. Actually, intellectual humility that is.

And you choose to hide your gaps. What's it called? Surfaces and gaps. Gaps. Gaps and knowledge. Yeah. If you choose to hide your gaps in knowledge and you, and that's sort of the way you are, that's just how you get good at hiding the gaps.

And then you become essentially successful at hiding the gaps. Then you get, so that will stunt your learning in that way. I mean, actively yes, but it makes it harder and harder and harder as you go on. Yeah. You know,

because the more you hide your gaps and the more you're committed to hiding the gaps, the more like when you start to get exposed, the more you're going to hide your gaps. Yeah. And also, You can only hide your gaps for so long. I mean, people recognize it. When you don't have that part of it, your game, it's not like people don't know it, man.

Yeah. And I'm thinking Jiu-Jitsu 100% where, you know, those guys where it's like, man, they don't want to roll with certain guys or they don't, you know, like, it's, everyone sees it. Everyone sees what you're doing. Marines mitigate weaknesses by leveraging their strengths to form new understanding and focus on learning to eliminate gaps this can only occur when learners first acknowledge their weaknesses and resolve to leverage their strengths to build meaningful connections should we make a poster that says that you know I mean like just so important and so seemingly

obvious and once again you wonder why someone would have to take something so seemingly obvious and put it into a book it's because even though it's seemingly obvious it's hard for people to do. Next section is called the expeditionary nature of learning. Marines recognize that to be effective war fighters, they must be warrior scholars. They must seize initiative to study the profession of arms whenever and wherever learning opportunities arise. And once again, I like, I like how the Marine Corps manuals just state things as a matter of fact.

If you're a Marine, then you obviously recognize that you need to be a warrior scholar. That's just how it is. Now, it goes into a little subsection here. And it's talking about force-on-force exercises to simulate war's complexity. Force-on-force exercises are purpose-driven learning environments that approximate the complexity of war. When developing such exercises, Marines focus on designs that enhance problem-solving and promote decisions. forcing events. This enables Marines to practice and better understand how to get inside the enemy's decision-making process. There is no substitute for fighting against a competent, realistic thinking,

adaptive enemy, even if that enemy is simulated by other Marines. This practice ensures that challenging learning environments provide a place to practice, develop, experience, allow errors adapt and learn how to fight and win. That's the very premise of Top Gun, needless to say. that is the very premise of Top Gun, that is the very premise of the advanced SEAL training where you are in fact fighting against other SEALs all the time and what's what might be hard for people to grasp and you might even be able to have a more linear exposure to this,

I could watch a young SEAL officer get better at decision-making events. I could watch a young seal get better at being in chaotic situations, taking a step back, detaching, looking around, figuring out what the possibilities are, choosing a course of action, executing it. I could watch someone get better at that. It's hard to, it can be hard to quantify what that, like, what that actually looked like. But I'm telling you, I'm trying to tell you what it looked like. This is why I think you might be able to give a better example.

you'd see a young seal day one going through land warfare training and or Dave his first we'll call it field training exercise or his first immediate action drill in an uncontrolled environment where he doesn't know what the call that he's going to make is patrolling out there boom the targets pop up the the simulators start going off his people react and the first time it happens to him he's totally overwhelmed doesn't know what decision to make. He's shooting his gun. He's looking around but not with any purpose.

No call gets made. Eventually the platoon chief goes, hey, be right or whatever. Then, you know, you debrief him. You go, hey, what were you thinking about when the shooting started? Well, I saw that target out ahead of us. Okay. What else did you see? You didn't see anything else, did you?

No. I didn't see anything else. Okay, cool. Next time, I don't want you to even shoot your gun. Okay. Same thing happens now. At least the debrief, he says, yeah, I kind of saw that. I saw that little piece of terrain we could get by.

That seemed to be a good spot. And then Chief made the call. And they're like, okay. So your eyes opened up a little bit more. And this continues down the road until finally he can actually make a decision on his own in these pressure environments. So you can watch someone get put into the chaos and get better at handling it over time. What did it look like at Top Gun?

Similar? Yeah, very similar. And what I was actually thinking with that is when you're talking about the progression is the end of the progression, you know, we'd go through this multi-plane environment, which is, I think, more replicates what you were doing. Not just the one against one, but multiple friendly aircraft and multiple enemy aircraft. And it appears as if the enemy could give you any number of, an infinite number of possible options to attack us. But we actually didn't do that. We had not quite scripted, but some of it. Formations and basic ways we wanted them to do it and at the beginning of those phases the student leaders would come back and just be like completely overwhelmed and by the end

They they wouldn't be they'd be handling and they would ask hey, what are you doing so what's so much different about these last runs? I've been doing well You're like nothing nothing And it's when they you would see them starting to see what's happening and then their minds are thinking wow they're either dialing it back or they're making and we weren't changing anything But that they were able to see that time was slowing down their just decisions would make more sense and they'd ask the question of hey what change like hey man nothing changed here what you're able to do now is see and so the the parallels there are amazing how similar those two situations are and it also goes to show how much more thinking i have to put into how we were doing the training and where it fits elsewhere other than just making pilots

ready to go to war yeah that i would get asked the same question uh hey thanks we're backing off tonight I'd be like hey thank you for using utilizing decentralized command and letting your subordinate leaders go on the assault yeah go on the attack go on the offense because when you do that my guys are pinned down they can't do anything you know how many guys I had tonight out out fighting you how many four you know how many had last night four you know how many had the night before four no change in the number of opt for you're going against what's what's changing is your ability to lead is your your team your subordinate leaders ability to step up and make things happen, your ability to give good guidance, your ability to make decisions,

your ability for your team members to make good decisions. Because that's the other thing that makes it really drastic is as eight fire team leaders, all of a sudden, you know, when they show up, two of them are kind of proactively making things happen, and then it becomes three, and then it becomes four, and then it becomes five, and then it becomes six out of eight fire team leaders are proactively getting after it. It's going to be hard to contain those. And that's when I would have to step up. I wouldn't back off.

I would step up my trade at guys. I'd be like, okay, hey, we need to bring it. We need four more guys. We need to put somebody over here and we'd try and screw them over. But we wouldn't be able to beat a good task unit with good decentralized command with simple calls, doing cover move. We couldn't, you couldn't beat them. You could not beat that, right?

So you can get better at this stuff. Fast forward a little bit. Marines guard against complacency because they, They know that their adversaries are always watching what the Marines are doing and they are constantly making changes to adapt in an attempt to defeat us. If Marines settle for what they think is good enough, it may result in high casualty rates for the next fight. Marines, just FYI, are not complacent. Next question. A learner-centric model.

This is the next section. is called a learner-centric model. The learner-centric model ensures that content is relevant to learners, actively engaging and challenging Marines in a positive instructional climate. For example, discussions on problem-solving between the learners and leaders and instructors are an effective method to motivate learners and build teams as they analyze information, consider alternatives, and work together to develop a solution to the problem that's posed on them. Now, I am going to venture to guess that some of this section is aimed at an old

philosophy of training, which existed in the military, well, it definitely existed in the SEAL teams, which is, hey, we're going, we're here. You're going to do what we tell you to do. If you don't do exactly what we tell you to do, it's because you're all screwed up and you need to do it the way we showed you, which does not promote this whole idea of thinking and learning and developing. You know, hey, you, you, you entered that room wrong. This is probably one of the first little, the first little things that I noticed as I'm peeling back my career when I was at Team One.

D. And I was, I would be instructing, and I was never the lead instructor, but I'd go out, we'd be doing some close quarter combat training. And someone would do something. Someone would enter a room, right? They enter a room, they go left, they go right, whatever. They make a decision. And some of the instructors, some of the more old school instructors would say something along the lines of, you went left, that was wrong. And I'd say, hey, why did you go left?

And they'd say, well, when I approached the door, I looked at the hinges, I could see which way it was going to open, and I thought it would be the quickest way. And you go, okay, here's the thing. And maybe there's a rebuttal to that. Maybe there's a, hey, listen, you can't presume that because you saw this, that's going to happen. Maybe it's the wrong. But maybe you go, okay, I understand what you were thinking. Here's something else to think about, but here's why it also may have been correct. And I used to say to guys, hey, you did what you did.

You did what you did. Look, you're going to be going into houses you've never been in before. That's the whole goal of this, that you can go into a room. You've never been in before. And you're going to react how you react. We need to understand why you're reacting that way. If there's a better way to do it, let's think about it. But let's not X out what you did as if this was the wrong thing.

By the way, you don't get a second chance in combat. You did you whatever you just did you just did and now you got to deal with it Think about from a leadership standpoint to what actually helps that person more Then you could do something like jaco that was wrong like Roger that do it. Do it the way I told you do it Okay Roger that you actually may do it the way I told you to do it maybe you will maybe you won't maybe you're just stubborn You're gonna not but you're gonna just do what you do but if I actually show you like hey man Hey do can you just explain that to me you you Your willingness to listen to me goes up infinitely.

And then if there is ever time that I go, hey man, you got to do this thing, you're going to get, yeah, Roger that, I'll do that. But just by asking the question and you, and I almost knew what you're going to say was, hey, just tell me why you did that. It doesn't mean that they're still right, but it means that you actually want to understand what they were thinking. And if you understand what they're thinking, it's so much easier to train and work with them that if you're just trying to force them into what you want them to do.

And what's incredible is this section captures that whole thought process. in the title of the section, a learner-centric model. So if you're a trainer or you're an instructor, so often people set up instruction as if it's around me, right? This instruction around me, hey, this is how you do an arm lock, right?

This is how you do it. Watch me and then do what I just did. Instead of, hey, let me see your arm lock. You know who does this, Dean Lister. He'll watch you do something. And when we were at camp up in Maine, people would say, hey, Dean's so awesome. And I'd be like, oh, why?

They'd say, he came from across the room. So the giant mat space, thousands of square feet of mat with a hundred people on it. And they'd say, he came from across the room and said, hey, I see where you're putting your foot on this position. And it'd be better if you'd move it four inches over here to the right. Try it. And then it would work. So it's learner-centric. it's not about dean.

It's actually about the students. And that's a, Dean's very good at that. Yeah, fully. It's fully about the learner. It's a learner-centric model. The Marine Corps, but I think,

I think that there is an old school mentality of instruction in the Marine Corps, possibly. I was never in the Marine Corps, but I did go through multiple training events with the Marine Corps. And I definitely saw some instructor-centric models, you know, and some instruct. And I think actually Dean dealt with some instructor-centric models.

Dean went up to do some combatants training with the Marine Corps, and the instructors were there. And instead of them being like, okay, well, how would you do this, Dean Lister, multiple-time world champion jiu-tit-to? How would you do a rear-naked choke? Instead, they were saying, we do it like this. Yeah. Yeah. And Dean said, okay, try that on me. Guess what?

There's some holes in the plan. Next section, self. And the caveat, haven't thrown it out there yet, no, I'm not reading this whole entire book. We're skipping big chunks. You can get it yourself. It's free. It's online. It's a PDF.

You can download it. The Marine Corps is very generous with their knowledge. Next section, self-directed learning. Like mission tactics, self-directed. learning benefits the leader and instructor by giving the learner more ownership and autonomy, which enables the leader or instructor to focus on learners who need more help or to explore alternate ways to improve the learning environment. The commander, leader, instructor, or mentor agrees to provide the learners with the necessary support and guidance to help them

accomplish their missions without unnecessarily prescribing their actions. Oh, decentralized command we we want you to know how to do this we want you to take ownership of what you learned why because then you're going to be more invested in it just good to go vicarious experience is critical because even the most realistic training experiences in military education fall short of the reality of combat therefore the more vicarious experience that a marine obtains it the less likely that a new experience in combat or otherwise will completely unique yes you cannot simulate everything I used to joke about this at trade it I would say unfortunately I can't just shoot you guys you know and they laugh

because we do everything else I was standing with the commanding officer of a SEAL team as one of his SEAL task units was out in the out in the desert in the imperial valley of California and and there was total mayhem going on and we both have radios on, we're listening to all the calls getting made, there's strobes going off, there's explosions going off, there's communication, okay, we do, two more guys, who are you shooting at? We gotta tell me, just all this is happening.

And we have the perfect view, there's guys on the ridge line, we're looking at like a bowl, a valley, and then guys are up on the ridgelines, and you can see them all from our vantage point. And I just looked at him, I said, there is no better training in the world for guys, in what these guys are. It's so realistic.

It was so crazy. But my point was, even with that, there was things that you can't simulate. There's things that you cannot simulate. And so you have to use these vicarious experiences so that people can learn. Continuing on, Marines can use mental imagery to gain confidence prior to executing a skill,

emphasize key points, in after-actions reviews, examine possible outcomes of decisions and explore options, mental imagery also provides an effective mission rehearsal technique. When using mental imagery, a leader pictures himself or herself in the operation, vividly visualizes different scenarios, including possible branches and sequels, and rehearses the decisions he or she may make given specific conditions and enemy actions. This way, the leader mentally prepares for multiple potential enemy actions. actions and reduces the possibility of surprise when the enemy reacts.

Now, what you're trying to do is close the gap between how hard you can train and what it's really going to be like, right? And you can't, look, you cannot fully get there. You can't fully get there. There's emotions that you cannot trigger unless someone is about, could die right now, right? In Jiu-Jitsu, right? There's, you train for MMA. Not even J-J-J-Zu-M-A.

We can throw punches. We can grapple. We can exhaust them. We can do all these things. But you can't have them walking into the octagon and the UFC. Even if you, and I used to, like, when we used to spar, we used to do it on Saturdays. When there was a crowd here, get the crowd to start commenting. You can do all those things.

But that last little thing, you cannot. simulate you cannot simulate and so you want to build up you want to close that gap as much as possible part of it is through the training part of it is through these vicarious experiences and reading and learning about them but there was a guy on eF online today saying hey I understand that I'm supposed to detach but there comes a point when it starts happening and how do I get ready for that yeah and the thing was I the advice I gave I was a little let's say I was a little nervous about the advice I gave this guy because I was saying, hey, you need to set yourself up for surprise things that you're not ready for.

You actually want to tell, like if I want to get ready to defend myself and not freak out, I need to tell echo, hey man, occasionally I want you to just attack me. And here's where you've got to be careful. If you do that, let's say you go, okay, all right, I got this. And you start tracking on me. And one night at Vaughns, you know, I'm out there getting some picking up some steak. Yep. And you, I get into my car or whatever, I'm getting in my car.

And you spring out of somewhere and start yelling and screaming with a knife in your hand to see how I react. And next thing, you know, you got two gunshots to the head. Right? Yeah. And how am I going to explain that one away, right? It's going to be tough. Yes. So we got to be, we got to do have to put some parameters around it.

Yeah. Because I don't want to shoot you. Yeah. Wait, that's what is that essentially, I mean, obviously not the shooting thing, but that's what that's what your answer was. Well, what I said was, listen, you know, talk to your wife and have your wife throw scenarios at you. And then I had to give the same parameters because if you go, imagine if you said, and I said, listen, you want to practice being in these turbulent situations. You have to be in them as close as you can get. So I said, if you tell your wife that, say, hey, I want you to throw some just crazy stress at me.

When, you know, and don't even do it to me. me today or tomorrow wait like a week till I really don't expect it. But then I told him, hey, you need to put some parameters around us. Right? Because his wife might come home and say, his wife might come home and say, I've decided to leave you. Yeah. And then he goes, good.

I was going to leave you anyways. And all of a sudden we have a total disaster, right? Exactly. So we have to put parameters on it. We have to think through it. But if you really want to get someone used to being under stress, that's what you do. You put them under stress. That's what you do.

And it's hard to do that. If someone knows it's a role play, there's a little thing in the back of their mind. Yeah. But if they don't, hey, you can create a lot of stress on someone. Yeah. If you fail that, like those test scenarios that they spring out at you, if you fail that test, you can do some damage in your relationship. That's what I'm saying. You got to be careful.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too, man. Because what if, yeah, what if your wife says, like essentially a fake, a mock, like, whatever, right? I'm leaving you. at it even like a something small let's say hey you didn't take out that trash or whatever and just with a slight attitude what if I fail the test and I'd be like it's not my job I bring up something that actually does really in real life trigger her a little bit just a little bit for sure she's playing the role but hey what if she can't detach either you know which is normal is insane and now it just escalates from there and there which started to be a test now man relationship damage it's like the

office the fire test with uh with Dwight right right supposed to be a test now we're We got people throwing copy machines out the window. In the military, we grew up with something called, and I assume you got the same thing. We had something called the training timeout. So in a scenario, like they briefed, okay, we're going to go do this training. And if something happens that you exceed a threshold of whatever, you put your hands up in a tee or you put your arm up and say timeout, and then we'll stop the drill. We're just going to like rudimentary training.

You do that. And so kind of always knew in the back of your mind, like, okay, this could get bad. but if it gets too bad, I can stop the training. What would be, sorry, inner, what, what, what would be, like, an example of? My recollection of the first time that I was briefed on the training timeout was during, like, the first week of TBS where we do swim qual. I was like the first thing you do swim call. Yeah, the water is, hey, look, if, you know, there's five instructors, there's 40 dudes in a platoon, we're watching you. But if you get to a place where you are, you can't handle this, you can throw the hands up.

And we'll see that. We'll stop the training. So you can introduce this concept early on. And then, you know, as you evolved in fighter aviation, we have the knock it off, which is actually kind of like, in some ways, it's kind of like tapping. So I can do this fight with you and we're fighting. If I get to a point where I feel like I've reached a limit, I don't think this is safe anymore. I can't keep doing this or whatever.

I can say knock it off. And you will stop training. You will stop being the aggressor. But you don't get to do that in combat. There is no training time out. There is no knock it off. But it's impossible for any training scenario. and remove that thing of, hey, if your life is now at risk,

there is no training situation that we would allow that to happen. We would never get to a place where you're going to get hurt or killed to prove a point. But you actually kind of know that subconsciously, and so that limit is there. That's the gap. That's the gap. That's the gap. That's right. The gap is when you've got a platoon of guys and they're receiving enemy fire, air quote, enemy fire.

And one of the guys just gets up and charges, you know, the bad guy. and it's great and he happens to get him or whatever. But if those are real bullets, the reaction might be different. Right. You can't. And it goes both ways too, because I used to explain that's what evens it out for our training.

What evens it out is the bad guys, my op for, they don't care if they die either because they're going to get reset and we'll go again. Right. But actually the Mujah Hadin often didn't care if they died. And so they have an advantage. there we care about our friends we care about our comrades in arms so we're gonna fight a

different way than the Mujahideen that's just they don't care not all the time but that's a part of their mindset is hey if I die that's cool martyrdom they would have suicide missions yes I we don't do that we don't be like hey look you're gonna die on this one but I want to talk about the plane we don't do that no and they would happen they would do that actually all the time all the time yeah and that and that the I think the point by this there are are things that you simply cannot replicate and that's that's one of them not just the risk to your own life that you're going to mitigate but the willingness of the other person to have no regard for that yeah which is something it's hard you cannot get that gap will always persist until you experience it

for the first time yeah and then you got to try and close that gap to the best of your ability and the way you do that is different instructors different angles and then as we're talking about here vicarious living vicarious experience hey tell me what that was like from you and there's a chance that you go, you know what? Oh, I know what. I remember this guy. I remember this. I've seen this before.

This whole book starts off with Mattis saying, hey, you shouldn't be surprised by anything. You should have read about it. There's no thing that you can't say, I've seen something like that before, which is what they're going for. All right. So going back to the book here.

Go back to the, if to rewind a little bit. So the whole test about the guy that you're giving advice to this, you know, have yourself tested or whatever. Have yourself tested. Put yourself into pressure scenarios. Yeah, for detachment practice, essentially. So, first, I think those should always be at a level one. That's, I think, just for safe.

If that's your weakness. Meaning we don't want, we don't want, we don't want, we don't want echo Charles to catch two hydro shocks to the grape in the Vaughn's parking lot. Yes. Because you threaten my stakes. Especially if you're weak, or let's say, detaching in moments like that or part of your maybe weakness, we'll say. Right.

is why I'm actually requesting for the training. So it is a weakness. So we gotta figure there's some possibility that I am not gonna detach. I'm not gonna see that it's you and I'm just cracking off my rounds with the shot place. So yeah, so I think level one, to, I don't know, this is my opinion,

but I think part of, or at the very least the beginning of the answer to someone with that kind of like a detachment kind of weakness or whatever is the leadership primer, you call it. So, okay, so before you even said the word leader, shit primer I would essentially prime myself by doing this and a lot of people do do this they'll like tell me this they'll be like what would jaco do in this situation like

anytime a stressful situation came up or a decision had to be made they'll be like oh what would jaco do in fact they'll say hey make a sure this is what would jocco do kind of thing and I'm like yeah so essentially I thought the same thing but not what would jaco do but more like hey I'm the leader so what should the leader do right now you know it's like or and then so along with being the leader is it's your responsibility you can you cannot it's against life rules to blame anyone else you have to take 100% of the blame and come up with 100% of the solution if someone helps you good but you have to come with 100% of the solution right now even if you're being attacked and feeling underappreciated blah blah it's 100% up to you

to cut to to manufacture a good outcome right so so that's essentially what would jaco do right That's like the press. So I would essentially prime myself. Like if something, some stressful situation, that's the rule. Like any stress that comes in some big or small, boom, I'm the leader. You just, you have to essentially prime yourself into being like the leader. And what's hard is is being primed, right? Because you're, you're not walking around like that.

It takes a long time to develop the instinct of your very first reaction. Your initial reaction is detached. Take a step back and take a breath. and make sure you understand what's happening. That's a really hard thing to train in yourself. It's a really hard thing to train yourself. So for the leadership primer, which, again, this is EF online. We got this thing called the leadership primer where you, you know, you can just press play.

Leadership primer. And it's me saying, hey, this is what you. Think about this. And it just gets you in the leadership mindset because if you're there already, that's one less step you have to think. Hey, if I tell you, hey, Echo, you're going to walk in that room. and you're going to get into a fight. If I tell you that, there's a guy waiting to fight you in that room, you are going to do eight times better

than if you just walk into that room thinking about, you know, getting sushi. Right? You're going to do eight times better, minimal. Oh, yeah. You're going to be ready. You're going to be primed. You're going to be thinking. You're going to be looking for an exit.

You're going to be looking for an entrance. You're going to see what is weak to size up your target. All that's going to happen the second you walk in there. If you're not expecting at all, it doesn't happen at all. So getting yourself thinking that way is absolutely, important and you know I'll take this whole thing one step further the idea of like what would jacu do I get it as like a leadership primer you actually have to ask yourself one level deeper than that which is for lack of a better way of explaining it what would jocco actually do right now

because the surface answer of what would jaco do is like oh you just btf through this right that's the surface answer it's not the real answer and that's the difference and I did a bad job sometimes in the teams of guys that worked with me but they didn't they got the surface jaco but they didn't get

the next level and so they'd go overseas and have to report to some army some army major that they didn't get along with and they'd think what would jaco do jaco would tell this guy better straighten himself out

No, and actually that's the wrong answer. Jocka would actually develop an awesome relationship with this guy, get to know him really well, and start planting seeds in his head where we ran everything. That's what Jocko would do. So it's a little bit deeper than that. You have to go next level before we end up priming ourselves for, hey, it's just like this.

If I said, okay, echo, when you go in this room, someone's going to attack you. And you walk in, first person you see you punch him in the face. Right. And it ends up being whatever, someone that didn't deserve it, right? That's a problem. You were overly primed and you didn't really think through the problem. Yeah.

So there's another level there that you got to go. Yeah. But to your point, correct. How can you get yourself primed? You know, I talk about leadership strategy and tactics. There's a list of 12 things to do as a leader. And I'm like, look, you can't read this list of 12 things and be like, okay, good, cool. Now, no, if you're a new leader and you check in, before you go into the meeting with your subordinate or with your leader, you just take a look, take three minutes and read through that thing and be like, all right, I'm thinking the right way. I've got my mind primed for what I'm going to go make happen right now. And when somebody blames me for something, instead of going, actually it's not my fault at all. Instead, you go, yeah, okay, you know what, let me get out my notebook and actually write down what you're saying. So I can make sure I can get it fixed because I don't want to be the person that's responsible for making mistakes.

but I'm ready to take it on and fix it. Boom. And just to be clear, too, like, I by no means am saying people, hey, do this. This is what all you got to do? Or not all you got to do. This is what you got to do. Ask yourself, what would Jock do? I'm not, like, advocating that at all.

I'm saying that is a different way of explaining what I would do. And it's, it wasn't like what would Jocko do. It was what would, like, the leader, quote unquote, the leader, do and I used you as a reference and here's the thing I know your second and even sometimes third level like I know I think I do anyway it's been effective with behaving like I do put it that way um so to me I just worked on being that way the whole time 100% of the time because it's easier to like D prime than it is to like prime one you're like laid on the priming kind of thing situation and when a situation arises you know yeah and here's where

all this is hard right all this is hard is that there's a gap that you got to be able to fill. That's what this is all about. The gap is I'm, I can get primed for so much. I can think about what I'm going to do and how I'm going to act and I'm going to make this call. And if somebody confronts my ego, I'm going to detach. But then the person that you didn't expect to confront your ego, the person that you didn't expect to say a nasty comment to you, that happens. And before you can get, think through it, you go, well, who are you to even be called out someone with what you did last quarter? Yeah.

And all of a sudden, we've got an escalation on our hands. So how do you get ready for that? The answer is you do these training scenarios. And you, as much as you can, you say, look, hey, Dave, I've been having a problem losing my temper with people. Can you do me a favor and just put me through some temper tests? Now, look, we got to put some safety parameters right on there because I don't want Dave to say, I don't want Dave to say, Dave says, you know, Hey, Jocko, this is a good example for you to set an Eschalon Front

if you're not even submitting this paperwork on time. And I go, well, you're lucky you're even at Eschalon Front, Dave. I don't even know why you're here. And all of a sudden, we have a real brawl about this, right? So let's put some control parameters in place. I know. And then immediately, Dave calls a trading time out because it's about to get, you know,

we're about to just throw everything under the bus. Why? Because he was role playing So yes, you got to put parameters around it But other than that Like if you want to see how you're going to react You're going to see how you're going to react So be careful No hydroshocks to your friend's chest

Because they surprise you trying to steal your steak Yeah It's kind of like a safe word like That's what training timeout is Yeah it's like a safe word right It's like hey I don't you need to stop You need to stop You know who tries to get me to take some kind of a training time out?

Dean Lister. Yeah, see, and that's the thing. And that's a whole rabbit hole too, Brad. There's so many ways to do that to call for a training time on. Because in Jiu Jitza, it's like, sure, there is the training timeout straight up. Like, hey, that's one of them. Oh, yeah. Like you can, let's say I'm, you know, maybe kind of injured or maybe just a super, you know,

let's say I'm a smaller person, less like physical capability against a crazy, you know, 21-year-old, 235-pound white belt spaz. Right? I can call a training timeout. I can be like, hey, like, I respect you,

but this seems like kind of dangerous. I'm not going to train with you specifically. That's a training timeout, really. But you could also be in a scenario where you're out of shape. You have a high-level jih Tudita, but you're out of shape, and you're going with the monster guy who's really good at Jiu-Sty. He's getting the better of you.

You're gassing. You're like, you're getting beat down. And you kind of don't like that. You can call it a little training time out. How do you call the training time out? Here's where the subtlety kind of arise. You can like fake an injury.

You can be like, oh, like, oh, my finger was caught in your shorts or something to give you like. And again, it's a spectrum. You can get like maybe 10 seconds training time out, then get back into it. Or you can give yourself maybe like a minute or guys used to do. I remember rolling with a guy and he was a higher belt than me. And I was in shape. I wasn't better than him, but I was in shape. I kept going, going, going.

And he kept like, we're doing ghee, and he kept like, coaching you. No, no, he take time to tie his belt again. And I'm like, bro, why are you even, bro, our belts fly off. You just keep training, right? He kept like, and the kind of like flagrantly taking like 20, 30 seconds to tie his belt. And he did like six times. That's a training timeout too.

The only thing about, I think a training timeout is known. And it did it to both sides. Like a training timeout. You're talking about little tactics. A little sneaky little tactics to catch a breath. My brother catch a breath over here. So it's a little bit different, but there are, I mean, tapping out is kind of a training timeout.

Yeah, well, a training time out would be like actually remember when you used to be claustrophobic? Yes, sir. When you remember when used to be more claustrophobic? Yes, sir. You would kind of, your training time out was, look, I didn't have a submission on you at all. Yeah. But you would tap out and just say, I.

There was a guy when I was at team two that I used to train with, and he would get so mad, and he would just go. He would just be, just get off me, just get off me. And then I'd get off me, be like, God. And he would be so, like, mad at me as a person. Oh, for a mad at you. Because I was putting the presh.

Yeah, yeah. Putting the press. Yeah, that was weird. Like, when you would, when you would make it known that you were trying to make me cluster football, it'd be less claustrophobic. The most claustrophobic I would get from you is one like, you'd be pinning me down,

and it seemed like this was part of your, like, tactic to, like, slowly submit me. Like, I'd have this feeling like, bro, I'm never going to get out of this, like, situation, and I'm probably going to die under here kind of thing. But if you're like, one time this is what you did, you were like, oh, you're better at your claustophobia now. Watch it. You said something along these lines, and then you put all your weight on,

and you put your feet on the wall. So all your weight was on me And you're essentially saying whatever word you're using You're saying like yeah like how does that feel kind of thing And I was like bro I'm not claustrophobic at all right now You want to know why You were primed I told you I was gonna do it you were ready for it

You were ready with the resist Yeah and my mental state was kind of like this is me against you now It's not me against any claustrophobia situation Like my mind that the battle was different Yeah huh Interesting That is interesting Back to the book

Marines need time to reflect on new learning experience to exploit their lessons self-reflection internalizes experience and increases mental preparedness for employment across the range of military operations so you're going to think about what happened the little thing about Madison here and then on to general al gray and they're the sum of what it's saying about they're saying Marines need to make time to reflect in order to build understanding exploit lessons and be ready to adapt as situations change so you you you you kind of have to debrief, then you have to debrief yourself. Next section, the role of the instructor, regardless of location or position,

marine instructors are knowledgeable, skilled, competent, and confident in their abilities. Once again, this is a statement of fact. That's the way marine instructors are. They're knowledgeable, skilled, competent, and confident in their abilities. Fast forward a little bit. Assessments. Assessments are employed to provide learners with constructive feedback. so that they can further develop professionally rather than an arbitrary test score that does not capture growth or change.

The most effective instructors use the coach, teach, mentor approach to provide learners with constructive feedback. You know, as we covered the code, the evaluations, the protocols, and I think I got asked, somebody asked me, would you recommend doing this in a company, you know, in a company? And I'm like, yeah, the biggest problem with the Navy and the Marine Corps evaluation systems is that they're annual, certainly coming out once a year. This idea here that you have to provide assessments more often than that. They don't necessarily need to be official, but you've got to give people feedback. Fast forward, learners and instructors alike should understand that Marines learn because of

of their errors, not despite them. Isn't that a smart thing to think to yourself? Is that my employees, my subordinates, my kids, Echo Charles, are going to learn because of their errors. It changes your mindset a little bit when the kids make a mistake. It's their turn to learn. Next section, technology in support of learning. Just as MCDP1, confirms that war is a human enterprise and that no amount of technology can reduce the human dimension. The learning environment is also primarily based on human characteristics rather than equipment. Technology can support, expand, and individualize learning. It is one of the many tools to support learning objectives. So look, it's a tool. Technology is a tool, but it doesn't

replace the human element of learning. The conclusion here, battle is the ultimate conclusion of this section. Battle is the ultimate test of military learning. And training as Marines will fight is a time honored Marine Corps principle. Train as you fight. In preparing for battle, Marines leverage the art and science of learning along with helpful technologies to enhance learning environments, tailor learning experiences, and provide constructive feedback to accelerate learning.

There you go. And now we get into the last section of this. Chapter 4, The Learning Leader. Hmm. It all just kind of comes together in this section 4, doesn't it? The Learning Leader. Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other, John F. Kennedy. The future operating environment will place new demands on leaders at all levels.

Our leaders must have the training, education, experience to meet those demands. And that's General Dunford, 36 commandant of the Marine Corps, and the 19th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And the last quote, throughout history, the difference between brilliantly performing armies and mediocre ones has always depended on a small handful of combat leaders. And that is Dave Burke's friend, John Bolton.

Throughout history leadership has been the most important thing on the battlefield Small handful of combat leaders When you're in a in a what's it called when there's a whole bunch of airplane in the sky one of those all those airplanes together called Is that like a squadron? Is that a is that a wing? Yeah, if you're going on an assault Will you call all those aircraft together? We'd call it an air wing in the Navy and ring corps and if you're going on you would you go on a mission like I would go on a mission like I would go on a mission? I would go on a mission? I would go on a mission with a seal platoon, you would go on a mission with an air wing. Yeah, if it was everybody, it'd be the air wing and there's smaller components of that.

You know, you'd have like division, a section. That's right. You'd break them down, much like, you know, fire team, squad, things like that. Is it true or is it also true in an air wing on an assault that a couple combat, a couple good leaders, good pilots can make a big difference? That is true. Oh, really? Absolutely.

We're working together in pairs, basically. Is that the smallest unit that we're working in? Yeah, despite the fact that there is an air wing, there's a Marine Corps, you know, Magtaf, the airwing component and the Navy has an airwing. The most common formation that we go out there is a two, sometimes a four ship, but a two-ship formation, we called it a section,

is the most common warfighting element. When things break down into individual implementation, two is the minimum. And how many aircraft, how many sections would you go out roll out on, on a mission that you would train for at Top Gun. And the reason I'm saying that,

like when you talk about you have multiple aircraft, like sort of the FTX scenario, the final training exercises, how many aircraft are going out? How many sections? Top Gun, the culmination of a Top Gun would be four sections.

It would be eight aircraft. Eight aircraft going out to assault a target. Then some bogeys come out. A lot. And they are going to try and bring it. And so does the, do the sections, have a overall leader.

Yes. If that guy's not quite as good, but there's a couple pipe hitters in there, all the difference in the world. All the difference in the world. I think all the same fundamentals that you've always talked about, if you put them into leadership in the air,

it's exactly the same thing. You do not have to be the mission commander to be the most influential leader in the formation. Legist. When you go with the air wing to fallout, Nevada. How many aircraft roll out on those missions? Now you're talking, you know, you could have 20.

Now you'd have much bigger, much more complex, different missions all at the same time, a lot more coordination, 20 aircraft plus sometimes. And that's the carrier air group going up to Fallon to run big exercises, getting ready for deployment. And a carrier air group would be, you know, three full squages of 12. You'd have a squadron of six. You'd have a squadron of four. You'd have 40, 50 airplanes in an air wing.

I did that trip three, I did three strike group carrier interoperabilities at Fallon. Yeah. Which is just so lucky on my part. As I was a rate, for two of them, I was a radio man. For one of them, I was the assistant platoon commander. But just the amount of visibility that gave me

because it wasn't normal for seals to do that trip. We would have a couple seals that were stationed up there. but we but to actually get up to be able to go up there and go in the field and do all the close air support very very helpful for me yeah we did some long patrols too from one end of that valley over to the other end 12 12 kilometers in a night lay up for the day recover a down pilot 12 kilometers back out the next night did you ever get to be the down pilot up there no never did I know exactly what you're talking about. I got to assign the down pilot.

Because that guy had to walk half those. It was not a job most people wanted. Yeah, they didn't seem as chilly. It was in wintertime? Yeah, we did every air wing and every course went through you to have a downpilot scenario. And you'd send a guy out there. Side track. Two things in my time in the SEAL teams where I got to see something in nature that

A normal person doesn't get to see one of them locked out of a submarine in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and it was It was the brightest blue is a daytime. We were doing a rehearsal. It was the brightest blue Most beautiful Ocean and it was not it was incredible visibility and there was like a pot of dolphins coming alongside of us and just swimming That's number one number two. I'm in Fallon, Nevada I'm in a helicopter and And it's early spring, so there's still snow on the ground, and we're flying nap of the earth up through these hills.

And we come across a pack of wild Mustangs, horses, that are charging through the mountains. And we're so low close to them. And we're like slightly above the tree line or whatever. I don't know if there's a tree line, but there's no trees, various like shrubs, and these things are just charged this big pack of wild Mustangs. It was freaking epic one of the coolest things I've ever seen in nature. That's one of the coolest things I've ever seen

All right So Leaders at all levels are responsible for their own learning while supporting their subordinates development Each Marine is either a leader or a future leader Whether by rank or by their experience and influence on other You know something I said at the early musters? I think I say to every master But I would say training is the Solem duty of the leader

Because if you got some training command and they're not doing what they're supposed to do, you need to still do it. You need to make it happen. You're in charge of training. You're in charge of education. You're in charge of making sure people learn. An excellent way to master a topic is to endeavor to teach it well to other Marines. Marines can develop leadership skills and improve communication skills through learning. Marines succeed with leadership styles that provide clear intent through mission type orders and decentralized execution. We are in full support of this document. Yes. You want to get good at something, by the way? Teach it. Yeah. Teach it. Do you think your leadership capabilities improved since you got to Eschon Front and you teach leadership?

I wrote a note when I was going through this myself, I wrote down the word leading is teaching. I was just a note. I just put in the margins. I was just running through this document a couple of times. The answer to question is yes, I do. That is. So it's. You just even the way you described it,

it could be a little bit of a slippery slope. You said as a leadership instructor at echelon front, this kind of implies my job is actually to teach. I'm an instructor. I'm here to teach leadership. And it's leaders at all levels responsible for their own learning. I assure you that at a minimum, it's equal.

And the truth is it's probably tenfold in my favor. I have learned way, way, way more than what I have taught in terms of like, What I get out. Because every time I teach something, assuming I do the things we talk about, I learn something while doing it. And I've told you this a bunch, that's been the biggest surprise of my second career was having to acknowledge of how much more there is for me to learn out there. So just that title leadership instructor, if you have the word instructor anywhere in there, I was a top gun instructor, whatever it is. Your job is actually to learn and then help impart that with other people, not just that you are the teacher.

Yeah. I got so lucky that when I was at SEAL Team 1, as a young enlist guy, I eventually went into the training cell and taught. And I taught everything luckily. And just seeing it, teaching it, you get so much, such a much better understanding of the subject that you're trying to teach. That's the coolest thing about being a student at Topkin is that Marine Corps sends you to Topkin. to come back to be an instructor just in your squadron. You don't have necessarily the title of instructor, but as a Top Gun graduate,

especially when you're on the boat, if you're not flying, there's really not much else to do. So you're training. That's all you're doing. You're training. And so every brief, everything you're doing,

it's on, that doesn't mean you teach all the briefs. It might be that you take a brand new guy and go, hey, you're going to give a brief on how the countermeasure system works in the F-18. And you, in my mind, I might know that thing like that.

I could draw that thing out down to the, you know, to the battery. But this guy doesn't know anything about it. But as the Top Gun graduate, you are responsible for either teaching or training every single thing that goes on. That is the coolest part about being a Top Gun graduate is that you're the focal point

of making sure the squadron gets trained. And so you get to be part of all the training evolutions. How many Top Gun instructors on average would there be at a squadron? Two. If you were really lucky, sometimes you'd have a third patchware. Pretty common.

one, maybe two. Yeah, they ended up kind of by necessity, but also just by design. It kind of ended up that in the seal teams in the early days, you would go to training cell at a team. The team owned their own training cell and you'd be in there. And if things worked out because you were, whatever, you didn't have orders for a certain amount of time or you had already done a bunch of deployments,

they'd put you in training cell. And a lot of guys didn't want to go in a training cell because, hey, you know, why would you want to go in a training cell? You're there to deploy. And I went into training cell as I was putting in my officer packages. So it was, hey, go in a training cell and they'll give you some time to get. Because otherwise, what are you going to do? Do another deployment. Of course.

What, of course, I'm going to go do another deployment. Luckily, the master chief, master chief faculty, you know, he told us if you want to get good at this stuff, you need to teach it. You need to come in here and teach it. And thank God because that was hugely, that had everything to do. Because you're de facto detached when you're instructing, by the way. When you're watching guys do immediate action drills out in the field or you're watching guys clear in rooms. You are de facto detached. You're literally watching that.

So you can see these mistakes. And if you pay attention to it, you can learn a lot from it. Marines hold a special relationship with each other that is akin to the relationship of mature siblings. They build each other up, share experience. and hold each other accountable. This relationship begins with shared experiences in entry-level training and instills shared understanding

of honor, tradition, and the importance of leadership. These are your brothers. Learning is necessary to leadership. Strong leaders promote learning in subordinates. Needs no explanation whatsoever. Thank you, United States Marine Corps. Foster and encourage the next section.

Leaders model said an example of learning for the Marines in their charge by openly seeking out and pursuing professional development for all Marines, including themselves. In italics. Yes. The number one person that you should be getting to learn is you. JP was reminding me the other day that at some point I said, hey, you need to start like this was when we were back in times.

And I told him, hey, here's these websites. You should look at these. so you know what's going on in the world, you know, just not even news, but more Intel kind of driven websites. And it's, I didn't remember, as soon as you reminded me, I remember doing that, but that was me saying, hey, man, you need to know what's going on here. As stated in MCDP one, which is war fighting, a leader without interest in or knowledge of the history and theory of warfare, the intellectual content of the military profession is a leader in appearance on. Only self-directed study in the art and science of war is at least equal in importance to maintaining physical condition and should receive at least equal time. At least equal time. You should be working out and studying the profession of arms.

Leaders who set an example with their actions and words that learning is important for the profession of arms inspire other Marines to learn more about the profession and its application. Marine leaders prioritize learning for themselves and others taking an active role to foster. and encourage marine learning. Leaders foster learning by engaging their Marines, taking interest in their well-being and supporting their professional development. Leaders are justifiably proud when their Marines succeed. Conversely, leaders help them overcome mistakes when they struggle.

Leaders do not wait for mistakes or failures to highlight a learning opportunity. Leaders provide subordinates with the sufficient freedom of action to learn and develop without seating responsibility to monitor supervising correct subordinates actions when necessary. We cannot rightly expect subordinates to exercise boldness and initiative in the field when they are accustomed to being oversupervised in garrison. The goal is for Marines to seek learning opportunities on their own accord, even if the leader is not present.

So they've embedded decentralized command into the process of learning in the Marine Corps, making it a part of your very being to try and learn. And if you don't do that, you're putting your Marines, at risk factual teaching and leading next section teaching and leading cannot be uncoupled think about that one echo Charles yes Marines who cannot teach will struggle as leaders strong leaders do not berate a subordinate for making a must their first mistake they turn mistakes into teachable moments and that's you know you know if you imagine if you don't have control over your temper and

And someone makes a mistake and you lose your temper, you've just thrown away an opportunity for someone to learn, you've squashed their initiative, all kinds of problems. Leaders encourage Marines to pursue learning opportunities and cultivate an open dialogue to discuss lessons learned when mistakes are made. It is the leader's responsibility to recognize, act on, and correct the mistakes by turning them into learning opportunities, understanding that it's far better to learn in a training environment

than to make mistakes when deployed. You know, it's the idea that you're going to take people's mistakes and turning them in teachable moments, there's like another kind of thing that I would see and I still see it. And that's this underlying, the underlying ego that gets involved. The little thing, the little thing that you can't. Look, I'm going to make this a teachable moment for you, Dave, because obviously this was a little bit tricky for you. You know what I mean? Like there's that little thing. And even that right there, even that right there detracts from the learning moment.

Just when I let my ego shine through my beady little eyes and pierce into your ego, it's just detracting from the teachable moment. So what does that look like? Just like the way you say it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The way I say it, the way I come across with, Hey, uh, hey, Dave. Clearly that question kind of stumped you on the webinar. You know what?

Why don't you, once you, uh, once you give me a call later to my, I can help talk you through it. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, the whole, just the whole vibe. The whole presentation. It also lets the other person know what you think of the relationship. This is kind of the nature of our relationship.

Yeah, yeah. I'm here to mentor you. We get this question all the time. It's like, hey, I really want to have a mentor. I think your answer is actually really good. It was like, hey, I never like assigned a mentor or assigned myself as a mentor. Either one, you should try to learn from as many people as you can. But the one that I would see get people fired up the most is when someone to go, bro, I'm trying to help you here.

And that would set people off all the time, which was, hey, I'm doing you a favor. I know something you don't know and I'm here to help you learn. Even that would put someone who, and look, the ego is on both sides because if you were to say that to me, even like that, I'd be like, right on. What do you got? I mean, that would be my goal as how I'd respond to that, which is easier for some people than for others. The ego's on both sides, but totally, you can only control your own. You can only control. So even if Dave has the most, the most totally humble attitude, he's open, that's great.

I got lucky, right? But any other guy is going, well, you know, actually, the way you talked about it yesterday didn't even make sense. All of a sudden, we're in a combative mode. Now, what do you know? Maybe I'm just running a little trading drill on him. Little ego check. Little detachment.

Exercise. He's good. Yeah. I threw that out today. I was like, my ego, or my test on Jamie. I was like yelling, like pretending like I was going to yell at Jamie. Did you know you were pretending? Yeah.

Well, I was just using it as an example. Okay. But Jamie was just smiling because she knows I know factually that Jamie would be like Okay, Jocco, I appreciate it. Let me let me go find out because she would just de-escalate Because she's dealing with this crap all day long, you know, that's what she does you know, so She keeps it real real real real all right General John A LaJune 13th commandant of the Marine Corps world war one

General the relations between officers and enlisted men should in no sense be that of superior and inferior, nor that of master and servant, but rather that of teacher and scholar. Now I'm going to hold up right there, because that right there is not correct. And if there's a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps and he's working with his gunnery sergeant, he is by no means, by any stretch of the imagination, the teacher to a student at all. It's the opposite, actually.

So I think, you know, if you were to take a look at this in present tense, it would read a little bit differently. It goes on. In fact, it should partake of the nature of the relationship between father and son. Again, that's not a great analogy because if, unless you're now flipping it to the gunny is the dad and the second lieutenant is the son. To the extent that officers, especially commanding officers, are responsible for the physical, mental and moral welfare as well as the discipline and military training of the young men under their command. That is true. Yeah, I mean, I think I picture this in the context of being a senior officer with young junior enlisted, very young junior enlisted Marines. But this to me kind of highlight

some of the problems with the chain of command. Now, the chain of command actually can be really good. It's good to have a good chain of command sometimes in a well-defined hierarchy. But there are huge pitfalls in that because organizationally, as soon as you figure out who you are in the organization, you presume to take on some sort of set of roles that comes with that. I think on my very first podcast of you, I even talked about my very first job as a lieutenant, I got lucky because I had one of those gunnies that was like right out of the dream scenario of who do you want to be mentoring you in your first job? It was this guy named Gunny Pilgrim who was like, you couldn't make a better Marine

who was my subordinate. I was his boss and in no way was I leading him or teaching him or doing it. It was a one way relationship where I just learned everything I possibly could from him because he was the type of gunty that knew where he was in the chain of command but also knew what his job was. But it actually does require you to look at you where you are in the chain of command and detach from that piece and say where am I in this relationship and what do I actually need to learn from this?

And if you can view it like that, the chain command really is sort of insignificant there because as a junior officer, I had nothing constructive to offer this guy. Nothing. Gunny Pilgrim. Gunny Pilgrim, if you're listening. He knows what's up. We're going to have to bring him on here

and get some good stories about second lieutenant. We should bring. You weren't second lieutenant, huh? First lieutenant at the time. You were first lieutenant by the time you got to. To the fleet, yeah, yeah. Leaders who, and so that ends that quote. And like I said,

there's some, just some perception in that quote. I think is a little bit off a little bit off I think it's more like if you if you just to say universally on this quote universally what Marines are to each other Marines are to each other you know because I can always learn I can learn from the most junior guy I can learn from the most senior guy so just depending on what dynamics are happening in that relationship you you know I might be the the master in one situation and 20 minutes later you're the master right that can happen because there's different parts of knowledge. And you've got to be open and flexible to do both those.

Continuing on, leaders who encourage an open discussion with their Marines about how thoughts and actions contributed to outcomes will have greater successes at teaching compared to leaders who simply point out mistakes for a Marine to improve upon without context or explanation. Yeah, and again, I think that's some old school, at least in the SEAL teams, that was more old.

And it wasn't always like this, But there would certainly be some guys in the SEAL teams when I was in the 90s that their role as an instructor was to point out your mistakes and tell you how to do it right. Not a conversation, just instruction, just direction. That direction is like rope memorization. You tell me to memorize something. Cool, I'll remember. I'll memorize it. I'm actually really good at memorizing things.

I'll memorize it. But what I really don't want, what I really want to do is not memorize something. I want to learn how to calculate what to actually do based on thought. Little note on here about constructive feedback. The goal is not a simplistic discussion of the right answer according to the leader's personal views, but rather for the Marine to develop greater self-awareness and understanding of the situation and task and to be able to adapt the lessons learned for future situations. Again, not memorization.

Like when I went to college Some of my classes Were I wanted to get an A on the test Yeah, you said this about OCS as well Or did you go to OCS or TBS? I was talking about TBS TBS. Yeah, memorize this Yeah, hey Roger that I will memorize this I will make flashcards I will memorize this

And it would have been so much better If every minute that I had spent Memorizing things I was actually having a legitimate Conversation about what the meaning of these Are learning the material? Yeah, totally When I went back, we talked about, I think it started with the first one when we did war fighting. Whichever one we did, the first Marine Corps Doctional Pub, you and I did together. It was when I went back to start reading these again, and we've read a bunch of them.

I read this last one like I was like laughing. I had so much fun reading this. I had no fun reading these pubs. I read all these pubs at the basic school, all of them. I didn't enjoy any of it because I didn't have this. I wasn't there trying to learn. and the mistakes that I made, I think I've said this several times,

looking back, if we could just figure out how to take the things out of there and have it make sense in your head and learn something from it, it's actually fun. Learning is awesome, and I was going back through these pubs as an adult, thinking, man, my experience reading this

was nothing like this the first time. What a total waste, so much I could have taken from that. So I could have learned so much more, so much faster, if that's how I viewed reading these things. Yeah, well, that is a big part of the very nature of this podcast is, hey, don't just read it. I'm not just reading this section and, you know, that's that.

How am I putting it in context with what I've been through? How are you putting it through context with what you've been through? and then how can someone that's listening take that and tie them together and say okay yeah there's you know as soon as you hear me read from a book and then say oh that reminds me of I'm just at that moment in time giving you another angle another piece of context another way to triangulate that idea in your own head which is what makes it worth otherwise Otherwise, people just grab the audio book or just read the book. Yeah, cool.

I read the book. I even for me, for me getting, of course, more out of it than anybody because I'm reading it and thinking about it and then overlaying and then getting feedback about it. So it's this, it's a, it's a exponential learning. It's an exponential pressure on my brain. Very lucky to be in that. situation. Continuing on, for example, providing topic areas for discussion using the

Socratic method, asking and answering questions to simulate critical thinking, draw out ideas, and identify underlying assumptions during debriefs rather than simply criticizing Marines' actions can be much more effective in fostering learning. Positive feedback is constructive positive feedback makes learners aware of what they did correctly, reinforces desired behaviors, and identifies areas to improve negative feedback that unnecessarily tears a marine down seldom leads to effective learning and can stifle initiative. It's a different mindset.

This is the type of thing. Echo, when you're talking about priming and priming your brain, if you're an instructor situation, just reading that right there before you go and instruct your class is going to help you, is going to help you teach and it's going to help them learn. The next section, oddly enough, is called humility. That's the name of the section, by the way. It's just humility. When you are a 15-year-old kid and you are thinking about which branch of service you are going to join,

and then you are very rapidly coming to the conclusion that the best branch of service for you to join would be the Marine Corps, you are not thinking about humility. No. You are not thinking about humility. You are thinking we are the best. The Marine Corps is the best. I'm going in the Marine Corps because they are the best. There's no humility in that whatsoever.

And you end up realizing that that's wrong. And one of the things that makes the Marine Corps great and makes any organization great is humility, which is why they have a section called humility. Here we go back to the book. All Marines, especially those in positions of leadership, can learn from anyone, are ready and willing to learn. However, ego can hinder learning. Commanders, other leaders,

and instructors learn from the Marines in their charge while also leading those Marines to learn. So this is what we just said. I can learn from anybody. I can learn from anybody in chain and command. Leaders recognize that humility is a part of the career long learning process. The best leaders at the highest levels recognize that the more they learn, the more they need to learn. And they set the example for their subordinates. How much you don't know. That's the initial stages of Jiu-Jitsu. After like your third class, when you think you mastered the whatever, the two moves that you learned, and then you realize, oh, wait a second, this never stops.

Effective leaders also recognize that we are not an expert in every topic. So we seek out those who are experts and learn from them regardless of relative rank or position. The Marine with the authority must make decisions, but until a commander has reached and stated a decision subordinate should consider their duty to provide honest professional opinions, even though these might be in disagreement with the senior's opinions. As I call that pushback. I want pushback. I need pushback. That's how we pressure test our ideas. And of course, it's the Marine Corps.

So they throw in until you've made your decision. Because once that decision comes, we're going to get on board with the program. Hey, what if it's illegal, immoral, unethical? We're still going to push back. What if it means, hey, we could get a lot of guys killed here unnecessarily. We're still going to push back. Leadership strategy and tactics cover that whole thing in ad nauseum. When we're at Top Gun, one of the things we had is something called a standardization board.

which is like all the senior instructors to get together to make these really hard decisions. Big decisions that had to be made. And as you might guess, you get 26 people in a room, all top gun instructors, all kind of the top of their game. You'd have really, really strong opinions.

And I think what stood out to me with this comment isn't like the idea, hey, I've made a decision. I want you to get on board. It's once we've actually gone to the bat, hash us out, we've talked to everything, and we've made a decision. What I need you to do is be on board.

Not that you can't, dissent, but what I can't have you do is walk out and be like, yeah, we're doing this. It wasn't my idea. This is really stupid, but that's what the boss said, is not the same as, hey, we all argued. We put it out there. Maybe we went in a direction that isn't what you wanted, but it's still going to work and it's a good idea where we can still do this. And you come out and go, hey, listen, there's what we're doing.

This is why I'm on board with this. Those are two very different things. So questioning those things, there are certainly times to do that. But just because you didn't get your way doesn't mean that it's wrong. It actually might mean that you need to just get on. board because you might be the one that maybe you got something to take from that. So when we have these stand boards, kind of the standing rule is when we're done, if you were on the losing argument, that doesn't mean you walk out and go, yeah, well,

I lost that argument. This is stupid. I'm going to do it, but I'm not really going to do it. I'm trying to sit in here. I was kind of racking my brain over here thinking about why is it that me, I, in my experience, was rarely that I can even remember in a situation where I was saying, hey, guys, here's what we're doing. Why is that?

Why is it that throughout my career and life so seldom that I can't remember an example of where I said, hey, listen, we're not, this is the plan we are going with. Why is that? I'm sitting here trying to rack my brain and it's pretty obvious. and it's like this. If Dave comes to me with his idea and his idea sucks, it's very easy to explain to him that his idea sucks. And he goes, yeah, you just poke 14 holes in my 15 ideas.

So obviously, that's not squared away. So that means, you know, it's pretty easy to win an argument when you are that right. When you are that right, it's pretty easy to win an argument. and and I'm decent at arguing. So if Dave comes to me with a crappy idea, it's not hard for me to go, yeah, Dave, I get what you're trying to say, but this, this, this, and this.

And Dave goes, okay, I'll go back to the drawing board. So that's one reason, because when I'm right about my decision, it's because you're freaking just wrong. You've come in with a bad idea. So that's half of the solution. That's half the reason why I'm not saying, hey, everyone, no more discussion. This is what we're doing.

That's 50%. The other 50% is because when Dave comes to me and says, hey, here's what I think we should do. And it's 13 or 12 of the points are pretty good. And even though I could lock down 15 out of 15, I'm totally good with going, sounds good, Dave. You win. Roll with it. And what does that mean? The amount of times, because otherwise, if I say, no, Dave, my 15 ways, my 15 points are betty.

And you're like, no, my 13. And we get no argument about it. And finally I say, shut up and go do what I told you to do. And now you go do it. And you resent it. And you're pissed off and whatever. But 50% of the time or 50% the solution for me is, hey, you're so wrong that you can't argue with me. And I don't say that.

But I just point out all the things. And you go, yeah, good point, good point. And you're not going to fall on your sword when you are just blatantly wrong. People don't do that. Even the most dug in person when they get shown the 19 reasons why they're wrong, they retreat. So therefore, we all go out with the same plan. Or you come into a plan that's freaking close and I go, sounds great, man.

Let's execute. Coming down the chain of command, meaning how many times did someone tell me, hey, Jocko, shut up and do what I told you to do? Again, racking my brain a little bit, I can't think any off the top of my head. Why? Same thing. Most of the time, when my boss had a bad idea, I was able to articulate and convince him of a new way of doing it that made more sense. Or I was able to say, you know what, that'll work.

I can make that work. I can make anything work. I can make that work. You know, this isn't a suicide mission. This may not be perfect, but I can go out there, mitigate the little downfalls, no factor. So that's why when I read these things, it's like I know what they're talking about, but I very rarely experience it.

Very rarely experience it. I can't even at Eschalon Front, the amount of times I've said, all right, guys, lock it up. This is what we're doing. I think we've talked about one of them is like a PT evolution at the muster, muster of four or something. Where there was a crazy plan floating around. I was like, you know what? There's a lot of risk with that plan. There's no risk with a known plan.

Hey, we're just going to go with a known plan. By the way, we got to go. Yeah, by the way, we got like seven minutes to execute this thing. We got to make a decision. That's like one of the few, almost every other time. And if I would have done a better job saying, hey, brief me on what we're going to do tomorrow and we can do a dry run and all that, I would have been able to say, hey, we could have gone through the cycle of actually figuring out, A, whether that plan would have worked, which it might have, or B, what little adjustments we need to make and then everyone's happy. This mentality of open discussion. So by the way, all this revolves around open discussion.

All this revolves around me listening, you talking, you listening, me talking. It all revolves around that. This mentality of open discussion hinges on the leader's willingness to remain humble and accept honest feedback. Therefore, all Marines prepare themselves to become leaders by exercising humility and being open to constructive feedback. Boom. This is a message to everyone in the world. Continuing on, the path to mastery starts out, starts with a sense of humility. The path to mastery starts out with a sense of humility.

Marines recognize that they do not know everything and therefore must remain humble as they pursue greater understanding and competence. Marines should always recognize that there will be more to learn and they must embrace their curiosity in order to continuously learn. Curiosity will lead Marines to knowledge required to fill their own gaps in experience and improve their skill set. And that curiosity is tying back.

Back to what I started this whole thing off with me like wanting to know a better way. Is there a better way to do this? Is that tradition right? Is that standard operating procedure correct? When a Marine begins to feel more confident, it is because he or she is closing the gaps between their goals and their actual capabilities. Reaching a goal along the path to mastery is an indication that it is time to move on to a more challenging goal. Boom. Next section.

and technical and tactical proficiency. Marines begin their pursuit of mastery by developing brilliance in the basics of technical and tactical proficiency. At all levels, technical and tactical proficiency requires Marines to reflect upon what they have learned, identify learning gaps, and close them. Self-reflection enables Marines

to evaluate the quality of their practice, recognizing that deliberate, purposeful quality practice leads to mastery. Incorrect practice and lack of focus does not lead to perfection. It leads to negative training that could be transferred into the battle space. Marines focus on doing the basics correctly, building speed and agility. No reason to get crazy. It's a pick and roll.

There are many technical skills that Marines learn. Some are standard battle skills training and others vary across military occupational specialties. Marines build foundational technical skills such as marksmanship and operating as part of a team in entry-level training. Marines learn to be technically proficient as riflemen, which provides a common identity among all Marines. The larger lesson for Marines, for all Marines to learn is the hard work, dedication, and persistence required when seeking self-improvement. That's what you're learning in boot camp. That's why every Marine is a rifleman. Yeah, look, do we need you know how to work your rifle?

Yes, we do. What's more important than that is the lesson that you learn and that it takes hard work, dedication, and persistence. That's what it takes. That's what you learn from becoming a rifleman. Marines build on this lesson as they move onto the next technological challenge. And then it kind of advances here into the larger picture. Marines develop teamwork and competencies so that they are technically and tactically proficient as individuals, teams, units, and magtafs.

Collective learning experiences build teamwork that enables success. Teamwork building exercises provide the opportunity for marine leaders to both lead the development of their Marines, teamwork, and learn from these exercises. During these learning activities, leaders who demonstrate humility by discussing what they did and why subordinates to reinforce. learning at all levels of the team learning takes time dedication and diligence and the pursuit of mastery and the reason I had to call this out is that in an organization the organization is collectively also learning that's the that's the big separation between like basic seal training and even the net when you get done with basic seal training then you go to seal tactical training

or what they call it now a seal qualification training both those are pretty much individual skill sets it's not until you get into a seal platoon Now it's collective learning. Now you're learning how to do things as a platoon, which is totally different and yet builds upon what you learn to do as an individual. What was the training that you led? What was the title of that training? It was West Coast Steel Training. Was that SQT?

What was that called again? It's pre-deployment workup. Pre-deployment training cycle. I usually call it advanced training, even though technically, If you looked by the book, the advanced training that is run is actually advanced individual training. That's what they call advanced individual training, which is, hey, you're going to learn to be a sniper. You're going to learn to be a parachute rigor. You're going to learn to be a medic.

Those things are advanced training is what they call it. The simplest way to explain what I did is I just call it advanced training. There's a seal that would be sitting in the audience go, you didn't run advanced training. He's like, no, I ran advanced collective platoon training. So a simple way to put it is to say advanced training, even though there's a technical, there's a command called advanced training. It's ATC, advanced training command. And they teach dive supervisor.

Got it. They teach radio men. They teach individual skills. But it's what I taught was the advanced. And usually what I actually call it is advanced tactical training because that's what it was. And that's what it still is. It's advanced tactical training. It's how do you.

And that's the units. Collective unit level training. And actually, now that you say it, what I actually taught is called ULT, unit level training. Got it. How much, just hearing you say that, how much has Buds evolved and changed what they did compared to what you did and how much that evolved? Yeah, unit level training evolves all the time. All the time, right?

Buds is a Buds is what Buds is and you can you know there's there's something if if somebody that went through Buds in 1964 went and watched Buds right now they would go oh yeah

oh yeah we did oh yeah they'd get a lot of reminders if they came and watched a seal platoon going through urban warfare training they'd be like damn they'd say damn now the land warfare stuff has been it's really been very similar although now I can't even say that because we have the the laser tag system we got all the put they would do pyro and stuff but we the laser tag

system and the paintball and stuff was just I was around when paintball started to come out in the seal teams and it and it changed everything for us it changed everything for us because unfortunately most of the Vietnam guys were gone and so all of a sudden we started doing wrote things. Wrote things, meaning here's the problem, here's the solution. And that's not what a learning organization does. They don't do wrote things. No, they don't do road things.

But hey, if you get contacted from this position in your patrol, here's the wrote answer to that, do that thing. And what happens is the enemy that you're going against is paper targets. They don't move and they don't shoot back. They don't maneuver and they don't shoot back. Well, guess what? That's actually what combat is. combat is fire and maneuver and now you're going against an enemy that doesn't maneuver or shoot back.

It doesn't cover move, doesn't fire, move, doesn't do anything. So it's not that it's worthless because you will learn what the mechanics of movement are. Yeah, yeah. But and we used to do this too. We would do no fire drills where, hey, you're going to get contacted from a bunch of different places, but you're not shooting. Or we use blanks. We use dits gear. Did you ever use dits gear?

Oh, no, it's not dits gear. What's it? Miles gear. Yeah, for sure. So Ditz was like the modern for us in the SEAL team. Ditz was the modern version of Miles Gear. Miles Gear was kind of, it had a lot of, it had a lot of,

had a lot of issues with Miles Gear, the old Miles Gear that we had in the 80s and 90s. It wasn't, you know, it didn't work really well. And it was just, it wasn't great. And you couple that with a bad attitude,

which is, here's something I heard, back in the day was it's going to give you training scars. Like they would say that about paintball. They'd say, hey, if you're using paintball guns, you're going to get training scars, meaning I'm going to forget how to load my real weapon because I'm used to reloading a paintball gun. And so now when the moment hits,

I'm fumbling around looking for a hopper to put my more paintballs in. We can't do it because of that. And what that essentially does, unfortunately throws the baby out with the bathwater. Because the training scars that you get from only fighting against paper targets are worse than the training scars you get from having to use a different weapon

to run these scenarios. Yeah. So to go back to your point, and I see where you're going with this, the basic level training of individuals has advanced and evolved a lot less than the unit level. level training where we were constantly adapting

from what was happening on the battlefield. Was that similar for you guys? I mean, if somebody went through flight school right now, it would look very similar to World War II flight school. That thing is not a vault. And it was just this idea of what a learning organization was. The organization has to learn. And look, and I'm sure it's true for Buds,

you've described it, but OCS primary flight training, they serve a very specific function. But that function is not to teach war fighting. And so the evolution of those organizations really isn't that dramatic. It doesn't change very much because it's teaching these fundamental skills that are absolutely required, but they're not the skills that you utilize the only skills utilized for war fighting. I just think this point as a leader, when you read that idea about a learning organization, is that a learning organization evolves and adapts and changes and right back to what you started with was my story at Topkin,

which was you actually need to be out in front of that. And leading your organization, so your organization is designed. to learn the organism that you're a part of learns. And when you start in the military, like OCS or boot camp or even a little bit TBS, I bet if I went back to OCS right now, I'd exactly, yeah, that's about right. I see guys marching on the grinder. I see guys ripping their bed sheets off their racks and throwing their mattress on the floor. I see people yelling and screaming.

And this probably looks much closer. And if I went back to, if I went to air wing training at Topkin up at Fowler now, I'm like, damn, you guys have upped your, I guarantee you, I'd say you guys have upped your game a lot just because I've been out of it, you know, for long enough because that is a learning organization. That's really, I think the goal. And I think, again, the parallels are pretty obvious at how clear that is. And it's not to imply that those basics aren't important. They're critical. And they mentioned that here just a little bit ago.

They're saying, look, what Marines do is get brilliant at the basics. Yeah. And when I was running trade at, I actually changed the, terminology that we use to describe basic I ads. I changed it from basic to fundamental. Fundamentals, yeah. Because it's truth. Because guys would think, well, I'm not going to do the basics. But these are fundamental. Right. Fundamental. This is what it actually all boils down to. These things, these fundamental things. And you know what? There have been changes, but guess what's never changed, cover and move?

Totally. Keep the things simple, prioritized next you, decentralized command. Those things have not changed. And I don't foresee them trying to change. Yeah, it's legit. Conclusion. Strong leaders are also teachers and mentors. Every Marine is a current or future leader and therefore leads by example to seek learning opportunities for themselves and other Marines.

All Marines, especially those in positions of leadership, should strive to remain humble. So they are ready and willing to learn from anyone at any time. time in any place. Learning is an institutional priority and a professional expectation for all Marines. Continuous, disciplined, and progressive learning is necessary for warfighting readiness. Learning is the foundation for all that Marines do. It is the key enabler for all warfighting functions. Think about that statement.

Learning is the key enabler for all warfighting functions and our purpose as the nation's naval expeditionary force in readiness. Marines learn to quickly recognize and understand important information. Adapt, make sound decisions, and act, which is especially important in the fog and friction of war. All Marines must understand that continuous learning is a priority and key to our readiness as the nation's first line of defense, always being ready to be the first to fight. And that's the last line of that document, aside from a giant bibliography of all the different documents that they cite in there, many of which are actually other Marine Corps pubs, which would seem like, oh, that's incestuous if those original pubs weren't so freaking solid.

But that idea that learning is the foundation for all that Marines do, and it's the key enabler. The key enabler to be able to collect, absorb, and understand information and then use that information to make good decisions and execute is all, all based on learning. And that obviously doesn't only apply to Marines. It applies to everybody. And I'll tell you, I think we've been, we've had this, how we're, how we're long if we've been, when did I, what has this about, been about a month cycle of us with this document? It's been about a month. Yeah. I have been paying attention and have realized what,

a better understanding of what. I haven't realized fully what it is, but I have a better understanding of learning and that I have been learning. And more important, what difference it makes when you are proactively learning, when you are actually learning, when you are actually, actually engaging. You're putting pressure on your brain to proactively learn. Makes a huge difference. Learning because you're experiencing something or learning because you are being taught, like think of those two things.

Learning because you're experiencing it and learning it because you're being taught, that's one level of learning. But when you learn because you are actively engaging your brain and processing information and making it part of your usable knowledge, making it part of your usable knowledge. Hey, I'm not just taking this fact and storing it in there and not being able to take it out and recollect it, not only recollect it, because who cares about recollecting it,

but taking it to apply it to a problem and solve a problem? Or use it, look, what are the chances that you come up with a problem that fits this thing that you learned and it's an exact fit? No, you gotta take six different little elements that you've learned actively, learned. You've engaged your brain and you apply a little piece there and a little piece there and a little piece over there. And then you have that knowledge and you use it and you apply it.

And that is the deal. That is the game changer. And that is learning. We're pretty fired up about learning over here on my side. Echo Charles. Yeah, you make a good point with like, are you say usable usable knowledge is it were totally different thing so that's weird because okay

so you don't remember when you're in school I don't know Dave Burke were you a good student I was okay you seem like you're like you'd be a good student as opposed to say no I was I was not a troublemaker

yeah I was quiet I did well in school I did not work very hard so I wasn't like a studious guy I didn't like try hard in school right right okay So for lack of a better way of putting it, maybe just happen to get good grades kind of thing, given kind of who you are. You could say that, I guess.

Sure. I want to say that, but I will also say Jockle, what? Were you a good student? In high school? Yeah. No. Okay. So a lot of, it seems like in school, you know, how you're learning should be fun, which you said, by the way, today.

Learning should be fun, right? I've heard that before. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, dang. True statement, actually. I like it. Yeah, as an adult, I think we can realize that a little bit more, especially when we're into learning. But you know how like when you're in school, they're like, learning should be fun.

You're like, well, I'm doing it wrong because this is super boring. You know, like playing at the park is fun. The slide's fun. Recess is fun. Lunchtime fun. Learning part, not so much. Pretty boring. And this is what I think is, this is why I think.

Because it's not usable knowledge in your brain. It is long term, for sure. But you don't feel it. You don't feel that. I'm going to let Jocko talk because I actually I'm not. I'm going to say so. Because it might be kind of what weird thing. I just said I had fun reading this.

I had fun reading this book, this pub. I had fun doing it, which is kind of crazy to think about because the first time I did it was just purely a chore. I actually think learning is fun. So I do stuff with my kids. I got a six-year-old boy. Like we are doing things now. He's able to do things with his hands and built stuff. And he's learning things and he's having fun doing it.

It's what is the problem. is that the inability to make the connection, that everything they're learning, even the ones that feel like a chore, if I could somehow convince my kid, listen, buddy, I know it doesn't make sense right now, but you will one day make the connection between this and other things,

which I can't do because he's six. If I could help him make that connection, he would be much happier learning things that don't make sense on to why he's learning them. It's the inability to make to the connection. The thing of it is is that you said something a minute ago, like since I cracked this thing open, I said this to you a little while ago, hey dude, this is coming out.

They're about to publish this thing. Even in the last month, I am looking around and seeing things that I've been looking around and seeing in my entire life. And that's because I can make the connection between learning things and how it creates not just the usable knowledge, but how it makes my life better and helps me be better at what I do. It isn't that if you could make that connection for your kids. And I think that's the hardest part for me is, hey, but we can't just all do the things that you're enjoying.

We got to do some of these other things, too, they're important. But I promise you they'll have value and meaning. That's hard to cross that bridge and make that gap for a six-year-old. But I've never seen anybody who learned something, not enjoy learning it once they figure out what they're doing. You were so close. So close. So close. You were so close to taking my thunder away.

You were so close. I'm glad I gave you the opportunity to attempt. And you were dancing around it. You were dancing around it. And you tell me if I'm wrong. Well, I was thinking, I'm like, man, I'm going to start saying something he's going to say. And every time I try to say something he's going to say, Echo says, if you could say it like him, it'd be better. So I almost, I should have just followed my instinct, which is to say nothing.

You were, you were dancing around what I was thinking. Okay. Which is this. You're saying, hey, you've got this thing and you can't make a connection in the future. I'm going to take that one step further. Imagine this. which I thought you were going to say is the key phrase. And then I thought you were going to say is the key phrase.

The application of knowledge actually being able to use it is where that connection gets made. So when you teach your son how to do something that he can apply immediately, that's fun. Imagine if in jiu-jitsu what you had to do was do an arm lock on a, what is it, a grappling dummy. That's what your lessons were. Would that be fun, right? Marginal. Okay, did you not want to give me a solid answer? What's more fun?

Arm locking a grappling dummy or arm locking a training partner? Let me ask you this. How many arm locks have you done on a grappling dummy? One. Okay, how many arm locks have you done on training partners? One million. Exactly. So this, every, what you said, Dave, totally accurate.

And I think where that connection actually gets made is when you have the opportunity to apply that knowledge. So if you teach your kid something and all of a sudden they go to the store and you go, hey, it's 78 cents. You know, get out the coins. And the kid gets to take out three quarters and three pennies and put them on the table. And he applied that and you give them the nod. Right? And you got to apply that. And boom.

Yeah, the cashier goes, I'm, thank you, son. So as much as we can, if we can teach people something, and then we find an avenue for them to actually apply that knowledge. And who knows? Maybe this could, maybe the goal is to actually teach people in stages

where you're teaching them things that they can actually apply. Like if you can set it up that way, that you're not trying to teach them advanced physics before, But when there's no application for it, but then when they get to a point where you can start to say, hey, you want to check out, you want to know what the tide's going to do? We can actually figure that out from astrophysics. We can actually figure that out. Here's what it is. And here's how it works.

And then people say, ah. So, yeah, application of knowledge. What do you think, Dave? Yeah. Dude, totally. And the piece that I still am grappling with, the larger connection, and I wish I could say it more clearly. is the piece that I'm struggling with, and I think most people struggle with,

is what you're learning doesn't have to be applied in that same way. Meaning, so, hey, you learn to teach a kid out to count money, and then he gets account money. But if I were to tell you that you could be better at arm-locking your opponent by reading the Marine Corps pub on strategy, because there's something that it makes you think and see differently.

And some people don't want to read that stupid book because it has nothing to do with what they want to do. Actually, actually, actually, It does. And if you can make that connection of this thing that seems totally irrelevant to your world, I don't like math. I'm never going to go be a math teacher. My daughter will say, I'm not good at math and I'm never going to go be whatever.

There's a connection there to every other thing that you're doing. And that's a gap that's hard to bridge. It's like it's not that you're going to go, but you don't have to become a mathematician for math to be important and fun in your life. I'm going to stop there because I'm what you have to say. But that's the gap that I'm talking about. Well, that's the original idea of the thread, right? The original idea of the thread is like all these things are connected.

Totally. And if you realize that they're connected, then you'll understand them better. And the better you understand this scientist from 1820, the better you'll be able to relate to this artist in 1904. Like, those things are real. And the mind, the brain is a muscle that the more you use it, the more you utilize it, the better you can respond. And so, yeah, I think you're actually absolutely right. That's when, when, and I was kind of stuck in the six-year-old brain, right? Because it's really hard to explain to a six-year-old, hey, this math that you're learning is going to help you give you a greater capability to win in a soccer game, right?

Like that, even though we all know it's actually true because you're sharper, you're smarter, there's a million reasons. So finding it the finding the application of it and when you recognize that application and I think that's where I've been very very lucky because at some point again at some point I said oh I can take what I learned in Jiu Jitsu and I can apply it to combat and I can apply it to leadership and by the way I can take something that I learned in leadership and I can apply it to Jiujitsu and all the all the way across those those modalities and by the way those modalities as As soon as you step into some other modality, if you have the open mind, you see the application again and you see it again and you see it again. I mean, we do this all the time at Eshalan Front. We're working with a company that we've never worked with this company before and you take a look at what they're doing, how they're doing it, and you can apply the principles that we know.

And if you don't understand that, look, you've got to take this little piece of this principle and this little piece and you put them in place. And look, we get people at Eslam Front clients that they've really, you know, really, read the book thousand times they've listened to every single podcast and as soon as you roll in and you start talking about it they don't quite have the skill yet of maybe how to apply it and as soon as they see how it applies all of a sudden their mind expands and you go back three months later and now they don't need they don't need us anymore they don't need echelon for anymore they've figured out the application process and that's where they go next level yeah totally speaking of learning

Echo Charles. Closing the knowledge gaps. Yes, speaking of closing the knowledge gaps. By the way, don't hide knowledge gaps. You know why I think it's fun as an adult, I think more. So like when you're young at that, maybe this has to do with part of the brain. Maybe not.

I don't know. But from what I hear it does. When you're young, everything is short term. Everything. True. Like the long term, the brain has a hard time to comprehend that, you know. So like you'll get students, like young students or whatever

who get really good grades. but that tends to be because their goal is to get good grades. It's not to like learn math so I can apply it to life necessarily. Maybe that's what they're told. Maybe maybe not. But as far as their actual like desire to learn the math, it's like to get good grades. Trey, you ever done? Okay, so I taught my three year old how to shoot a slingshot, right? How are what? Shoot a slingshot.

Sure. So I shoot a slingshot. You watch a three year old bull. by the way, you know, probably girl too, but shoot a slingshot at a bottle in front of a three-year-old. They're going to think it's the most awesome thing in the world. And they say, oh yeah, you try. He doesn't know how. He doesn't know how to put the thing in.

He gets all mad or whatever. I teach him he's focused on that thing like, man, this is, I'm going to learn the world's solutions right now. This is the best thing in my life and I need to learn this. Try, teach him how to like memorize the alphabet. bet he'll be like bro i'll listen to you but bro i'm not into this right now you know it's just night and day you know um or or try to do a puzzle with a kid you're just looking for that one piece that fits and when it fits it's like cool but meanwhile as an adult you're like cool that is cool that's good incremental like progress that we're making but it's really cool when this whole

corner is developed and then this whole corner's and then you put them all together and boom the big puzzles see i'm saying it's like a bigger picture kind of thing way of thinking anyway that's why And then not to mention when you're in an adult, what you're learning tends to be something you chose to learn. And that's already, you're just already going on that path of fulfilling like little gaps in your knowledge that you need to be filled. You know, so like actionable knowledge kind of thing. It's already going to be set up like that just by the very nature of you choosing

what to learn. See what I'm saying. Yeah, that's why that's important for parents, teachers, human beings to try and get the kids to recognize what that thread that that thread ties everything together the long because if we're learning for short term we're learning for sure for short term and it's hard to see where it all ties into you know with that so speaking of long term short term learning what he got for us echo charles if you have I'm going to go with the knowledge gap situation that really because that's a big one hiding knowledge gap or closing oh yeah exposing and therefore closing

Closing, yes. So, Jiu-Jitsu, let's face it. Let's face it. I don't need to learn how to fight, right? Because I don't fight. Yeah. If that knowledge gap is exposed in the real world,

you can have a problem. We are going to have a problem. So let's close that knowledge gap. We'll take Jitsu. When we take Jiu-Jitsu, what do we need? Jiu-Jitsu training gear. Gu if you're doing ghee, Rasker's if you're doing no-ge.

Okay. So we're getting all this. stuff. There's more stuff, by the way. Orjimane.com. That's where you can get you these best keys in the world. American made 100%. Are we back making jeans? We are making jeans. We are back in the game. Gines are being made.

Good. You can order them and you will get them. We have, we're making it. So if you don't know, we started making masks. Face coverings actually because we don't want people to get confused and think that this is an N95 masks. They're not, but there's recommendations from all kinds of people, including law enforcement, that will find you here in the state of California if you're not wearing a mask. No kidding.

Yes. Is that under certain circumstances? You're outside. Started May 1st. No kidding. Yeah. So anyways, at origin, we started making masks so that people face coverings. So if you want to get those, go to origin, main.com.

You can also get a bunch of other clothes, including jeans, yes. You can also get, let's say you're in lockdown at your house. You didn't have a gym. No gym. Your gym is shut down because of COVID-19. Now you have no weights, no gym. What are you going to do? Well, you want to work out.

You want to train. Guess what you can get from origin, Maine. Two items right now. One of them is a plio box, right? You want to get your jump on. And there's all kinds of things you can do with a plio box. You know what I do with a plio box? Push-ups.

Yeah, push-ups. Yes, jumps. Yeah, all that stuff. You know what I do? Stretch, oddly enough. Sure. It's one of those things. You use it to get yourself in positions that force you to stretch.

And I am not a good stretcher. Yeah. And then we also have something known as the burden, which is a, what would you say it is? A leather kettlebell. It's a leather kettlebell. So it shows up to your house with no weight. And then you can fill it with whatever you want to fill it with. My recommendation, actually, pennies.

Go to your bank. Go to your bank and get $50 to $75 worth of pennies. Load them into the burden. So stitch it up, not stitch it, but you tie it up. It's like shoelaces. And then you have, you got about a, 30 to 40 pound kettle belt depending on how much you fill it up. Yeah, dang, that's a good idea.

Pennings are heavy, men. Penries are heavy. And they're readily available. They have them at the bank. There's going to be a run on pennies in America. They're going up and value. You know, they're going out. They're phasing out pennies.

They were. Do they even have them at the bank? Yes. They do. They do. Yes, they do. I heard like five years ago that they're straight up phasing pennies out of the whole game. The cool thing, 40 pounds might seem light.

a kettlebell if you've never used a kettlebell before and you don't work out you're gonna be surprised 40 pounds as heavy is more than you're gonna have to go lighter than that but dealing with the burden because it's pliable it's actually harder to you it's harder to work with in a kettlebell so like you know a kettlebell is harder to work with a barbell because it's odd shape and it's whatever yeah this is one step even harder oh yeah so you can get really kind of savage workout just with the burden. Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. Because it's like, you know, that's the whole thing with like sandbags. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that kind of thing. Yeah, the awkward is like working more muscle. Do you have a burden, Dave? No.

Oh, dang, your relationships must not be very good right now over to origin. Well, it's a hot commodity. That thing is good, man. Yeah, well, we sold out immediately, but we got more leather. So we're back in the game Making them happen

Making them happen More burdens Yes more burdens for the world Yeah that was good Carry your burden Oh yeah Also boots Or we're back doing the boots

Thing Do you have boots right Dave No no boots either No boots Very bad relationships Either that or they know me really well You're not wearing boots Oh check

Yeah makes sense Yeah well yeah You won't wear boots like just around No I don't wear boots just around. But when I go on the road, I only wear boots. Yeah, cool. Makes sense.

Everything at origin main.com. Also supplements. If you are not keeping your joints in order, you're not going to be happy. Big picture, because after a while, they jam up. Trust me.

So yes, joint warfare from Jocko Joint Warfare, super krill oil. Also, we have the discipline. Keep your mind in the game. your brain in the game. Dave Burke, super excited about the discipline. Pretty much daily.

Not pretty much. It's daily. It's actual daily. Yeah. We spun up some more Cold War too. So, yeah. If you need that little immune system hitter, you can jump on the Cold War and get some of that.

The cans of Discipline go, ready to drink. And there's a new flavor that will be coming out. Actually, there's a couple new flavors that will be coming out. One of them is called Sour Apple Sniper. The J.P. Dinell, signature. And then also, we will be announcing afterburner Orange, the Dave Burke, signature model. And then Echo Charles, we don't have a name.

We don't even have a flavor yet. But I sensed in the room today when we started talking about after burner orange. Let's just say some of us weren't as excited and maybe thought that maybe they should have their own What are you talking about? That's not even true How do you put that on me? That's not true. It's not true at all I think you need your own flavor. All right. Well, thanks, bro

But yes, these are- I got a sample of the sour apple sniper You still watch this. Dude, it is so good. And I did my first two samples of the afterburn orange right now that sour appraisth sample they have that they've dialed that thing in that thing was good yeah it'll take it'll take some iterations yeah i don't i've done two i did two i've done two trials so far of after burn orange yeah i got the first two got the family everybody got in on it tried it

yeah it's just gonna take it takes iterations to get it there the i mean for the first mulk for mint mulk i went through 10 iterations try it again try it again try it again try it again and then I was like, yep, there it is. So all that good stuff. Warrior Kid Mulk. Jocka white tea. Man, I made a jaco white tea the other day, like from the tea bags. That is so legit.

And all this stuff is available at the vitamin shop. If the vitamin shop is open in your area right now, since we're all in lockdown, you can check it all out there. OriginMane.com. OriginMane, M-A-I-N-E, OriginM-M-M-M-O-N-C-com for any of this gear. And it does. Yes. the whole game, the whole system, really.

Also, Jocko has a store and it's called Jocko Store. So, super original. Yes, we go to jocco store.com and you can get, you know, what do you call? merch. Is that the kid, how the kids say it now? merch stuff. Yeah. The last T-shirts, hoodies, more rash guards, beanies, some women's stuff on there,

tank tops and whatnot, you know, discipline equals freedom. You know, the whole, how should I say? As far as representation goes, you will be representing the path. We'll say that. I got a good quarantine shirt on there, too. If you want to represent in lockdown, you're still putting in the work. You're still doing your decline push-ups on the plio box. You're carrying the burden.

See what I'm saying? And you want to represent? We got a good quarantine shirt for you. A good one. Got women's tank top two. Tank tops, too, by the way. Jocco store. Don't come.

Good stuff on there. I'll just leave that out there for you. Yeah, yeah, it's good, man. Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't yet. Leave a review so we can read it. Hopefully it's funny. Hopefully it's impactful. Also, got some other podcasts.

Got a podcast called The Thread. The episodes are out. They're on YouTube. It's a different, what is it? Podcast feed. What is it called? Yeah, it is called the feed. Yeah, that's true.

So there's a different feed for the thread. There's a different feed for grounded. So the thread is about, well, it's about what we were just talking about, a thread of things, how things connect together in the world. And we, myself, Daryl Cooper of Margar Made, are, have been doing that podcast. It's been, it's been wild, to be honest with it. He's bringing things up in my mind, making me remember things.

One of the coolest things that he made me remember was this conversation with contractors. I'm in Baghdad at 2003, 2004, and there's contractors that show up in Baghdad. These guys are Blackwater guys or whatever, triple canopy guys. And these guys come in to our compound, and they just kind of arrived in country.

And a couple of them were former seals, you know, probably in the 90s, no combat experience. And they're talking to us, and we're looking at their gear, and we're kind of giving him a heads up. And that Daryl, because he's good like this, we were asking the guys,

because they were about to go to Fallujah. And they were taking up-armored Ford Explorers, which sounds badass, but the up-armored Ford Explorers were actually horrible. All they were was a regular Ford Explorer, two-wheel drive Ford Explorer, with like a little bulletproof glass mounted inside of it. They didn't make any adjustments to the suspension.

They didn't make any adjustments to the power. It was just, they were junk. And so we're looking at these guys, getting ready to go in Fallujah. And we're asking them, hey, do you guys have run flats for your, again, we're asking, hey, do you have this? Do you have a radio? Do you have this?

And then it's like, hey, do you have run flats for your Ford Explorers? And they're like, no. and Daryl named the podcast, you know, do you have run flats? And it's such a great name because that really shows you where we were at. That was towards the end of my deployment. And these guys were just showing up. And we knew how bad things could get and how quickly they could get bad. And these guys who had just showed up had no idea what they were getting into.

And within a month, the contractors that got. that got ambushed in Fallujah and strung up on the bridge that we're there. So we go into all kinds of things like that type of story, like that type of information, which I really haven't talked about

in that podcast, The Thread. And we're gonna, we got China coming up. We're going deep on China. And so we also have the grounded podcast, which is about Jiu-Jitsu. We have the Warrior Kid podcast, which is for our Warrior Kids.

Latest episode. I think it's the latest episode is about Johnny Kim. Johnny Kim. on it guest guest starring astronaut doctor and seal Johnny Kim warrior kid soap don't forget about that it's available on jaco store now is it are we there yet are we there yet yes that was a massive hesitation warrior kid soap get some killer soap for yourself and that way you your family everyone you know can stay

clean stay clean speaking of staying clean we have a YouTube channel very clean YouTube channel. Where? Actually, I'm not sure how clean that YouTube channel is. Why can't you just go in and do like, you need to make channels within the channel, one that says, you know, whatever you call hype videos or what are those things? Enhanced videos. You should have enhanced videos.

You should have excerpts. You should have the thread. You should have grounded all in separate channels. That's my humble opinion. Yeah. You know what? I'll go home and do it since it makes a lot of sense. Okay.

All right. Take an action. Well, they are, they're in playlists, right? So it's called playlist. So you've done that already. I've done that, but here's the thing. What you're talking about, which I agree. Is it, I've done that?

Or is it, here's the thing? Which one of these two are we talking about? It's actually technically both. So that is done. They're in playlist. So you can go to the playlist section, then they'll be organized. But if you go to the main YouTube, then there's a way to organize it where it displays your playlist, which is what I think anyway, that you're,

you're talking about, right? Like channels within the channel. Yeah. So when you go to the main page, yeah, it's like you can, nonetheless, yeah,

it is done. So yes, they can be played in a row, in order, whatever, and, you know, be not filtered out,

but like if you just want to listen to the thread, right? And you just let them play, boom. See what you're saying? Yeah. Got them all.

Anyway, yes, we do have a YouTube channel, joccal podcast, YouTube channel, video version, video, see what Dave looks like,

see what we all look like, whatever, also excerpts on there. We got psychological warfare, if you need a little psychological hitter to push you through a moment of weakness you can check that out wherever MP3

are sold wherever MP3 I was going to say songs but they're not songs wherever MP3 audio is coming at you check it out psychological warfare is the name of that flipside canvass dot com Dakota Meyer making psychological warfare for your eyeballs

go to flipside canvas.com books we got some books What book? How about the code? The evaluations, the protocol. Dave Burke. How's it going? It's going pretty good.

Are you happy with the product? I am. I've been more happy with the interaction that the product has created. A ton of interaction, man. It is so awesome to see how many people got it and got either back on the path or understood the path better. The interaction from that has been awesome, man. I'm stoked to be a part of that. That is the, that book is like, this is another thing that it, that it sort of does.

And whether it is this surprising, maybe, maybe not. But it's like, okay, so you read it, right? You could refer to it all this stuff. It's like a big part of it is just a reminder to just evaluate how good you're doing. And really remember that you have, you do have a goal, right? And if you don't, then make a goal, whatever. So like, this is what it'll do. Like if I'll work out, which is a normal thing, you know, try to work out.

But I'm mentally conscious of like, okay, what kind of workout? Was that a two? Was that a five? You know? And I'm kind of like at the end, I have a straight up number done, straight up. And then I'll like share it with somebody. Just threw up a four today, you know, whoever, you know, if they're sort of in the game as well. Like that's what it'll do, you know.

So it'll keep you on track, man, in that way. Dude, without a doubt, you start thinking about things you've never thought about before. Yeah. Also just being able to say, I just need to at least get a one over here. Just at least like, hey. And you also look at some cookies and you see. say no I'm not going to go to zero right now. Leif Babin was telling me he had a little scenario unfold and he was like,

this could be a zero. A little zero on the diet. I had a little scenario yesterday. Just had to throw up a zero on food, on fuel intake. All right. Yeah. What? Min chocolate chip.

No, no, worse. Way worse. Donuts. No, no. I'm never going to eat donuts again. If you see me eating donuts. You can stab me in the face because I'm just not going to do it but just straight up American Bacon cheese burger yeah which right we're we're already not good but fries with it

That's just no fat. That's just unsat yeah at the end of the day that does what is that the that That amounts to a zero yeah for that's I was actually I asked Laif I was like maybe I should have put some kind of negative Numbering like you it's gonna actually take you time to Dig out of a hole right you had Bacon double cheese burger The carry over for the next day is diet You're carrying that with you I'm not down another point on tomorrow's number

It should be a negative even if I ate today you know a grass-fed steak I you know whatever and a And a salad I would still not even be able to dig out of the hole French fries I don't eat French for come on What's a what would be a one as far as a meal goes? do you think I think just a no I think a

well I don't know because look if there's if there's a potential for a five a meal that's a five a four or three a two and a one well first of all it's a whole day right it's a whole day totally you can't just get one meal

you don't get up have a ideal breakfast and give yourself a five for diet for the day and call it good you got to do the whole day and you know if you're on a five for a diet that diet is that consumption is Heather to other things that you're doing.

You are, I optimize. A one is like, I didn't do anything bad. Yeah. But I didn't do anything like constructive either. I'm not like managing what I'm in taking. A one's like you ate to survive you. And you didn't do anything that took you going backwards. Yeah, but like what?

There's no French fries involved in. If you ate French fries in the day, you're not getting a one. Okay. Is this a one day? We'll say breakfast, lunch, dinner. Keep it simple. Okay. Uh, breakfast, we ate

Frosted mini wheat No. It's in your audience. Cereals. What are we talking about? Frosted mini wheat. What? Serious right now?

What about shredded? No, brother. What? No wheat. No whole wheat. Nothing. Cereal. What about granola?

Grinola out. That's a zero. Here's the other thing. We got to look at what is, what is it that you've set up for yourself, right? Because some people, if you're running a marathon, all of a sudden, you're going to need certain foods that you would not. need had you been trying to cut weight or had you been trying to gain weight, right? Right.

So it depends on the goal. There's a thing here that's a larger, and we've had a lot of questions about this. First of all, whoever's let you mark yourself whatever you want. This is your evaluation. If you're a habit, if you're, if you're someone who's spent the last 10 years and you get up in the morning and your breakfast is donuts, like that's just been your thing, donuts and coffee and you get off the donut and coffee train and you get up and you have some sort of whole wheat cereal thing to replace.

that you're doing you're improving you're getting better now is that a five no that's not a five and it's not to like punish you for making one small mistake but it's the measurement of are the things that you're doing it probably the biggest takeaway is what you said is are you thinking about this because if donuts is part of your diet every that that's you're you're a zero for nutrition in your life and you need to get on a path by which that is no longer part of your repertoire and when you don't do that you got to account for that you know what why even play around I have the book right here. Here's the deal.

Here's a score of one. For at the end of the day, you ate everything you're going to eat. Here's the score of one. Food intake was effective to sustain health but did not optimize nutrition or participate in health enhancing program. So maybe you had some little granola. Like it sustained you, but it didn't optimize. Right. Yeah.

It wasn't. You weren't recovering from the week's workout for Monday. Did it did not eat properly and did not provide any nutritional benefit to perform critical daily tasks. That's your donuts and a pizza Right? You're just the gear you're getting a zero. Yeah Five consumed ideal Ideal food intake and maintained perfect adherence to diet or fasting Got it. Yeah, every calorie was optimal. What? Gotcha

Every calorie was optimal and nothing was consumed that didn't contribute to health or nutrition allowing for a sustained peak level of performance throughout the entire day. Okay. No big deal. No big deal. I had an interesting situation to throw out to the crowd here. Happened to me on Saturday night. So normal day, Saturday, we're out.

It's a good day. Took my kids mountain biking. We had a good day. Came back, had a good, I think I grilled. We did a normal dinner. And then we had a little adult, a little situation at the neighbors. We went to the neighbor's house. We did some social distancing hanging out.

Everything was cool. They're all drinking. I don't drink. I'm hanging out. It's all good. We had a good time. Get home just before midnight. Feeling hungry, Dave.

Feeling. So at literally the stroke of midnight, I am consuming strawberry milk. At midnight. I'm good with that. Yeah. I'm totally good. Oh, yeah. My last meal is way after.

I didn't need a meal. I didn't need a meal, but I wanted something that tasted good so bad that I just that's a good question right there. One of the good things about Molk, just check it out. You might feel guilty because it tasted so good, but you're actually making clear. Yeah, or if you're still good, this cannot be good for me at midnight.

Yeah, and the motive too, right? You weren't like, hey, I'm on this program. This milk needs to facilitate the program. You're like, hey, I need something that tastes good. There's the moke. So it's kind of a question. Is that, so what is that? Is that like a two?

It has to be something because milk is good for you. Are you, if you're, working out on any regular basis, moch is good for you and it does support your goals. 100%. Moke is good for you, period. I don't even think this is a question, actually. I think this is a positive.

Just making sure. Good deal. It's just a little guilt because it tastes so good. Leadership strategy and tactics. So the code, you can get that one. It's up and running. We had a little lag time. I apologize.

I didn't realize that every single person was going to buy it immediately. We're back up to speed. Sorry about the delay. We also have leadership strategy and tactics field manual. We have Way of the Warrior Kid one, two, and three. We have Mikey and the Dragons. We have discipline equals freedom field manual. We have extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership.

We also have Eschelon Front, which is our leadership consultancy, where we solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. A lot of that right now is taking place on EF Online. You heard me reference it a bunch today. Go to EFonline. If you want to interact with us, check it out. We're on there. We're live, not just me, but all the instructors at Eshalonfront, different times a day, different subjects, lots of interaction, Q&A, leadership primer.

We talked about that, immediate action drills, all kinds of stuff going on. EFonline.com, check that out. Muster 2020, Orlando's canceled. Phoenix, Arizona is up next, September 16th and 17th, and then Dallas, Texas. Texas, December 3rd and 4th, check Extreme Ownership.com. If you want to come, we canceled an entire muster with 900 people. Some of those people are going to Phoenix and or Dallas. So those are going to sell out earlier than we thought.

Get on it earlier if you want to go. And of course, we have EF Overwatch and EF Legion. If you were in the military, go to EFlegion.com and enroll. There's companies that are hiring right now. Even though there's companies that are laying people off and furlowing, there are other companies that are exploding in growth and need people. So go to EF Overwatch and EF Legion. EF Legion is where you can just enroll immediately.

EF Overwatch is for companies that are searching for executive position. EF Legion looking for frontline leaders, frontline managers to make things happen. Also, America's Mighty Warriors.org. This is Mark Lee's moms charity organization. helping service members worldwide, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Donate. You can donate right there. There's a little section that says donate,

and she spreads the love to service members, their families, and Gold Star families. And if you haven't had enough of my oppressive elocution or echoes farcical blathering or Dave's top gun talk, then you can locate us on the interwebs as well as Twitter on Instagram and on the face. Dave is at David R. Burke. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocka Willink.

And to all the men and women out there in uniform, our military members who fight and risk it all for our way of life. Thank you to the police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service. Thank you all for taking care of us here on the home front and to all the doctors, nurses, and medical personnel that are working to keep us safe and healthy. Thank you for dedicating your life's work to the care of others. and to everyone else out there remember that you are your own commander

you are in charge of your life you are the general and you are also the soldier you have to lead but you also have to follow that is how you achieve your mission so go out there and get after it

and until next time This is Dave and Echo and Jocko. Out.