Jocko Podcast - Jocko Podcast 15: Band of Brothers, Henry V, Breaking Rules, Teaching Aggression, Jocko’s BJJ Style, Lazy Habits & Procrastination

Episode Date: March 23, 2016

0:00:00 - Opening 0:04:40 - Henry the 5th 0:51:12 - Internet Questions / Onnit 0:56:15 - Opinions on "regular" Army Infantry 1:01:51 - Jocko's lessons and breaking his own rules in Jiu Jitsu 1:09:23 - Consoling team members who failed task. 1:14:46 - Advice for entering the Military straight out of highschool. 1:20:28 - Can you teach aggression / Alpha-behavior? 1:30:51 - What Jiu Jitsu style does Jocko have? 1:40:28 - Is Jocko's advice only for driven individuals? 1:53:51 - Advice for breaking lazy habits and procrastination.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 15 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I looked around at the men. I was the only one looking around. All the other heads were bowed down, all of them. Praying. These men were going into battle.

Real battle. We could literally hear machine gun, fire in the distance where the battle would take place. These men had suffered an incredible number of casualties. They had every reason to pray. I was with Charlie Company from one of the most hallowed units in the U.S. military, the first of the 506, the band of brothers made famous by their unbelievable performance in World War II, which was documented in the book, Band of Brothers, which became an HBO miniseries of the same name. The first of the 506 and Ramadi held the line on that tradition of glory and service and courage.

There's nothing I can say that will do justice to the admiration and the respect that I had for the first of the 506 and that all of us seals had for the first of the 506th. the seals that I sent to work directly with the 506, they became adopted by the 506. Red Curahee, that's one of the nicknames for the 506. And the seals that were directly there working with them absolutely loved the 506. The 506 represented everything good I can imagine

in a military team or any team, professional and disciplined and motivated and creative. The leadership in the battalion was absolutely outstanding. The battalion commander, he was the very essence of leadership. He was calm and direct and friendly and open-minded and respectful and respected. And his staff and the company commander, and the senior NCOs, they had this unified thread between them, this bond, this connection.

And it was that tradition and that sense of purpose and that standard of excellence and professionalism. It's hard to describe, but it was absolutely there. And it was as real as the sand and the bullets and the guns. And so there I was, and this was early in my deployment to Ramadi with task unit bruiser. And I was about to go out into the Malab district with Charlie Company. And their company commander was just an outstanding guy. And I knew that this unit and this company and this battalion,

I knew it was something special. And I knew that that term, the band of brothers, I knew that that's what they truly were. And we hear it, and I know it's a book, and it's a, it's a, it's a HBO series, but where does it come from? Now, most people have heard that simple quote, we few, we happy few, we band a brothers, for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.

And I knew what that quote was. I knew where it came from. I was an English major in college, and I knew that that was Shakespeare, and I knew that that was Henry the 5th, and I knew how powerful that quote was. Now, when you start talking about Shakespeare and you start talking about Henry the 5th,

there's all kinds of different directions you can go. Because you can go back and you can look at what Henry the 5th was like in real life, and if he was like the leader that Shakespeare made him into in the play, and you could talk about Shakespeare himself and the rumors and the myth. and the legends that circulate his life and his legacy, because there's all kinds of questions about Shakespeare.

I mean, did he actually write all of his plays? Was he more than one person? Was he a soldier at some point? How did he know all this stuff about the military and what it was like to be a soldier? Was his vocabulary 10 times what a normal person is? There's all kinds of, like I said, rumor and myth about Shakespeare.

But instead of talking about all that and the conjecture and the hypothetical questions, I would rather talk about something that is known, something that we have today. And those are the words. Words from the play, Henry V, which, yes, was written by Shakespeare. And I'm going to tell you,

Don't be scared and don't be intimidated by that. I mean, don't be scared and don't be intimidated by Shakespeare because you don't understand it. Because you can't. And the fact of the matter is, no one can. At least at first, it's not possible to understand Shakespeare out of the gate. It doesn't work. It's another language.

It's, it's, it is another language. You can't be expected to understand it. It's written in something called early modern English. You know, we speak English. This is early modern English, which is just a transition from something called middle English. And if you go on YouTube and you, you look up Middle English and you have somebody read, a real common one is if you look at the Lord's Prayer in Middle English, you can barely understand it. Parts of it you can't understand, parts of it you can't understand, parts of the word.

you recognize. But when you get to early modern English, now it's a step closer, but it's still is, there's, it's different, it's a different type of language. And there's archaic words and there's obsolete words. And there's words that Shakespeare just made up, he would make up words, factually. And the patterns of speech are different and the idioms are different and the references are all historical. And so if you don't have a grasp on those mythological reference, and historical references and biblical references, then it doesn't have the meaning that it's supposed to have. So you can't expect just to open up Shakespeare

and be able to understand it. Now, this is actually the opposite of what I often say, because to me, you know, you hear me say all the time that what makes English so important is that you can make things very simple and very understandable by everybody. So then why is it important? Why should we read it? Why should we try and understand it?

And the answer to that question is actually very simple. Shakespeare had something. He had something. He had some understanding, some knowledge, some insight into the human mind. That is not normal. It's not normal. He understood people. He understood relationships. He understood leadership. He understood love. And he understood. He understood love. He understood war, and I don't know how he did this, and I don't know why he did, but he did. And on top of that, he had this talent, he had this gift to translate that knowledge into words. And this is important because in the late 1500s, in the early 1600s, this is a whole other deal. There's no special effects. There's no close-up shots of an actor. There's no stunt man. there's no CGI, everything has to be contained in the words.

All the emotion and all the feeling and all the action and all the nature of human beings. It all has to be captured in the words. And the words that Shakespeare uses are heavy. And they're also, they're pregnant. They're pregnant with so much more meaning than what's on the surface. they're filled with depth and knowledge that you have to scrape away and uncover to figure out what they're even talking about. But let's take a look at this,

this famous speech in Henry V, the play of the same name. And I'm going to lead into it a little bit, just to kind of at least set the context of what's happening. And as I went into my notes, just the opening, when you've got this guy that kind of comes out and describes you what's going to happen in the play,

and he kind of introduces Henry, they call him Harry, and he introduces him with this line. Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, assume the port of Marry. And at his heels, leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire crouch for employment. So if you break that down, first of all, he's coming out of the gate. Out of the gate, he's saying Harry is warlike, which means he's fond of war and skilled in it and equipped for it.

And in a more literal meaning, it's saying Henry is like war himself. which means he has complexities and the youth and the mayhem and the chaos inside himself. And then it goes on to say that he should assume the port of Mars, which means he should take on the bearing of Mars, which is the Roman god of war. And at his heels, so down now by his feet, leashed in like hounds. So you got dogs, angry dogs on leashes. And those dogs are famine, sword, and fire.

And in those days, that was war. Because when you did siege warfare on somebody and you locked down their castle, you starved them. And once they were weakened, you burned their castle and then used the sword to finish them off. So he had those dogs of war at his side and they were crouched for employment. If you can imagine a pit bull just tense and coiled like a spring ready to pounce, that's the opening to describe Henry. So they're at war with France, and they go to take down this town of Harfleur.

And at this point, this is one of the other really famous speeches from Henry V. and at this point they've broken through the walls and there's a breach in the wall so there's a hole in the wall but the French are still defending it the French are still defending it pretty well and so Henry has a little chat with his troopers and this is a pretty famous speech

and he says once more unto the breach dear friends once more or close the wall up with our English dead so he's saying that hole in the wall charge it. Charge it and either get through it or fill up the wall with our dead. And then he says, in peace, there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility. So when things are, when things are peaceful, being calm and being humble is a good thing. But when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger. So when war comes, never mind peace and calm,

it's time to be like a tiger. And he says, stiff in the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage. So tense your body and summon up your rage. Then lend the eye a terrible aspect. Let pry through the portage of the head like the brats. Cannon let the brow overwhelm it. So what he's saying there is furl your brow and let your eye poke through your brow like a cannon like a brass cannon sticking out of a porthole. As fearfully as dotha gallad rock overhang and juddy his confounded base swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean. So he's saying make your brow overhang and your eyes like a rock that druts out over the wild ocean. And then, now set the teeth and stretch

the nostril wide, hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit till its full height. So you know what that one is. Bite down, grit your teeth, flare your nostrils, take a deep breath and hold it in and bring every emotion you have to its utmost. And like a tension of on a bow. On, on, you noblest English, whose blood is fed from fathers of warproof. Fathers, like so many Alexanders, having these parts from mourn till even fought and sheathed their swords for lack of argument. So he's saying, listen, you got to fight. You got to fight. You got to fight, you Englishmen, whose blood is from combat-tested warriors like Alexander the Great. And those men have fought on this soil from morning until night, forever.

And they only sheathed their swords when there was no one else to fight. Do not dishonor your mothers. Now attest that whom you called fathers did beget you. So don't dishonor your mom. Prove that your father, with his warrior, your blood is really your father. Be copy now to men of grosser blood and teach them how to war. And that means be an example to the lesser man, to the weaker man, and show them how to war. And you, good yeoman, whose limbs were made in England, show us here the metal of your pasture. So yeoman were basically like the troopers, the foot soldiers and the archers.

and he's saying, show us how you were born in England and the pasture, that's where you were raised, like a cow was raised on a pasture. Show us what the metal of that pasture is. Let us swear that you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not, for there is none of you so mean and base that hath not noble lustre in your eyes. So no matter where these guys are from, no matter what level of society. They came from. He sees the noble lustre,

the righteous gleam in their eyes. I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start. Now, greyhounds, you know, now we use them for racing, they used to be used to hunt to run down animals. And a slip is, and this is one of those things, you've got to look this up.

I didn't know this. I looked it up today. A slip is an old kind of leash that they used for hunting dogs that when you, it was very, you could basically hit a switch and it would let the dog go. So here are these, picture of these greyhounds that are in these quick release leashes, but they're straining on them, waiting to go on the hunt, to go and chase down their prey. And the next line is, the games afoot, follow your spirit. And upon this charge, cry God for Harry, England, and St. George.

So he says the game's afoot, meaning the animal that you're hunting, it's out there. Follow your spirit. And then go and get after it. And as you get after it, yell God for Harry, England and St. George. And St. George is the patron saint of England, the dragon slayer. who was an executed Christian martyr. So you can see that there's so much inside these words. And he captures some of the brutality of war.

And so what happens now is they get the village that they're trying to take down and they've put a lot of pressure on. They've gone through the breach. They've gotten flat back. But now they've got him on a lockdown. and he's telling them, he tells the governor. Henry tells the governor that he needs to surrender

before Henry loses control of his own men. This is a scary thing. This is like, you know, hey, if you don't surrender now, I'm not going to have control anymore over these guys. These barbarians at the gate, they're going to come, and I'm not going to have control of them anymore. He says, the gates of mercy

shall be all shut up and the fleshed soldier rough and heart of heart and by the way fleshed this is an old word it means excited by the taste of flesh so he's saying these soldiers who are excited by the taste of flesh

in liberty of bloody hand shall range with conscience wide as hell so in liberty of bloody hand. You know what that means? It means our hands already covered in blood. I'm just going to go forward. I don't care anymore.

I don't care anymore with conscious, wide as hell, mowing like grass your fresh, fair virgins and your flowering infants. So we are going to come and we are going to

mow like grass your virgins and your children. That's savage right too. He goes on trying to convince them. Again, his key point is like, listen, I have control these guys right now. And he goes on. Therefore, you men of Harfleur, take pity on your town and of your people, whilst yet my soldiers are in my command, whilst yet the cool and temperate wind of grace, o blows the filthy and contagious clouds of head. murder, spoil, and villainy.

So he's saying, like, right now, there's a cool breeze of peace and grace with my guys, but some contagious clouds are coming of murder and spoil and villainy. And the word he uses heady is, it means intoxicating, meaning these guys are going to lose their minds. If not, why in a moment look to see. see the blind and bloody soldier with foul hand desire the locks of your shrill, shrieking daughters. Your father's taken by the silver beards and their most reverend heads dashed to the

walls. Blind and bloody shoulders. Again, that's like blind with rage and blind with murder. And foul hands, he's telling them this. Your naked infants spitted upon pious. hikes and spitted, by the way, is a methodology used in this time period for cooking small game, small animals, and it means you put the animal on a pole from mouth to rectum. And he's saying they're going to do this to their children. While's the mad mothers with their howls confused do break the clouds, as did the wives of jury at Herod's bloody hunting stories. slaughtermen. So break the clouds. That means cry. So the madmothers are going to go mad with tears

like they did in the Bible. In Matthew 216, that's what this is referring to, when King Herod ordered the slaughter of all boys under the age of two in Bethlehem. This is like a threat that they're going to kill all the children. So Henry V is bringing it. What say you, Will you yield and this avoid or guilty in defense be thus destroyed? So the French hearing these pretty valid threats coming, they surrender. Henry and the troops take that village, and then the next thing they do is march. And again, I'm moving rapidly through a re-year-old. war that took place and they end up settling on the opposing ends of a field which is now what

becomes the the famous battle of it some people call as in court or adjuncourt and the french they they've got more people i mean it's in france so they've got more people so they've got more people, substantially more people. And there's a bunch of different, you know, in the books I've read, there's varying numbers, but they definitely had substantially more people. And Henry, he's talking to some of his leadership, his subordinate commanders, and then they all kind of walk off the stage, and he's left there, and he starts talking a little bit about the burden of command. And some thoughts on leadership, which I was, I found very familiar. So he says, upon the king, let us our lives, our souls, our debts, our careful wives,

our children, and our sins lay on the king. We must bear all. So he knows that the king is responsible for everything. Got to take ownership of everything. and he kind of talks about this idea that the king

is it's the expression of it's lonely at the top he's about to get into that in whatever it was 1599 oh ceremony show me but thy worth

what is thy soul of adoration art thou aught else but place degree and form so he's saying like what is all this junk besides just social rank and etiquette what real meaning does it have creating awe and fear in other men wherein thou art less happy being feared than they in fearing so he's saying look like these people are scared to me i'm i'm actually less happy than they are they're afraid of me but i'm

less happy because i'm the guy that's scaring them i am a king that find thee and i know tis not the bomb, the sceptre, and the ball, the sword, the mace, the crown imperial, the intertissued robe of gold and pearl, the farsed title running for the king, the throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp that beats upon the high shore of this world. So he goes through all the kind of stereotypical things that make you a king, you know, the clothes, the scepter, the crown, all those things. no not all these thrice gorgeous ceremony not all these laid in bed majestical so not any of those beautiful things expensive things can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave so it's the slave who

with a body filled and vacant mind gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread. So he's talking about this fact that the king doesn't get to rest, he doesn't get to sleep. When the slave goes home at night, he's going to eat the fed with, and distressful, basically, that means that they made it themselves. They made it with their own hands. They actually get some satisfaction of making their food and eating it. He doesn't even get that satisfaction.

His mind is constantly churning about the fate of the kingdom. And it's actually interestingly, when I was in, I know we did a podcast here about Sri Lanka. And I talked about me being in Sri Lanka. And I tried to drag, because again, I'd never been in combat. This is the mid-90s. And I tried to drag as much knowledge as I could out of the Sri Lankan guys, the Sri Lankan military, and the Sri Lankan Special Boat Service and the Special Forces guys that we were working with. And they were unbelievably combat experienced veterans.

but one of the guys that I befriended who was an army captain and you know his he was one of those guys who was a guy that was a good leader but man he felt exactly what this guy what what Henry the Fifth is talking about here and I remember him saying

you know he's kind of just having a late night conversation with me because like I said I was constantly trying to garner information from these guys and learn from them and you know he because this guy had been at this guy had been a regular soldier and then he had been promoted he'd gone up the ranks and he said you know jaco when i was a soldier meaning when he was just a grunt soldier i'm you know lower enlisted guy he said i knew i could survive anything and i knew i could take care of myself and it was actually kind of

fun and he said now that i'm a company commander because now he was actually a pretty senior guy he said it is the most stress and it is the most harrowing thing because I'm not worried about myself anymore but I'm so worried about all these other guys that's what the worry is and yeah I uh I actually got to know that feeling myself the leader gets no rest and and and what henry's talking about is that burden of command and that's the same thing that Sri Lankan guy was talking about you hear me talking about it as well. You know, that burden of command is heavy. And now, so now, you know, again, I've kind of gone very quickly through what this,

to get to this point where Henry V makes this famous speech. And as I said, the English are on one side of the battlefield and the French or the other. And again, this really happened. This is factual information. And they can hear each other and they can, at night, they see each other. there's campfires burning and in the English, like I said, they know they're outnumbered. And finally, one of the leaders, you know, as they're getting ready to go into combat, one of the leaders from the British side, he calls out kind of like wishing that they had more men.

And it's interesting. And it's pretty important to know that, I mean, obviously Shakespeare fictionalized this in many ways, but that speech is actually rooted in a real account. it's rooted in a real account of something that was said. And the account was written by an anonymous chaplain that was like on tour with these guys. And he just wrote down what he saw. And in his report, it was a guy named Sir Walter Hungerford

that suggested to the king that it would be nice if they had another 10,000 archers from England that were not doing anything, you know, that are sitting back doing, you know, back in England. sitting in peace and it'd be nice if they had them there. Now in the play, it's a character named Westmoreland, who's one of the lieutenants or one of the subordinate leadership of Henry V. And he says, oh, that we now had here but one 10,000 of those men in England that do no work today.

So he's saying that same thing. He's like, listen, here we are, about to go to battle. were completely outnumbered and be nice if we had some of those other guys that are in England right now that are sitting in bed that are doing nothing. And so now King Henry responds. And again, this is in the same vein

that was documented by this anonymous chaplain. And of course, Shakespeare wrote it, so it's got to be, it's a lot more impactful, but the message is the same. And I'm going to go through this once and kind of break it down so that we can understand what the meaning of these different words are before I just roll through it.

So when he said, this guy says, if only we had more guys. And King Henry says, what's he that wishes so? Meaning who just said that? He said, my cousin, Westmoreland. No, my fair cousin. If we are marked to die,

we are enough to do our country loss. And if to live the fewer men, the greater share of honor. So he's saying, no, listen, if we're going to die, we got plenty of guys here to die for our country. But if we're going to live and if we're going to win, the fewer men we have, the better. Because that's more honor for us. God's will, I pray thee, wish not one more man. He doesn't want anybody else. by Jove, I am not covetous for gold,

nor care I who doth feed upon my cost. So he doesn't care about gold, he doesn't care who he feeds and who eats off of his check that he's cash in. It earns me not if men my garments wear, meaning he doesn't care if people are either taking his clothes or if they're wearing his royal colors. He doesn't care.

He doesn't care about any of that. Such outward things dwell not in my desire. So those things don't matter to him. But if it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive. So if it's about honor and if it's a sin to want honor and want glory, then he's the guiltiest person of them all. No faith, my cousin, wish not a man from England. God's peace, I would not lose.

so great an honor as one more man. Meethinks would share from me for the best hope I have. Oh, do not wish one more. So he's just going off like, no. We don't want anyone else. I don't want to share my honor with anyone else. Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, that he which hath no stomach to this fight let him depart. His passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse. So he's, okay, you know what, Westmoreland? As a matter of fact, tell everyone that anybody that doesn't have the guts

or the stomach to stand here with us and fight, tell them, I'll give him a passport, and I'll give them money to pay for their trip home. We would not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship to die with us, He doesn't want to die with anybody that fears the duty. That's what they mean by fellowship. The duty to die with us.

This day is called the Feast of Crispian. So, Crispian. This is actually alleged twin brothers, interestingly. Crispin and Crispian, twin brothers, they helped the poor and they preach Christianity, and they were tortured by a Roman governor, and they were thrown into the river with millstones tied around their necks

and they survived. And when they survived that, they pulled them out of the water and they beheaded them. They were venerated and they became saints on October 25th. And that's called St. Crispin's Day. Sometimes it's called St. Crispian's Day.

But that's what it is. So this day, this is October 25th when they're about to fight. He says this day is called the Feast of Crispian. He that out, lives this day and comes home safe will stand a tiptoe when the day is named and rouse him at the name of Crispian. So anybody that lives through this day and comes home safe when it's going to be St. Crispin's day, they're going to get on their toes. They're going to be so excited about it. He that shall see

this day and live old age will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors and say, tomorrow is St. Crispian. So again, any way that lives through this is going to their neighbors and say, hey, tomorrow's St. Crispian's Day. Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars and say, these wounds I had on Crispin's Day?

So he's going to be at their feast. He's going to roll up his sleeves, and he's going to say, you see these scars? These are what I got on Crispin's Day. Old men forget. Yet all shall be forgot. But he'll remember with advantages what feats he did that day. So he's saying everything gets forgot.

But the old man will remember the glory days of that battle and what he did. It will be the highlight of his life. Then our names familiar in his mouth as household words, Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Osbury and Gloucester, be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. So all their names are going to be remembered. This story shall the good man teach his son. And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by from this day to the ending of the world.

But we in it shall be remembered. So he's saying, look, this is a story that good men are going to tell their sons. And they're going to forever remember on this day till the ending of the world what we did. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother. And that one doesn't really need an explanation. But we sure do hear about brotherhood a lot. Be he ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition. So no matter where you're from, no matter what you were like, no matter what kind of a person you were, today, when he says gentle his condition, that today will make you a gentleman, today will make you a man.

And gentlemen in England now abed. So guys that are back in England right now sleeping shall think themselves are cursed. They were not here. And hold their manhoods cheap whilst any speaks that fought with them. thus upon St. Crispin's Day. So like I said, anyone that's home in England, and that word of bed, it's like implies being lazy and sleeping, they're going to curse that they weren't there. And they'll know that they weren't real men. And I mean, he used the word manhood,

which implies, you know, testicular fortitude. They didn't have the testicular fortitude to fight. And that's the speech. with the understanding. And I haven't even gone all the way. I mean, I didn't go to break down each and every word and the depth and meaning behind them

because they are so impactful. And if you go and you read, you can get like a translated modern version that kind of dumbs down the language. And that's okay. But I'm telling you, having done both, when you do that, that's like compared to,

actually doing the work and studying and figuring out what it all actually means, if you just take a dumb down version, it's like diet Shakespeare or Shakespeare light. It's actually worse than that. It's like firing a cap gun versus firing a real gun. It kind of looks the same and it might even sound a little bit the same, but one of them will kill you. And the other one just goes bang. It's not as heavy. And what's really bizarre, And this is, I think, actually, this is really strange. If you go on YouTube and you look up Henry V, St. Crispin's Day speech, right? If you look it up, you'll get these classically trained actors famous.

I mean, famous actors doing this speech. And in my mind, they don't get it. they don't get it right and I you know what I know I'm a nobody I know I'm just some guy and these people are people that studied Shakespeare and did it on stage and all this I'm I'm just an ignorant you know wretch from the trenches and I don't understand I am big pentameter and all the other little details but I'm telling you I don't think they get it and when I watch the professionals do this I don't think they get the emotion. I don't think they understand the leadership. I don't think they get the fear and the

blood and the death. And I don't think they understand war. And when these actors take these great words that are grafted brilliantly and they try and say them like leaders, to me, they still sound like actors. They don't sound like men that have fought. They don't sound like men that have seen battle. They definitely don't sound like men that have seen war. I think Henry V

would have sounded different. This is what I think would be closer to what Henry the 5th, a combat leader, would have sounded like. As he

as he answered some one of his subordinate leaders out there in the crowd saying that we need more people we need more men I think this is what he would have sounded like what's he that wishes so my cousin westmoreland no my fair cousin if we are marked to die we are enough to do our country loss and if to live the fewer men the greater share of honor. God's will, I pray thee, wish not one more man. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, nor care I who doth feed upon my cost. It earns me not if men my garments wear. Such outward things dwell not in my desires. If it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive.

No, faith my cuss Wish not a man from England God's peace I would not lose so great an honor As one man more Methinks would share from me For the best hope I have Oh do not wish one more

Rather Proclaim it Westmoreland Through my host That he which hath no stomach To this fight let him depart His passport shall be made And crowns for convoy Shall be put into his purse

We would not die In that man's company That fears his fellowship To die with us This day is called the feast Of Crispian He that outlives this day And comes home safe

Will stand a tiptoe When the day is named And rouse him at the name of Crispian He that shall see this day and live old age, will yearly on the vigil, feast his neighbors, and say, tomorrow is St. Crispian. Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars and say, these wounds I had on Crispin's day.

Old men forget. Yet all shall be forgot, but he'll remember with advantages what feats he did that day. Then shall our names. Familiar in his mouth as household words, Harry the King, Bedford, and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury, and Gloucester. Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. This story shall the good man teach his son. And Crispin, Crispian shall ne'er go by. From this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered.

We few. We happy few We band of brothers For he Today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother Be he ne'er so vile This day shall gentle his condition

And gentlemen in England Now a bed shall think themselves Accursed they were not here And hold their manhoods cheap Whilst any speaks that fought with us upon St. Crispin's Day. Now that is a speech. And that is, like I said, there's a lot more to it than what I covered.

There's so much depth there. And that's why it's lasted the ages. And that's why you hear people talking about brotherhood and this is what they refer to. And as far as Shakespeare goes, and I talk all the time about getting stronger and faster and getting smarter. And stronger and faster, that's, I mean, that's pretty straightforward. How do you get stronger and faster? You let weight, you work out, you do your calisthenics, you do physical activity to get stronger

and faster. But how do you get smarter? Well, this is one way to get smarter. you go out and you find something that you do not understand and you gain understanding of it. Words you don't know and phrases you don't know and concepts you don't know. You find them and you learn them. You teach yourself. The resources are there.

And by the way, you know what? It's free. There's no gym fees. There's no equipment to buy. You can get all of Shakespeare, his entire canon on the internet for free. It's at the library for free. The only thing it does take and the only thing it does cost is just a little something that we call discipline, right? To get in there, to open that book, to challenge your brain in order to free your mind.

So that's Shakespeare. That's Henry V. And very impactful. and definitely a classic representation of the band of brothers that I had the honor to work with in Ramadi, Iraq in 2006, the first of the 506. And I guess it is time for questions from the interwebs. And speaking of the interwebs. and if you want to support this podcast, you can get some supplements from joccofuel.com.

You can get some gear and clothing from origin, USA.com. You can get a bunch of cool t-shirts and whatnot from jocco store.com. And you can check out my leadership consulting company at echelonfront.com. And everything is available at jocco.com. Yes, if you would like to support this podcast

in a painless way, We'd call it painless. Yeah. Seamless. Seamless and painless. Quasize seamless. Instead of going straight to Amazon.com, go to jaco store.com or jacoopodcast. So if you buy a TV, if you buy a flat screen plasma TV for $800.

Mm-hmm. Right? And you can do it through, you click through joccopodcast.com. Mm-hmm. Or jococco store. I'm sure. Or jocco store. Then the podcast gets supported financially.

Yeah, it gets like, you know. A little something. A little something. Yeah. It's cool. It's better than nothing. Yeah. And it's, yeah. And actually, Amazon pages.

Because, because, yeah, that's cool. Because it takes time to do the podcast. Right. It takes preparation to do the podcast. Yeah. And you know what? I'm going to be honest. I'd do it anyway.

Yeah. Obviously, I think you would too. But people ask, though. They're like, hey, this is great. That's true. People, they'll sign up something. I guess other podcasts, they'll have situations where you can sign up and just enter your credit card and it'll take out like a dollar a month or something as like a thing.

This guy, I totally forget his name. Such a cool guy. Anyway, emailed me and told me that. I was like, dang, that's solid. But nonetheless. Should we do that? But I don't know. I think we're just...

Maybe we'll research that. Yeah. Because I do. People are always saying, hey, how can we support it? Because people are getting value. And when they get value, they want to give value. They want to give you something back, which is awesome. I appreciate that.

Very cool. Very cool. Yeah, I mean, the prep notes today were 17 pages long working on for the past. few days. Yeah. Getting ready. You know, that's like a term paper in college, you know, those grinders, total gut check. Yeah.

That's like a 400-level term paper. My term papers are one page. Yeah. One page. College athlete over there. And, oh, yeah, one more thing about Amazon. Somebody hit me up on Twitter and said, hey, you need to say on your podcast that you have your book, Extreme Ownership, is an audio book.

Yeah. And what I think is cool about it is Leif, who wrote the book with me. He's another seal. He worked with me in Ramadi. And he and I are the ones that read it. So we each wrote chapters. We each wrote half the chapters. And we read it.

So, you know, if you're used to the Jocko podcast voice, yeah. And, you know, Leif was on the podcast, obviously, podcast number 11. Yeah. So, yeah, so you can get the audio book and you got another, it's eight hours, long. It's no joke. If you got a long drive? Eight hour drive. Yeah, you got an eight hour drive. San Francisco from San Diego.

Yeah, yeah, it's one of those drives. It's good. Okay. Yeah, so joccasor.com, jaco podcast.com. All right. And on it, on it, on nit.com. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. All right. Internet questions. First question. Kind of a paragraph with a question. Yeah, we've got some long questions. Jocko, I'm just curious about your opinions on the

regular army infantry. It seems like nowadays the regular infantry is almost looked down upon from the regular public and every prior military public speaker. I almost feel like we're looked at like we were just bodies that held ground and absorbed attacks and made no real impact on the war. I'm almost hesitant to ask because I'm not sure if I can, or I'm not sure if I'm in denial or if it's just pride. I serve with some fantastic warriors and I don't want those heroes to be looked over in history because they were regular grunts.

So I'd enjoy your opinions on this matter and if you could enlighten me on how infantry divisions are looked at from other groups and organizations. Yeah. This question, you know, it bothers me. And it bothers me because if you couldn't tell from the opening that I did tonight talking about the first of the 506

and I would tell you the same thing about so many other units that we have the utmost respect and admiration for what we used to call conventional forces with they now called general purpose forces

but it's the Marine Corps the U.S. Marine Corps the U.S. Army, their regular infantry or ground powder, they're grunts and we, like I said, the guys in my

task, you know, the guys I know in the SEAL teams, we have nothing but respect and admiration for the ground pounders, for the grunts. And for my position, you know, haven't been in Ramadi with the 228, which was a reserve unit for Pennsylvania, the Iron Soldiers, those guys were outstanding, outstanding. And then they turned over with the 1-1-A-D, and you've heard me talk about them and the battalions that were attached to them. Those guys were just, all of them. I mean, they were just so professional, so brave. And of course, special forces and seals and Rangers and Marsoc and Afsoc, for whatever reason, special operations gets attention, right?

I mean, the name is special operation. So it gets this attention. I'm not 100% sure where it comes from or where it started or whatever, but there's something about that the public and the media, and I don't know, the media feeds the public and the foot. the public feeds the media and the media feeds the public. So like the public wants to see stories. So the media produces stories about the special operations types.

And then it goes into a vicious circle, a vicious circle, and they just make a bunch of new stories about it. And so, you know, it's like this little mystique or whatever of special operations probably that's having that impact. But let me tell you, or just for everybody,

for anyone that's on that's not been in the military that has that, you know, thinks, ooh, the special operations guys must be more, you know, elite or do more dangerous stuff. Wrong. Wrong. Do they do dangerous stuff? Yes.

But, you know, I've been all, when I was in Iraq, my first deployment to Iraq went all over Iraq. It's second deployment, stayed in Ramadi. But I, during that time, saw the conventional units, the general purpose forces,

the ground founders, the grunts, the Marine Corps. And not just them, but I talked about this last time, the logistics folks. I mean, so it's everybody. They're out there. They're living in forward operating bases. They're living in combat outposts in the middle of cities, you know, small groups out there eating MREs, just living in really tough conditions, doing daytime patrols and horrible areas, working with Iraqi soldiers.

You know, like I just said, doing these logistics runs, you know, these are where you get blown up with an IED. these are where you get ambushed. I mean, this is what they did all the time. Every day, this was their job. Even like the mine clearance operations. You're going out and you're going out to go and get blown up or try and look for things that are going to blow you up. And, you know, for sure, you've got some guys that are in the big mine protected vehicles.

But when we were in Ramadi, there was a Marine Corps unit that would follow behind those guys. Sometimes an army unit that would follow behind those guys. Infantry guys, just out there getting after it. And so what do we think of that? I mean, I have just admiration, respect, and just the utmost, I hold those guys in the highest esteem because they held the line. So to that guy out there that asked that question, believe me, anybody that's been in combat and knows what you guys do. And I spread that word all the time. You listen to any, even if you read Laf and I was book, I mean, we talk about that in great detail about the respect and admiration we had.

for the general purpose forces, the grunts, the ground pounders, the bravest, the most professional and most dedicated people that I could ever imagine. And I was absolutely honored, and everyone in my SEAL task unit

was honored and humbled to have served with such brave warriors. So that's how I feel about our U.S. military. Next question. So Jocko posted a Twitter post, Instagram. Both. Twitter and Instagram post of a picture, black and white, strangely. That's sort of my gig.

Yeah, your thing. Of just the mats, and I think there were some ambiguous figures of his dean, right, teaching somebody. Anyway, he talked about he learned a lesson or something like that. Anyway, so the question is, Jocko, what lesson did you learn for the thousandth time? Because he said that. It was. in training with Dean the other day. So what was that lesson?

The lesson was rules. Rules must sometimes be broken. So let me give you the quick story. For those of you that are jiu-jitsu players, we'll indulge you a little bit with some jiu-jitsu. So Friday night training, and Dean and I usually train hard on Friday nights, and we had a war.

We had a little death match on Friday. And it started off, we would have probably, I don't know, five, six, maybe seven minutes. And he got me, got me in a little situation that forced me to submit. And then we, I was like, all right, let's go again. And so we went again and I, and I wore him down and I got the better of him. And actually, the deeper water I take him into, the better things get for me, right? So I warmed down and I got a hold of his arm.

and I had him in a compromised position for probably five minutes. And, you know, he, and he at the last moments, good, great timing, and he got out. Arm bar? It was a straight arm lock. And so he got out, and we got out, he was done. He was like, yeah, I'm done. I mean, he got out of it, but he was done. So Jocko got a little moral victory, right?

And then I kind of antagonized him a little bit, which is what Dean and I do. We instigate and we antagonize each other. And so I antagonized him a little bit about, oh, you don't want to train anymore. Oh, because you're too broken down. You know, I'm going to stay here and train more. You can go home and, you know, have a glass of warm milk or whatever.

You know, just giving them a hard time. So, you know, inside, and I failed to recognize us inside psychologically, he was not happy about that. And so Saturday, He's like, hey, you know, let's train. And so I missed that. I missed that. It's a cue.

That's a red flag. So when I showed up, you know, he says, oh, you know, let's just work some moves. And we went over some stuff and working some other people. And, you know, we're just kind of, we're very relaxed laid back. There's no class going on. We're just, just relaxing. And I said, hey, man, I got to leave at such and such a time. I go pick one of my kids up.

He goes, yeah, yeah, no problem. He goes, I got to leave too. So now I think he's got to leave. So I'm actually thinking, like, we might get a light roll. and that'll be it. You know, maybe like two, five-minute rounds. So, and he's got the, you know, the nice guy face and all that stuff that he's given me. So anyways, I said, you know, Louis worked on some stuff.

And he says, all right, let's roll real quick. He even threw that out there. Like, it was just going to be a quick roll. Real quick. Yeah, just a quick roll. So I'm thinking, I'm thinking two or three minutes. Literally, I'm thinking two or three minutes. Like, to go over maybe and try some of the stuff, we were just, we were just drilling a little bit.

No, he comes full on. I mean, and it was disguised full on. So he didn't, you know, get, but he just went very sternly and passed my guard really quick. And then, and actually, you know, you and I were, had discussed this mount escape that I had done to him the other day. And I was actually like, I don't really care if he mounts right now. I've got this new escape. And I'll just use that. And he aggressively mounted and he aggressively went for this move that we call the Snow Angel,

which is when you get the person's arms up like a snow angel like up above their head from the mouth and it's just horrible in there yeah like way above you have no leverage you can't move and so not going to get me in snow age you got me a double snow angel so both my arms are stuck up there now what what was bad about this was there was a moment okay and this is this is the rule that I learned because after we broke it down so dean kept me there for you know probably seven minutes in double Snow Angel, which is just a nightmare. Because he's not just holding me there. He's like saying things. You know, he's antagonizing me. And I'm sitting there just wanting to kill him. And I forget, I actually forget how it ended.

I don't remember if he went for an arm lock and he got it or if he went and I got out. I forget how it ended because it's kind of a big blur, which most of my rules are. But anyways, the rule is, and I don't want to go into too much detail, just because it'll get too technical and too hard to you know, do through an audio podcast, but, you know, basically I don't let my elbow cross the other person's sternum. I don't let it go across their sternum because if it does, you can get pinned there. You get stuck there. So there was a moment where when Dean was trying to move me into Snow Angel, where I should have sacrificed and done like a drastic movement, that's a major breaking of that rule and turned to my side really hard and put my elbow across his sternum

and it would have gotten me out. And as we, as we look at, at it, you know, because once I was out, then we went over it for a few minutes just to just try and analyze what happened. And I realized that, you know, that I had held on to this rule of mine, even though part of me was like, you know what, should I try it? And I didn't. I didn't try it. And so then I got a worse position, worst position, worse position. So the lesson learned is that sometimes you've got to break your rules. Now, the thing is, it's not just jujitsu, right? It's not just jujitsu. It's about business. It's about life. It's about relationships. It's about not getting stuck in a rut. And it's about being able, because it's another thing is I was in my own head.

I didn't detach from the situation. I didn't look at it from another position and say, okay, you know, this is getting worse right now. I just was stuck there mentally. So you've got to think, you got to, you got to think about your rules objectively. and I didn't do that. And it's a rule that has saved me many times. But this time, it cost me nearly, dearly. So don't let your rules rule you. You've got to keep ruling your rules.

Don't let your rules rule you. Yeah, another way to kind of look at that is like a black and white mind. You know, like don't stick. Your mind is more or less black and white for sure. as far as how you think generally speaking, but don't neglect the gray. There's so much gray in there. And of course,

if you have rules and they're solid rules, man, yeah, stick to those rules. But like I said, don't neglect the gray. You know how you say you got to break rule every once in a while. Don't be just,

hey, rules are meant to be broken. Let's just break it. Don't do that. Some people use that as a excuse just to do whatever they want. Yeah, exactly.

And they're wrong too. They lack the discipline. Yep. Next question. Let's do it. I'm glad you use that Mount Escape, by the way. Check. Do you have any advice on consoling a member of your team that you're leading who knows there to blame for the project failing or falling through?

The person in question is a great worker, but just made an honest mistake that caused the failure of the project. They feel extremely guilty for putting my job at risk, and I can't convey to them enough that I understand. It was an honest mistake and that I personally failed to communicate enough with them. I think it's a great thing this person is so passionate at their job. But is there any way I can get them to distance themselves and show them that this one failure is not that big of a deal? So, yeah, like the question says, it's cool that you got somebody that's passionate, right? That's great. And it sounds like they want to take ownership and that's great too.

It sounds like they are having trouble moving on. So in this case, no, no major complications. Is it not that big of a deal? You just got to talk them through it. And for me, I would use probably some kind of, you know, some stories, a real simple one is like about parachuting. And if you're parachuting, one of the main training points when you're parachuting and something goes wrong is you don't get focused on just trying to fix the bad shoot.

Because that's what gets people killed. They're looking up. They think maybe they can save the shoot. They think they can make it open somehow. And the next thing you know, they hit the ground, right? And they die. So what they do is they teach you that, hey, you got a bad shoot. You know, you pull your main parachute and it doesn't open correctly.

You take a look at it. You go, okay, is this thing going to open or not? You make a decision and then you cut it away and it's gone. And you focus on the next thing, which is getting your reserve parachute to come out to save your life. The one that didn't open doesn't matter anymore. So move on. You can think about it like a shooting competition too because it's the same thing You when you're shooting

You don't want to shoot you don't want to think about the last shot that you just missed and you don't want to think about the next shot that's a hard shot or a far shot or You don't want to think about those other shots You want to think about the shot that you're taking That's the one that you want to think about and if you're getting caught in the past It's going to ruin what you're trying to do in the present So you you know you have have to move on. This is something you've got to explain to your employee that's getting, you look, listen, I understand that you had a rough time. If you can't let that go,

it's going to screw up the project we're working on now. So let's let that go. Let's move on. So that's what I'd say to him. I'd say, listen, look, buddy, I know this one went bad. I get it. You feel bad. Appreciate it. It's over. It's in the past. Let's take the lessons learned and we got to move on. Let's not dwell on yesterday. If we dwell on yesterday, it takes our focus off of today and tomorrow, which are the things we can actually control. We can actually control what we're doing today. We can actually control what we're going to do tomorrow. We don't have any control over what happened yesterday.

That's gone. So what I need you to do is focus on this mission now and making sure we execute it 100%. That sense of control or that access to control over a situation that's so critical to to know when you're in that position because to know what to know that that you control it yeah to have it on the front of what you can and cannot what you can and can control yeah to like I said have access to that because it feels as far as feelings go it feels like use the parachute analogy

it feels like dang there's the problem the parachute that's the problem so all my attention and all my emotional energy is is is on that that's the problem but like how you said if you just on it just folks on the fact that, hey, I can't control that bad shoot. That bad shoot is gone. Cut it away. And yeah, focus on the thing. But like I said, man, that's the key right there to understand that, man, you don't have

control over that anymore. We're done with that. We're not doing that anymore. Yeah. We're doing this new stuff. And you know, I should have said that on the last one about talking about breaking rules. I said business.

I said life. I forgot to say combat. But combat's the same way. If you get stuck in a standard operating procedure and you won't see your way out of it, you're going to pay. and it's the same thing in combat. If you make one bad decision on the battlefield, and now you start dwelling on that bad decision,

you've got to forget about that. You've got to move on. You've got to move forward. So, you know, the only reason you look back is to just assess the lessons learned you're going to take away from it, and then turn back around and look forward. Don't get sucked into the past and get drowned

and pulled back there because you can't control it. You can't change what happened. Move on, buddy. That other question, the black and white mind one? Are you breaking your own rules, your one rule? Kind of like on Ghostbusters, one. Don't cross the streams.

You ever watch Ghostbusters? Yeah. Same thing, man. But then they had to eventually. Right, they had to cross the streams to kill that, the demon. Yeah, you're reaching, man. I think you actually intentionally tried to do this. That was a little reach.

That was a little reach. No, those are understandable terms. Okay. Jock. What's the best advice heading into the military straight from high school? And this question is actually from my brothers from Down Under, Kane, Dover, and Nicholas Bennett. And they've been down there in Australia getting their 4 a.m. wake-up challenge on

for about, I don't know, 35 or 40 days there at this point. And what's cool, what's been cool is hearing their feedback as they've kind of turned their lives around and they're getting all the stuff done. And actually, you know what was hilarious? He sent a – one of them said a tweet. with a picture of a text conversation with some company that they were trying to work with. And it said something like, the time on the tweet was, you know, 501 in the morning or something like that.

And, you know, he said, hey, are you still offering blank or some program or whatever? And then the response was, yes, we are still offering that. And then, you know, the reply was, okay, I'm really interested in accessing that program or whatever. And the response was, okay, but don't text people at 5 a.m. And then the response to that was, okay, wake up earlier. Which I thought was classic. So those guys are rocking. It's very cool to see.

So, and it's actually one of the, and I forget which one of them, one of theirs brothers is going in the military, which is awesome. Very cool to see the Australian military work with them a little bit. I actually work with them on a small level a lot, meaning that I work with a couple of their soldiers a lot over the years. But I never worked with them in a big unit, but they were great guys. here's a couple real simple things and I'm assuming that he's going to some kind of army or some kind of ground force he's going to be a trooper on the ground

obviously be in shape do runs do push-ups do sit-ups do pull-ups I would say be ready to march in boots that's one of the things that you do in any infantry unit that is shocking to civilians is putting on boots and putting on rucksacks and walking long distances why do your feet get like mangled up

It's just a different kind of exercise. We talked about this before. Hump a ruck, man. You got to just put on a ruck and hump a ruck, and you've got to wear whatever footwear they're going to supply you. Try and get the closest thing to that and get your feet ready for it

so that you don't get your feet destroyed. Be comfortable in the water. So most military has some kind of water testing, you know, where they're going to throw you in a pool or whatever. You know, going with a normal haircut. It's not going to make that big of a deal because, you know, they're going to shave your head within moments of showing up. So that's not that big of a deal.

But detach. Okay, you're going to get in these crappy situations. Worst people can be yelling at you. They're making you much stuff. Just detach. Just detach and watch it because the drill instructors are hilarious. And if you're getting, if they're in your face, you can be like, damn, this is harsh. But if they're in your face, but you're watching it from a free place of mind, it's so awesome to watch and it's so fun.

It's so easy to understand what they're doing. You know, you got to remember they're not going to kill you in training. And enjoy it. I had fun. I had fun in all my indoctrination courses, which is, you know, all your courses where you're getting treated like a recruit. So for me, it was boot camp. It was buds. It was airborne school.

And really an OCS, too, Officer Candidate School. All those things. I had a great time. I had a blast at those schools. I had fun getting indoctrinated. I embraced the little rules that they, throw it outside a brace on and I take them to the extreme and I that's that's how I ended up having fun fun with it and then the last thing I would say and and I actually I almost miss this

but this is this might be the most important thing okay so you're 18 years old you just got done with high school you show up in the military and guess what you start getting a paycheck all of a sudden you're the richest guy in the world because at Mickey D's you were making 7.50 an hour and all of a sudden now you're getting a fat paycheck of you know $2,200 a month. But you don't have any expenses because you're living in the barracks or whatever. You've got all your food coming to you.

So what are you going to do with that money? Well, a lot of guys in the military what they do with that money is they blow it. They blow it on women and whiskey and they get the big toys, right? They get the massive toys. They get the massive trucks

and motorcycles and Harley and everything like that. I'm not, I got nothing against those things, but what you need to do is save your money. And, you know, they throw figures around 15% of your paycheck, 20% of your paycheck, 10% of your paycheck, but put that money somewhere long term where you're going to grow it.

And then I would tell you, you know, just buy a house, buy a house, and then rent out the rooms to three guys and you sleep on the couch and have them be paying your mortgage. And when you get them all stabilized and that mortgage is kind of covered, go buy another house and do that every few years. And there's no reason to retire from the military and not be completely set where you never have to work again. If you just don't blow all your money on stuff that you don't need.

And I'm not saying you've got to live like a monk. But just don't blow all of it. Blow some of it. Don't blow all of it. And that's real important to all the folks join in the military or new to the military. You can make that happen. Financial discipline equals financial freedom. There you go.

Next question. I'm a firefighter slash paramedic. Historically, my profession has always been composed of alpha men. and all he had to worry about was teaching the skill and not the aggressive side of a person that is key within this job. We now face a new generation where they're hiring softer men, quote unquote, softer men due to upper management and human resources criteria. So when you get these guys, the drive that is needed to do the job is not there.

I truly believe that our profession is a calling. that goes for all public servants and military alike. So my question to you is, how do you instill aggression or passion? How do you instill it? How do you turn a soft man into an alpha male? Skill can be taught, but aggression and passion is where I come up short and tend to get frustrated because some people don't love this job the way I do. Those soft men will potentially be put in a position where they may have to pull me out of fire

or even save someone's life, and aggression will be. key call me crazy but I'd rather have the alpha male that gets after it on a daily basis to pull me out yeah no doubt about that you want to have the guy that's going to be aggressive and make things happen at the moment of truth so how do you do that how do you instill that well number one hard training you know you got to set up training for your people that is tough that challenges them and at first there'll be some you know complaining about it and whatever else but eventually people start to embrace that hard training that start to to make them feel proud.

And that's what you want them to do. You want to push them mentally and physically. And you want to have them understand a very important premise. Because if you take the fact that these guys are, let's call them softer, well, that means they want to have, like, you know, they want to be safe. Right. Well, you need to teach these guys that the best way to mitigate risk, is to be aggressive, right?

If you want to mitigate risk, the best way to mitigate risk is to be aggressive. So example, if you think a fight's going to happen, what's the best way to control that situation? It's to be aggressive, to aggressively attack the enemy. If you're in a gunfighting situation and someone's attacking you, what's the best thing to do? It's flank them and attack them.

You want to be aggressive in a firefight. If you're fighting a fire, you want to fight the fire, right? You don't want to let the fire burn and get out of control. You want to aggressively get the fire under control. So aggression is the best way to mitigate risk. So get these guys in that mentality of where they recognize that the aggression is an important facet of what they're doing.

And you want to put them in training scenarios where the aggression wins and passivity loses. You want to put them in a situation where, oh, guess what? You sat back and waited and now we got the whole building on fire. Or you sat back and waited and now the people, that we could have rescued three minutes ago are going to die because you hesitated at the moment of truth. So you've got to teach them that aggressiveness

over and over and over again. And I think that's that's what you got to do. I know that I, one seal officer that I was working with we were going through land warfare training and land warfare training is you got

machine guns firing, you've got rockets going off, you've got smoke grenades, it's mayhem. And if you're going to, you have to grab control the situation. So you're doing what we call immediate action drills and everyone's shooting live fire and they're maneuvering. And you've got to grab control of the situation and you've got to make things happen aggressively through force of will. And so this one seal officer who I thought was a great guy, he, he, he, he, he, He wasn't making it happen. He wasn't being aggressive enough. And I said to him, I said, hey, man, you got to be more aggressive.

You've got to get, you got to get fired up with your guys. And he said, he literally said to me, I remember it like it was yesterday. He goes, I don't know if I can get any more fired up. And I said, okay, hang with me. And I, just, just follow me. And I took command of his squad of eight guys. I said, just follow me. So we got in a contact drill,

and the shooting started, and boom, I showed him what aggressor looked like. Hey, you two set up on this corner right here. You get up there. Start laying down fire. You over here. Start getting a headcount. You're yelling, placing guys,

making it happen through force of will. It's being aggressive. And that was all it took. He just didn't understand the difference. He didn't understand what aggression look like, and he didn't understand how it impacted the situation. When you're not being aggressive out on the battlefield,

you have no control. Things will just happen, and you will have no control of them. So, and guess what? It's the same thing in life if you're not aggressively pursuing your goals. Again, that doesn't mean you're aggressively confronting people at every turn.

No, it means you're aggressively pursuing, your goals through any means necessary. Again, people get confused and think that I'm in someone's face. Hey, we're doing this my way. No, no, no. You're aggressively pursuing your goals. You're not aggressively pursuing people. You're not aggressively pursuing personalities.

You're not aggressively confronting people. You're confronting the challenge, not the people. Do you have to confront people sometimes? Yes, of course you do. But you're aggressively confronting and attacking the challenge, the mission, not the people. But anyways, this guy didn't quite understand. So I had to show him. I had to let him see what that looked like.

What it looked like to say, you know, hey, take it out right here, grab a guy and say, set a corner right here, start moving guys, and have them see that. And guess what? Then you get the other people in the squad start seeing it, and they start acting aggressively to make things happen. And that's when you do it.

That's what you do. And obviously what that's, what that means is you as a leader, you have to lead. You have to show these guys the way how important aggression is and how to do it. Yeah, and kind of in life, I think you can't, because again, it's one of those things that sounds pretty simple. It's either be aggressive or you're not being aggressive kind of thing, but it's so hard. Like, for example, if you're in life, a lot of people, they sit back and wait for things

to kind of happen. Like, oh, I'm waiting. You know, you hear people say it just hasn't happened for me yet. I'm waiting for my big break kind of thing. No wrong attitude. Yeah, exactly. But when you're in that situation, it kind of seems like that's how the world works. So it doesn't.

And a lot of it, you know, it's maybe how people are raised. I don't know. Where if you don't know what that is that, if you don't have access to that feeling of being an aggressive person, it's hard to get there. until like how you said, if someone shows you, like, in the exact situation that you're in, and in your case it was that one specific training situation, you showed them how. So it probably clicked right away. But in life, there's all these situations. So just to be an aggressive person might be kind of hard for someone to access, you know,

unless they have, like, a mentor or something, you know, or someone who demonstrated it. It definitely is. It definitely is hard in life. It's hard to show people all the different situations. And because then you also can end up with people that are overly aggressive. Right, or aggressive on the wrong thing. Or aggressive in the wrong direction. You know, I said this is someone the other day,

they were talking about being, they're talking about like, I'm super passionate about this. And I said, don't aim your passion at the people. Yeah. Because people find that offensive. Yeah. You've got to aim your passion at the mission.

And let, I mean, there will be some collateral encouragement when people see someone that's fired up, when people see someone that's passionate, it makes people excited about the mission as well. But if I hit you with my, passion. If I aim my passion at you, all of a sudden you're intimidated by it, you're turned off by it, you're made defensive by it. So that's what you have to be careful. You want to

aim your passion, aim your aggression at the mission, not at the people. What you want to do with people is you want to influence them. You want to steer them. You want to pull them along. You want to make them, give them the idea. So they think that they're moving in that direction on their own. You actually want them to be. Never mind, think you want them to move in that direction on their own. That's leadership. And so that's what you've got to do with this aggressive thing. It's definitely a really good question. I would also say, you know, what, what music are they listening to? What, what TV shows are they watching? What movies are they watching? Are they watching UFC, straight up? Are they watching people fight? Are you doing any training? Are you hitting bags? Are you

throwing some Muay Thai kicks? Are you grappling? You know, do those things raise aggression levels? Are they working out hard? You know, like, no kidding. Squatting heavy weights increases your testosterone, period. It really does. So get on the squat rack and start getting that testosterone flowing through your system. Yeah.

Let's go to the next question. Be aggressive on that one. Just be aggressive and lead aggressively. Yeah, funny how you mentioned UFC. because you can kind of in that regard, you can learn a little bit because you can hear, like you always hear the coach

or whatever yelling saying, be first, be first, be first. All kinds of stuff like that, yeah. You definitely don't hear him say, hey, sit back and wait to get attacked. Yeah, exactly. You don't hear them say, okay, be defensive.

Yeah. Or be passive. Yeah, exactly. Doesn't happen. Next question. Some jiu-jitsu talk. What type of style do you play? aggressive, passive, reactive, or smash and pass.

Et cetera, et cetera. Well, I mean, I've trained with you. You probably have an assessment, your assessment of my game, which will be a limited assessment, by the way. Because the game that I show you is built to contend with what you bring to the table. Yeah. If you brought it something else, you'd see something else. Yeah.

And I have a little bit beyond that because I witness you and Dean all the time more so before than nowadays. But yeah, I would say my assessment. Yeah. Okay, yeah. So you watch me with other people and you can see. So you do see that I train different ways with other people. Yeah. And really, that's really the core of the evaluation is that when you roll with people, it's like you're real, it's like variable style.

You know, it changes. so and it depends your mood too like if you're just messing around with me or whatever you're like you know how this is kind of weird but you do this thing that no one really does and you look like you look me in the eye like while you're rolling it's weird because I know you're just messing with me like

oh like everything I do you're like oh that was cute kind of kind of an attitude and then you know if I talk too much you know whatever then you'll you'll smash and pass so in regards to these these choices all all of the above right so so passive when you're kind of taunting and maybe even learning or not learning is taunting a style of jiu jitsu yes yes it is it's your style and so you'll be passive kind of waiting for me to do something and then if it doesn't work then you taunt some more

and then so that's passive and then reactive is obviously you know reacting to anything that i try to do. Aggressive is when either time is running short or I talk too much. And smash and pass is the result of that aggressive stuff. In really, in replace of smash and pass, I mean, I think the alternative for me is, is a little something that we like to call the disrespect. Right. The disrespect.

Yeah. Which is when you just completely disrespect the person's guard and just pass and smash them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think the key point for this for me is that I agree with you. Like I have a decent card. I have a good top position. I'm pretty good at card passing. Whatever. I'm not great at Jiu-Jitsu, but I'm decent at some areas. And one thing I am is I'm pretty comfortable. Like in just about any situation, there's no situation where I'm, there's no situation where I'm freaked out.

Like I don't mind being in half card. I don't mind being on a half-card top bottom. I don't mind being guard closed open, whatever. I don't mind being mounted. I can pretty much handle any situation. You know, and again, when you're training with Dean, right. It's, you know, you get, you get very comfortable with people because you have a guy that's just a savage.

And, but what's interesting about this is for me, and I talked about this, I mean, I talked about this. There's a dichotomy here, right? Like, if being aggressive is not working, then you have to try that other. game you know I always say if you're if you're trying to pass someone's guard really close and you can't do it back away because there's an opening there and it's the same again it's the same thing with life right if you're beating your head against the wall try a different route when there's one door that's closed or heavily defended in combat go find another door go breach a window go find another way there's an opening somewhere else and I think that's what my game is I think that's what my game is is it's like you said variable

based on a variety of influences both in my world and in my opponent's world yeah and surprisingly and I think that people

a lot of people wouldn't really assume this right away is that you're yeah sure you're gonna smash and you're aggressive and kind of rough you know a lot of times But you're like a playful jiu-tizu guy. Oh, I was going to say this, and I think this is important.

I had a guy ask me, how hard do you go? And the answer is very easy. I go just hard enough that I'm staying ahead of the other person. Now with you, those of you that are listening on audio, Echoes making a face, because there are times when I have to step up my game a little bit and put the wood. Times where it's straight up That's not true Yeah

Okay Okay Yeah But there might be some Oh you know why That's because you come in with You sometimes you come in With an attitude of

I can see it in your eyes You're like today's the day And you come in there And you got the serious look on your face And I oh okay cool It's gonna be like that Right on And so then I have to bring the heat a little bit

Yeah Yeah Fully Yeah But that same and this is the part where I think is kind of interesting is that

you do it doesn't seem like a war like it seems like a war but all within the confines of some silly game not silly but some game yeah but it's it's obvious though you know like I think that someone who maybe never seen your role or never had that experience with you specifically they would assume that you're this like

heavy minded guy I'm gonna smash and that meant And that I am taking this really seriously. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't. Because some guys are like that. Yeah, that's true. It's not that I don't take Jiu-Jitsu seriously, but Jiu-Jitsu is fun to me.

Right. It's so fun to me. Yeah. And I think that the better you get, the more fun it gets, and the less you have to be like that, you know? Yeah. And I don't mind when people come at me like that, because I still get to do the same thing. You know, I still get to have fun. Yeah.

And, yeah. No, Jitsu should be fun. Yeah. It really should be fun. The funer it is for you, the wrong you're going to do it for. Now, part of the funer of the fun. part of the fun can be submitting people and you get people that that's the only fun

that they have in jiu-tizu is when they submit people and that's not what I'm talking about. Yeah, I think this kind of... The transitions and the flowing and the utilizingizations of moves and the cool things that happen and, you know, sometimes I'll be wrong with whoever and something just, like someone will do something really cool

when you start laughing like, man, that was awesome. That's jiu-jitsu. That should be fun. It shouldn't be this, it shouldn't be, it shouldn't be it shouldn't be the fun shouldn't come from just submitting people that's just bullying right yeah in a way yeah

and you know you shouldn't get you should at a certain point you go you know what okay cool I can tap people out but let's let's let's do this for the reason of the sport itself the the game itself which is a fun game yeah I know guys who told me straight up that

when they're driving up to the gym they have anxiety Yeah. Anxiety. Oh, what am I going to do? Or if they get tapped out, it ruins their day or their week or whatever.

Yeah. No, I have none of that. Yeah. I'm rolling to the gym just in totally, totally happy to be getting there and get to do something that's so fun. Yeah. Yeah.

I wrote with Chris Martin today before. And it was all, like you can make jokes. You can talk trash and you can do all this stuff while you're rolling. And doing that in the, playful way i mean don't be a dick you know but but you know just like i'll yeah you can you can you can push being a dick sometimes it makes it more fun for sure like you can you know you can call a move and then do it on

the guy if you're better than him or whatever and it but it makes it fun though yeah you know and me and chris we're we're doing that the whole time i'm like oh yeah watch this oh oh oh how's that feel kind of thing yeah and of course that's taking to an extreme because i know chris for a long yeah we're friends but talking just a little bit of that makes it more fun just like if you're playing a video game just like if you're playing any other game you just talk some friends you know it's it's part of the fun yeah and like i said my original point is i think people wouldn't assume that about you given how you may come off sometimes but you're really like that no i jihitsu's fun to me no doubt on sports for sure believe you're not jihitsu in a way like when you're surfing

in california there there's a there's a much harder vibe surfing in California than there is in the mats for sure. Oh, yeah. You know, when, you know, when we're surfing where I surf, like, it's, it's a gang mentality type situation, you know, and so on the mats, it's just so fun to be in a situation. And surfing, you know, leads to fighting often. Oh, yeah. And so, but in jihitsu, the fighting is already happening.

Right. So, so it's, you know, you can, you're kind of over it. And now, now we're just, we're already fighting, so now we can just chill. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy hell surfing's like that, right? It's supposed to be this kind of zen thing.

No. No, it's supposed to, but it's not. It's an aggressive, it's a very aggressive environment. It's like a territorial thing. It's a very territorial thing. Yeah. It's kind of cool. I like it.

You like that. Next question. I understand and agree with all your thoughts and principles. However. However. I interpret your concepts for leaders leading men who are mostly driven or other leaders who have a desire to make themselves better in maintaining the status. Yep. So common misperception, right, is that, you know, the military and the seals.

I say this all the time. Everyone thinks that the military and the seals, I think that we're leading Terminator robots, right? And everyone is just driven and they're going to get up and they're going to do everything. And it's, I just talked about this on the last podcast. It is a bell curve. It is a bell curve. And there's a great bunch of guys at the top of the bell curve that are go-getters. There's a solid bunch of guys in the middle.

And there's a lower guys that are bumps. And so this interpretation that the concepts that I talk about are just for leading these front-running A personalities that just make everything happen, not correct. You know, there are seals that don't want to work. There are seals that want to take shortcuts. There are seals that want to skate by. Then you get outside. Then you're working with Iraqi soldiers that are unmotivated, untrained, poorly equipped. We got to work with these guys.

We got bosses. I mean, I got bosses in the SEAL teams that are either an egomaniac or that are ultra-risk averse. You can have any of this stuff going on. You can have your guys that are risk-averse. You can have guys that are too crazy. You got all, you know what they are? they're humans, they're individuals,

they're human beings. And because they're human beings, even in special operations, and sometimes especially in special operations, because when you get in special operations, you get guys that have huge egos and attitudes. And so, oh, you think that they just want to do whatever you tell them to do?

No, they got their own idea. They got their own method. They got their own plan. They got their own, what they think they're a tactical genius. So you've got to get around that. So what does it mean? It means you have to,

have to lead them. And it's the common theme that I'm talking about all the time. And it was I mean, you got to build relationships. You got to build the trust. You got to make sure they understand why they're doing what they're doing. You got to make sure they understand the strategic impact. You got to empower them. You got to set a good example. You got to listen to them. You got to take input. You got to give them responsibility. And when I say responsibility, I mean real responsibility. You got to build them up. You got to make them better. You got to show them and, let them see not in a not in a in your face way but you've got to subtly let them see what self improvement means them and how they can better the position and what drive will get them you got to

give them ownership of stuff and you got to let that ownership grow into extreme ownership where they really want to own things you got to teach them to lead and you got to put them in leadership positions and you've got to show your trust by actually following them sometimes. And again, people ask me these questions, you know, how'm a new leader? How do I lead? I got a new person. How do I lead them? It's the same answers.

It's the same answers all the time. The principles of leadership. Now the nuances are there. Yes, the nuances are there. And I have to nuance for echo that I got a nuance for this guy over here and I got a nuance for this group over here. The nuances are there. But the basic principles are the same.

Am I never, am I going to, who am I going to be in charge of that? I'm not going to try and build a relationship of trust with them. Who's that? The answer is nobody. You know, who is it that I don't want to set a good example for? The answer is nobody. Who is it that I'm not going to listen to? If you don't listen to people, you alienate them, you don't want to be part of the team.

I mean, it's, it's, things are universal. And again, there's nuances because you might have to make adaptations. And, you know, when we, when we did battle leadership with, uh, with, uh, Adolf von Schell, and he talks about distinctly these three different types of commanders and how the boss gave them each their own little adjusted order because he was dealing with their personalities. So yes, you've got to deal with the personalities, but that doesn't mean you're doing something different from the principles.

So when you get, sure, when you get to the bottom of the bell curve, you might see some people that might need to be replaced, they might need to be removed. I'll tell you what. Most likely, they just need to be led. The reason that, or I think one of the reasons why the perception is that all your guys are robots and, you know, I'm going to give you an order, they follow it. No question. That is like movies, right? Like a few good men, remember Jack Nicholson?

He's like, people follow orders or people die? Yeah. That was his thing. They say that kind of stuff. Yeah. But they do, they do capture it in some Hollywood. movies where they show how mutinies take place and how

things go wrong and how the new lieutenant in Vietnam is going to get fragged by his own people that stuff's real yeah you know that stuff's real so it's just it's a misperception the other misperception is because of boot camp

a lot of military movies are they show a significant amount of time in boot camp but boot camp is a matter of weeks in a career You know, I think Marine Corps boot camp is 13 weeks. I think the Army boot camp is 10 weeks. Boot camp is a very short period of time in your four year, six year, eight year, 10,

year, 20 year career. Boot camp is, you know, I talked about the indoctrinational times in the military. They have very short periods of time compared to your whole career. And in boot camp, when your drone instructor says drop down and do push-ups, you drop down and do push-ups. In boot camp, when your drone instructor says pick up that, you know, make your bed, you make your bed. And if you don't, they yell at you and they yell at you until you do make your bed. So people get that idea that that's the way the military's run. Yeah.

And that is, like, you know, a great example is Full Metal Jacket, the movie, which is a great movie. But the boot camp scene is half the movie. But in reality, even if you were a guy in Vietnam, you know, boot camp is 13 weeks and then you went on into Vietnam for a year. So it's a fraction of what your real career is like. And so people get that impression that you're just going to be able to bar recorders and everyone's going to listen to you. It just doesn't work that way.

Yeah. And actually there's a great, there's a great video. It's called Charlie Company in the... Anyways, I forget the name of the video. But it's about a company in Vietnam, Charlie Company. And maybe if you remind me,

I'll put it on the website. It shows two company commanders. But anyways, to make a long time, story short, these guys, they don't like their new company commander. And at first, they're resistant to him. And, you know, he says, listen, these guys got to learn that they're just going to have to do what I tell him.

And then it fast forward's a couple months. And they interview him again, and he goes, you know, how's everything going? He goes, you know, they get it now. And they realize that they just had to listen to me and do what I told them. And then they go out in the field with the guys. And the guys in the field, they're supposed to be. doing things, they're just not doing them. They're just, they're literally calling back like, yeah, we did, yeah, we did a patrol.

Yeah, they didn't do it. Yeah, we moved positions. They didn't move positions. Yeah, we're going to do another, you know, another foot patrol tonight. They're not doing it. So he was under the impression that everyone had like buckled to his will. They were just completely snowing him and he had no idea. So that's what happens in the military.

If you don't lead to your people and you just order them around and you think that everyone's just this, this, how'd they describe it here? Men who are mostly driven or leaders who have a desire to make themselves better. I mean, if anybody in a position with guys like that, it's going to, the leadership job is going to be very easy. You just tell them what to do and they do it. Right. I mean, I could give you example upon example, upon example of stuff in the SEAL teams where what I had to do to get people convinced that this was the right thing to deal. Yeah.

You know, I mean, it is like, you know, a classic example is telling guys, okay, we're going to take Iraqi soldiers on every operation. You know, so these guys were saying, are you kidding me? Well, they just didn't go, hey, cool, Jocko, we'll do exactly what you tell us. Right. No, they look, what are you talking about? We're not taking these guys out. Why would we do that?

It's going to be risky. These guys aren't trustworthy. They're not trained. Right. They had a million reasons why not to do that. No. But how do you get them to do it? You explain to them why.

You explain to them the strategic importance. You have built trust with them. You tell them that they're going to take ownership of the Iraqis. I mean, it's everything that I just said. That's what you do. That's a classic example. So, yes, once again, you have, if you're in a leadership position, you have to lead. You ever seen the movie Saving Private Ryan?

Yes. Yeah, there was a part in that movie that they weren't down for the orders. Remember that way? It was kind of like a little pivotal part where they were going to go take a, a machine gun nest and they were like man we don't have to do this so they all kind of got together and hey you know seems like unnecessary risk and he's like he kind of tripped out a little bit and kind of forced them to do it and they were like all right whatever kind of reluctantly

then one of the guys died and stuff but anyway that's an example yeah and these where they you know and especially you know when we were just doing uh talking about world war one that one portion of the book where he says you know what we got order to do this thing I didn't feel good about it but it was an order we were going to do it so there's a Examples from the past, especially where, you know, it definitely was more like that in the past. In World War I, obviously it was like that. Obviously it was like that. Unfortunately, it was like that.

Yeah. Because it caused people to continue, you know, to execute these operations that were just going to get people killed. And, you know, actually, Leif and I were talking about that last week. Pickets charge, Gettysburg. They sent the troops up and they got slaughtered. and they came you know their survivors came back and Lee was you know basically in tears like hey I'm sorry this happened I this was my fault he took ownership of it and I hope I'm getting the story right but but that's the that's the general the general gist of the story but then the

you know the big story was that the guys were like hey we'll go again if you know because you're such a great leader will go again And Leif, you know, was kind of like, you know, that's what World War, you know, that's what, that's what happened. That shows you that guys were willing. And I said, yeah, but the difference is in World War I, they sent him again. They sent him over and over, you know, Lee was regretting and I'm sorry. And I did something that got you, you know, a bunch of guys killed. It's horrible.

In World War I, they're like, yeah, it happened, going again. Yeah. Oh, yeah, and that happens again. We're doing it again and again. And it's just a, I'll always just be horrified. by that and hopefully man progresses beyond that. And again, part of that is as a person,

you have to question. You have to be a rebel. You have to question what people are telling you and why they're telling it to you. If my boss doesn't tell me why I'm doing my operation, and I continue to execute it, that's my fault. I need to raise my hand and say, boss, what are we doing? Why are we doing this?

I don't understand. You got to take that. initiative because if you're just blindly following orders I don't want somebody that's blindly following orders I never want people that blindly follow my orders I want people that say okay boss wait why are we doing this why is this happening because I want people I want think I want leaders underneath me that know how to lead and you know what when you build the trust and you build the relationships those guys will do anything for you and my guys in my task are they do anything I mean I know

know it. They did over and over again. Did operations that were crazy and hard and dangerous and risky. Never did anyone say, oh, you know, we're not doing this. They said, okay, we understand. What's the mission? All right. So you've got to build that role. It's again, it's the same basic principles of leading human beings. And that's what you've got to do. But to think that you're just going to order people to do things, it's not happening. long answer to a good question. That was actually an interesting perspective and I know it's a perspective that a lot of people have. People always think, well, you know, you led seals and they're elite, so that was easy. Yeah, but before you said, before you told me, that's kind of what I figured.

Last question. Jocco, any tips for breaking habits of laziness and procrastination? Maybe some good reads on the subject. And this is a question I wish you would answer for me like 10 years ago. So yeah, any tips? You know, this has definitely been a pretty common question when people want to know how to stop the laziness and they want to know how to stop the procrastination. And, you know, they have some idea in their head, you know, some kind of a vision of what they want to do.

But they don't know where to start. They don't know where to start it. You know, they don't know where to start. And so they say, hey, where do I start? And when's the best time to start? And I have a very simple answer for that. Here and now. That's it.

You want to improve. You want to get better. You want to get on a workout program or a clean diet. You want to start a business. You want to write a book or make a move. movie or build a house or a computer or put together some mobile application, where do you start? You start right here. And when do you start? You start right now. You initiate the action aggressively. You go. Because the idea isn't going to execute itself. And the book isn't going to write itself.

And the weights out in the gym, they're not going to move themselves. You have to do it. And you have to do it now. And that means you got to stop thinking about it and stop dreaming about it and stop researching every aspect of it and reading all about it and debating the pros and cons of it. Just start doing it. Take that first step and make it happen. Get after it. And get after it here and now. And I think that's all we've got for tonight.

so thanks to everybody for listening to this for uh for putting those headphones in your ears and pressing play and settling in with me and sending some spending a little bit of time in my head i know it's a little scary in there sometimes thanks for the feedback that you give us and the questions you ask us and thanks for subscribing to the podcast and downloading it and writing reviews and spreading the word and thanks for buying the book and buying the audio book and lastly and most importantly to everybody out there thanks for getting up early thanks for getting in the gym thanks for getting on the mat thanks for getting your grind on at work getting your head into a book getting smarter and stronger and faster and better thanks to everybody for getting after

it. And so until next time, this is Jocko and Echo.