Jocko Podcast - Jocko Podcast 5: Corrective Measures, Workouts, Diet, Marcinko and Rollins

Episode Date: January 13, 2016

Navy SEAL, Jocko Willink and Director, Echo Charles discuss leadership corrective measures, as well as firing. Internet questions: Workout, diet, Henry Rollins, Richard Marcinko. @jockowillink @echocharles  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number five with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo Charles. Good evening. Welcome to podcast number five. Here we are. Here we are number five. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. So, tonight I got asked on Twitter,

hey could you talk about coaching some people and that kind of prompted me to think about something that I have pulled out in the past when I'm teaching some leadership classes and what this is is two counseling notes that I wrote for sessions when I was trying to help a couple of seal leaders improve themselves and get better and the first one was for a seal that was a buddy of mine and who was a little bit junior to me just a little bit junior in me in rank but you know because I was a prior enlisted seal I had actually been in the seal teams for a much longer time and this guy was great great leader, great guy, and very passionate about doing a solid job and very passionate about

the SEAL teams, which is an awesome thing to see. And with that passion, and I've said this before, sometimes your strength can be your weakness, and sometimes he would get a little bit too passionate about stuff and a little bit emotional and be a little bit easy to read. And so I was in a meeting with him and I kind of saw Hiro's acting and I saw how other people were reacting to him. And so when I saw that, I kind of sat down and just put some words on paper to let him know that he had a little area of improvement. And what's good about this is, you know, I was the detached person. So I was able to sit outside this situation and just watch and see, oh, that's, that he's not

coming across the way he thinks he's coming across. And so I'm going to start off with that one. It's pretty positive. Echo. When you say put words on paper, is that like an official thing? You know, like when you get written up at work or something, it's like here's your official warning. Right. This one was not.

This was just a bro saying, hey, man, here's some tips. Almost like a DL note almost. Yeah, a DL note. Yeah, this is a DL note. So what's interesting is there's, in the SEAL teams, there's not a lot of writing up. in this capacity. So if somebody has a safety violation where they do something unsafe

that gets written up immediately. But this type of thing is a little bit, you know, because normally you're just trying to bring someone along and help them out and improve their leadership. You know, it's just mentoring. So a lot of times you don't need to document when you're trying to help out your buddies.

That's why I'm kind of lucky here. I forget what it was, but I, you know, I went to a meeting, he was in it, and I kind of forget the situation, but for whatever reason, I wrote this down and I think I sent it to him and said, hey, let's talk about this later, but just wanted to give you this stuff, you know, now. And so I'm kind of lucky that I wrote it down.

It's kind of like in the spirit of organization. Yeah, and just I think it was more of just, I couldn't talk to him immediately for whatever reason. And so I just sent him an email and said, hey, bro. Or I like left it on his desk. I forget if it was digital. It was probably email. So here we go. and there's some interesting comments in here and that's why I think I saved it and that's why I think

it's good conversation. So here we go. Here's my note to a seal leader that is a buddy trying to move along his leadership paradigm. And here we go. One, leadership is getting people to do things. This is a form of manipulation. So right there, I use, this word that everybody hates manipulation and people often replace that word with influence and I do it too. You know, I say, oh, you want to use your influence, but what you're really saying is you want to manipulate people, but it's very negative. And the way I break that down, the way I separate that from something negative and something

positive is if I'm trying to manipulate you in a negative way, that means I want you to do something that's going to benefit me and it's going to hurt you. To me, that's manipulation and that's negative. But if you're trying to influence someone, you're trying to lead them, you're still manipulating them, but you're trying to get something that's going to be positive for them and positive for the team. So as far as I'm concerned, when you're influencing someone, you're really manipulating for a positive outcome.

So, but that being said, I think people need to recognize that. And that's why I use that word, because everyone knows what manipulation is. You're trying to get someone to do something. And that's what leadership is. If you think about it, you're trying to get someone to do something. But I use that word, so it's very clear what you're trying to do. leadership is nothing more than getting people to do what you want both up and down the chain of command so not just the people below you want the people above you to do to do what you want them to do

more importantly getting them to do to want to do what you want them to do is the best form of leadership and the highest form of manipulation so this is a situation where you don't even want you want the person just to want to do what you're getting them to do. So now I go on. Every time we open our mouths to speak to another person, our goal is to get them to do what we want them to do. Otherwise, why the hell are we talking? So everything you say, the tone of your voice, the words you choose, the inflection

on those words and body language and facial expression are all tools to be used to make progress in getting your way. or tools that you misuse and isolate yourself and move away from your goals. So again, I wanted to make sure that this guy knew that every little facial expression, everything that he said and how he said it, all those things have an impact because people forget that. You don't realize how important your words are and how important your facial expressions are and how important your tone is and how that impacts people. You are always in negotiation.

Everything you say and do and the manner in which you say and do it has an impact on future outcomes. Pretty simple. Now this is when I say this to people, they go, ooh. So here it is. The best way to win is when the other person doesn't know you won and if possible might not even know there was a fight. if your ego requires the constant food of victory, you can never win in this manner. So just to restate that,

the best way to win in a competition of getting something to happen or getting someone to do something, the best way to win is when they don't even know that you won, and even better than that, is that they don't even know that there was a game. They don't even know that they're doing this for a reason other than by their own free will.

That's what they think. That's what you want them to think. And again, this is manipulation. And I'm sorry about that. The thing is, is that you're manipulating for positive outcomes. You're not manipulating for your own benefit. You're not manipulating for, to make something bad happen that person. You're influencing them so that they do a better job so the team does better so that the mission gets accomplished.

Now I go on. Creating adversarial or antagonistic relationships never helps you reach end goals. This is slightly related to the old keep your friends close and enemies closer. People that outright oppose me will never help me and will usually maneuver to hurt my cause. This is never good. At least a neutral relationship seldom results in someone actively sabotaging my efforts. So it's really easy to get an adversarial relationships. And that wasn't one of my little go-to words that I used to use when talking to my subordinate leadership.

What adversarial relationship? You know, I'd say, hey, you're starting to get into an adversary relationship with this person. And then where is that going to go? And I would say, it's never going to be good. They're never going to go out of their way to help you. In fact, when you're an adversary of somebody, they go out of their way to sabotage you and hurt you. and that's just never going to be helpful. So then I go on to say,

your history reveals that you are good at getting into adversarial situations. You should work to control that impulse. It will never help you attain your goals. And that's, you know, you're laughing because that's a very blunt statement, right? That's a very blunt statement. Your history reveals that you are good at getting

into adversarial situations. You're good at it, though. Like that's a skill. Yeah, yeah, you're real good at it. And you can see, this is a pretty blunt, pretty blunt writing here. And the reason is because I had a relationship with this guy. You know, he was open to hear what I had to say.

And so it wasn't like I was just being a jerk, and I was going to put him on the defensive. And he knew that. And he knew that I was always, you know, looking out for his best interest, and I knew he would look out for mine as well. So we had a very good relationship. going on don't burn bridges period nothing is ever gained by this the future is never known

and i always do what i can to keep lines of communication open bridges intact and reinforced if possible so why burn bridges so seldom in life should you burn a bridge and a lot of times people think because I'm a seal and I'm aggressive, that I'm like this kind of burn bridges type of person, right? And it's just not true because it's not an effective way to go through life. Now, I go on to make a note about that. I don't like to say never,

but when dealing with human relationships, which are inherently complex and unpredictable, I believe that you should never follow courses of action that cannot be undone, reversed, or manipulated in the future. Of course, now I'm talking about, you know, people on the same team. I'm not talking about, you know, going to war, and there you obviously do things in war that are completely unreversible because you're destroying and killing people and they're never coming back.

So this is different. This is in a team situation where you're trying to work together and you're in a leadership role. Going on. Believe in what you're saying, but accept that you might be wrong. I believe in what I'm saying, and if I don't believe it, I study and question it until it makes sense. Or I change what I am saying until I do believe it. That's a little hard to understand that last piece.

So what I'm saying is you've got to believe in what you're saying. You have to believe in what you're saying. And if you don't believe it, then you've got to either question whatever it is that you're being told to believe or that you should believe or that you're supposed to believe. you've got to question that until you understand it. And then once you understand it, then you have belief in it. And, you know, I'm not going to go into crazy detail on that because in our book that Laf and I wrote, you know, there's a chapter and it's called belief. And it explains exactly what I'm talking about when it comes to making sure that you believe in what you're saying. But I think the point that I was focused on here was more that sometimes you're wrong.

and you have to be able to admit when you're wrong. And I go on to kind of go into some detail here. If I'm wrong, I look forward to admitting it because it gives the opportunity to advertise being humble and open-minded. That's interesting. And people miss that opportunity all the time. When they're wrong, they either put their foot down

and deny it or they don't take advantage of the fact that when they're wrong, they say, oh, you know what, echo? Ah, man, I'm definitely wrong here. think you had a much better idea. Let's, I'm stepping back and you run with it. That's a great sign. It makes people respect you and go, yeah, that's cool.

This guy, this guy's humble enough to admit when he's wrong. They like that. So that's actually a form of manipulation in its own right, because I want you to think that I'm humble. And I am humble, but I want to make sure that you see that. Right. I go on to tell this individual, you are not good at being wrong or taking criticism. This is a weakness of yours, so recognize, fool.

And again, you can see here, that's where that kind of the relationship that I had with them comes out. Oh, right, you really put that. Yeah, yeah, no, that's real. This is real. And this is written, I would say, maybe eight years ago, something like that. It's pretty old. Thank God for computers, because we have, you know, records of things.

Right, right. You saved it. Control S, yeah, for sure. Now I go on. Think strategic. You will win and lose daily battles all the time. If you flaunt your victories, which you do, they hurt you strategically. If you sulk in your defeats, which you also do, it hurts you strategically.

This is wrong. Winning in daily battles gives you the opportunity to deflect credit, show your humbleness and victory, and show your ability to lead, which all help you in the long-term fight to achieve your goals. Losing a battle gives you the opportunity to generously seed your position, to admit your wrong, which both display humbleness and display your ability to follow. So people in every business and every job in life, in your house, you win and lose little battles all the time. and deciding which ones are worth fighting for, number one.

And then when you do win them, how do you act? And then when you lose them, how do you act? And all of these, the winning and the losing is not as important as how you act upon winning or losing and how you continue to influence the situation. Even though you might have lost, you do it in such a way that you show humility and you open. up you show your open mind and it makes the person you build your relationship with them so winning or losing is not important what's important is how you react to winning and losing yeah like when you um like when you say you're sorry right you know like if two people are in a relationship or even friends and get into a argument fight whatever about whatever and uh in one person they don't

want to say they're sorry you know because it'll show that i was wrong or it'll show that i lost the argument or show that my points were invalid or whatever they think. But when you say sorry, and for real say sorry, don't be like, well, I'm sorry if you were offended. Don't say that kind of stuff. Don't be like, okay, I'm sorry. Don't say like that, like really mean it. And when you can do that consistently, it'll be any future argument, it'll start to break

down that barrier of defense. You know, so the person and the people, both of them, won't go into it thinking, okay, I got to, I got to mount this defense against this person. Now it can be a little bit more of a fair problem-solving situation more so than this argument, me against you. Because they trust they're not going to get attacked if they show weakness or whatever. If they're like, oh, you know what, I know I made a mistake. You demonstrate by saying, sorry, you demonstrated that you're not going to go and turn up the heat when they start throwing that weakness. It's like, okay, you can solve problems a lot more easy.

That's thinking strategic. Right, right. speaking to people going on here speaking to people oh wait going back i say you have a bad tendency to get caught up in tactical battles you expend effort and ammunition receive wounds and tear yourself up when you should be thinking strategically that kind of goes to what you were just saying where people will get all angry and they'll hurt their relationship why because they want to win this meaningless battle right meaningless battle so detach yourself when you start feeling that anger, that aggression, that frustration, detach yourself and ask yourself, what am I really arguing

about? What is happening right here? Why am I getting worked up? You probably shouldn't be. Now I go on to speaking to people. Literally speaking to people. Treat everyone with respect from E1 to O10. E1 in the military is the lowest ranking person. O10, an officer 10 is the highest. that would be an admiral or a general. The E1 is the seaman recruit, the lowest ranking person. So I'm saying, treat everyone with respect. Speak with humility.

This disarms people and is one of the best forms of manipulation. And again, if everyone is put off by that term manipulation, which I know it is a very derogatory term. But you have to get over that. Because you have to understand what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to make sure that people understand that when you're in a leadership position, there's nicer ways of saying it, but what you're trying to do is get people to do what you want them to do.

That's what leadership is, and that's also what manipulation is. Disarmed people are open to suggestion. Overconfidence and condescending tone, which is common for you, causes defenses to go up and people to get defensive. So the minute you come in and you start being over, confident or talking to people in a condescending manner, they get defensive. And all of a sudden, they're not really listening.

That being said, subtle confidence and believing in what you are saying, as noted above, allow people to also believe in what you are saying and that they trust in your judgment and leadership. However, do not speak as if you know things your opponent does not. That offends everyone, especially SEALs. So you never, never like talk to people as if you know something that they don't, you know, because it offends people. It offends me.

It offends everybody. It's impossible not to be offended by that. It makes you feel stupid. You get defensive. So you've got to say things in a manner that you don't sound like I know it and you don't. Right. Your rank means nothing in an argument. Pulling rank in any way is defeat.

So the minute I have to say, echo, I always. rank you, therefore I'm right, means I couldn't, it means my argument didn't make sense. It should be able to stand on its own two feet. And similar to that, and this is something we saw a lot in the SEAL teams, and you see it a lot in the business world as well. It's similar to rank. It's the experience. It's pulling the experience card.

Pulling the experience card is weak. Arguments should be able to stand on their own without needing to be backed up by the way we did it in Baghdad, the way we did it in Ramat. the way we did it in Afghanistan or whatever the case may be. You shouldn't need to say that. Now, you can cite an example, but that shouldn't be the basis of your argument. And we see that in the business world where someone will say, well, we've been through this before. And, well, why did you go through it before?

Then why are we going through it again if you went through it before? Maybe you did something wrong. But that's a tendency that people have. And in the business world, you end up with people that have been in a specific industry for 20, 30, 40 years. So it's very easy for them just to fall back on the, well, this is the way we've done it before. I've seen this a million times. I've always done it. I've done this before.

I've been through this before. You've heard all these examples. It's what people do. Also, like if people, they're in some kind of debate or argument about, I don't know, whatever, solar system. They'll be like, oh, I have a college degree. Almost like my argument is better than yours, regardless of what it is because I have that college degree. Yeah, I have an example of that where, uh, you know, uh, you know, a young seal was feeling as if he was being disrespected about what,

that he didn't know very much. He's a pretty new seal. And he fell back on the argument of exactly what you just said, which was like, you know, I have a degree in problem solving or something. I've been to classes on problem solving. That was his reason why people should listen to him.

Right. Which is not a good card to pull out in any situation. And definitely not in the SEAL teams. Hey, I've been to a class on problem solving. You need to listen to me. Wait a second. Why don't you just present your solution? Right.

And then let it stand on its own two feet because if you're so good at problem solving, then we surely you must have a wonderful solution. Yeah, you took that class for sure, man. But yes, it's the same thing. So to close this thing out, I said, anyway, those are some thoughts. I thought about this today after we had that conversation. I left thinking about my principles of management leadership off the battle.

field in administrative situations. These are the same principles I used in combat, building relationships and leading. And I also use them in administrative leadership situations. And as you know, I've been successful in that environment as well. You're a great leader. Just make some adjustments to your game. And you'll be even better. And that's it.

That's how I closed it out to this guy who was, you know, got this note from me. me and hit me back and said, hey, man, thanks. That's good stuff and I'll take action and definitely improved his game with it. Now, that's a pretty nice counseling session or nice attempt to help somebody. Now, this next example that I'm going to go through is somebody that was on his last legs. He was in a leadership position and he was having some significant problems. Now, he was an inexperienced guy and for some unknown reason, he was cocky, he was arrogant, he was failing as a leader, and he'd been through multiple verbal counseling, like I talked about. You asked me, do we write people up? I mean, the SEAL teams, for writing somebody up for a

leadership problem, they've been counseled numerous times verbally because you don't expect, I mean, it's not that hard. It's not that hard to say, hey, make this adjustment. The guy goes, oh yeah okay I didn't see that I was doing that the only time you end up with someone that you have to actually write it down is when someone starts getting to a point where you say okay this person's job is now in jeopardy and this is

again thanks to technology I saved this thanks to technology yeah so here we go seldom do I have to do this most guys listen and adjust and get better and move on

my cadre meaning the training crew that I had my cadre and your leadership asked that I talked to you and it is my job and my duty and my responsibility to try and make squared away tactical seal leaders know this I have personally worked with and seen all kinds of platoon commanders with all kinds of personalities. If you count my previous experience in platoons and training cell, and as an enlisted man, the number is pretty big. I've done seven deployments serving in every spot from the youngest E3 new guy to the oldest and the task unit commander. That being said, I'm not that good at anything, but I am a hard worker. I don't like to waste my time with people that don't appear to have the desire to be better seals, and you don't appear to have a desire to improve yourself, despite your

history, which includes the following. Getting bad fit reps. So fit reps is short for fitness reports, and that's basically an evaluation. And this guy had really bad evaluations. Just like general evaluation. That's like fitness stuff. Well, it's fitness. Fitness is like one block, but there'll be a block on leadership. There'll be a block on tactical knowledge. So there's all these blocks in his, and he had bad fitness reports, bad evaluations. Getting sent to a staff billet as a junior officer. So they took him and instead of making him and putting him in a seal platoon, they had him in some administrative job,

which is a big signal. Sometimes they'll do that in between tours or after you do an assistant platoon commander tour. They'll give you a tour like that to expand your knowledge, but he just got put straight into that. So that wasn't good. And finally, having a horrible reputation in the teams. which this individual certainly did have. Now, I go on and say,

I didn't take this into account when looking at you as a seal officer and as a man. I don't care what people say. I judge people on what I see with my own eyes. At first, I thought you were just another alpha male seal that rubs people the wrong way. No big deal.

There are plenty of seals like that. I usually like them. Most of my true friends fall into that category. And that was one of the things about this guy. You know, he was like a big guy and he was pretty aggressive. And I thought to myself, just what I said. I thought, okay, you know what? Maybe he's rubbing the people the wrong way and people are a little intimidated by that.

As time passed, I began to see something different. This is what I see. You are insecure about something. I don't know what, but it forces you to act arrogant and come across as selfish. your performance as a tactical leader varies between below average and average with some visible spikes of increased potential you are almost incapable of communicating with other people respectfully so those top three right there for whatever reason and i never figured out what made this individual so insecure i don't know if he i have no idea i don't know what happened to him but it's okay we have insecurities we get intimidated, we feel like we have to over prove ourselves. It's okay. These things happen.

You just make adjustments. That's all you got to do. You got to make some adjustments. You got to realize that you're not communicating with people respectfully. And when somebody tells you that you're not, you got to question, what do I sound like? Maybe you pull out a recorder and listen to yourself. You have some good ideas. You have some good ideas from time to time, but you act as if you know everything all the

time. Your ability to elevate your presence to that of a respected leader of men on the battlefield and in garrison is almost non-existent. And I don't know if at this time I was really using the term like detach that much, but that's what I was trying to get across to him, is that he wasn't able to elevate his presence. He wasn't able to come across like a leader. He was right there in mentally with the rest of the platoon going on.

You cannot mask your emotions and you don't understand the ramifications of that shortfall. So these are the little things, the little eye roll, the heavy sigh. Yeah, yeah. The crossed arms. I mean, just all these little things that it was like, it was like an open book when you'd see this guy. You know exactly what he was thinking. and he had no idea that it was so obvious to everybody else. Myself, all the rest of my instructor staff,

his leadership, everyone was thinking the same thing. And in his mind, he was good to go. He was, you know, he was a stone face poker player. Yeah, it kind of gets worse when you can't mask your emotions, but your emotions are reflective of your insecurity, which you mentioned is one of the first thing. So it's like this double whammy. It's one thing if you can't mask your emotions,

but you're pretty humble in general and you're a nice guy or whatever you're a go with kind of guy. And the emotions that you're not masking are something positive. Right. At least some positive or a lot of positive, maybe some negative, but hey,

look, no one's perfect kind of thing. But yeah, if it's just like insecurity, oozing out of the bad. And the insecurity was really, what oozed out of him was I know everything. You don't know.

Look, Jocko, I know you've been in the teams for 18 years and you've done multiple appointments overseas. And even though I have done zero deployments overseas, I know more than you. Yeah. Here we go on. And so now I start trying to make sure I cover all the bases with this guy. Sure.

You do not have the understanding of human nature, team building, leadership, influence, manipulation, compromise, and the broad concepts of tactical operational and strategic leadership and management. perhaps you don't have the intellect to understand these things because if you did why are we sitting here right now talking about this and by the way the reason this is written down i wrote it down and then brought him into my office put it in front of him and then read it to him because i wanted to be crystal clear right and so that's why this is written in that perspective i'm saying why are we sitting here talking about it right now why am i not thinking this might not be the most polished guy in the world but he's a good guy and he'll get things done because you end up with plenty of seals that are just they're just not that polished or they're a little rough around the edges or they can't brief well or whatever I mean it's cool there's there's all kinds of different guys in the seal teams and you just got to take what you get and you you strengthen your weaknesses a little bit but this guy was just not getting there for some reason you believe that you are a victim that people don't

like you or have it out for you and this was so weird this guy had this attitude that everyone wanted to fire him, that everyone was against him, and he was this, he was in this, you know, struggle on his own against the world. And it was just completely not true, especially in the beginning. I mean, obviously it escalated to that, but that he brought it upon himself. But, but honestly, that's something I kind of, I kind of pride myself in, in, in, as a leader, in taking a, a blank slate when I meet somebody and say, saying, okay, cool. You know, hey, look, this guy has a bad reputation or whatever.

I'm going to see what I can do with them. I want to make him better. I kind of take pride in that and want to make people better. And so for him to think that I was out to get him or this training cadre I was out to get him, just not true, just completely not true. This is not true, but it isolates you, hurts your ability to interact with people and keeps you in a paranoid, guarded, and confrontational state. It's rough.

Rough. Next, you don't understand the broad skills required to be a good seal leader, such as tact, team building, communications, and trust building. So it's interesting, none of this is about fire maneuver. None of this is about taking down a building. None of this is about, you know, how to plan and execute an assault. None of this is about that because that stuff is relatively easy to do. And what we would 99.9% of the time when we fire a leader,

it had nothing to do with their tactical prowess. It had to do with them as a leader. Now, them as a leader would affect the tactical outcome of operations for sure. But that wouldn't be the key component of their failings. The key component of their failings would be their arrogance. Going on, you do not understand the burden of command. You do not understand the influence you have on your men. This is a big one.

This is one of those ones that I find this with CEOs, I find this with mid-level managers, I find this with everyone where they don't understand their influence on their people. They understand when they say something off the cuff That everybody listens and they think they mean it and it has Real impact on people They understand when they show up late Now being late it's okay

When they go home early Going home early is okay Those are the little things examples of little things that people don't understand the influence that they have on their troops Going on You do not understand the gift you have been honored with to lead men in combat against our nation's sworn enemies. My concern is how you will act overseas when lives are at stake. I cannot allow you to go forward with these shortfalls. And that is something that in the SEAL teams, so in the SEAL teams,

people think, well, if someone's no good, you just fire them, that's it. And it's actually not true. You know, you have to have good reason and document what issues they're having. And the other thing is that that's really harsh about firing someone in the SEAL teams is when you fire someone in the SEAL teams, you're ruining their life. It's their dream to be a SEAL. Now they're not going to be a SEAL anymore. Their paycheck, their retirement. I mean, they've got plans. They're counting on this. So when you fire someone in the SEAL teams, it can be devastating career blow and it can really ruin someone's life. Now, there are times where we go, hey, you know what, this guy's going to be okay. We need to push him back a little while. We need to recycle him. He'll be able

to come back and he'll get better and he just needs to learn more. That happens as well. But in this type of situation, this guy was already with a bad reputation. This was going to be, if he got fired from this job, this was going to be a death sentence for his career. So when you fire someone from the SEAL teams, they're not out of the military. It depends on the situation. It depends on the situation. Dang. Yeah. Sometimes they'll get, a lot of times the officers will be removed from the military.

The enlisted guys might go to the regular Navy, which is a harsh punishment for a guy that's been in the SEAL teams. In the SEAL teams, you have quite a bit of freedom, you get more money, you're doing some job that you really like, and then all of a sudden you're not doing a job that you're like, and that can be a severe form of punishment as well. Is it like going to the minors from the Major League? No. It's just a totally different job.

It's like going from baseball to something completely different. I mean, it's going from baseball to do an accounting, you know, or from baseball to going to construction, you know, because the regular Navy has regular jobs that are like that. There's accounting jobs. There's building jobs. There's, you know, technical jobs. So it's like going from a job that's like a sport, which is the SEAL teams,

going into a job that's more of a job. But it's not like a dishonorable discharge situation. No, not unless the guys And you know, it's interesting I remember I was on a I was on a ship one time And the waves were big And it was cold

And we were launching off this ship In the middle of the night And there was this regular Navy guy First Class, Boeson's mate Which means, you know, he ran the deck operations Of the ships

And putting boats in the water And it was all stormy and dark And we're on these little boats Out in the Middle of the ocean We're about to go launch and the guy says to me, man, I would never want your job.

And that's, you know, that's what he was thinking. And I looked back at him and I said, well, that's good, because I would never want yours either

because I would never want to be, you know, stuck on a ship and doing that kind of work, but it's, we both had jobs that we liked. Right. You know, and everyone's got jobs they like.

But so when a person's in the SEAL teams, though, and they're getting put to a job, it's normally a job that they don't really like. And what my point is, point in all that is that it is difficult to ruin someone's career and it is a heavy burden when you have to do this to somebody that being said you're going to send these people especially a person in a leadership position they're going to be overseas and responsible for people's lives

you have got to do the right thing and i say that to business leaders now you know you've got to do everything you can to mentor someone. And that's that's that's actually how I know you've done everything you can to mentor and get someone along. Because when you fire them, you shouldn't feel guilty about it. And when when a leader says, oh, really I feel bad about firing this person,

okay, then that means you haven't done everything you can to mentor them. Because if you have and they still fail, then they're incapable of doing the job. And, and they need to go find a different job, but then you get put in a different position. That's just the facts. But if you've done everything you can

and they can't do it, then, yeah, they need to move on. But when you go, oh, I feel bad about getting rid of this person, it's because you haven't had this conversation that I'm having with this guy right here. The laying it out and saying, here's what you're doing wrong,

here's how you need to fix it. This is what the expectations are, and if you don't meet them, you're not going to be here. You need to clearly understand that. Yeah, it really puts it into perspective right on that last item there. One, when you said,

my concern is how you would act overseas when lives are at stake. Like, that really puts it into perspective. I mean, really, looking at it in a lighthearted kind of way, you can kind of compare this to, let's say, you know, when you're in kindergarten, you get a report card or whatever, and then at the end, if you're a kid like this guy,

you get a little note at the end says, all it says does not play well with others. Right. You're like, all right, you know, He doesn't have any of these, whatever. This, especially when, this is the adult version of that, but times it by like 10. And it sums it up right here with that last one,

like when lives are at stake. And that's exactly what was going on. So here I tried to give this guy corrective measures, is what I called it, corrective measures. Number one, be humble. And we get asked all the time, what's the most important characteristic of a leader? And Laif and I will say all the time humility.

And if you're not humble, then how can you look at yourself and say, I need to do stuff better? How can you look at your team and say we need to get better? How can you look at your enemy and say, I better respect them? If you don't have that humility, you're going to fail there. So my first corrective action of this guy, be humble. Number two, truly and deeply accept the fact that you have some serious personality defects that you need to immediately put in check and over the long term completely fix. So I was very concerned that this guy was going to sit there and nod his head. Yep, okay, yep, sorry.

But not truly and deeply accept the fact that he had these issues because there's a big difference between nod on your head and saying, I got you, sir. Okay, sir, yep, yes, sir. I'm going to, I'm going to do better. There's a big difference between that and going home, looking in the mirror, and saying, I've got some serious problems that I need to fix. Going on. Understand that the criticism you are hearing from me is not mine alone, but also my staffs and your leaderships as well. I've also heard this from other people outside your command, your reputation is horrible. Again, I wanted to make sure that he didn't think this was just Jocko being hostile.

I wanted him to realize it was my entire staff and his leadership that was being hostile. Going on. Corrective measure. Embrace and contemplate the solemn responsibility of being a seal officer. about to lead men into battle and possibly to their deaths, embrace the burden of command. This is one that for me was very disturbing to see because I had led men into battle

and I had had my guys get killed. So to have him with this attitude where I could see that didn't occur in his brain. He didn't understand that these guys that he's supposed to be in charge of. He's going to be asking them to do things that can get him killed. And I don't think he understood that. The burden of command, that's the burden of command. That's that heavy responsibility.

And yes, in combat, it means guys getting wounded or getting killed. And that is a heavy burden. But I will tell you, in the business world, when you've got people's jobs at stake when you've got the profitability or the survival of a company at stake and dozens or hundreds or thousands of people may or may not have a job if you don't do your job correctly as a leader, that is a heavy burden as well going on. Be the best at everything you do. In doing that, one, put everyone else before yourself. Push away compliments. Shift them, to your peers and your men, accept responsibility of failure and shortfalls only for

in them is the improvement and growth. So this is actually a conversation we had on one of our earlier podcasts. Any compliments, success, you shift that to your peers and your men, you accept the responsibility for the failures and the shortfalls. And again, if you don't accept the responsibility. for those failures in shortfalls, how are they ever going to get fixed? The answer is they're not. I'm never going to change everything, anything, if it's all that goes fault.

I did everything right. It's all echoes fault. Truly listen and try to understand what people tell you by first understanding that your personal compass is wrong, truly and completely wrong. For what is right and wrong. for what a good seal and a bad one is, for what makes an exceptional leader and a horrible one. You must correct this compass so that it may guide you in the right direction.

And my point with this was that I think in his mind, his vision of what a quote unquote good seal was, I think he thought he was being it. And I had to explain to him that he was, wrong. He did not understand what a good seal was. He did not understand what an exceptional leader was. He just did not understand it. You must correct this compass so that it may guide you in the right direction. The final corrective measure, lose your ego. This guy, despite having a treacherous record

and a horrible reputation, despite that for some unknown reason that I cannot fathom, he had a big ego. He thought he was a great seal. He thought because he was a big dude and could shoot. Well, he was a talented athlete as well. But he thought that that made him a good seal. And it didn't. It just gave him a big ego.

So now I tell him these are tall tasks, but you control them all. And that's true. If you look at every one of those things, be humble. Yes, he controls that. Except the fact that he needs some serious work. Yes, he controls that. Understand that the criticism is coming from a bunch of people, not just me. Yes, that's under his control.

Embrace and contemplate the solemn responsibility of being a SEAL officer about to lead men into battle. And possibly to their deaths. Yes, he controls that ability. Be the best at everything you do. Yes, that's under his control. So all these things, lose your ego. These are all things that he had control over. We need good, aggressive leaders in the SEAL teams.

We don't need the person that I outlined above. And the reason I pointed that out is because I think in this guy's mind, he was an aggressive guy. And he was a good leader in his mind. but I wanted him to know that. Yes, we do need aggressive leaders in the SEAL team, but we don't need this guy. We don't need the guy that I'm just talking about.

It's in your hands. Good luck. Then I asked him, do you have any questions or comments for me? Which, he did not. I asked him, are you sure? He was sure. I asked him if he understood, and he nodded his head.

And again, the reason I'm reading these is because these are my actual notes. and then I said, do you believe I am right, or do you just think I don't, or do you think I just don't get it, and that you actually know what's up? And he, of course, said, no, I understand.

And even as he was saying in those words, I was not convinced. And this gentleman did not make it in his leadership role, and he ended up getting fired. when he said that he understands was it like was he all salty like yeah understand man no i mean he was he was not disre not he was not openly disrespectful and maybe somewhere in his brain he was trying to understand and trying to listen and trying to believe but it it wasn't there

So in going through this, and I think one of the reasons why I wanted to do this on the podcast, was a lot of times leadership is about awareness. And I use this example all the time in the movie Terminator. It says, you know, in the year 2016, the machines became aware. And I used to get to see that with C-L leaders. like they become aware of being in a leadership position. And so that's that's one form of awareness. And I think a lot of times you don't recognize, if you're not aware of something,

you can't recognize what the problem is. And so going through this, all these issues that this guy had, people that are listening to this podcast, you don't have all these issues. It's impossible. You wouldn't even like, to listen to this podcast because this is a podcast

where we're all kind of sitting here picking ourselves apart and seeing what we could do better and trying to learn and people with with this type of attitude that this guy had they don't even enjoy this because they think they know everything.

You're not even talking to them. I'm not even talking to them. But everybody, myself included, I still go through this and I go, I'm doing that a little bit right there. I'm falling into that trap. I'm getting a little bit arrogant on this thing. I'm doing this wrong.

I'm not, I'm not, I'm letting my emotions out too much. And again, I'm not telling people to be robots, but you can't be an emotional disaster or emotional show for your people. So that awareness and thinking about it. And the other thing, this is, the other reason why I wanted to use this particular note is because I think it says direct of a note I could write someone. Maybe I could do it better now. I don't know, but at the time to go face to face with someone and kind of call them out, this is about as stern as I could do it.

And this is the standard that we need to hold ourselves to. That sternness, that what am I doing wrong and how do I be honest with myself and be my own worst critic, which is a big cliche, but yeah, be your own worst critic. Look at yourself and you can't be your own worst critic if you don't detach from the situation. If you're inside your own head, you can't even critique yourself. So you've got to get out of that brain. And that's going to be a common theme for not just for this show, not just for this podcast, but forever.

Because it's one of those things that's really helped me. and I think has helped the people that I've worked with when they overcome that. So there's some counseling for everybody, myself included. So now we're getting to the internet questions. So again, if you're listening to this podcast and you're wondering where these questions come from, they come from a couple different places on the internet, Facebook. I actually get most of them from Twitter. If you want to see what's happening on Twitter with me,

it's at Jocko Willink. If you want to see what's happening on Twitter with Echo, it's at Echo Charles. And if you want to see what's happening on there, and also if you want to submit questions, then for me, Twitter's the place to do it because I can jump on there. That means you have to be disciplined

and keep your question short. And I just drag those questions out of there and put them into the well of questions. And with that, and some of them I answer, you know, right there on the spot. And some of them, I go, ooh, that's a good topic. So with that in mind, and I'll tell you, this is still from the well of questions

where most of these I don't have the name of the person because I'm still on the well of questions of the first time I asked and I got hundreds of questions. So I'm still going through those. And here we go. What drill of you to become an English major in college? This is something I surprisingly get asked a lot

and I guess it shouldn't be that surprising because if you don't know my story with college, I was actually already in the SEAL teams. I had spent 10 years in the SEAL teams when I finally got sent to college. to get a college degree in order to continue my career as a SEAL officer. And when I went to college, it was not even a question that I was going to be an English major. So why is that?

Well, luckily, I had spent enough time in the SEAL teams to realize that the most important skill from an officer perspective that could differentiate and make you do a better job of something you could, I mean, we talk about leadership all the time and the different points in human, humility and discipline, all those things that make you a good leader. That's great. But those aren't things that you learn in college. So which skill could I learn in college that will actually make me do a better job as a seal leader? And I knew before I even showed up there exactly what that was going to be. And that was English. Why? Well, English to me was the study of the English language. The English language is the methodology that we American humans

use to communicate with each other. And as a leader, it is critical that you have a good control and a good grip on this medium that you're going to use to communicate what your vision is, what your ideas are, what your strategies are, what the orders are. You have to be able to do that in clear and concise language and I knew that English would provide me with that. You also have to be able to understand what you are being told to do or what the orders are or what the mission is or things like rules of engagement. So rules of engagement is a legal document written by lawyers and you have to read it and understand it. And I found that this was very, very, very, very, very, very useful. This was probably, and again, looking back, because you know what I guess I could have gotten

a degree in history and I could have really drilled down in the military, and that would have been helpful as well. But the practical application of English in that job was very important. And I'll tell you that in anyone that's going to end up in a leadership position, the command of the English language is a very important thing. And when I started to get into Shakespeare, and Shakespeare, I know there's at least half the audience just went, oh God, what is he talking about? Shakespeare. The thing about Shakespeare is, and this is what I had to learn in college, when you first see Shakespeare, you think, oh, I don't understand this.

This is a bunch of gobbledy gook. This doesn't sound like English, I don't understand it. You're not supposed to understand it. And people don't pick up a Shakespeare play and just understand it. You have to study what the words mean. the guy made up words. He just made them up. So how could you know what it means?

You're lying if you say, you know what it means. He made it up. He used archaic words or words back then that weren't archaic, but they're archaic now and people do not use them anymore. So how could you know what they mean? You don't. You have to look them up and figure out what they mean.

And that was very good for me to take a bunch of Shakespeare and have to look at this writing and figure out what it all means. because I realized that when three years later or four years later, when I got a rules of engagement that was written by a lawyer, and there was words in there I didn't understand, I didn't just go, oh, God, I don't understand this, and throw it away. No, I said, okay, there's a word I don't understand. I just need to look it up, figure out what it means, make sense of it.

And that's what studying Shakespeare specifically did for me. And, you know, at some point we're going to get into some Shakespeare right here, and there's some very, very powerful things that Shakespeare wrote, which are unmatched in language, in my opinion. So that's down the road, probably not too far, but that is why I studied English in college. How do you deal with delayed onset muscle soreness or stiffness from weight training, and how does it affect your jiu-jitsu?

the jujitsu questions. Awesome. So, obviously, I work out, I work out pretty much every day. I work out. That means I lift weights. I do calisthenics. I do sprints. I do some kind of physical conditioning every single day.

And that means that, yes, I am always at least somewhat sore and tired. when I show up to train the Jiu-Jitsu, which I usually do in the evenings. So for me, Jiu-Jitsu always makes me feel better. You know, you're basically getting a very gnarly full-body massage when you train Jiu-Jitsu. You're getting a very aggressive and involuntary full-body massage,

and you're getting stretched in different directions. So whenever, you know, if I, did some exercise that made me sore. If I did deadlifts and I'm feeling sore tight in my back and I go do Jiu-Jitsu by the time it's done, I don't feel that soreness anymore. So just like a massage or a stretch, I think it, it loosens you up and it's pretty normal for me.

I also like to train sore and tired because it just makes training a little bit harder and makes you more ready. And all that being said, when I do heavy squats or high repetition squats or any squats where I kind of push the envelope, yeah, my legs are really sore and it sucks to get on the mat and I do it anyways. And also training while your muscles are sore

when you're tired, it helps your technique, right? So you're not, especially as a bigger guy. Yeah. You know, having strength and weight at the same time as an advantage can be used as a weapon, but can get in the way of your technique. It can get in the way of the technique. can get in the way of your progression.

Progression, yes, for sure. You might be speaking from a standpoint of someone who's in good condition, by the way, because I would say that for most people, I would argue, for most people, it's not a full body massage. It doesn't loosen you up. It makes you more sore. Yes, and you know what, that's a good point. And beyond the fact, this is, you actually are right on more points than you know.

Because beyond the fact that, yes, I am in fairly good condition because I do work out every day, also, jujitsu for me, because I am experienced, is generally not a 100% physical war like you have when you're not quite as experienced. Right. And if you watch, you know, when I'm rolling with guys, all my training partners, they're all good guys too. So we're training for, you know, an hour. And we can do it. It's not because we're in that much better condition. It's just that we're that much more relaxed and we're relying more on technique. So that's a good point.

And I could see where in the early days, now that being said, I've trained this way the whole time that I've trained. So even when I was a spaz crazy, you know, white belt warrior, I still worked out every day. And when I was a blue belt training super hard, I still worked out every day. So you're, I was going down the path that you were right, but now I'm going to renege on that and say that you're wrong. And you just need to work out, get on the mat, loosen it up, and keep training. Well, yeah, I think in the grand scheme of things, you'd be more loose, yeah. but we're talking about delayed onset muscle soreness. I think,

I think I would argue that most people after training jiu-jitsu, unless it is like just a light, like, roll. But if you're, you know, if you're doing just, I don't know, your normal jiu-jitsu guy, let's say he does four rounds, six minutes, one minute in between. Mm-hmm. He's going to get more delayed onset muscle soreness

the next day from the jiu-jitsu. I don't think so. I don't think so. This is a issue that will not be solved on the Jocko podcast. I would say try it. Try it. That's what I'm saying. I think so,

because I've been trying it for years and years. So we're going to go ahead. Another thing is every time you show up to do Jiu-Jitsu, it's not a competition day, you know? And not that you don't have roles and good roles and you go hard, but there is a difference between, like, I'm going to let this guy pass my guard, or I'm going to hang on with every little piece of might.

And what is this look you're giving me right now? I agree with you, but it still doesn't change my argument that even if you're rolling that way, I think that you have to roll pretty light to not get any delayed onset muscle. Okay, and here's one more story. And this is where you might be right. This is a funny story. So like I just talked about when I went to college, so when I went to college at the University of San Diego, It was, I was still in the military, but my job was to go to college, which meant that for somebody that was used to working 18 hours a day as a seal, all of a sudden I didn't have 18 hours a day to work.

So I trained a lot. And one of the things I noticed one day, for whatever reason I had, I think I had one of my kids was born and I had final exams or just some perfect storm of events. and I missed and I didn't train jiu-jitsu for three days and on the fourth day I got up out of bed and I felt all like young

and I wasn't sore and I was dang I feel great what is this and what it was was that I hadn't trained and at that time at that time we this is when Dean Lister and I were training like madmen and he was constantly

competing I was competing and he was competing and he was and we would train for two to four hours a day of just psycho rolling and but again even we were doing cycle rolling like that it wasn't competition day and but we but it definitely made me sore yeah and so you do get some soreness you're correct I think I'm just used to being in a continued state of soreness yeah that's what it is so when you're like oh yeah I didn't roll for three days on that four you know that that fourth day you woke up and you're like dang I feel young what is this, that's called rest.

You rested and you recover. It happens. I mean, I travel now. There'll be days, obviously days when I don't get to train. Okay, so this question is I don't know if it's an addition to the other question, but it's a phrase like this. Also, I'd like to hear more about

your writing process. Tough times, what worked well, creative breakthroughs, etc. I don't think these were related. I think this is just pulled out. Oh, right, right. Okay. creative breakthroughs. Yeah. So first of all, to go specifically on how I wrote this book,

and you could probably apply this to any kind of task that you're looking at doing, but the first thing we did, and Leif and I wrote this book together, the first thing we did was we outlined the book and what the chapters were about and what the stories inside the chapters. So we both knew what the chapter was, and then we said, and if you haven't read the book, I wrote half the chapters, and he wrote half the chapters. So we didn't write it together

and try and mind-meld the whole thing. Now, the intro, we wrote together and the outro or whatever it's called. We wrote together. And that was cool. We just edited it because it was both of us talking. But we didn't have to try and mind-meld or come to agreement on the rest of it.

We just wrote separate chapters. And so what I did was once we knew what the chapters were, once we knew what they were going to be about, then I wrote a thousand words a day no matter what that was my I was very busy at the time I was doing some big contracts I was super busy and I knew that I had to do it in chunks and I also know that my attention span is I can force it but it's not fun so a thousand words took me about an hour like 50 minutes to an hour so every day no matter what I sat down

And I ended up writing about 60,000 words. So it took me, no, I think it was 55,000 words. It took me 55 days. 55 days straight and my draft was done. And that's, that's, there's a couple good advantages to it. Number one, when you write every day, if you write, if you skip two days and then you go back, guess what? You've got to go back and reread what you wrote because you don't remember it. Whereas if you just go back into it, I could just pick up where I left off.

Boom, I could start writing again. An hour later, I'm done. Don't have to waste any time. I have to go back and reread. I know what my train of thought was. That's the important thing. So that was important. And sometimes I didn't feel like writing, of course,

but I just wrote anyways. And sometimes it would come out not that great, but it doesn't matter. You got a thousand words that you can hone and you can adjust and you can turn it into something good. And also, it just takes away, every excuse is gone. There's no excuse. There's zero excuse.

There's only you do what you're supposed to do. That's the only thing. I don't know what to think. I lost my train of thought. I have writer's block or whatever. I'm too tired. No, it's like one answer for all these problems. And that is right.

So you got writers block? Good, right. You got, I'm too tired. I had a long day? Good, right. Oh, I'm stuck and I don't know where to take this story. Good, right. That's the only, it's just one answer solved every problems.

And that's kind of the same thing with everything, you know, with going to the gym. You know what? I'm tired. Good. Go work out. I'm sore. Good. Go work out.

I'm super busy right now. good, go workout. You could do this, you can apply this to any sort of, you know, with training jiu-jitsu. I don't know if I'm not feeling like my A-game tonight. Good, go train when you're weak. Right. Good, go train when you're mentally not there because it doesn't matter. What is it?

Is it the world championships today? And even if it is the world championship, you've got to go fight anyways because it's the world championships. So get on the mat and train. Yeah, and you could look at these, when you say that that applies. to everything. Like you don't feel like it or whatever. A lot of times create like creative block. And I'm just realizing right when you said that is the first time I'm kind of understanding this and realizing that okay, when you have a creative block, that's almost like in my experience, it's a good reason to not do creative stuff because I can't because

creativity comes from a real like you have to feel it. You have to want to do it. It's like a creative thing, right? Inspirado. And you cannot manufacture Inspirato to quote Tenacious D. Yeah, yeah. You can't manufacture it or whatever. So it's different than going to the gym. So are you saying, though, if you get creative block,

and for those of you that don't know, Echo does, he writes and produces and films and directs videos of all kinds. So you're saying when you can't think of what to write, you just stop. Yes. We have a quitter in our midst. You know, in a way, though, but what I'm saying is, and that's okay.

I mean, we all have different techniques. My technique is not better than your technique. Your technique may work sometimes. It may be work 100% for you. I'm talking about my technique, and my technique was like, okay, I've got writer's block. I don't know where to go with this.

I'm going to write anyways. Right. And what you're saying is when that happens to you, you say, you know what? I'm just going to walk away from it right now and come back to it later. And that's okay. I say until right now, though,

I just realized it when you said, okay, if you don't feel like writing or good, do it anyway, because I guess I never really thought past that. When you say, yeah, you'll just have more stuff to hone into, okay, if later on when you do hit inspiration, which now you have more material to draw inspiration from, it's going to come clear like, okay, that thing that I wrote or, you know, put in when I wasn't inspired, okay, that's got to go. But you can learn so much from what you put down there. Why doesn't that work? Or dang, that was pretty good when I was feeling bored

and when I was feeling whatever. That's pretty good. I'm going to use that, you know? So you're going to get way more results potentially than you would if you simply don't do anything. And what if the inspiration doesn't come back? Yeah. Which it fucking doesn't a lot of the time.

Then it's too late. So yeah, good lesson learned right there. Thanks. That is a good one. So next question from Jennifer. From Jennifer. This one I absolutely. got an author there that has a name nice Jennifer Jennifer says I'm really struggling with focus

lately I'd love for you to cover it on the podcast focus cover that this is do we get asked this a lot about focus I don't if we've got asked specifically oh yeah specifically about focus but this is one of those things and this is this is I'm starting to realize a underlying theme with a lot of with a lot of what people are asking me and that is I think people have a vision or a thought that I'm I've got some answer that is like oh you lack focus follow steps one two and three and I've talked about this with leadership and that I've got some easy button solution for these situations and this got me thinking about my kids and one of my daughters who when she was I don't know what how old you are

when you're supposed to learn the times tables but she was that age and she got really disappointed because she didn't know our times tables and she would actually you're young when I again I don't I forget the grade but it's you know it's like maybe second grade second third grade yeah second third grade so she's supposed to know her times like tables she doesn't know them and she starts getting this negative attitude of I'm stupid you know I'm dumb other kids know them I don't know them and I just said oh well have you studied them and she hadn't she hadn't studied them she'd sat in class when they would go over them and she'd picked up 50 or 60 or maybe even 70% of them but you know there's some hard ones in there right 12 times 12 12 is a tough one

You know, there's some tricky ones in there that she didn't know. And so I said, oh, well, you need to study them. And then you'll know them. So, you know, we made the flashcards and she studied them and all of a sudden she knew them. And then she realized that you have to practice these things and you have to put effort into them. It's the same thing with sports. You know, you'll get the kid that says, I'm not any good at baseball. Well, you don't spend any time practicing it.

Right. And so it's the same thing with focus. it takes effort. I don't wake up in the morning, flip a switch and then become focus. When I was writing, when I was just talking about writing this book that we wrote,

I didn't go, okay, flip the switch for focus. I'm going to do a thousand words right now. No, no, no. I just sit down and go, okay, listen, idiot. This is your job. You need to do it. Get it done. You know, another, another funny story

is in the SEAL teams, we have these helmets. We had them. We've modified them since. but we had these helmets and underneath the helmets you would wear this this headset that your radio headphones would go into so when you're in the steel teams you're out on the battlefield you've got to talk to different people and you've got to have a radio and you've got nice almost I guess it would be to describe it it's like a Bose noise canceling headset for all practical purposes but it's durable

and you wear that underneath your helmet and if you're in a leadership position sometimes you have one group of people talking into one ear and the other one might be the air frequency so you can hear the aircraft talking so you got all this stuff going on inside your head and that's tricky and kind of a pain but what was really painful was the way they made these headsets they didn't fit right so they were very painful and they they actually squeezed your head so when you put your you put your headset on and then you put your helmet on over it and it actually squeezed your head and it was very very uncomfortable to give you a headache it was just it just wasn't fun at all. It sucked.

So we were out on this training mission and this is when I was a task unit commander and it was a long one. It was 14 hours. We were out there on this target and we were securing it and we were holding it and we were searching it and doing all this stuff. It took a long time. In about

eight hours into it, one of the junior officers came up to me and he says, have you kept your helmet on this whole time? And I said, yes. And he said, doesn't it hurt a lot? And I said, yes. And that was it.

You know, there was just pain to be experienced. And I just sucked it up. And eventually we figured out how to cure it. But the point is, is that does it take some pain to focus? Yes, it is not easy. It takes will and it takes mental effort. to make it happen. You know, and it's there we get into kind of the things,

I think I talked about this last week, but, you know, shut off the music, set a goal for what you're trying to get done and then put a time limit on it. You know that, I used to race myself when I was writing those words, you know, I'd race and see how fast I could get them done and then go.

And that's that, that's your focus. Your focus is something that you control and you can make happen. So get focused. Practice focusing. Practice focusing. Yeah, because he kind of, at first glance or the first thought isn't that you practice focusing,

you focus on practicing or you focus on writing or you focus on, you know, and if you can't focus, like, dang, that sucks. But if you practice focusing, then you can focus on your writing. And also everybody knows the deadlines make you more focused. When something's due, I mean, so put a deadline on yourself and make it real somehow. Right, like kind of like if someone texts, you say, hey, I'll be over in 10 minutes. You can clean your house pretty quick in that 10 minutes.

That's true. That's true. But give yourself three hours to clean. It's going to take three hours. It'll probably take three hours. Leif and I say when people would, to plan for an operation, how long does it take to plan for an operation? We always say a half an hour longer than you have. That's how long it takes.

So just get on it, start planning it and go forward. So diet. What do you eat? and any thoughts on using superfood amaranth to increase fuel nutrition amaranth do you know what amaranth is no i didn't know what it was either i didn't look it up you looked it up i looked it up no stranger to looking things up no stranger at all it's some kind of a grain some kind of a grain so what do i eat uh in short i guess you would classify me as a paleo type person i eat steak, I eat chicken, I eat pork.

I actually, for whatever reason, and don't like the taste of fish and seafood that much or eggs, which is really unfortunate. Really? Yeah, I know. It's really bizarre. I eat a lot of hamburgers growing up, and I kind of didn't eat a lot of seafood growing up, so I just am not a big fan. But I eat a lot of steak, chicken, pork.

I eat some kind of salad, you know, just about every day. I love Caesar salad, so I eat a lot of that. spinach salad. I put a lot of olive oil on it, kind of bathe it. This is Peter Atia, who's a really smart doctor and the, I guess the president's CEO of something called Nucci, which is this nutrition science, which is this large, the biggest organization to study nutrition. And he gave me a good thought or the way he explained these salads. He looked it salads as a vehicle to eat fat by just putting a ton of, you know, olive oil, basically. So I've gotten into that lately and just really making these big salads with massive amounts of olive oil

so I can get plenty of fat. So I'm definitely a fan of eating as much fat as possible. You know, if you want to talk about why I do that, if you, you know, there's a book called Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubbs, which is a fantastic book and gives a lot of background on it. Like I said, Peter Attia, who's just a brilliant guy who I've had a lot of great, long conversations with because we've done some stuff together. And he's actually the person that introduced me to Tim Ferriss.

I mentioned that on the first podcast, but it's funny, we'll go out for dinner. And he wants to know about seal stuff, but I just want about nutrition stuff and his take on nutrition stuff, so that we have good conversations and good tradeoffs. But he will, you know, he explains a lot of stuff really well. And then another good thing.

On the Tim Ferriss podcast, he did an interview with Dom Dagastino, who's got a really good perspective, another doctor that's, you know, a workout guy and understands nutrition very well. So that's where I have gotten to in my life. And I've got a long story, you know, about nutrition and maybe someday we can go into it. It's just just the discovery. And it's just with everyone else. I mean, just the fact that I guess 20 something, 25 years ago, everyone thought, well, not everyone, but most people thought fat was bad and carbs were good.

That's not true. Actually, carbs are bad and fat is good. So it's been a, it's been a, and I was lucky to have been around people that knew that early and taught the information to me. So that's the in a nutshell. And if you want to get with the experts, then people like Gary Toms, people like Peter Attia, people like Dom, Dagestino, they're the ones that can give you the science behind what I'm talking about or what I've experienced as well. Nutrition. Nutrition is also one of those subjects that, you know, people vehemently disagree with each other on. There was a while where I was banned by my.

wife from talking about nutrition with her friends. In the early days of me being completely pro-fat and pro-protein and really anti-carbohydrates, when no one really thought that, you know, 10 years ago, and I would be giving all of her friends a hard time about what they were eating and what they were feeding their kids. And my wife eventually banned me because I was problematic in that situation. I could see that. Yeah. I mean, even just saying, you know, carbs are bad. I mean, there's a lot to that, you know, but to say carbs are bad,

that's a controversial thing to say. Exactly, yeah. And that's another thing, and I keep saying this, but I'm not here to convince anybody. And if you want to tell me that carbs are great, good for you. I hope you enjoy type two diabetes,

get after it. But it's not like carbs, so you see what you're doing right now? You're going to start a little argument right now. No, I'm not going to. Okay. Because the bottom line is I don't, this is stuff that I have figured out. I've learned from people.

I've used it myself and I know what works for me. And if you don't want to believe that, I'm okay with that. I'm not here to save your life. I'm not here to change your mind, you know? And it's the same thing. You know, you've heard me say this about jiu jih Tijuana, where I used to be really, you know, no, jih Tjitsu is better than this and jih Tijitsu is better than that. now I'm like, no, actually there's other, and first of all, there's other perspectives,

but also that are correct. And Jiu-Jitsu, and I actually believe that Jiu-Jitsu, I actually believe need be well-rounded and all this other stuff, but the bottom line is I'm not a, I'm not a, here to convert people, but somebody asked what I ate and I told them. Right. And that's, that's what I did. Technically that is 100% true. That's what I did.

And if you want to argue those points, don't argue with me. argue with Peter Atia, argue with Gary Tobs, argue with Dom D'Agostino, because those guys are, I mean, Peter and Dom are scientists and doctors, so they know and they will give you the facts, which I could give you, but I won't be due nearly as convincingly. Yeah, yeah. Okay, next question. A couple of guys I'd like to hear your thoughts on. Richard Marcinco. Marsenko. Marsenko.

And Henry Rollins. Marsenko and Rollins. So let's start off with Dick Marcinco, Demo Dick Marcinco, who, if you don't know who that is, he was a seal in Vietnam, a seal officer in Vietnam. He was the founder of Seal Team 6. He created Seal Team 6. He ended up getting in trouble with the Navy. And they kind of did a witch hunt on him.

And he was eventually, I don't, actually he did. He did a little bit of jail time. They found that he had falsified some travel records and maybe some money. They found stuff on him. But it was kind of trivial stuff that was trumped up. But, and they forced him out of the military. And he wrote a book in the 90, in the, in the, early 90s because it showed up in the seal teams right around when I got actually threw buds

into the seal team so it was sometime around 1990 or 1991 he wrote a book called rogue warrior and it did amazingly well sold a lot of copies and it was definitely broke the mold of this idea of the quiet professional which was how I was most certainly raised in the seal teams and it's something that I've obviously contradicted now because wrote a book with Laif have this podcast. I've been on TV. So I've definitely broke the paradigm of The Quiet Professional. I absolutely try to respect the spirit of the Quiet Professional. And I'm not, you know, even if the book that Laif and I wrote isn't a book about our triumphs and everything we did great. It's a book about what we learned

usually from bad situations and humbling experience, that's what the book is about. And it's an effort to pass on leadership lessons learned that we learned in a humbling way. So there's that. But Richard Marsenko,

from my perspective in the SEAL teams, and again, this was right when I came in, he was kind of the guy that broke this mold. And of course, there's been, you know, dozens and dozens of quote unquote seal books now but he wrote the first one very well received and definitely got some flack from the seal community and that is what it is now now i worked for guys that worked for him that literally were you know they that he was their commanding officer and I remember one of them

I said to this one senior guy that had been a ton of experience and I said you know you worked for Marsenko how was he and he looked at me with no hesitation said best commanding officer I ever had and that's I heard that everybody I ever asked

just about told me that the only people that you'd hear anything different from would be senior senior officers that he was you know he'd be over the top he wasn't he didn't quite play the game and but there's no doubt about it he was a tough guy he was a hardcore guy and the guys that worked for him respected him and liked him the thing that I learned from him was seeing how that transition took place and how he he the thing that got him to where he was to to get that responsibility

of creating SEAL Team 6, which is this elite counterterrorist part of the Navy. You know, obviously he was trusted and he was liked and he was respected. And so I saw that he had gotten himself to that level, which is very cool. I also saw, and I, again, this is a topic that comes up a lot. Our strengths are often our biggest weaknesses. And so this kind of cowboy mentality, this aggressive mentality that he had, it got him there. But once he got there, it doesn't seem like he was able to rein that back in. And that is something that I became cognizant of.

Because no doubt when I was a younger guy, when I was a young seal and then a young seal officer, I was definitely fairly cowboyish. and as I moved up the ranks, I recognized that I had to mature and I had to grow up and I had to do things definitely. I couldn't do the same things that I did when I was a young platoon guy as I could. I had to tighten it up when I became a young officer

and then I became a platoon commander and then I became a task unit commander and I had to grow up, you know, for lack of a better word. And looking back, I should have grown up even more, you know, but you don't see that at the time. So that's something that I learned from Mar Sinko, even though I never worked for him. And I met him a handful of times, you know,

but never spent any actual time with them. But I have also seen this exact same thing with business leaders, with CEOs, especially with CEOs that come into a company that is not doing well. and there's only one kind of person that can turn that company around. Somebody with a dynamic personality,

someone with a vision, someone that's going to kick down doors, somebody that's going to make things happen. And you see those guys go in there and they get that done. And they turn those companies around. And then the real test comes is can they transition

from being that cowboy to be in that company person, to be in that straight shooter, straight and narrow that takes the company then from survival to thrive. and some of them make it and some of them don't. And I look at Dick Morsenko as a cautionary tale to everybody that comes up through the ranks

and gets to that point where you need to take it to the next level and how you have to change. What got you there is not going to be what keeps you there. You have to change and you have to adapt and grow. And so I think that's important to recognize. and it's important to constantly be looking around for examples and saying, okay, I saw what happened there and try and push yourself forward. So that's my, I don't want to say my opinion because it's not really my opinion. Those are my thoughts on demo Dick Marsenko, the rogue warrior.

The other one is Henry Rollins. and if you don't know who Henry Rollins is, he was a young kid from the D.C. area who grew up in the punk rock scene in D.C., went to a military academy. And eventually, even though he was kind of just a kid, at some point a band called Black Flag, who was a incredible, band led by a guitarist named Greg Ginn. They asked Rollins, who was just a fan, who had jumped on the stage at some point and sang one of their songs, they said, hey, they had a falling out, or I forget what happened with their first singer, but the first singer wasn't singing anymore. If they needed a new singer, they asked Rollins to try out.

Rollins jumped on the opportunity and took that gig and ended up being the lead singer of the band Black Flag, who is a really pivotal band in American rock and roll. And I think he took, you know, Black Flag to a whole new level. And I've talked about this on Tim Ferriss and I'll talk about it again. But there was an album called Black Flag My War, which is an incredible album. And it's especially an incredible album. And if for those of you that Listen, for those of you young ones out there, the records used to come on a piece of vinyl, and there was two sides to it. And so this black flag album called My War had two sides to it. And the first side sounded fairly similar to what most of black flag sounded like prior to that, which is just sort of punk rock, fast beat, whatever.

Side two was this slowed down, heavy, dredging, powerful music and the whole side is like that and that that side of that album was on my record player when i was i don't know 13 or 14 years old for like a year i just all i listened to and i really related to it because it just was something that this heavy this introspective this this aggression and anger was something that i wouldn't when i heard it for the first time I was like, oh, that's what I think. That's what my mind is filled with. And this was sort of my, the next thing that came after Black Sabbath for me.

Because Black Sabbath was the first thing I said, okay, that's what I, that's heavy and that's dark. And I understand that. I relate to that. The happy music that I was hearing, I didn't understand that. I didn't relate to it. That heavy stuff, when I heard that, this dark stuff, I related to it. And I understood it and it fueled me. And so, Rollin,

Black Flag, My War, side two, definitely had a big impact on me. And then from there, eventually he was out of Black Flag, and he formed his own band. And they made an epic record, which is called Lifetime. Just again, this hit me at an age where, what was I? 16 and here comes this album called Lifetime that was very powerful very raw very hard and it just I can't imagine a better sound coming into my ears when I was 15 or 16 years old than this album Lifetime so myself and my buddies at the time we were listening to Rollins and again this was these were songs about power these were songs about as a matter of fact the cover of the

Lifetime album was two hands gripping the earth. It was, you know, this kind of this message of at least that's how I interpreted it. That's the thing you, I remember. I was a kid and I'm hearing this stuff and I'm overlaying what my thoughts of the world are on top of it. It sounded aggressive to me. It sounded tough to me. And that's what my mind was like at the time. And so I put what I wanted it to I made it what I wanted it to be and to me two hands holding the earth was a powerful symbol of I'm gonna I'm gonna take over the world I'm gonna control the world I'm gonna make things happen so we actually when I was a kid we actually followed Rollins around and we would you know he'd played this was in I'm not say this was like 88 or 89 but myself and my buddies

who we were all into Rollins and we went and probably saw them play 10 or 15 times on the Eastern seaboard maybe it wasn't 10 maybe it was 10 times and we you know this is back in the day this is this is you know he's playing in clubs that are the size of your living room you know you're and we'd help them on load their instruments

and we'd help them offload and we'd hang out with them afterwards and it was it was great it was cool and that was my experience and I was definitely I think that had a big impact on me. Another thing, I kind of mentioned this about that album Lifetime, in between the songs, you know,

if you look at vinyl records and there's a space in between the songs, and there's, you know, there's like a standard, I don't know what, you know, there's a standard of two millimeters, let's say. And when I first got that lifetime record, the space in

between the songs, you could see it was tiny. And that's because the one song would end and boom, the other song after moment of signs, boom, the next song would kick in. And that's what the album was like this intense, just driving, getting after it. So we would go to those shows and we would just go completely nuts and get our insane mosh pit destruction on. So out of that, you know, spawned this.

And the other thing was cool is, you know, Rollins was, you know, we were not into drinking. We were not under drugs and neither was Rollins. So he was this kind of, and, you know, we'd see Rollins doing pushups. before the shows, we say, oh, yeah, this guy's like us, you know, this, I relate to this guy, because I want to be strong, and I don't want to do drugs, and I'm staying clean, and he's staying clean, and so we had this good thing going. But again, this is my 15-year-old brain. Right.

And so what happens? So I took all that to mean that's the way life is. For instance, Rollins has a big tattoo on his. back that says search and destroy. Okay. I took that literally, you know, okay, this, I need to search and destroy. How do you do that? Okay, what is the most hardcore thing? What is the most physical thing? What is, how do you get control? How do you do? How do you be aggressive in the nth degree? You know how you do it? You be a commando. And so, so those, again, those weird, twisted interpretations of my mind said to me, okay, that means you need to be a commando.

And that's what I did. That's how I end. That's one of the, one of the, one, you know, one of the, I would say one of those factors that led me on the path that I'm, that I'm here today. So went through seal training and actually, interestingly, the first Lollapalooza tour, and we'd have to Google this and see when this was, but it was the first Lala Palluza and Rolla Palluzza and Rollins was playing and they played down in, somewhere in San Diego. Lollapalooza came and I went. And I didn't want to pay for it for whatever reason.

So I went backstage and I waited until I saw Rollins. I saw Rollins and I said, A. Rollins. And he said, hey. And you can see he kind of recognized me. I mean, he recognized me. Went over, said hi. And I said, hey, can you get me into this show? And I got a couple buddies with me.

And he said, it'd be easier to get you into Fort Knox. It was kind of weird because back in the day, we would sit there and hang out with them and help him load his van and walk right in. And it was just really cool to have that much interaction with somebody that you were into. I mean, you can't do that normally. And all of a sudden, there it was. Now he's in Lollapalooza. And even though he's on tour and he doesn't know anybody there, there's a guy there, me and I can't get in.

So it was, you know, it was cool. But it was definitely a sign to me that, that, that, things were a little different now. And he'd kind of made it, right? I guess he made it now. And he ended up having some pretty bigger, but he had some bigger records that did better than Lifetime. But the way it kind of continues,

the way this story continues is that Rollins was a guy when I was a kid that talked about Vietnam vets. And if you read any of his, you know, he used to write books and I'd read his books. and he would talk about Vietnam vets and how this guy taught him so much about discipline and then he talked of you know he had this tattoo this search and destroy

and in his books or in his shows he would talk about the violence and the fights and all these things and he even talked about like missions remain calm prepared to destroy that's from a song it's from a Henry Rollins song remain calm prepared to destroy so he he kind of had this

thing that I thought was cool when I was 14. And then I actually went and I did this stuff. You know, I actually went and did the stuff that he had talked about

and that he spent his career talking about. And so all of a sudden this connection, this sort of yeah, this connection that I had with him, all of a sudden it kind of faded because I looked at it from a different light as it was no longer me looking at someone thinking

this guy's done this cool stuff. It was actually starting to look at him thinking he didn't do this cool stuff. And now I think when I see him now, and it's weird, I think he's about 10 years older than me, maybe 12 years older than me. So I can kind of see, it's a little bit of a glimpse in the few, You know, because you see a guy that's certain years older than you and you know what he looked like when he was 25 and you know what he looked like when he was 35 and 45 and now he's probably 55 and I can see what he looks like and what he did look like. So I kind of, I see him now and he seems to be a result of that life that he ended up with, which is Hollywood and kind of famous and kind of being in movies and being a rock star. And it's, I don't have the same, like I said, connection that I did.

But like I said, when I was a kid, when I was 13 years old, when I was 14 years old, when I was 15 years old, I was definitely, I definitely took some things from him and applied him to my life. And I'd love to meet up with him. I know he lives up in L.A. and if at some point Hank if you're listening let me know let's uh let's link up we'll talk about the old times but you know I think that might might even be something to close with is when when you're dealing with people people are not who you want them to be your idols the people that you look up to the people that you think are cool they're not they're not that person you kill your idols.

Now, there's things that we can learn from people. But they aren't going to be what you think they are. They aren't going to be even what they should be. Those people, when you take them and you put them on a pedestal, they're not deserving of that pedestal. They're going to be faulted. They're going to be weak. They're going to be egotomaniacal.

They're going to be condescending. They're going to be, all those negative things to be lazy, they're going to be entitled, they're going to be short-sighted, they're not going to be perfect. Far from it. And that's fine. That's okay. You learn from their weaknesses.

And you learn from their strengths, of course. And you mimic them and you emulate them. But equally is important. You learn from their faults and you see what not to do. because the bottom line is you can't control other people. I know we spent time tonight talking about manipulation and influence, but the bottom line is you can't control them. You can't make people be what you want them to be.

The only person that you can control is you. you and that's what you've got to focus on focus on you focus on focus on focus on making yourself who you want to be faster smarter stronger stronger more humble less ego discipline your body so you can free your mind get up early and go get after it and be that person that you want to be. And that's not easy. And not everyone can do it. And I'm not here to tell everybody

that everybody can do it. But it can happen. And it does happen through one small decision at a time. And every one of those decisions important in building you. And that's all I've got for today. So to everyone out there,

there. Thanks for listening. Appreciate it. Thanks for subscribing. That's kind of how we know that people are listening. Thanks for reviewing when you get the chance. Let us know what you think and let the world know what you think. Spread the word. We want to keep doing these podcasts. So thanks. And most of all, to everyone out there, thank you for getting after it. This is Jocko. Until next time, out.