Jocko Podcast - 424: Action and Purpose Even When You Are Afraid.

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

USAF Manual, "Psychological Aspects of Survival." Part 2. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 424 with Echo Charles and me Jocker Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So continuing from the last podcast that we did for 23, if you haven't listened to that one, you can't go back and listen to it or you can listen to that one later. These kind of stand on their own. This is going back to the book, the same 1954 Air Force Manual called the psychological aspects of survival. And there's just a bunch of good information in there.

Today we're going to talk about some sections. Look, it's a survival manual. That's not what it's about. It's about the psychology of survival. And so the things that I found that we're going to cover today, they're helpful to so many different aspects of your life. It's a section on fear and it's a section about leadership and how to recognize and overcome fear,

something everybody needs to know. And then how to lead a group or group leader. leadership or group leadership in dynamic situations how do you do that and I think you're gonna see both these topics I was pulling all kinds of stuff out of them that we can apply to our normal lives business lives tactical lives if you're in a tactical scenario family relationships the whole nine yards so here we go we're gonna go back to the book 1954 psychological aspects of survival fear in survival fear Can save your life or it can kill you opening line. I like where we're going some men are at their best and enjoy themselves most when they are scared many downed flyers faced with survival emergencies have been surprised at how well they remembered their survival briefings how quickly they could think and react and what strength they had the experience gave them a new confidence in themselves on the other hand some men became paralyzed with face with this when face

with the simplest survival situations. Some of these have been able to snap themselves out of it before it was too late. In other cases, a fellow crew member was on hand to save them. The others, however, have not been so fortunate. They are not listed among the survivors. How you will react depends more upon yourself than it does upon the situation. Once again, these people take it right to the source. the early versions, extreme ownership, how well you react depends more upon yourself than it does

upon the situation. This has been demonstrated both in actual survival situations and in laboratory experiments. It isn't always the physically strong or happy-go-lucky guy who handles fear most effectively. They frequently become frozen in panic. On the other hand, timid and anxious men have met such emergencies with remarkable coolness and strength. It's about you. What's you going to do? And that is true. You don't know how people are going to react. Now look, do you get enough sense for it. You do. You get you can make an assessment and you're going to be accurate to a certain percentage. So let's say if I looked, if I knew five guys

and I knew we're going to put throw some dynamic situation at them and I had to predict how they were going to react, I'd probably get a 70. 70% right yeah well I guess it's based on how good you know or how long you've known them maybe yeah but even then yeah even then like just being around them for a second you can kind of yeah you can look at them but you're only going to be like a 70 you know now look if you have the chance to put them in scenarios you can start to know them know them better right which is what you're saying but even when you know them yeah there's still going to be some people that just lock up at the wrong point you don't know yeah and that's one of those things

things when you get to experience it for the first time and you're like, okay, I'm good. It's a good feeling. Oh, like that dynamic situation. Yeah, you've been in the scenario and you're like, okay, that's kind of, you know, that's what everyone, that's why young men want to go into combat, right? They want to see what up. They want to see how they do. They want to make sure that they react the way they envision.

And I think that that's one thing that plays into sort of how you handle the whole situation, right? If you didn't respond and didn't act the way you wish you would have, I think that's probably pretty hard to deal with. And actually, I got another book that I'm prepping right now that's, that kind of tunes into the trauma and the post-traumatic scenarios. But that's one of those things that I think I did. It also reminds me of that, remember when Jimmy May was on and he was talking about

people going through buds and the way that they saw themselves, the more closely that aligned to the way other people, people saw them the better chance they had to making it through and if they saw themselves differently than other people saw them they had less of a chance of making it through I think this one the way you see yourself and the way you actually do I think that has a lot to I think that impacts you so if you have high expectations if you think you're gonna be a superhero yeah and you act like a super wimp that's a problem if you don't if you think you're kind of wimpy and

you kind of perform wimpy you're okay yeah If you think you're going to be wimpy and you perform well, then that's kind of you'll be okay. But I think the hardest one is like you think you're going to be a stud and you end up being a dud and they're going to be hard to deal with. Yeah. Well, that does make sense because even just in everyday life, you know, we're grown adults now. Allegedly. Allegedly. And you know, you think of, I don't know if you have this, where you think of something you might have said to somebody or did or like behaved and you just regret it and you can't get that time back.

You know, you almost want to be like, like you wish you could just rewind time and like not do that, you know, kind of a thing. But it'll, and it won't ruin your life of nothing like this, but it's even now if you're reminded of something you did 30 years ago, it still actually has like an actual impact on how you feel. It's like that kind of. And it's just such a small thing, you know, so I can't imagine or I can imagine how big of a deal it is, you know, in these extreme situations. And there's two things. Number one, like, hey, you. You're in harm's way. If you don't act like a hero, bro, you are there.

It's okay. Like, we get it. It's a, you know what I mean? Like, we hold a higher expectation of ourselves. And then when someone doesn't do what they wanted to do, they feel bad about it. When it's like, hey, man, you were there. It's okay. Yeah.

Like, we appreciate you just being there. So thank you. Yeah. But that's number one. That's different. Yeah. You know, like what you feel in your head is like, it's different, you know? Yeah.

It's harder to convince someone. Like you missed the, the, the winning touchdown. down as a receiver. You know? And I'm like, hey, Echo, it's okay. Like you, we wouldn't have been here if it wasn't for you in the first place, but you don't care about that anymore.

You just know that you let us down. In your mind, you let us down when we needed you the most. Yeah, exactly. So that's one part. The other part is what you just said, and they talk about in this book, that's why it's kind of fresh in my mind.

And you've heard me talk about this a bunch of times. Being mentally prepared and in this book, they just call it set. They call it set. We'll get to it. But being set, mentally to handle something it makes you so much more prepared for it and the example I was used is if you came to my house and I was like I hid in the hallway

and scared you'd be scared if I told you I was gonna scare you I probably I probably could not scare you just because you were ready for it if you role play like a conversation that you're gonna have with someone before you go and do it you're gonna do so much better than if they suddenly show up like I want to talk about this right now you're going to be totally frazzled. Where if you role play at first with one of your peers and then you go and you make it happen, you're going to be able to handle a lot better. Patrolling down the street and thinking, okay, if I get contacted from the front, I'm going to go over here.

I'm going to make the call to move the platoon over here. Just having that little bit of foresight helps you out tremendously. And that's one of the things you and I talk about jiu-jitsu. If you train and someone grabs you in the street, you're like so ready. Yeah. If you don't train and someone grabs you, you, it takes you a good chunk of time just to compute what's going on and the fear and the aggression and the hostility and the physical, the physicality of the whole thing. That's five things or whatever I just named that you got to get over. Yeah.

Meanwhile, if you train, you're over. You're already on the other side of that mountain. You're like, what? Let's go. Oh, you just got hip tossed, son. It's true. He just got hip tossed. All right, going back to the book here. Fear. Everyone who faces an emergency that threatens any of his important needs experiences fear. In a survival emergency, you may be constantly threatened with the loss of such basic needs as food, water, companionship, shelter, even of life itself.

In a survival situation, you, like everyone else, will experience fear. Your fear will greatly influence your behavior and your behavior, your chances of surviving. Fear cannot be removed by a military order. It is a very natural response to danger. You must recognize fear, live with it, and if possible, use it to your advantage. You must accept fear as a normal reaction. It is not an emotion you need to be ashamed of. You must realize that you cannot avoid fear by denying that the danger causing it exists.

You must realize that there is always something you can do to improve your situation. Good advice. That's a big one. And this is another thing to point out, taking MMA fighters that are nervous, and you can see that they're nervous, and they've gone to the bathroom nine times, and they're pale, and they're sweating, and they're just nervous, you can tell. And if you tell them, hey, that's just your body getting ready for combat, it's good for you to be feeling what you're feeling right now.

And they go, okay, cool. If you're like, hey, what's wrong? Bro, you just sent him in a tailspin. That's so helpful. Very helpful. When you basically indicate to someone that their feelings as weird or wonky as they are, whatever those feelings are, when you tell them that those feelings are normal, part of the process, whatever, however you want to say it, like, it's weird how helpful that is.

And I use that all the time now, thank you, with my kids. Because, you know, they're growing out. You know, my daughter is 10. You know, they go through things. socially and all this stuff. And it's like, you know, they don't understand. They just understand what's in there in front of their face, how they grew up. They, you know, all these other things outside of the household is, you know, a lot of time, a mystery, you know.

So, you know, she'll get like offended or just troubled with this and how this went. And I'm feeling this for this reason. And I'll be like, hey, no, no, no, this is all normal. You got to understand. This is how it works. But what you're feeling right now is completely like, that's normal. Everyone feels like that. And then it helps 100% of the time, or it has in my experience.

the companionship through the hard patches. Companionship, in this case, just being other people feel the same thing. Yeah. It's like, oh, okay, God, it's normal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So totally. Wait, what did you just call it companionship?

It's like companionship through hardship. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like you are, what you're being told is, yeah. Oh, you've got to go for the first day of school. Yeah. You feel all nervous. Oh, everyone's nervous. Everyone feels that way.

You're all in this together. Yeah, yeah. It's okay. You got to go try out for the football team. You're scared. You're nervous. Yep. That's everyone that's going out on that field is nervous.

Yeah, that's true, huh? Because if you feel like you're the only one that feels like that, that's when comes like the feeling of like, hey, there's something wrong right now. This isn't correct. This isn't normal. You know, this is something wrong kind of a thing. Yeah. But yeah, if you know that there's nothing wrong with it, then it's normal.

It's like, all right, business as usual, then I guess. What we're doing? Yeah, so what we're doing. Next section. What is known about fear? Symptoms. When you are afraid you may have. One or more of the following symptoms or signs.

However, these effects may also appear in circumstances other than fear. So it goes through a bunch of these rapid and noticeable pulse, palpitation, trembling, feeling or muscular tension, dryness of the throat and mouth, change of pitch of voice. You ever watch, like, police shooting videos? Yeah. And you can hear the voice of like a cop that's totally petrified and his voice. Like, they're losing it. That's a good example of that. Stammering.

Perspiration, especially on the palms of the hands, souls of the feet, and the armpits. Feelings of emptiness in the stomach. Desire to defecate or urinate. I just talked about that. You get a UFC fighter that's going to the octagon for the first time. He's probably going to the bathroom 14 times in the final hour there. Same thing with combat. Like you're going out in a guy going on his first mission.

He's in the freaking port of John a bunch. nausea, faintness, forgetfulness, talkativeness in the early stages, later tending to become speechless. You ever been around someone that's scared? They're talking about some of that's blah, blah, back, blah, yeah. Confusion, fatigue, dilation of pupils, increase in blood sugar, increase of sugar in the urine, increase in adrenaline content of the blood, feelings of unreality, irritability, inability to concentrate. That's the last one. So these are all things that you can see when you see someone that's scared.

Do you have anything that you've been around where people are scared where you already know the deal? I mean, you kind of just like with your kids, like it's the first day of school. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can kind of have you seen them shiver? No, not shiver, but just, um. Not any of those symptoms. That's like extreme. So, no.

I mean, you know, at football game, but I would still have, even though I know the deal, I would still have all those feelings. Nerves and stuff for a football game. Yeah, or like Jiu-Jitza or whatever. Remember I told you I would gag all the time

before my first match only for some reason, or it's obvious now because before your first match, that's when, you know, once the seal is broken after the first match, it's like whatever. But, yeah, and in football, I'd have super, super dry mouth. It was weird just for the first,

maybe like three, four minutes of the game. I've been backstage at UFC where well-known fighters are throwing their guts up. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, that must be something. Like, are they going to be able to fight? And the coach would be like, no, that's just what they do. Yeah, yeah. That's just so.

That's kind of crazy. Yeah, all those things. But like we've been saying, when you are helping someone get through a frightened moment, those are some of the things they experience. If you tell them, yep, that's just normal. I always tell people, like, that's your body getting ready for war, Whether they're going to fight in the cage, whether they're going out on the wrestling mat, whether they're going into combat, that's your body getting ready for war. That's your body getting ready for combat.

So it's good. It's good. I tell them it's good. And it is good. Yeah. Getting focused. Next section. Who experiences fear?

Almost everyone who has flown a combat mission has experienced fear. In a study made of 1,985 flying officers and 2,519 airmen after World War II, 99. percent expressed some fear 33% of the officers and 42% of the airmen were afraid on every mission or on almost everyone where do airmen experience fear study of the fear reactions of 150 normal airmen following world war two combat tours in the eight there force indicated that some experience greatest tension the night before a mission or at some time even more distant from danger the majority however experience the greatest tension between briefing and takeoff and perhaps

over again over the enemy coast tension is relieved by action a few experienced the greatest fear at the time of combat or catastrophe some show no marked response until after the mission has been completed and they begin to talk it over very few seem to show no tension at all some because they displace fear other because they convert their fear into aggressive action against the enemy. For me, I was like a night before guy. Like the further away, that's when I, and I would feel, what I'd feel is nervous.

And I was nervous, number one, obviously, a guy's going to get hurt or killed. And number two, that we're going to do a bad job. Like, we're going to make a mistake. I'm going to make a mistake, and that's going to cause the unit to do a bad job. But for me, like, after the briefing, actually, basically during the briefing,

I'm now, I'm in the mode of, remember when I talked a little bit about getting a little bit of arrogance, a little bit of cocky? I would, basically, when I'm going into brief and I'm briefing, that's how I'm feeling. I start feeling like we're going to crush the enemy. And still have a little bit of that,

but I start feeling pretty good. And then the greatest fear in the time of combat, I'm one of those people that, when it's going on, and I think most people, that's why it says a few. Most people are like, When you're when it's happening, it's happening. That's what you're, that's what you're focused on.

Some show no marked response until after the mission has been completed and they begin to talk it over. I don't have any of that. But I have talked to guys where you could see that when we got back, they were like, what the hell just happened? And you could see the fear settling in afterwards. And then no tension or no fear. You know, they displaced the fear or converted. into aggressive action. That's probably,

I know I felt that way a lot of time. I wasn't really afraid before, during or after. I was more, I guess, for lack of a better term, focused. But also,

like, you're driving down the street, you're waiting to suck, start an IED. Well, that's called fear. You know, or you're going out the gate.

You're like, yeah, this could happen. Today, it could happen in the next 500 meters, 300 meters. Like, this could go down.

So yeah, so that means if you can if you're coaching someone or if you're coaching yourself or you're looking at yourself You may feel any one of these things in any one of these times before during after it could come your way So be ready for it be ready to recognize it next section what do airmen fear the study already mentioned the flying officers and airmen showed that the following things were most frequently feared by combat flyers Number one failure number two cowardice number three enemy action so the enemy didn't even make the top three

that's what Americans are like Americans we don't want to be cowards and we don't want to fail oh yeah the enemy might do something that killed me but what I'm really scared of is I don't want to fail and I don't want to be a coward next having a plane on fire very specific

bad weather malfunction of the aircraft, injury to the eyes, abdomen, brain, and genitals. Worryed about that. Worryed about that. Factors which increase fear in combat. One study indicated that fears are increased by feelings of helplessness and hopelessness of being attacked when you can't fight back, of being idle when you are in danger, or of being insecure in the future.

Yeah, this goes to like For me, I never liked being in reliant on a machine Like being in the back of a Bradley You and when you're when you're a A passenger and a Bradley like you're just in there It's dark. It's you don't know what the hell is happening It's loud it's hot and You can just get blown up and that's the way it is

You're a passenger in a Humvee You know, Humvee is a little bit more proactive, especially it's normally you're in a Humvee with your platoon. But in Bradley, you're in the back of a brand of Bradley. Like you got picked up or you're getting dropped off or whatever.

You don't have much control. You feel a little bit helpless. You feel it does feel badass being in a Bradley, of course. But when Bradley's are getting, getting IED and blown up and destroyed and catching on fire, it doesn't give you the confidence that you might think you would have in a Bradley.

I would have chosen 100 times, out of 100 to be on my feet instead of in a Bradley. Love the Bradley's. I appreciate them and God bless them. But my personal feeling, I'd be way more, I'm way more comfortable being on my feet than

in the Bradley. So, tentative summary of what is known. Everyone in a survival situation may expect to experience some fear. Some will experience normal fear with well-controlled rational behavior. Some may have disabling fears,

good leadership and training will modify all fears. It's very important to remember. Good leadership and training will modify all fears. What downed crew members say about fear? Reactions to fear. The air crew members interviewed who had been downed said that they experienced some or all of the previously listed symptoms.

The in-flight emergency and bailout were for most survivors intense experiences. As a result of the fear experience, Since then, some suffered considerable mental inefficiency. Yeah, I wasn't going to read this, but I'm going to read it. I was, this is a quote. So again, this book is based on just interviews with a lot of people, and this is World War II and Korea. So they've got fresh memories.

This guy says, I was stretched out against the bulkhead and scared as hell. The bulkhead is the wall of the plane. I don't remember doing anything until I had fired 100 rounds. Then I looked at my own body for holes, even though the Japs had not, fired, I made three attempts to jump. Every time my hands were holding on to something and I could not free myself. So here's a dude that's scared. He's trying to jump out, but he can't let go of the plane. Some describe the fear reactions of fellow crew members as panic, which proved fatal. Quote, the co-pilot blew up when the plane was hit. He hit the panic button and didn't bail out. This was

just the opposite of what you would have expected. I had thought he would have been, the, I would have thought I would have been the one to blow up, but I was unnaturally calm. I did begin to shake when I finally hit the ground. So dudes just so horrified that they just don't get out of the plane. Recognizing and facing fear, fairly common, especially among those captured, is an attempt to suppress from conscious awareness, the reality of danger or inability to accept the reality of the situation. Quote, my first thought or feeling was that this just couldn't be happening to me.

I couldn't believe it. My thoughts were that I had to get to the rendezvous point so I could get home for supper. It finally dawned on me that it couldn't be done. I then got out of my escape kit. It took me quite a while to reconcile myself. I decided to take the line of least resistance afterwards. I was aware of evading, although somewhat vaguely. So just not accepting the reality of the situation that you're in.

I'm going to fast forward a little bit to a section called releasing tension. Many said that they experienced tremendous relief from tension or fear when they escaped from the aircraft, hit the ground, or some said even when captured by the enemy. That's not good. But you can see if you're totally unprepared and you're totally uncomfortable and you're out there and you're scared, you could see where once you get captured, you feel like an amount of relief if you're in the wrong mindset. You might even not try to as hard as you should to evade capture because you're Waiting to get caught yeah it's like that feeling of the unknown yeah feeling of the unknown yeah feeling of the unknown is worse Yeah, it's like at least you got some relief from that you know and you're not really considering like you know the new stuff your new issues because they're not right there in front of you know you could see that Yeah oftentimes people prefer known rather than unknown yeah even when the known is like being a

prisoner of war that's great there's an important section things you can do to help reduce or kill fear are keep busy keep busy with your job plan bail out and escape procedures keep the crew briefed about the latest developments here's a bunch of quotes quote it is important to keep everybody doing something all the time some were drying socks some fishing etc another quote I was getting chilled so I bailed out the dingy to keep warm This also kept my mind occupied and helped to keep me calm. Next one, quote, I was so, I was miserably cold in my hiding place, so I began doing pushups to increase my circulation. And it's crazy.

World War II in Korea, you've got people that were shot down over the ocean, people that shot down over the jungle. These are just vast experiences. Many activities such as the last two, not only release tension, but also serve to fulfill other survival needs. get into a relatively safe place to think things over. Getting out of my shoot harness, I ran to the nearest ditch about 30 yards away and lay down to think things out. A lot of these, the same of the last podcast we did,

these moments where you take a second, get yourself to a position, as we say in the SEAL teams, take a freaking wrap off, take a wrap off, and assess what's happening. A little bit of detachment. A little bit of detachment. And this is what I was talking about earlier.

The psychological set, they just call it set for survival. To me, I think what they're talking about is mindset. Be mentally prepared. Having a psychological or mental set for survival or hoping for the best, but being prepared for the worst, seems to reduce fear and increase survival chances. Having a mental set for an experience affects your reactions. And hence your success in evading and escaping.

So again, having the mindset that like, if this happens, I'm going to be ready for it. What am I going to do? Walk through that a couple times mentally, hopefully physically. Hopefully you can run through the, you know, when you're parachuting, you kind of constantly just kind of go through the motions of what your cutaway procedures are. Like I'm doing, I'm talking. You can't see if you're listening. But if you're watching, I just instinctively started kind of like thinking through the wave off and thinking through the, the protocols that you do.

But you do that a bunch of times. You do that over and over again. You just go through the motions of doing it. And that helps you be set if an emergency occurs. Going on here, one airman says, quote, I always tried to remember all the information I would need if something happened. You may never need it, but suddenly something may happen so that you have to use it. In an emergency, this crew member recalled clearly without panic,

or confusion all the pertinent information he behaved almost as if he had rehearsed the situation and actually salvaged his crew when the designated leader failed to carry out his duties you know what's wild as i've been reading this book and we'll get more into it but you think you don't think about this but these bombers when they're getting shot down it takes time like they're up there at 30,000 feet they get shot they lose an engine they lose a wing now they're going to crash it takes time so there's a bunch of things in here where they're they're talking through how they're gonna bail out there get bailing out their wounded friends they're grabbing people like getting them patched up getting them in

their parachutes they can go like you don't think of that amount of time that's you think oh it just blows up and you're dead right you don't think of oh we're descending from 30,000 feet on you probably have a few minutes you probably have two three four minutes to bail out maybe even more I mean from 30,000 feet in a free fall you got like three minutes that's going down at 120 miles an hour if you're in a glide slope you might even have six seven eight nine ten minutes yeah 15 minutes maybe not 15 that might be getting extreme but but you have a lot of time to think about what's going on I've never really

considered that before. Yeah. And yeah, it's pretty wild. One of my, I guess it would be my great uncle was shot down in World War II. And 10 crew members, five of them were killed,

five of them were captured. He was captured and made it back to America. Pretty amazing. But I never thought about the seven minutes of plummeting on fire towards the earth. And what the hell is going through your mind is? going down.

Continuing on, another crew member had no mental set for an emergency. He was emotionally prepared for a rest camp after the mission and not for an emergency on the mission. He did not anticipate having to bail out. When the emergency occurred, he was panic-stricken and froze up. Later, he could not remember getting back into the pilot seat where he used all of his strength to write the aircraft so that the crew could bail out. He feels his the experience was so unexpected that he was not quick enough to realize he was actually in trouble

He continued with this shock type behavior on the ground and was captured although he now believes he had a good chance to evade an escape He says he now tries to get set for any situation in order to avoid such shock and panic again That's what I was talking about earlier this idea if you're going into a situation if you take just a tiny amount of time to think through the contingencies and what could happen and how you're going to behave, if you do that, it's going to help you so much. If you walk into a restaurant and you think to yourself, you know what, if an active shooter comes in here, here's what I'm going to do. You're going to respond 10 times better than if you wait until an active shooter walks in there

and starts pulling the trigger. It's you going through those little exercises in your mind so helpful like I said we'd walk down the street constantly having the the thought okay if I get contacted from the front here's what I'm going to do here's what I'm going to tell the platoon to if I get contact from left if I get contacted from the right just thinking through those things constantly it's it's going to benefit you to a point that in the moment of truth could be life or death you know in element what elementary school did you go? two. I think it was actually called the red brick elementary school. So red bricks on them. So in, I think in high school too, I forget. Anyway, you know the fire drill? Yeah.

Did the fire drill? Yeah. And did you ever go through the fire drill and think like this is the most mundane thing pretty much ever? Yeah. It's like you just. It also doesn't seem real good. It didn't seem good, right?

Like there's a fire and you want me to line up and count people and then walk orderly down the hall. I'm going out the wall. window, bro. Yeah. Like, why are we not going out the window? But when you think about it, it's probably the best broad drill to have. Because why would you go out the window?

Like, come on. I don't know. Your school, I don't know how it was shaped, but given my situation at our school, lining up in an orderly fashion, like, really the most sense. Because if it's like, hey, if everyone be lines towards the door, bro, we're going to get jammed up in the door, like little bottleneck scenario kind of thing. And then if we go single file to this very specific place, we all know what to do when there's an actual fire literally know what to do little kids not just me a bunch of little kids too So yeah, it kind of makes sense think kind of you reading this and just thinking about how that works

It's like yeah, you've literally been through this before this is a hundred percent right. That's exactly why they do it. Yeah exactly why they do it is because if you rehearse it once or twice you're going to be 10 times better than if you just try and do it for the first time under duress. Yeah. Under duress. So, yes, rehearsals. We used to say in the SEAL teams,

when we're getting ready for a mission, the goal was one third planning, one third gear prep, one third rehearsal. Now, we didn't achieve that very often, but that's the goal, is that we're going to rehearse this a bunch of times. And you do that rehearsal.

It's going to pay off. It's going to pay dividends. Yeah. I remember in football and in jiu jitza is a big one where, because that's what practice is, right? It's levels of rehearsal, essentially. And I remember when I played football, when I first started playing when I was 11 years old. And I remember going through these plays and practice all the time in our first game.

And I remember getting a play called where I had to, you know, they give me the ball and I run and do all the stuff. And I'm thinking like, how the heck is it? this is going to play out with some real another team, you know, when I'm looking at the faces and I don't know those other faces. And it's almost surprising to be like, oh, this worked just like it did in practice. Like sometimes it works really good. Sometimes it kind of doesn't work. You know, like, but there's nothing surprising about the whole scenario

aside from the strangers across from us versus our teammates, you know, in practice. And in jiu-jitsu is the same thing where it's like, okay, if I kind of execute this take down the way we did in practice, like, you know, I'm looking at this guy and I don't know him, And I'm like, I don't know, man. I hope this works. And you do it. You're like, bro, that worked just as good as didn't practice. It's like almost surprising, you know?

But yeah, it's weird how that can just play out like that. Yeah. It's so beneficial. Do your rehearsals. Continuing on. One sign of mental set is to equip yourself physically for a possible emergency. One man prepared a personal escape kit in addition to the one he had been issued. He sewed straps on his GI shoes in order to safeguard them.

He spent five months successfully surviving and evading. No other member of his crew took such precautions and no other ones came out alive. Another took no precautions. He assumed that if I were knocked down, I would be killed and survival would be useless. He was slow to accept the emergency, not realizing immediately that he had crashed. He felt panically and yelled, get me out of here. He made a little attempt to escape and was soon captured. Go through some freaking rehearsals.

training helps many survivors frequently mention that training gave them confidence especially training in parachute ditching procedures in general the evidence is adequate training equals order and a high survival rate inadequate training equals confusion and a low survival rate that's another thing uh you play chess a lot yeah you're what's your call sign call sign oh chess dot com yeah uh echo charles 24 so I know you're getting a lot of challenge matches. Yes. But as you get better, you're starting to see patterns on the board, right?

Yeah, big time. And you can go, oh, I see this pattern, therefore I can do this. Yeah, yeah. So part of what training is is pattern recognition and knowing, oh, I've done this before. So now, let's say you've rehearsed getting out of your parachute 10 times. Now when you're actually getting out of the parachute, it gets hung up on a piece of your gear. And you don't have to worry about the nine protocols that you've been through that you've rehearsed because you just do those naturally. Only thing you need to focus on that one little area that's hung up so you can get out.

So having these chunks of information, I think they actually use that word in chess as well. Like the board is in chunks and they see different chunks of the pieces and the way they're put together. So you can do that with anything. When you do an arm lock in Jiu-Jitsu, there's 10 things, let's say you've got to do right to get the arm lock right. If you've done it a bunch of times and there's a variable, you don't need to worry about nine things. You only worry about that one variable and correcting that one thing.

So that's why we want to train. It's exactly why we want to train. I had a weird shot in archery this year, hunting. I was like leaning over really far, and I was leaning on a on on my photographer and like he was shooting and it Caleb like I'm I'm basically almost laying on him and my form was not normal it was and and that's the thing about archery is you want basically the geometry of your body and of your shot to be the same every single time yeah it's a whole purpose of training and so that the geometry of that all comes together well I was not even close to my normal geometry. Not even close. It was never been so out of position. I've never even, you know,

you'll practice being in weird positions. I hadn't practiced a position that's weird. And I was totally out of position. But like the few critical things that you have to do, the site, the grip, like those few critical things, that's what I focused on and made the shot. But if I would have been thinking about more than those things,

man it would have been a disaster probably well actually wouldn't have even taken the shot yeah but yeah i'm like basically my buddy caleb i'm like laying on him he's scooting back trying to get out of my way and i just did the the little components that you drill over and over again and i'm not even thinking about him i'm just doing them yeah my brain is turned off i'm i'm executing the protocol of the shot why were you laying on caleb he was in my way like wait so what are you sitting I mean, you're not sitting down. You're standing up. No, I was sitting down.

So you're sitting down. Yeah, bow drawn leaning over to get, to get between like where the shot is going to be taking place. Yeah. So. Oh, and he was just there with you and. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, Caleb's credit, guess what?

Perfect video. Like he got the whole, like he nailed it. See, he got even more credit. Because he was, he was having a adjust for me. And he steady, just dialed in. So let's give props to. Caleb. Oh, big time.

So the thing that you might not have realized. Copeland creative. Check that out. Okay. So the thing you might not have been realizing in the moment is while you're over here contorting and leaning on him to get your shot, my man Caleb's over there leaning and contorting and adjusting to get his shot. No, 100%.

You know, he was saying. He was. And he was also, you know, we were laughing about it later. But he was thinking, do I take a breath? Do I not take a breath? Does Jocko anticipating me to breathe? Like what? You know, he's so he's just trying to.

Yeah. And it's not like you rehearse this. Oh, wait, yeah, because you guys are connected like physically. So yeah, if he dudges or he starts doing some wonky. So not only did he get the video. Yeah. He didn't foul up my shot. He got it all dialed, all steady.

And credit to you. I've hunted with him a bunch before. And so we've been around each other a lot, but not enough to be like, to know exactly what to do. He's very experienced at a hunt photography and video. So I was lucky in that respect A guy that was not in That didn't have that experience Bro, if that person didn't have that kind of experience

That he has It would have been a disaster Because he had to keep the camera thing Keep me, club blah But you know Yeah, yeah So he knew the flow Like of the whole deal

He just he does it I mean that's what he does That's what he does for a living But I would almost wager That he was more concerned About his shot than yours Like the way you were like It would be funny if this was a kid

Where you know how you're like Okay I gotta get my shot or whatever And Caleb's like oh I don't care If Chalko gets his shot I'm over trying to get this shot. This is the important shot here. Yeah. No, I think, I honestly think, well, for a hunt photographer,

their priorities to make sure you get your shot, right? They're not going to, they're not going to mess that up. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But the fact that he was able to get it without interfering, and that's pretty impressive. Actually, that is very impressive because you're right about that. Where obviously, you know, I'm joking with that because, you know, like some people, they're like,

no, it's not about the hunt, it's about the video, you know, kind of a thing. And it's like, oh, that's a guy really, you know, loves his craft kind of a thing. But it's really like anytime you're in these intense, more intense situation as a video or photographer person, like it is like a flow, a little dance where, yeah, especially if he's right up against you or whatever. And just like even like, you know, you don't want to disturb the habitat kind of a scenario, but at the same time you want to like capture it, like the best you can. You're going to get right in there if possible, you know, even when Alex Honol will, was talking about that where like his guy was right because that guy he he's kind of in the mix

with you know he's not standing on the sidelines with a you know lens trying to get there he's like with you so yeah you guys got to kind of work together yeah yeah and there's actually video from the other angle too and that was interesting because I never you don't really see yourself in like pressure situations you don't you can't see but I saw myself and I I look like I'm gonna brush my teeth like I look just I was laughing with late I feel like the show would lay from the video and it just looks like I'm a robot basically like no emotion just look like I'm very very very calm yeah and just I dial in boom lean over and I'm just leaning leaning leaning leaning keelps to Caleb props to kepp Copeland creative out there in the world so training back to the point here training the protocols you

You will have less to think about if you've trained properly. I didn't have to think about really Jack. Didn't have to think about anything. I'm just executing the protocol. That's what you want to do. And that way, when there is a disruption, you can focus on that and you don't have to worry about all the other things that you're doing naturally because you've trained well.

Back to the book, men who had no parachute training described many kinds of panic behavior that resulted in injury, capture, or death. Some said even a few simple escape rules gave them comp. Apparently adequate training enables the individual to avoid being surprised and to establish defenses against danger. That is to take immediate measures to counteract the danger. Here's a quote at the time our altitude was such that we could not return This is really crazy to think about these these bombers You're at altitude you but you're at an altitude that you know you can't make it back to base So at the time we're our altitude was such that we could not return instructions for ditching were given for which

we had been adequately briefed many times. The entire crew assumed ditching stations and calmly awaited contact. As soon as we hit the water, so they were taking this thing into the ocean. As soon as we hit the water, ditching operations were immediately put into effect. Within 35 seconds, all crew members had left the ship. The ship then broke in half and sank within two minutes. And by ship he means aircraft. I've done something called a helo dunker, which is, you get into a helicopter, like the body of a helicopter, and it goes in the water and flips upside down,

and then you got to get your way out. And then you do it blacked out. So you put like a mask on where you can't see anything. So you go through both those things because it can be really hard, you get disoriented. Now for guys that are seals, like I was there with my seal platoon,

it's pretty easy for us. But if you're not used to, if you're not used to the water, bro, you get put upside down, you get flipped around, and there's like jolting, Yeah. But that's why they do it.

That's why they do it. They're training you so you're, you are prepared for those situations. I also did the training to go in the backseat of a jet and you had to pull the ejection handle. So you sit in a chair, like an ejection, like a pilot chair. And then you got to go through the protocol to eject and then it like shoots you up. Yeah. It's like a carnival ride type track.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. You just go up. That's cool. You pull the thing. You pull the thing. You pull the lever and you go. Yeah.

Is that cool? Yeah, it's cool. Is it kind of like a ride or is it like fucking this kind of stuff? No, no, no. It's just more like a ride. Yeah. So is the helodunker. I mean, if you're good in the water, the helodunker is kind of a fun ride.

Yeah. But the helodon, is there like a technique to the helo, you know, like an actual protocol? Yeah, yeah. You, you, I forget what it was, but you know, you like find a crease or something and you follow the crease to a window or like as you're going to impact, you put your hand on something. so you know where you're out. That's what it is. That's one of the techniques. I forget them all.

But as you're impacting, you grab something so you maintain your sense of location. Oh, yeah. This is when you're blacked out. Yeah, when you're blacked out. Like you grab the seat. Yeah. Because if you don't grab the seat, all of a sudden you're floating around, you don't know which way is up. It could be a problem.

Yeah. So isn't there? I mean, I'll imagine there's this sounds kind of familiar where like there's a car one too, right? Where you're in like the car. There's like a protocol where like, yeah, if you. You hit, you know, you drive in a lake into a lake, you're falling off a bridge. I don't know, whatever. And you're in the car and now water's coming in the car.

There's like a protocol, like a technique to do that, to escape. Because like you can't open the door when there's air in. You want to like try and roll down the windows. What you want to do. Yeah. So you got to like kind of suck it up for a little bit. And I think the other thing is you've got to if the car, you've got to let if you can't get down the windows, you've got to let the car fill up with water so that it equalizes the pressure so you can't open the door.

Yeah. So that part would be spooky. You gotta have a tool with you. You can smash the windows. Yeah, then it all comes flying in. Yeah, then you gotta be careful. No, you gotta suck that up. So it's like this fortitude you kind of gotta have.

Yeah, but it's not just a fortitude. It's a plant. Right, right. That's the, yeah, actually. It's a set, as they call it. Yeah, so if you have that plan, you know, hey, this is part of the process, this shitty part where the water's freaking coming in and you're like, you want to panic right now, but you gotta like let it fill up, get underwater, then things can kind

of continue. Yeah, that's kind of scary. But yeah, if you're, if you're, if you're trying to fill up. trained in it because it seems like okay just if you did that one if you talked through that one time It'd help you a lot yeah if you rehearse it with your kids yeah everyone's living yeah if you don't rehearse it you got issues Inadequate training here's a quote on a bombing run over France after hitting the primary target we were severely hit by flack I was scared and it just got a like a bleep a written bleep it just says a space So the guy probably said I was scared shitless

That's the only way I can describe it Our bailout was very disorderly It was just a madhouse Due to the lack of adequate bailout procedures There was no orderly conduct at all We had to kick some of our guys out I pushed the radio operator out But a shoot didn't open my mind open just in time

So this is if you haven't rehearsed it's mayhem Other ways to minimize fair fear Good morale Some name good morale as the important fear killer. Others mention self-confidence or psychological preparation as important. Here's one. Quote, if you keep your morale up, your brain works better. When your morale is down, everything looks bleak and you feel afraid. Another quote. The most important thing is to have a well-trained crew, good crew coordination, and the proper mental attitude.

Try to get a crew in a state of mind where no man bitches about what should have been done or what mistakes had been made, but rather all concentrate on what they can do now. So apparently, scared shitless wasn't a bad word, or was a bad word, but you can say, bitches. No bitching. Another one, quote, like the other 11,000 prisoners of war where I was, I was not psychologically prepared. They lacked confidence and gave themselves up with literally no attempt to evade or survive. I know some men who just, just sat down by the side of the road and waited for somebody to capture them.

The presence or absence of normal leadership does much to increase or decrease fear. Good leadership, quote, we decided to fly as far as possible toward home base and to bail out as soon as we got below 1,800 feet. Jeez, that's low, dude, with a parachute. Especially if you don't have any familiarity with parachuting. To keep as much altitude as possible,

we jettisoned lots of equipment, including a waste gun and ammunition. We even considered throwing out the ball turret. Everyone was calm during this maneuver. Can you imagine you're getting ready to crash, you're throwing stuff off of your airplane? Everyone was calm during this maneuver. Our position was radio to everyone every five minutes.

So this is a long, like I was talking 15 minutes. Yeah, we're talking 15, maybe even longer. That's crazy. The pilot cut the switches before the bailout. The engineer and I rigged up a static line to drop the wounded bombardier out. We had many bailout drills and the aircraft commander was sharp on emergency procedures. We talked things over in the crippled plane and made plans.

We had decided to walk back toward the plane to pick up all crew members. We worked out even to use the use of water and food. Even though there's little hope of getting out alive, everyone felt that what we were doing was the best thing that could be done. I wish they had GoPro cameras that were on that aircraft. as dudes they're going to crash into enemy territory and they're just coming up with plans, helping their wounded guys, radioing positions, freaking impressive.

All members of this crew, including the crippled bombardier, evaded successfully for several days and survived. Who ya. Rescue system in some interviews indicate that knowing that there is a good pickup system in the area for Stahlsphere, downed airmen are more confident when rescue or recovery squadron operates in the area that makes sense survey the situation fear can at times be

quieted by simply by a simple survey of the situation many found it helpful to take cover and to observe what was going on before taking action failure to do this resulted in what was probably avoidable capture in a number of cases the enemy is scared to the thought that the enemy is as scared as you are and faces similar problems enables some to continue against considerable odds that's that's you know we were talking earlier about uh shared companionship in fear yeah that's another good thing is to say you know if you're going to fight someone they're more scared than you are like the enemy is scared of you too yeah prayer helps several said religious

practices especially prayer and reading the bible calm them down quote i never pushed the panic button even when I came down. I'm a Catholic and you may think I'm a religious fanatic. The Sunday before this mission I'd gone to mass and communion. I was in a state of grace. I was not alone up there. Religion and God are no longer beliefs to me. I know he was with me for four months, end quote. And then we get to a section that's very important. Caring for those who crack. When fear becomes too great for a crew member, he introduces additional hazards for the whole crew. Since fear can become contagious, others also may be affected beyond their control. The actions of the man who cracks may endanger the safety of others and taking care of him can also add to the group's dangers.

In some cases, such persons was kept under close watch and away from others as much as possible. quote one of the men was an ex-wrestler he folded purely from fear he cried with fear we kept him concealed as much as we could so that he wouldn't influence the other men or the natives i kept telling i kept him with me all the time and he did everything he was told another section close closely knit crews sometimes lend strength to their members who are on the verge of cracking quote the wing gunner had broken his ribs and became hysterical but calm down when he saw that we were getting out. The other gunner was screaming that he was dying. The co-pilot temporary lost his head and started swimming away from the sinking ship, but returned to where the rest of us were.

And then it goes on to say, sometimes an objective estimate of the risks involved the man's seemingly harsh measures. One crew decided that a man who was delirious could not continue with the group. The rest of the group, the rest of the crew escaped. The man. The man. was left behind was captured treated and eventually returned in good health in another case two crew members who became hysterical had to be tied up and placed in the front compartment of the boat of a boat that had to been dropped to the crew drastic means we're taken at times to get a crew member to come along and to bring him through the experience quote the bombardier wanted to quit one night but I drew my gun on him and told him I would shoot him rather than leaving behind

He said later that he thought I meant it. So he got up and came along. Check. Now we get into a good important section. What can be done about fear? These stories and the inferences to be drawn from them suggest a number of means for controlling fear. Above all, they emphasize that combat crew members

need not be helpless victims of their fear. So there you go. You don't need to be a victim of your fear. Sometimes only the crew members can do for himself. Or sorry, some things only the crew members can do for himself. Other things the Air Force must provide in order to give the crew member the mental and physical tools with which to handle his fears. And here's a whole section. What you can do about fear.

Do not run from fear. Understand fear. Learn to recognize fear. Learn what your reactions to fear are likely to be. Admit and accept fear during training. Face as many fears as you can when you do many of your fears will vanish Learn how to plan and to act purposely even when you're afraid and if you think about military training If you think about seal training and the things that you do

Jumping out of an airplane Climbing over the cargo net I didn't think too much about climbing over the cargo net was down to teams the other day It's 50 feet tall like it's tall It's very tall If you're not if you're afraid of heights it's going to be a problem and you're going to have to get used to it or you're not going to graduate Yeah, so that's like one of those things where you're just going to get exposure therapy to heights Yeah, going. This is another thing I never really thought too much about some people are really scared of the ocean at night Like they're really scared of it. Yeah

Do you spend so much time in the water at night? I think I was too young to process fear for a lot of the stuff I was just like young and just yeah, it's almost like it comes though right where the It's kind of like a version of the fear of the unknown, like for ocean at night, for example. I can see how someone would be scared of that for sure. We've been diving into spearfishing at night since we're a kid. So at first it's like, what the hell you have to be scared of? It's just like the regular ocean, just the sun ain't out. It's like literally there's no difference.

But when you really consider it, what if you've never been there? Oh, yeah. Oh, man, it's like, it's kind of like a haunted like place. Yeah. with death just all around you waiting to just eat you, you know? Like everything in like when you're a little kid. Fonked death waiting to eat you. Oh yeah, at every turn.

So I remember when I was a little kid, like little kid, maybe like six, seven years old. Being in one of these communities, I was in New Jersey. And we're in one of these community pools. You can just go to the pool. And there was this, it was this big one with these high dyes. And I remember that it was so deep. I couldn't, I felt like I couldn't see the bottom. That's how deep this pool was.

And I remember looking down there and thinking, but this is like kind of scary down there, like way down there, you know? It's like you can't see the bottom. There's infinite like just horrors down there. I don't know what, but it's a pool. So there's nothing literally down there. But I remember that feeling. And then, you know, when you grow up, you start to like, you know,

logic kicks in and all this stuff so you're not scared of pools. But think about it. That feeling doesn't necessarily go away. So as an adult, you grow up, that feeling just caught a fight. because you didn't go in the ocean, especially at night, you know, all this stuff. So that fear is now like, it's kind of morphed into this real, like, thing that lives in your head. So now you go in the freaking ocean at night, someone you've never been. You don't know the horrors that wait down there for you, you know?

So you get in there and it's just sheer panic. Makes sense. Yeah. But the opposite of that is you overcome that fear. You get in the ocean at night. Yeah. You jump out of the. the airplane you jump out of the helicopter you go free fall you have your oxygen

taken away from you at night like all those things that you're doing my my my point in saying this is if you go through seal training there's gonna be something that scares you yeah and what you learn how to do is you learn how to go anyways yeah so there is a method to the madness of making you do all these things where you're gonna some of them are gonna scare me it's very normal to not like heights that's a human instinct yeah it's very normal to be afraid of very dark large areas where there's monsters yeah it's it's normal so you're gonna have to overcome those fears over and over again it's it's very normal to be fear feared of or

afraid of bullets but you new live fire where people are shooting right next to you so all these fears that you have you're gonna learn how to take fear and contend with it and Which is good because when you go into combat It's gonna be a fear that you haven't had yet But you're gonna go through those protocols whatever they were to get through that situation and perform Yeah Develop confidence in yourself use your training opportunities wisely maximize your capabilities by keeping physically and mentally knowing your equipment and how to use it learning how to survive evade and escape

Know what you can and cannot do so you that you can make wise choices This is what a what a lot of you know field crash survival they're doing those courses you're gonna go through them these basic protocols Mike Glover he's gonna talk to you about oh what what if your vehicle does break down what if you do slide off the road what if someone does approach you in this dark alley what are you gonna do you're gonna think through it you're gonna have the set for it and you're gonna have equipment that you're gonna learn how to use you're gonna learn how to use a tourniquet the

first time you will use a tourniquet you don't want to be when you've got to put a turnicet on yourself or someone else for real Because there's going to be other things that are going through your head. That's why we are being prepared. Same thing with Tim Kennedy, sheepdog response. That's more like, hey, what are you going to do when you are in a conflict of some kind, in a confrontation of some kind, whether it's an active shooter, whether someone trying to grab you.

So both those two schools are going to give you the preparation that you need to handle certain scenarios. Be prepared. accept the possibility that it can happen to me. Be properly equipped and clothed. Have a plan. Keep informed. Listen carefully. Combat briefings.

Know where you are going, what is going on at all times. That's such a big deal. They just throw it out there. Know where you are and what is going on at all times. They throw that out there. That could actually be the number one thing. Know where you are and what is going on at all times.

Know when danger threatens so that you can be prepared if it hits. Keep busy. Do all you can prevent hunger, thirst, fatigue, idleness, ignorance about the situation since these increase fear. Know your fellow crew members under stress. Learn to work with them in emergencies, learn to live with them under stress, learn to plan with them. Practice your religion. Don't be ashamed of having spiritual faith. Remember that the enemy may be as scared as you. Always remember that your ultimate goal is to get back alive. And then it talks about the training that you're going through. And it uses a good term.

The survival school and unit level training programs offer the combat crew member gradual supervised experiences with survival evasion escape problems to afford what may be described as, quote, battle inoculation. That's what I was talking about earlier. You're going to get inoculated of fear. When you go through basic seal training

and you go through Hell Week, there's freaking explosions going off. There's machine guns going off. It's mayhem. You can't see. You can't hear. You're getting stress inoculation. Because guess what happens in combat?

There's machine guns going off. There's exposures going off. You can't see. You can't hear. There's smoke. There's chaos. You get inoculated to it. The machine gun, they shoot blanks, right?

Like it buds or whatever. Are those blanks? Is that equally as loud as like a real one? Yes. Straight up. So it's like a pretty good representation of machine gun fire in your ears. Oh, yeah. For sure.

Yeah. It's freaking loud. Yeah and they have not just they have like 50 caliber machine guns too which are real extra loud Yeah, yeah and then there freaking tossing grenade sims and flash crash. It's like it it's a cacophony Of noise yeah that does simulate combat very well. Yeah, because that's a big part of it right? I mean I know a lot of kid guys they grew up as kids shooting guns and stuff like that but if you don't just the noise and that weird that impact pressure in the air or whatever when you're in the the the presence of gunfire It's like just that alone, that's a big freaking thing. You know, a big factor in the thing. So, yeah, when you're used to that, it's like, oh, it's way different.

Yeah, that's true. They're going to inoculate you to it. Followed by, quote, booster shop. So it's battle inoculation followed by, quote, booster shots. So they're going to keep you stimulated, you know, and in the SEAL teams, you're going to go through workup. You're going to get crashed with flash crashes. You're going to once again have machine guns.

Like all this stuff is going to, you're going to continue to get these booster shots of stress inoculation. And then what's interesting is once you start to become more senior, you can handle that lower level stress. Now you're going to start to get the stress of making decisions, looking around, trying to figure out what's happening, simplifying what's going on, making decisions and passing the word to people. So you've got to be able to handle the lower level stress from the situation to start to now handle the stress from the leadership scenario that you're in. And all that works. The knowledge of the principles of map reading, route finding, ground navigation, camouflage, concealment, like all these things are good to know and understand knowledge of the basic survival essentials. That's what we've got to do, knowledge of how to bail out of the aircraft, knowledge of his own survival and enemies weapons for survival purposes.

Yes, that's smart. And it goes on to talk about survival equipment, talk about rescue and recovery procedures. And then it gets into a section of physical fitness and psychological conditions. Physical fitness is a bulwark against fear and despondency since it enables the crew member to successfully overcome the many physical problems of survival, escape, and evasion. It sustains his will to go on. Many units, but still not all, have continuing programs designed to improve the physical condition of every combat crew member to survive, evade, or escape.

There has been much psychological research at all levels to determine the causes, characteristics, and effects of fear upon survival. Mental conditioning seems closely related to physical fitness, knowledge of equipment, and competence in survival procedures. I'm going to say that again. Mental conditioning seems closely related to physical fitness, knowledge of equipment, and competence to survival procedures. Some flight surgeons are helping to train combat crew members to accept fear as normal and

channel aroused energies towards the survival goals. The emotional state of the individual in emergencies has been the active concern of numerous chaplains and many competent, far-sighted aircraft commanders. Some counsel the individual directly, others work through other crew members, and still others emphasize group counseling and group experiences to build up the confidence of all crew members. So that's what we're doing. Notice that falls on the leader.

Summary of this section, the Air Force has done and can do much through training to prevent many fears and to make possible purposeful action in stress situations. However, the crew member himself must learn how to handle his own fears. He can best do this by taking advantage of the training opportunities and knowing himself. So it's on you. So much good information about fear. Look fear is not necessarily the chaos of combat fear is going to a job interview Fear is confronting someone that you need to deal with at work

Fear is helping your kid overcome the fear of the first day school so all the stuff that we just put out very important But I want to get to a section here I'm the fast forward like to probably the last section might be the last section we come from this book but this is where we start talking about leadership leadership and group behavior It's called group behavior in survival and what it says here the behavior of a group under survival conditions emerges as an important factor in almost every survival story during an in-flight emergency for one bomber crew decisions are made promptly plans formulated crew members are kept fully briefed individuals who have difficulty are assisted The result is escape evasion and survival with minimum hardship and 100% recovery

In another episode, there is indecision. No one assumes leadership. Crew members panic, and the crew is not kept informed. The result is that two crew members lose their lives, two go berserk. The remainder fight and unnecessary suffering results. That's bad leadership. That's bad leadership. To go berserk.

This is what they're saying in this book, which is based on interviews of people. that were like, oh yeah, Fred went freaking berserk. And then Mike and Jim were fighting. Like that's what's happening. We're trying to survive as a team. Here's fast forward a little bit. General psychological conclusions. Group organization.

A crew's chances of surviving depend largely on its ability to organize activity. A tight situation does not weld a crew together. Rather, the more difficult and disordered the situation, the greater are the disorganized. crews problems. So that's important to think. Sometimes you think, well, we'll perform well if, like, something happens. No, it's actually not true.

If you don't have a good, well-oiled machine of a team, when something bad happens, you freaking fall apart. The tight situation doesn't help you. This is particularly true in the face of common danger when fear can result in panic rather than concerted action. And it goes into a bunch of things here. Group morale. High group morale exists when all crew.

crew members feel themselves to be part of the crew rather than individuals and are proud to be members of that crew. High group morale has many advantages. The individual feels strengthened and protected since he realizes that his survival depends on others whom he trusts. Two, the group can meet failure with greater persistency and three, can formulate goals to help each other and face the future. High morale must come from internal cohesiveness and not

merely through external pressures. That's very important. The spreading of a mood. Under certain conditions, moods and attitudes become wildly contagious. Panic of a crew may be caused by a few exceptionally frightened members, members, false rumors, horror stories, lack of faith in the group, or a badly frightened leader. Panic often may be prevented by conscious, well-planned organization and leadership on the basis of delegated and shared responsibility combined with faith in the group and realization of the need for cooperation.

It's contagious. What you're doing is contagious, how you're reacting, your emotions are contagious. Fast forward a little bit. The survival leader and the survival companion. So what this is talking about, it says survival companion. It's talking about teammates. So it's talking about leaders now and teammates. And this is just great, great information here.

Several studies were made to determine the characteristics causing acceptance or rejection of crew members as survival leaders or companions Some 240 trainees were queried upon completing advanced survival training The experts instructors training officers psychologists and others who have observed some 14,000 trainees during during the two-week training interval were also queried Results were checked by having crew members select or reject specific individuals and then describe the man chosen or rejected. While differing as to the details, the results indicate consistent importance of certain characteristics, many of which are applicable to any type of leadership or any type of companionship. So you got a bunch of people. You interview a bunch of people. Who did you like as a leader?

Who did you like as a teammate? Who did you reject as a leader? who did you reject as a teammate? This is the goods right here. The ideal survival leader. According to crew members, the ideal survival leader has the following characteristics.

Knows himself and his men can hold his crew together, is interested in crew member welfare, considers and uses the suggestions of others. This is just if you're watching, you can see a big smile on my face because these are the things we talk about all the time. These are the things we're talking about all the time.

Making sure you take care of your troops. You look out for their welfare. Make sure you consider what other people have to say. Can keep up crew morale under stress. Has crew members, respect and confidence? can get along with crew members. Isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting?

If you're going to be a good leader, you've got to be able to get along with people. You can't be a dictator. You can't be an authoritarian. You need to get along with people. Distributes work fairly. Plans and organize as well. Keeps his crew well briefed.

Boy, you've got to keep your people known what's going on. According to the experts, the ideal survival leader must. Recognize and advantageously use individual differences. So people are going to be a little bit different. And you've got to be able to take advantage of that. Strengths and weaknesses. Oh, Echo's real good at this.

I'm going to have him do that. Echo's not good at this other thing. I'm not going to make him do that. Be resourceful. Have the confidence and respect of his crew. Keep his crew well briefed. Those individuals selected as ideal leaders were described as described as respected for their superior experience and background, personality and physical

adequacy, mature judgment, ability to achieve results through resourcefulness and understanding utilization of the men. So that's what we're looking for. Those are the positive attributes here. Now we're getting into the poor survival leader, not seeming to care whether anyone else survives easily excited excitable and becomes panicky you want to remain calm as a leader we don't want to lose our temper we don't want to freak out unable to maintain control of his crew and easily discouraged and gives up that's the poor survival leader now we get into the

teammate the ideal survival companion in the in the abstract the ideal survival companion or teammate is easy to get along with big shocker stable not freaking out personally and physically adequate skilled and knowing in survival techniques able and desirous of surviving adversity able and willing to do his share one who works for the welfare of the group able to prove himself in survival training okay look don't don't look out for yourself get along with other people be stable like these are the things we talk about all the time this from 1954 individuals rated by others most highly as survival companions were those who helped others the most joked the most

men hunted the most. Yeah, I got up a good attitude. And here's the list of the poor survival companion. Men were rejected because they got on the nerves of others as a result of loudness, boasting, arguing, using profanity, disagreeable personality characteristics, failure to keep clean. Crying type of complaining self-centeredness failure to do their share Personality inadequacies and immaturities physical inadequacies personal dislikes isn't that interesting personal dislikes if you're just one of these people that took I don't like this I don't like that complainer and

Poor handling of authority relationships. Oh, that's right. Oh you're in charge you know that boss everyone around boy that list right there Let's just remember that list loudness boasting arguing using profanity disagreeable Personal personality characteristics failure to keep clean crying type of complaining Self-centeredness failure to do your share Personality inadequacies and immaturities physical inadequacies personal dislikes I really like that one it's just annoying what the personal dislike yeah that person is It's going to like that. And poor handling of authority relationships.

The whole self-centeredness. No. That's like ego. It's a big ego, baby. It's a big ego all day. It's weird because the more you guys talk about ego, or I guess the more we all talk about ego. Mm-hmm.

And how it can just appear in so many places. But there's so much to like this idea of self-centeredness, like selfishness, narcissism. inflated ego like however you want to kind of put it like it seems like there's different like little departments you know where self-centeredness kind of has this very specific feel to it versus ego versus narcissism you know like self-settiness almost like isn't like a thing that it's less about like other people more about this person's self where like nothing lands on them if it ain't about themselves

Kind of a thing. I think it's important to remember the context that we're talking about. The context that we're talking about is survival. Yeah. Which means we get a little bit of food. This has nothing to do with ego. I want to get mine. I want to get more.

Oh, we have a blanket that we found. It's about me. It's not my ego saying, like, I want to prove to everyone that I can win the blanket. No, no, it's like, I want to take care of myself. Yeah. That's the self-centered. Yeah, and that's how it like that's how it feels to me too where it's it's like a component it's under the umbrella of ego But you're right it's a very specific thing when someone is trying to take care of themselves

Yeah look that can be a component of their ego because I want to get promoted because I want to be in charge But when what I want to do is I want a little bit more food. Yeah, that's a thing and and and not others kind of a thing because there's a difference between like hey if I go out like I don't know I went out on my own I had to use bathroom in the on a desert island I don't know trying to survive and I go and I see this like tree of mangoes and I'm like oh some delicious mangoes mehound all day so it's one thing to be like hey I'm gonna eat some and then remember oh wait a second let me bring some back for for the rest of the people or for you know whoever else is with me versus oh I'm gonna do that same I'm gonna eat some but I just totally just forgot about it I forgot about others you know like that's like a weird that's like a a version of self-centeredness where it's not an active like okay I could and I choose not to

it's just that you don't even think about other people you're just so self-centered you're just like your whole reality is just centered around you and that's sort of it you know versus the guy who's like it like they almost reject others actively and think about themselves that's like a different flavor of self-centeredness seems saying yeah but again what we're dealing with here is like I'm going to take care of me yeah regardless they are they both entail that Like you ever knew someone I know a couple of people like this and I didn't even realize it Where they're self-centered in that first way where it's like they're oblivious to others Like scenarios. Yeah, yeah now now I see what you're saying. Yeah, like they're nice people people that

They just you ever you ever go and you know you go to a restaurant or something and the The hostesses whatever walks by you or something or put put you at your table and the the person you're with just they that hostess does not exist as a human being yeah they don't say like thanks or yeah I appreciate it or what they just like they just don't exist or like a dorm a coat person oh yeah yeah you're like give them the ticket just they hand the coat they don't say thanks or just like grab it and walk away those people are that's i don't think that's necessarily ego but they're just so self-centered that you think dude can you just be nice to another person that's like helping you out yes so consider that exact thing like so

So there's a difference between, look, both equals and equal like scenarios, right? But there is a difference between the person who sees the co-person and consciously thinks, oh, they're beneath me, so they're not worth my time or hello or niceness versus the person who just, they don't even see them. Because they're not in their centered world. They're not in their world. They're just like a tool of life, you know, like a feature of life. You see what I'm saying? They don't mean if it were to be pointed out to them like, hey, that's a person. And dude, they're like, oh, wait, I didn't even realize it, kind of a thing.

You know, so it's almost like a benign self-centeredness versus a malignant self-centeredness, something like that. You see what I'm saying? Because I know, like I said, I know some people, a couple of them, that they're kind of this benign self-centeredness. They're super nice to you when you talk to them and stuff like that. But anytime, like, they start going off about something or you start talking about something, it's always like themselves 100%. where it's almost like even if you do say something about yourself they almost like gloss over a little bit and they're like oh yeah cool and then they go right back to themselves the whole time yeah and sometimes in my case bright didn't even know this i didn't even realize it i was like i wonder you know how you're just left

with a certain feeling a lot of the time it's like why am i not vibing as much because they're so nice these people you know they're nice the ones i know anyway and i just don't vibe as much as maybe be another person or whatever. And I start to realize it. Wait a second. Like sometimes this weird, benign self-centeredness will produce this experience. Yeah.

It's real weird if you think about it. To have in your head that what the group that we're with right now, what they really want to hear is about me. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like that's a really weird like thing. But I feel like that would be a consciousness though.

Like if you're conscious of it, that's one thing versus if you're just, not conscious of it. You know, some people that... Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's such thing as that we... Oh, shit, I just didn't realize I was doing that.

Which is kind of a lot of the stuff that goes, you know, what we do. Like, we don't realize sometimes, a lot of the time anyway. But to have it that hardcore is like... I think that's what I'm kind of stumbling upon. You know, that there's versions of self-settiness. You ever see sometimes like...

Someone will talk about a politician and they'll be like, the politician mentioned I, me, I or me 39 times in a three minute talk Yeah, yeah, fully. That's what's happening

in those situations. Like maybe there's a little bit of both or whatever But in their mind, what they want Everyone to hear about is them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of jacked up. And listen, can you You know, you are going to have to,

if you're a politician, you're going to at some point I have to say, well, I was born or I think what we should do here. You're like, I get it. Yeah, fully. But there are times where it just is so over the top and you think, ooh. Yeah. And again, it's a bunch.

It's a collection of experiences. It's not just, oh, yeah, I listened to this guy's speech and he said, I, 39. That's not it. It's a pattern. Yeah, exactly right. Where you can, again, yeah, your first experience with someone, it's like, that's not enough info, you know. It's like you're left with a certain feeling for a certain reason. And it's usually because of that consistency, you know, because there's a difference between using yourself.

as an example because yourself happens to be a good example. So you're going to tell a story like about what you went through to exemplify whatever point you're making. And there's a big difference between that and then just simply always talking about yourself and referring to yourself to glorify your past or to glorify your this or that. Those are two completely different things. And usually you can sort of formulate where it kind of formulates after a while the when you have enough experiences with somebody like what they're doing, which one of those

they're doing. We don't like that vibe. No, no, no, the vibe. Exactly right. It's the vibe. But it's for a reason. Yeah, exactly. This is pretty funny.

Another study indicated that the most annoying survival habits, mannerisms, and actions were authoritarian behavior of officer personnel, inconsiderateness, playing the star, bossiness, always right attitude. That's a list right there. That is a list right there. You might want to note those down. Authoritarian behavior of officer personnel, inconsiderate, playing the star, bossiness, and always right attitude. Aloofness or failure to become integrated into the crew. Lack of cooperation, lack of participation in crew activities, inconsiderateness of others, failure to do their share of the work, superior. superiority attitude irritating verbal behavior excessive griping false high spirits foul language excessive

arguing bragging criticizing questioning those in authority commandingness chattering and loudness telling the same old joke jokes threatening to quit sarcasm this is an interesting one singing immediately upon waking you need to tell that one to my kids when they were younger

this was like a freaking musical at my house with my kids running around my daughters are freaking just singing like just singing in all the musicals bro aerial and whatever else but the little mermaid yeah little mermaid

all those things bro it was like a Broadway play singing upon and it was it was definitely an annoying characteristic for me good thing it wasn't a survival scenario unless it was I don't know here's a good one monotonous monologues about private episodes oh let me tell you about oh this is a classic right here talk about the last war temper outbursts making an issue of someone else's mistake These are so important. Irritating nonverbal behavior borrowing horseplay snoring lack of personal cleanliness unsanitary practices These are good stuff these are universal by the way yeah but boy talking about the last war Monotonous monologues about private episodes You don't you hate getting caught in those scenarios because there's

They're, the thing is they're private, so they're kind of like personal. And you, so it's rude kind of to walk away. Look, I don't give a shit about you, whatever you're about to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or you've told me this freaking sob story a million times. So there you go on that. They're definitely down on swearing. I wonder if this was written today.

We probably wouldn't catch all that because they're talking about swearing so much. Yeah. Are Air Force guys, do they tend to be more proper or what? No. Yeah, because I kind of thought like every time when you're like because it is Air Force guys, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So actually when you first brought it out, I was like, wait a second. This could be actually, it probably does reflect a lot of the common, you know, like ethos of what Air Force guys are. Right. Right. In a way. But I think it's just the modern day. But the interesting thing is like people swore all the time back then. Yeah.

It's even in the book. They made it into this book. Right. Like what? They beep them out. But like they're in here. So it's interesting that. I wonder what level of maybe it's just like the totally atrocious level of swearing.

I think this is what it probably is. I don't know. I'm me, so I don't know. But it could be more than the normal kind of a thing. Yeah, yeah. Like everyone's swearing a level one and you're over here swearing level eight. Like that's a problem.

You ever heard a comedian that just is swearing to the point of where you'd feel like this a little bit? Yeah, yeah, fully. Occasion that can happen. Or, yeah. Oh, yeah. comedians, it's real clear too because you're up there as a comedian, you're there to be funny first and then everything else second or second, whatever, but funny first. So a lot of times people will be controversial, right? Which it's super funny when they're funny first. So it works. But when they're controversial first and funny second, it's like, oh, this guy's just trying to be comfortable. And it's not funny. So the violation is very clear as far as the experience goes. Is you what you're saying? That's what it seems like. Men actually rejected as companions. So these are people just straight up rejected.

Not even not annoying. These are rejected. Griping the most, helping others the least, and seeming to be near the breaking point. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah,

I think it is that though. It has to be as far as like how much of each of these factors are going on. Because it seems like in any, intense situation, some of this is going on in everyone's, you know, it takes a kind of special person to never do any of these. The last stuff that we read was things that were annoying. The things that I just read were out actually rejected. Like, we don't want you. Right. And they said griping the most. Yeah. So it's kind of like that. Griping is tolerable. Yeah, but let's face it, it's not advisable. Yeah, yeah, it's not good. Doesn't help. Shouldn't be doing it. Yeah, it's like

snoring, right, where if someone snores quietly one night out of the week versus the guy who's just snoring up a storm every single day super loud, it's kind of like, there's a big, big difference, you know what I'm saying? So that makes sense. Except for the fact that snoring is somewhat involuntary. Yeah, fully. Whereas griping is, that's on you. Yeah, fully, but I'm just saying the comparison. You've got to take ownership of your snoring. Like if you snore, you got to say, hey, man, I'm going to, I'm going to sleep with my whatever. I'm going to tape my nose, whatever you got to do, you try and suppress it. But that ultimately is an inviourism. But that ultimately is an involuntary thing.

Yeah. So there's no one I've ever met that was proactively wanting to snore. Improving their snoring. They're not working on their snoring. Right. But you can definitely control your griping and you're complaining. So yeah. But as far as the difference between this guy doing it and this guy doing it,

it's kind of like the degrees can make it like worthy of rejection versus. Versus like this guy sucks. He's annoying acceptance of some of this stuff. Groups in real survival situations based upon the processing of many survival evasion and escape reports, certain general principles emerge concerning good and poor survival crews. They go into a list of these things. Here are some of the principles for working together that you can practice in survival training and in other situations. If you practice these, you will find that your crew works smoother no matter what the problem is.

So what we're talking about is like leadership principles to work together. Organization of manpower. The survival of almost any group largely depends upon the organization of its manpower. Organized action where crew members know what to do and when to do it, both under ordinary circumstances and during crisis, is one specific means of preventing panic. Flexibility and versatility are important in emergencies, clearly. Supervision. One authority states that survival leadership differs from other leadership, mainly in the manner in which, it must be maintained in order to continue his effectiveness in a survival group a leader must

maintain his position of prestige by using it that that one's interesting because you can imagine someone that is not stepping up and then all of a sudden they step up you ever seen that in a work environment before where someone's not leading and then all of a sudden they decide to step in and start leading at some point oh they're kind of like in a bad like not in a bad way yeah like where he doesn't work it doesn't work yeah because everyone's been doing their thing and then all of a sudden I roll and they're like hey this is what I wanted to do right right right uh B salvage the opposition for instance this is this is I didn't understand what this meant at first it says salvage the opposition so here's what it means for instance by putting to some useful purpose the human energy which causes conflict so you've got this energy

freaking echoes frustrated hey echo can you help me move this wood to build the fort. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to take your frustration. I'm going to do something positive with it. Salvage the opposition. Take advantage of that situation. Keep somewhat aloof from, but not too high above the group.

Dicotomy of leadership. Motivate wisely in in accordance with the severity of the survival situation. The next one is participation in group decision. The advantages of full group participation in a survival situation are obvious. So getting input from the team gets them on board with the plan. Give that ownership when you can. Acceptance of suggestions and criticism. Many survival stories show how an airman becomes the real group leader, initiating action which saves the group.

Although some one person, such as the aircraft commander, must accept responsibility for the final decision. He still can make good use of other suggestions and criticisms. Isn't that interesting? Listen to what other people say. Accept their criticism, accept their suggestions. Consideration of available time. Hundreds of survival stories indicate that there is rarely unlimited time in which to make a decision.

On the spot decisions which must be acted upon immediately usually determines survival success. Those who just drift failing to consider time are the ones who perish are captured or suffer the most. This is why in the extreme ownership leadership loop that I wrote about in the new version of leadership strategy and tactics field manual when I'm making a decision the first thing that I consider is time the first thing I consider and this is exactly why It talks about checking equipment. It talks about understanding the severity of the situation the necessity for surveying the situation is widely recognized in problem solving Frequently the things most feared are those involving the unknown which is what you just talked about earlier surveying the situation serves to remove those unknowns and set and to set in readiness powers of the adjustment group atmosphere group atmosphere crew relationships group ego or whatever term is used emerges as highly

important in the group survival the following illustrates how the individual gets support and strength from the group quote we elected to stick together and Ditch. Everyone helped in the preparations. The tail gunner had broken a collarbone, nose, and ribs. The wing gunner had broken ribs and was hysterical, but he calmed down when he saw that we were getting out. The co-pilot temporarily lost his head and started swimming away from the ship, but returned when he saw that no one was following him. The pilot was very stable. He pulled the tail gunner out. We tried to comfort those who were injured, giving the tail gunner morphine. Since we were all. wet and cold we huddled together for warmth while awaiting rescue all except the tail gunner went back to flight duty god these are some hard men freaking getting shot down shot up shot down crashing into the freaking ocean getting recovered healing up and getting back in the game props talk about the future served to raise morale in some groups a feeling of unity also improved morale in some cases adverse conditions can threaten the group morale, obviously.

Quote, we are getting discouraged. We smoked a cigarette for breakfast. It was rained until 11 o'clock, so we remained huddled together under a tent, talking and somewhat pessimistic. We were about out of humor and snapped at one another. I shot a squirrel, and soon Shorty got another. Our spirits improved,

but we were still at or near daggers points with one another. Just rough conditions. That's why as a leader, as a leader, you've got to pay attention to that. You got to recognize when you got your team in rough conditions. They're sleep deprived. They're sleep deprived. They're cold.

They're hungry. Whatever the case may be. You got to recognize that. You got to pay attention to that. Reaction speed. In survival emergency, previously established reaction patterns are important in enabling the group to react quickly. One authority claims that one main purpose of survival training is to afford an opportunity

for knowing and understanding the responses, individuals, and groups. need to acquire is what we were talking about earlier going through the drill will make your reaction time so much better and going through the drill as a team will make you understand the way other people are going to react what holds a crew together if your crew does things just outlined you will find that things go much easier if you find that your crew is unable to do these things take stock and find out why you may say we may not work very well together now but we would if we ever gotten to a tight spot this is where you are wrong a common danger is not

enough to hold a group together when danger threatens you may even become competitive rather than cooperative this is when panic is likely to occur I like that term I like the term of competitive rather than cooperative and that I've seen that happen yeah that's It's a real thing. There are four main qualities which hold a crew together under pressure. A liking for one another. Isn't that shocking? One thing that holds a crew together under trying circumstances is a liking for one another.

There have been stories of downed air crewmen who have refused to escape in order to stay behind and protect a fellow crew member. Men crowd together to keep warm. During the parachute descent, they count the other parachutes and try to identify their buddies. also an unwritten code that an injured crewman will be bailed out by those who are uninjured. You can't expect everything to be rosy under conditions of danger and discomfort. Feelings will be wrong on edge.

It will be easier for you to hold together if you already like one another. If you find yourselves getting angry with one another, don't just ignore it. Recognize what you are doing and why. Then do something positive about it. So that's one thing that I noticed that the stress of combat or the stress in stressful business situations, people are going, people will not act the way, they may not act in the most positive way. And I never held that against people. Like if you and I were in a stressful situation and you started acting like a jerk,

yelling and screaming, I would not hold that against you. I would measure it. I'd be like, okay, well, if Echo gets under stress, he's gonna freak out. Okay, I noted. I'm not gonna hold a personal grudge against you. I noticed that a lot. I notice that people, the way they behave

in stressful situations in combat and business, things start going sideways. Some people freak out. I note it. I put it in the calculus of how I'm gonna work with them in the future, but I don't hold it against them. I realize that they're just, you know,

short, on edge, tempers flare, emotional. So keep that in mind. Be the person that de-escalates, don't be the person that holds a grudge. You ever watch these, uh, what is, what's the freaking show? Well, were they like, a lot of these, on YouTube, there's these little, little mini ones are like social experiments, right? How do people react into these conditions? And they put on some weird condition. But there's a show, an actual TV show, what was it called? There's this dude, like, what would you do? Or I think it's like, what would you do? That's what the show is called. And it's,

This one, it's kind of like a candid camera scenario, but this, the, the scenarios aren't like funny. So, basically it's like, you know, they'll be at a restaurant. Everyone, the staff of the restaurant is in on the gag and they want to do this one person. They want to find out what would they do, whatever. So they set up everything where like the, the people in the next booth, the dad is like abused, like verbally abusive to the kid to see, okay, what's this person going to do, you know? public scenario, restaurant, whatever. And then a lot of times the person like doesn't step in.

They're like nervous, you know, whatever. And they don't react in this like favorable way sometimes. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Right. And then, ha ha, candid camera. Like, why did you do that? Or why didn't you step in?

And they like put them on the spot, you know, a lot of the time. And I had that same thought right there where I was like, not everyone just can just immediately when a stressful scenario gets sprung on them in public, in the middle of their day, in a peaceful situation otherwise. Like, not everyone's just going to step up and be like a hero. Not everyone's going to do that every single time, you know? So we, you know, we get these guys on camera. We put them on TV and, you know, we laugh at them when they don't respond favorably.

You're like, ah, freaking no spine or with no character, whatever. We cast these judgments on this one thing that they were totally set up for, you know, where it's like, yeah, what you say, we'd be like, okay, you look, under this specific circumstance, they acted like that, you know, like breathed up. I'll leave these people alone. Sometimes it's like, you don't know what that guy's going through. You know, you set up this freaking show,

all these actors to do all this weird stuff, just to ha-ha see how this person reacts, bro. Can't do that, man. Yeah. There's more to it. Yep. And also, additionally, if you are thinking about what's going on

and you're a little bit detached from it, you're probably going to make better decisions than if you're just reactive to, the scenario. So they, what did you say? The dad's abusing, verbally abusing the kid.

Like you, like, you got to think through, what is that, what's, what's happening? Yeah. You know,

and if a guy's playing that out on his head, okay, well, what's the right move right there? Yeah. Because you can,

you know, generally speaking, as a human, it's like, oh, I don't know what's going through the, you got a dad

that's publicly verbally abusing a kid. That guy's got issues. Right? This isn't normal. This guy's got issue. What is he? Are you going to make it worse for the kid?

So there's a lot. You can throw that out that are like it's real simple and easy. But when you do get in a situation like that, I'm not talking about a candid camera, but when there's something going on, you've got to detach and really run through, not let your emotions drive it, but what's going on? Can you actually help? Are you going to make things worse? You know, oh, now we've got a physical abuse going on.

Now we're probably stepping in. Matter of fact, we're stepping in. Like you start abusing a child, we're going to have issues. We're going to put a stop to that. The verbal abuse thing, like, how far are you willing to go? You're going to go and report this. You're going to call child services. You can do the follow-up calls.

Are you going to make it worse for that kid? Are you going to get stabbed? So there's a lot of things to consider. And the way that you consider those is by taking a step back and detaching. And look, there's so many nuances in that situation that we couldn't, I couldn't say like well here's what I would do I would need to be there I would need to be sitting there I would need to physically size the whole situation up I do is there is there a wife there is a mom what's her reaction are there other kids what are their

reactions there's so many things to consider but the only way you can truly consider those things in the moment is to be able to detach and take a step back and look around next section here is power leadership a liking for one another is not the only thing needed to hold a crew together in survival. Survivals agree that every survival group should have a leader who will exercise his power of authority. This doesn't mean that he has to be a dictator. Somebody has to take lead in accomplishing the things already outlined. Stories of crew survival clearly show that disaster strikes if this power isn't exercised.

So somebody's got to step up and lead. Communications. Almost every story of 100% crew survival gives an account of good. good communications during the in-flight emergency and what follows where there's a lack of communication there is panic and having losses and again this is talking about a plane being in a plane being in a bomber but imagine in your company imagine your organization imagine your team when things are going sideways you got to communicate what's happening because of poor communications procedures the men bail out when there's no need to bail out or fail to bail out

when there is a necessity failing to communicate also causes panic Having someone to talk to helps morale. It prevents panic. Next thing. A goal. Having a goal is a fourth factor which holds a crew together when things get rough. If you recognize that all of you have the same goal, survival, you will do a lot of things you wouldn't usually do. When an individual crew member forgets his goal and wants to give up, the crew may be able to snap him out of it.

One evading bombardier wanted to quit the crew knew that this would endanger all of them the aircraft commander drew his pistol on him and told him that he would shoot him rather than leave him behind the bombardier Got up and came along the entire crew survived and here's the the summary section based on the social psychology literature literature about group behavior under stress interviews interviews and reports interviews with and reports about air force survivors and reports about air force survivors and and continuing study of survival trainees, the following conclusions have been reached. Factors which further group survival chances. Skill in organizing activity. Good group morale.

Definite goals which serve to improve crew morale. The leader's knowledge of his men as individuals. A widespread of participation within a crew. Keeping the crew well briefed, which helps achieve organized action. splitting up into smaller subgroups as the occasion demands, development of interdependencies based on each man's resources, ability to make quick decisions and act upon them immediately, proper supervision or leadership,

group decisions based on adequate survey of the situation, effective previously established reaction patterns, it's good training, good interpersonal crew relations, Yes, good relationships. And high prestige personnel, such as the aircraft commander, taking full advantage of their relative great opportunities to initiate action, which may lead to success. And here's some things that decrease group survival,

the absence of any of the foregoing factors. Failure of someone to fulfill the leadership function. Panic, which often arises from a lack of group organization leading to crude disintegration, lack of inner cohesion as a unit or lack of crew. crew stability, lack of conscious, well-planned organization and leadership. And this is going to close this section, this day, this book out. We may go back to the book at some point, but for today, this is what it means to you.

Every crew member can examine his own personality, behavior, and habits in relation to his fellow crew members in order to judge how he can add to the entire crew's potential for safe return. So you as an individual can get better. And you need to examine yourself. And then every aircraft commander can find hints for measuring and for improving his leadership performance under both normal and emergency conditions. He can use the same material to analyze and improve the performance of his whole crew as well as that of each member as an important factor in influencing the crew's survival potential. The leadership and the crew both need to pay attention.

Both need to make improvements. And so we see once again that the biggest impact on our survival and our lives is how we lead, how we train, how we prepare, how we test, how we improve ourselves, how we understand our fears, how we train to control our fears, how we understand what being a leader is. and what being a team member is, which is interacting with other human beings. That's what we need to do. Improve in those areas, which is on us. So there you go. There you go.

That's the psychological aspects of survival. And again, I just saw the folks that gave me this book, they came to the muster. Oh, it ran on. And I told them, the last podcast hadn't come out yet. I said, it's coming. So I appreciate you giving me this book. The woman actually found it.

in her fathers who served in the Air Force or the Army Air Corps, found it in his, you know, old, old box of stuff. So pretty awesome. Army Air Corps. So before the Air Force was formed, they had the Army Air Corps. Yeah, that's what. And then eventually that became the Air Force. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. That's crazy. So is that the real, that's the actual one? That's it. Straight up. Right there. It's the real deal. It's a real deal.

That's really good. I like these manuals. Yes, or more. Yeah, because they're like cool little guides where you can be like, huh, because a lot of this stuff and really a lot of what's kind of out there is just ideas, guidelines, whatever that are not necessarily in this like cohesive formation where some of this stuff, a lot of it is like, I kind of, that makes sense. It's not going to come as some big revelation or surprise, but to have it like laid out in a certain way

where it's like a little guide where you can be like cool survival scenario but wait a second that kind of applies to me in us in life everything so just and when you really think about it welcome the jaco podcast bro but okay that goes without saying okay but in a way you can kind of look at life as one big survival task really yes on a lower level or less intense level so so all this stuff is a pretty relevant approach to surviving. Bro, welcome to Jacco. Have you been about called extreme ownership, dichotomy leadership, leadership,

leadership strategy, and tactics? You see any of those? Yes, sir. I'm just wondering. But what I'm saying is that's why I like this one, because they're so straightforward in that. And you can, you know, with every line, you can just apply, apply, apply. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's one of the things that has made the, you know, Aschelon Front appeal to people is because

you get to see the extreme combat examples, but they're so clearly related to what you're dealing with in your business, with your team, with your family, with your life. So when you know that you have to take ownership of a terrible situation in combat, guess what? You also have to take ownership when you make a mistake with your spouse or you make a mistake with your superior at work or whatever the case may be. When you know the consequences of not covering and moving in combat, well, now when I'm not supporting my operations department at work, I realize there's consequences as well.

So the translation, it makes it very obvious what the consequences were are in combat, but then you also take those and you apply them to your life, your business. So yes, in survival, it may be a really important thing to rehearse. And if you don't rehearse, you die. But guess what? We're going to brief a potential client. We might want to rehearse a couple times just to make sure we're ready for whatever questions that might ask.

So, yes, you're very astute in your recognition of the fact that after 424 podcasts. Yes, sir. The things that we talk about apply to life. Yeah. Or, you know, that's just one of the many reasons I like. Am I following in that super annoying category? Yes. You're a bad survivor teammate, whatever.

I'm a bad survivor teammate right now. The self-centered part of it too is like, you know how I'm gonna be honest with you. Hey, I like you a lot, so I'm be honest. Yeah. Pretty much every one of those bad scenarios, I was like, shit, I can name a time where I did that. You know, so I was thinking, well, some of this hat, I mean, to never do any of these is like, proud, that's almost impossible for a human, you know? So it's one of these things where the guide is like, or the manual was telling you, hey, like, this is bad. So, hey, if you catch yourself doing this, just freaking knock that shit off.

So the self-centeredness, that's a big one where, you know how, I don't know, maybe I'm different. Maybe I'm the same as everyone else. I don't know. But you know, like, if I'm like hungry, right, I'm cruising by myself or whatever. In my situation, let's say I'm at home, it's only me and my wife home and I'm hungry. And I'm like, bro, I'm not going to make something. I'm going to get something for delivery, right? Oh, yeah.

So every once in a while, all just like. like forget to get her something to or even ask her like oh are you hungry yeah not every time but every once in all I will and I'll be like what the hell's wrong with me like what why was I not am I self there brother's an unwritten rule at my house yeah if you're getting food yeah you don't need any communication you don't need any text you get food you bring it home you bring it home you so if I'm going to swing by and get some freaking chick filet chick filet um I'm getting it for the fan. Oh, for everybody.

And if the error is, there's already food on the table when I get home and everyone already ate, it's okay. That's the mistake you make. Yeah, yeah, that's part. Look, you already sent him a text. You're like, hey, going to swing by Chick-fil-A, going to grab some. Does anybody want anything? You don't hear a response. Like, you texted him a little bit late.

You don't hear response. Guess what you do. You get it. If you don't get it, you show up. Yeah. And my family, you can have problems. My dad, BC. He would always say this.

He's like better to have too much than not enough. But he would always say it. He'd always say it in regards to food when we're making food or whatever. Like, oh, should we peel like, you know, eight potatoes versus, you know, the six or I don't know, whatever. And he's like, do them do more because it's better to have too much than not enough. Which is kind of what your philosophy is. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Like if it's a when in doubt, bro, get it. Yeah. So, yeah. So we don't have that rule. So I guess that that's kind of. Well, once your kids are driving Yeah, yeah, hell yeah.

Then it becomes a thing. Because I would say my wife and I kind of had that, you know? Like if you're gonna pick up some food, you're gonna get it done. But now that once you got kids that are driving too, like it's happened. My kid rolling into the house with in and out with not a thing for me. You know, guess what happens? Yeah. Guess what just happened to their meal became my meal.

That's what's happening. And pretty administrative. Yeah. Punitive measures. Yeah. Well, so here's now that I'm really thinking about implementing this, I kind of can't, this is why. So a lot of the stuff I get, a lot of times the rest of my family doesn't want it.

Like I would say like a good 75% of the time. What, like sushi? They'll say no. Like, yeah, like sushi or pokey or something like this. They just don't even want it. Yeah, or they're not in the mood for it. Because like sushi is one of those ones most people you've got to be in the mood for. Okay.

But or pokey or something. I'm like this like rough or something from that place, you know. My kids like sushi, but they like rolls and I'm like, or maybe they already ate. They'll be like, yeah, I want that. They always say yes to sushi, but then when you bring it home, they only eat like a little bit. They like the idea.

Yeah, if you're buying something weird to eat, yeah, maybe it don't apply. Yeah. But if you're getting in and out, in and out 100%. You're getting Chick-fil-A? Yeah. You're getting some Mexican, bro. I'm with you. You better supply for the fam.

I would actually say now that I'm thinking of it, anytime where it's like a, yeah, like a shake shack or some burger place or whatever, I know to ask everyone because everyone like the chance of them being down for that is like probably 90, 95%. I mean, unless they ate already or whatever. But even then. Contingency planning is you just get it. I think you're like you're just get it. That's what we're doing. But yeah. So if you roll to my house and you have in and out with you, you have chick filet with you, you better have enough for the old man.

That's what's happening. That's community chick-flin. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, yeah. Yeah, you're right. Those were the spots for after wrestling with my kids. Get done with wrestling like tournament. Got a way in, there all day.

On the way home, chick-fil-A, in and out. Yeah, that's the call. That's what's happening. Yeah. In-and-out, solid for sure. Yeah. I got a all formulated thing. Like that being a rule at your house, that makes sense.

But it can't be a rule at my house. It should be. Like I said, not if you're buying weird stuff, right? If you're buying ununiversal foods. Oh, yes, not universal. I understand. If you're buying non-universal foods, then yeah. Yeah.

If you're coming to my house, don't bring this other sushi for you. Okay. Don't be bringing pokey for me. Don't be bringing me this. But stop it in and out and grab that protein style. Yeah, yeah, all day. Three by three. Yeah.

I get it. Yeah. I got you. But at least ask, though, because that's really the original. problem is like I felt in terms of like oh even if my wife will be like let's say 50 50 right she's 50 sometimes 50% she'll say yes 50% she'll say no I'm good so I'll usually ask her whatever and then after a while you start to get the pattern like hey it's like freaking 11 at night right now there's like only a certain amount of sushi places open she's probably sleeping right now

or about to go sleep she's not going to wait another 20 minutes and then freaking eat they He's not going to do that. You know, you kind of go through that quick calculus or whatever. So I'm just, I'm just going to go. And then every once in a while, she'll be like, oh, you should have told me I wanted something. Then I'll feel self-centered. Like, I'll be like, bro, I wasn't even thinking about it, you know, kind of a thing. At least ask.

Yeah, at least ask, bro. Yeah. Or just get it and put it in the fridge and you have it tomorrow for lunch. Yeah, that's true. You know what I'm saying? This isn't hard to figure out, right? Well, now I know, now that I listen to the manual and you re-come, go through the manual, we're good to go now. Hey

Speaking of getting fuel look do we get occasionally do we get some in and out? Occasionally do we get some chick-fil-a occasionally? This isn't our normal fuel right? No, we got to keep it a little cleaner Okay We want to keep it clean clean fuel Jock fuel That's what we're doing

Check out the hydrate Check out the greens greens with creatine Should we put creatine directly in greens? Oh, like as a standalone? As a thing. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure yet. There's people that it would be a lot.

It'd be a big move. But right now, I'm telling you, you can do this if you want. You have the choice, freedom of choice. You want greens and creatine. Boom, mix them up. Have it in the morning. It's a good thing too. You get done working out.

Maybe you have like, you know, you do some work. You get done working out. You get doing some work. Now it's like 10 o'clock. 11 o'clock. You're getting a little hungry. boom have have like some mixed nuts whatever then you want to get something a little bit sweet you wouldn't think greens are sweet you wouldn't think that they taste good jockle greens taste

good and freaking outstanding for you so joccofuel.com I don't think you should do the greens creatine thing as of separate yeah as of right now with 15 seconds of thinking about it I think you should keep them separate this is why unless actually two things this is why because they're like you're mixing it up. So it's like, you know, you think about the experience. So the only time where I'm like, hey, hey, I wish these were together already versus me opening up one more container or whatever.

Like the only time where I'm be like, oh, I'm glad this is already mixed or whatever is like they're ready to drink stuff. So like they're ready to drink like mold, for example. Like the fact that it's already there, you just open it is way different than mixing it up. Like just day to day. Mixing is a whole ritual is what you're saying.

It's like a Japanese tea ritual. You're going through these whole. procedures out comes the creatine out comes the greens yeah little ice little that's slightly slightly dramatic but um yeah sure comparable we'll say you know a ritual no but put it this way it's like more steps and more of a task more of a time constraint not in and up not for one time i'm saying overtime and you feel that when you're like okay oh the ready to drink is just ready to drink this other one i got to open the i got to go get the container i got to go get the mix if you're doing water okay if you're doing milk okay now i got to

grab that, I got to do it, I got to clean up, I got to put it away. It's different if it's RTD, right? So that's the only time I can think of where if it's like, hey, if you're combining things that are already ready to go, okay. But if you're just like, oh, yeah, you still got to mix them. You still got to go find the thing. Now it's just one less container. It's like, that kind of defeats the purpose a little bit.

And then you got to relegate it to people who want the greens with the, with the creatine. See what I'm saying? Now, here's an exception. Do you want to do a separate podcast episode about this? Here's the exception. Here's the exception, John. Having a hard time.

Well, follow me. You could have just said, don't mix them. I would say, cool. Well, you got to know why, though. No, I don't. Oh, you don't have to know why now. Okay. Continue.

Okay. Let's just get this done. Okay. So if you had R.T.D. Greens that had creatine in it, you know, something along those lines where it's like, hey, you're getting your greens. You're getting your creatine and this is in a drink. That tastes good.

It's like refreshing. It's like a little drink. But you got that added. See what I'm saying? Okay. I would be that. To me, I feel like that would have a place in my life. I feel like.

Noted. Versus like another powder that's, oh, this powder versus, you know, and you got to mix them the same exact way. I feel like, you know, that might be a little bit spinning wheels. That's what it feels like to me. I don't know. That's just me. Your input is just deeply appreciated across the board.

No, no, no. I mean, you're appreciated. I'm even thinking about maybe putting together a separate podcast about this. Anyway. Djangofuel.com. Come and check it out. Mulk, you heard about that. We got protein.

All tastes delicious. Naturally sweetened. No junk in them. Clean fuel. Joint warfare. We got it going on. You want to get this stuff? Wah-Wat.

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down in Tejas. Thank you. Meyer. Thank you. Harris Teeter. Let's go. Lifetime fitness. Shields.

Small gyms everywhere. Jiu-Jitsu. CrossFit. gyms if you own a jih Tzu gym if you own a crossfit gym if you own a power lifting gym if you own an Olympic lifting gym if you own a yoga studio let us know JF sales adjoquofuel.com

and we can set you up so you can give your clients your customers your consumers the goods that's what we're doing also origin USA.com you need clothes to clothing to wear when you make when you wear clothing wouldn't you like your clothing

to have been made by a person that was not enslaved. My guess is yes, you would. Wouldn't you want your clothing to represent freedom? Wouldn't you want it to represent America? OriginUSA.com. We can give you clothing for your entire life. Because workout gear in the morning, jeans. We got other pants coming out now.

Have you seen the mo? Lab pants. They're coming out. Freaking. Just awesome work pants. Obviously, we got the jeans. Obviously, we got boots. Obviously, we get done with your workday.

That's when you're putting on your jihitsu gear, your glee, your rash guard, your shorts. We got you covered. Head to toe. Head to toe. I dig it. Belt? Yeah. Got you.

Wallet. We got you. Sox even. Beanie. Beanie. Beanie. For the top of your head. Sure.

We got you. Hunt gear. We got you. Anyways. You guys know the deal. OriginUSA. We're bringing manufacturing back to America rebuilding America rebuilding the communities America freedom origin USA.com

Let's go. It's true also speaking of freedom and discipline Because without discipline there is no freedom Look at you with the connection this is real check you out. It's true. Look hey if you want to represent Discipline equals freedom that concept combined Go to jocco store. Come get your shirts your hoodies your hats we got some shorts on there too we have socks coming Like soon like within the next few days okay and some new special hoodies as well what is it what are the socks like say on them Discipline equals freedom they don't just they're not just what do they call my socks people see my socks in like a picture. Oh yeah your workout socks or man socks or something yeah

Yeah, grandpa socks. Yeah, you don't put much aesthetic thought into your socks. Oh, yeah, you don't put much aesthetic thought into your socks. I don't really put much aesthetic thought into the clothes that I'm wearing. Yeah. I wear what I wear. That is very clear. Yes. Especially when you look at your socks.

And I dig it, man. Do what you dig. Not all of us feel the same way. You know, like when I, hey look, when I'm walking through the freaking, actually, I just wore him some. Oh yeah, I went to a show. What kind of show? Comedy show. Bill Maher. It's like a political comedy show. This is a political comedy show. This past weekend. How was it? Good. Did you laugh? Yeah. Oh, Bill Marr. He's the TV show guy. Bill Marr, yeah, real time with Bill Marr. Did you go to the like, well the filming of it? No, no, no. He has a stand-up too, stand-up show as well. So he was here, San Diego. I mean,

my lovely wife went. Boom, I wear the discipline equals freedom socks. Now look, when I sit down in the chair and my pants kind of go up, it reveals the socks. What do you want them to see? Never thought about that. You with your grandpa socks. They're going to see your grandpa's socks. They're going to be like, whatever. I'm going to keep moving. They see my disability. equals freedom socks and it'll be like hmm does it say discipline equals freedom on each sock yes there it does the whole it was just one sauce discipline the other less the talk is freedom no does it say over and over again or just one time oh one time one time and then has the X flag on there sure they're legit

letting people know letting them know if they care it's true but yes those are coming in they're very good their quality we got the long ones and the regular side what do you call them crew whatever either way you got some options there and a lot other cool stuff on there. Speak of the options on there. There's something called the shirt locker. That you can subscribe to. That's a new shirt every month with different designs.

Yeah. About discipline equals freedom. Quite a few people at the master were representing. Oh, representing big time. Big time. Big time. Oh yeah. And that's how, you know, like I said, you want to represent discipline.

This is where you go. Some people wonder about the magic. They see a shirt. They never seen it before. Yeah. Where did that come from? Yeah. Shirt locker.

There you go. Yep. Jocostor.com. That's where all this stuff exists. Also, if you need steak, which you do, Yes. Primalbeef.com or Coloradocraftbeef.com. Both awesome companies making awesome steak for you to eat.

It's freaking outstanding. You need steak. Go to primalbeef.com. Go to Colorado Craftbeef.com and get yourself some of the goods, some steak, some ground beef. Just get it. Get it done. Also subscribe to the podcast.

Also, jocco underground.com. Also, YouTube channels. You got the Jocko What is it Jocko podcast YouTube channel Official official Yeah Origin USA YouTube channel

Jock Fuel YouTube channel So that we've got some YouTube channels So you want to see some of that Psychological Warfare Don't forget about flipside canvas Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall I've written a bunch of books about leadership Where I take ideas and leadership principles from combat

And show you how you can apply it to your business in life Isn't that interesting about Charles? Amazing amazing Also got a bunch of kids books for the kids that you can get kids look there's all kinds of paths kids can go down these days and there and a lot of them are not good fact most of them i would say are not good or you can get them down the path get the kids you know the warrior kid books also echelon front we have a leadership consultancy go to esplanfront dot com for details on that we have an online training

academy extreme ownership dot com for these principles that we teach that can be utilized in business And in survival tactics, you can learn them. You can learn how to be a better human being. Go to Extreme Ownership.com. Also, if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization.

If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Also, don't forget about Micah Fink up there in the wilderness, helping our veterans relocate their souls. Go to Heroes and Horses.org. And Jimmy May has got an organization beyond thebrotherhood.org helping our comrades in arms

transition to the civilian sector. If you want to connect with Echo and I, we're out there. We're on the interwebs. Echoes at Echo Charles. I'm at Jocco Willink. Just be careful because the algorithm has been programmed

to steal your time from you and flush it down the toilet. So be careful. And thanks to all our service men and women around the world right now and also to their families who serve and sacrifice. We are indebted to you always and we will not forget the gift of freedom that you have given us. And also thanks to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol secret service and all other first responders. Thank you for keeping us safe here at home.

to everyone else out there. Do not run from your fear. Do not run from your fear. Understand it. Recognize it. Acclimate yourself to it. Face it. And learn how to take action.

Action with purpose even when you are afraid. And build the mental strength and endurance through physical strength and endurance so that you can make. yourself a survivor and until next time this is echo and jocco out