Jocko Podcast - DEF 04: Stop Lying To Yourself

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

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Discipline equals freedom episode four Jocker here also have Kerry and Leif in the house I was doing a live event I think it was the one in New York I was doing a New York Jocko live and I'll get to the Q&A portion and this guy stands up and asked a question and and basically his question is that he's having a hard time finding discipline staying discipline type scenario and And he kind of goes through his life.

He's, you know, I'm pretty happy. I got a good job. I got a good family. I got a nice house. I'm in pretty good shape. So he's doing good, right? And he says, but, you know, I can't find the discipline. You know, I sometimes I skip workouts and sometimes I sleep in and sometimes I eat bad.

And sometimes I watch a little too much TV. And I just, how can I find more discipline is this question. And I'm sitting there thinking about it. And I thought through all these different possible scenarios that could be going on. And finally, I'm like, you could be lying to yourself. That could be the problem. How is that? You can be lying to yourself by saying, I'm really happy.

That can be a lie. It can be a lie. Hey, you know what? I'm really happy right now. And there's a chance you are, right? There's a chance. There's a chance that you really are truly happy. I got a good job.

I got a good family. I got a house. I'm in pretty good shape. there's a chance that you're truly happy in that situation. And if that's the scenario, good. You know what? Don't worry about getting more discipline. You're happy.

You're content. You got a good job. You got a good family. You got a house. You got a car. Everything's good. That's cool. That's fine.

But there's a chance that that's not fine. There's a chance that you're lying to yourself. That's why you're asking this question, by the way. The reason you're asking this question is because you can't find more discipline. You want more discipline. Why do you want that? Because you know you could be better and there's something in your mind That's saying you could be better and you know it and you know that the way you could get better and the way you could do better and the way you could be more Is by having more discipline So don't lie to yourself

That's what we have to do we have we have to not lie to ourselves and this is what I a GP uses this quote a lot Because I ended up telling JP like two weeks later or something we were at a gig together Discipline is rooted in the truth we tell ourselves That's what it is discipline is rooted in the truth we tell ourselves because if you tell yourself the truth If you tell yourself the truth and the truth is I'm not happy with where I'm at That's the truth the truth is I can do more The truth is I can be in better shape The truth is I can work harder than I'm working right now the truth is I can do more for my

my family. The truth is I can do much better than I'm doing right now. And if that's the real truth, if that's what you believe, if you believe that to be the truth, you won't have to find more discipline. Discipline will find you. It will wake you up in the morning. It will wake you up in the morning. Have you ever been like preparing for something and you didn't think you were ready and you couldn't sleep and you wake up in the morning because it's happening? 100 times, million times. Ever happen to you, Leif?

Definitely. Hey, when you're, many many times. Missions going out on a mission, like let's say you're in Iraq and you're going out on a mission, you haven't been on a mission before. Let me ask you this, the first mission you did in Iraq with me when we were there together.

How well did you sleep the night before? I don't think I slept at all. Why is that? Trying to think every, every contingency, you know, so much work left undone, just not confident in knowing that all, all the, you know, all the eyes were dotted and the T's were crossed and everything was done

and prepared as it should be. And you're also thinking about scenarios that might unfold, like worst case scenarios and it's kind of just spinning. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? What makes that interesting is you've got a specific scenario that's happening that you want to be ready for and therefore your mind prevents you from sleeping. That's what happens. So when you're going through life and you truly feel like you could do better and you could do more and you truly feel that way and you're going to have a hard time sleeping and look I'm not encouraging not sleeping I'm not doing that but when you if you think about that and you say oh yeah I could do better you're going to have a hard time sleeping you're going to discipline is going to find you now if you lie to yourself

if you lie to yourself if you would lie to yourself and say you know what I'm I'm good to go. Like I'm not worried about this operation. We're good to go. I know everything will probably go fine. I'm good. You sleep all night like a little baby. If you lie to yourself and you're like, well, you know, I'm in pretty good shape.

And my family's doing fine. And I like this house that I'm in. And my job's good enough. If that's the lie that you're telling yourself, maybe you can sleep just fine. And maybe it's hard to be disciplined in those scenarios. So what you need to do is you need to tell yourself the truth about what the hell is going on in your life. That's what you need to do.

You need to do an assessment. You need to break out a piece of paper and start to write down these things that you claim to be happy about and pull the stops off. Like, okay, what if I, if I could have any house I wanted, is this house the house I wanted? Is it? Is it really? You sure about that?

You sure about that? You sure about that? You see what I'm saying? If you ask yourself, hey, I'm in pretty good shape right now. You sure about that? You sure about that? And you write down, well, if I could snap my fingers and be in a different physical shape, is this what I would choose?

Or would I want to be a little bit better? Would I want to be stronger, faster? Am I happy where I'm at with my jiu-jitsu? I'm pretty good. I've been training for a while. I can beat most people. That's pretty good, right? Then you've got to ask yourself, you sure about that?

Are you sure about that? because we end up lying to ourselves. And if we're lying to ourselves, we're not going to find the discipline. It's going to be more difficult. You have to do an assessment. You have to detach from it. You have to write it down.

And then you have to ask yourself, is this the truth right here that I'm saying? And like I said, dude, if you're happy with that and you pull back, you peel back the onion, and you look at it and you say, you know,

my house is awesome. Like it's a really good house. And maybe you have to weigh some things out. And you say, you know, my house is pretty good. And if I was to really want a bigger house, I'd have to work so much more that I wouldn't be able to see my family. You know what? I'm good with it. That's fine.

That's perfectly fine. But maybe you're not getting to spend time with your kids in the morning because you're sleeping late. And now they're going off to school and you haven't said good morning to them. Haven't sat down and eating some bacon with them or done a quick workout with them. And you know it would make you better. And you know it would make them better. But you're not doing it. because you're being lazy.

So tell yourself the truth about the situation that you're in. That's what we need to do. And it should hurt a little bit, by the way. It should hurt a little bit. There should be aspects of your life that you know you can improve upon. That should hurt a little bit. Here's the cool thing. Take ownership of those things and guess what?

Doesn't hurt at all. Now guess who's in control? You are. But if you're having trouble finding discipline, start by telling yourself the truth about what's going on. I'm going to go to the book here. Discipline goes freedom field manual. Where does discipline come from? It comes when you make a decision to be disciplined.

Really? Hold on a second. This is a choice. Is that what I just said? Is that what I just said right there? It's a choice? I mean you're not born with discipline? Hey, this is your baby boy.

He's got brown. blue eyes and level seven discipline is that what happens negative no that's not what happens you actually as a human being get to decide if you want to be disciplined or not back to the book when you when you make a decision to be better now if you've already told yourself that hey I'm pretty good to go you don't make a decision to be better because you already think you're there you lie to yourself and you're not going to make this decision if you lie to yourself you're not going to make the right decisions back to the book when you make a decision

to do more to be more self-discipline comes when you decide to make your mark on the world if you don't think you are disciplined it's because you haven't decided to be disciplined yet it's because you haven't created it yet it's because you haven't become disciplined yet because you haven't told yourself the truth and this is going to be problematic it's going to be very problematic so where does discipline come from it comes from you become the discipline embrace its cold and relentless power hell yeah i like that line and it will make you better and stronger and smarter and faster and healthier than anything else. And most important, it will make you free.

That's where we're at. Go. This guy sounds comfortable. The guy who was talking to you? Absolutely. What effect do you think comfort plays on our ability to tell ourselves the truth? Well, comfort's kind of a, it massages lies, right? It makes them feel good.

It makes it feel like it's okay and you know that happens in in people's lives Happens with everybody right I mean it happens you know what it happens with a rock and roll bands Right rock and roll bands when they're young and they're struggling and they're hungry and They're they're poor and their music is reflects that But it's hard to you know write good music when there's someone massaging your freaking throat as your drink eating caviar or whatever it's hard to be like disgruntled about things so the music tends to get worse and worse as time goes on it's like fighters too right yeah it's it's hard for a fighter in silk sheets to get up and go for a run in the cold biting air you can't live like that you can't allow yourself to get there you got to be careful that because it's a real thing. Yeah, comfort breeds lies and it breeds a lack of discipline. Absolutely. Because that's where you're at. And that's, you know, as much as I talk about, look, imposed discipline is not

our goal, right? We don't want imposed discipline. But you were talking earlier about before we hit record today, you know, one of these one of these other discipline equals freedom episodes that I did, I was saying, listen, you're the general, you're in charge, you're also the soldier. What is, what do they teach you about discipline in the Marine Corps? So in Marine Corps basic training in boot camp, we have ditties. And one of those ditties is about discipline. And the, the first call from a drill instructor is discipline. And then all the recruits say, discipline.

And they spell it out, D-I-S-E, and then he says, discipline is. and the recruit say discipline is immediate willing obedience to all orders sir and that's where in my brain I try to attach that to the orders I'm giving myself right if you're the general and you're giving yourself orders immediate willing obedience to all orders from me yes do it do the thing that's what I try to tell us I'm the general I'm the soldier I am going to Obey orders without question and you've heard me talking about this for years right now, right? The negotiation the debate the what and people say like what do you tell yourself? I'm telling myself anything. I'm not allowed to talk. I'm not allowed to talk. We're not allowed to we're not allowed to come up with these things.

It's like you know the Marine Corps recruits not like well actually I'd like to wonder why we're doing this why you want me to go over this. It's not happening not allowed to do that. You're not doing it. Immediate obedience to the orders. That's what we're doing with ourselves and listen Do we encourage this idea of imposed discipline on other people? No, you've heard me discourage it for years. I don't even encourage it with your kids and listen beyond Marine Corps boot camp in the military. I don't encourage, hey, immediate response, immediate obedience to my orders. I don't even want to have to give you orders matter of fact what I want is you're doing it before I even thought of it that's what we really want that's what we want to get to but the way we treat ourselves as general and soldier What we need is immediate obedience without question

That's what that's what we're moving towards and here's the thing If there's lies if the general lies to the troops there's no trust There's debate there's negotiation if the soldiers lie to the general there's no trust there's lies there's lies there's no trust there's lies there's debate so we can't let that happen we tell the truth up and down the chain of command in our heads so that there can be no question you're asking about you know first combat operations whether or not I was sleeping you know good the night before and I think what gives you after that first combat operation you realize okay I there's a there's a lot of things that are out of my control I got to focus on what I can control and you you know you can prioritize and ask you know on those things but the

The more discipline that we were in planning and preparation, the easier you sleep at night. Because you know that you've done everything you can. And you can go to sleep knowing they're like, we're fully prepared and we're ready. And I think that that's a, I had a leader asked me about this recently. And she was talking about like not being down on herself. Well, you know, we're holding the standard really high. We have to be disciplined. And, you know, kind of similar to the question that you got.

that you reference of this person that's, that's, they know they could be better, but, you know, it's, but they don't want to like be, they, they're driving their confidence into the ground because they're constantly like, you know, holding the standard too high. And so the, the question was, like, how do you gain more confidence? And the only way to gain that confidence is through discipline, in, in that discipline preparation is what gets you confidence. It doesn't matter whether you're playing a sport, whether you're in school, studying for a test, whether you're not preparing for a presentation, you know, at work, or whatever it is that you're doing, planning for a combat mission.

I mean, the more disciplined you are in that preparation, the more confidence you're going to have. And I think for me, I notice if I get off the path, it's, it becomes, it's easier to lie to yourself, you know, and so that slip, it starts to really, that could snowball, whereas the more that you make that a habit of telling yourself the truth and realizing, hey, I got a fault, you'll stay on this path of this one. It becomes easier. It becomes easier and easier over time. So I think what seems daunting to people initially, it's not that daunting when that becomes habit. And it's just part of what you do. I remember when we first started working together, Taskin-Rouza, Seth Stone, the Delta Petitian Manor and I were good friends. And we go surf all the

time and we'd go surf after a we go out and party you know hard on Friday night and we'd like we're gonna get up early what we called Dawn Patrol was like 730 and then we started we started rolling out with Jocko Jock was like cool I'll meet you guys at 445 and we started going out in the dark and initially that seemed insane like who who can get up at 445 on a Saturday morning that's is that even possible and I remember Me and Seth, even when you were able to join us for surf sessions, we would go out all the time at like 4.30, 4.45 in the morning. We'd surf for an hour and a half, and we'd paddle in as everyone else is paddling out.

So no one else is out there. And I was like, this is awesome. So it might be the greatest thing I ever taught you. Is there any way, there's anything better than paddling out when it's dark? It's like, it's amazing. It's amazing. It's awesome. And is there anything better than after you've been surfing and catching every way

and other people are paddling out as you're paddling back yet that's pretty satisfying as well too because you know like your your day is started off like no one can take that that time away from you and I think that's a that's a super powerful thing but it's it gets easier over time and I think what makes it easier for me is when I'm thinking if I got to think long term like if I'm it's real easy a lot of myself when the alarm goes off in the morning if I'm not really I haven't really looked at the schedule and detail and I don't know how busy the day is going to be it's it's easier to tell yourself, oh, you know, I'll find some time. I can sleep in. You're such a lie. That's such a lie. I'll find some time. It's such a lie. Don't do it. Don't do it.

What helps me not do it is the discipline preparation of like looking at my schedule. I was like, no, there isn't any time. Like this is the time. So I can't get sucked into the algorithm of, you know, scrolling through Instagram or whatever it is. I've got to use the next hour that I have to get a good workout in to set the whole tone for the whole day. Because there's, there's not going to be another time for me to be able to do that. So I think that kind of long-term thought of where I want to be, you know, on a day-to-day basis. If you're not really paying attention,

you're just kind of just a slave to the what's next on the schedule and you're not looking ahead, it's real easy, I think, to lie to yourself, or easier, certainly. Yeah. And the more you lie to yourself, the easier it gets. You know, when people come to work at Ashlandfront and, the first time they say like, well, that wasn't really my, and you can hear like on a conference conference, like, and they kind of self-correct. And then after a while, no one says, you know, if you've been at Eschlam Front for three months, you don't say, well, that wasn't my fault. Or I think actually, you know, Leif should have done. No, you don't do that. You don't say that. You recognize that that doesn't work. It's not allowed. So when you start lying to yourself, it doesn't get harder. It gets easier. And it becomes harder to recognize. Like, it's, it's, It stands out like a sore thumb at Eslam front when somebody says, oh, that wasn't my fault or that's because of the client.

When someone says that, it stands out like a sore thumb. It's just it everyone hears it. Well, when you lie to yourself and that's the habit that you're in, it doesn't stand out at all. And that's why I'm a big proponent if you just writing things down, right? You know what? You got an excuse for not working out. Just write it down. See what that thing looks like.

Actually, we had a conversation on this podcast the other day and I said, I'm going to, I'm going to ask chat GPT to write, give me 5,000 excuses to not work out today. And I, so I did it like later on in the day. I was like, I want 5,000 excuses to not work out. And it wouldn't give it to me. What it said, it was like, it gave me a mental health answer. Like, even though. And then I tried to give it a better prompt. I was like, if a person wanted to know.

why they shouldn't work out and give a legitimate reason. I tried it and it would not give me any excuses to not work out. Is the AI on our side? The AI might be, but is it an ally? It was very strange, but it was very weird. That is weird. Yeah, it wouldn't give me the answer. Now, I haven't tried Bard yet, and I'll try the other ones later and we'll see what we get.

There's a trooper in there, like in the coding thing. He's like, no excuses. Your excuses are lies. So there is no hack. Yeah, there is no hack. There's a man on the inside. We've got a man on the inside. Yeah.

The AI is disciplined. Yes. That's what we're doing. The AI is telling the truth. And that's what you need to do too. So if you're lacking discipline, you got to start telling yourself the truth. And if you do that, the discipline will find you.

That's what we're doing. you want to do more of this go to the deaf reset dot com sign up we're getting after it come get after it with us also jacofuel.com jocco store dot com origin usa.com and echelonfront dot com we're there come get it