Jocko Podcast - Jocko Podcast 6: Napoleon, Aggression, Mind Control

Episode Date: January 20, 2016

Navy SEAL, Jocko Willink and Director, Echo Charles discuss winning tactics. Internet questions: Agression, Jiu Jitsu Academies, Character Judgement, and Mind Control. @jockowillink @echocharlesSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number six with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Time to get back to the books. Last time I read some letters. And today we're going back to the books. And actually, this one is kind of hard pressed or it's a stretch to call this a book. Today we're, you know, I've given some pretty, you know, the last one, hundred yards is a very rare piece of, piece of literature,

if you could even call it that. Same with battle leadership. That's pretty rare. Now, that one can be found on the internet. About Face was a pretty popular book. But this one, tonight,

we're going with something that many people have heard of, or at a minimum, you've heard of Napoleon, right? Sure. Yeah. But what's interesting about this, what almost makes it cheating from my perspective for me is that these are maxims. These are already parsed down and put into a format that's very easy to understand.

You know, the work has already been done. And I'll tell you, it is hard for me to find books or pieces of information to do this with. and part of the reason is it takes a it takes I'm looking for something very specific right and it's not you know there's so there's a lot of there's tons of great books about war and they are about war they're about what happened and how the war happened and how what what tactics were used and what unit moved where and how many people they killed and how many maneuvers they did. And so that's very interesting.

And there's definitely lessons to be learned from that. And there is knowledge, and there's knowledge inside of tactics. You know, the most common one is like if you talk about the flank, which is the most common tactic, is, you know, if you're assaulting a target,

you go straight on. And that's a frontal assault. But then what you want to do is you want to swing around to the outside and hit them from where they're protecting themselves. So that's a tactic that can be applied to, you know, anything. It can be applied to a debate. It can be applied to jujitsu. It can be applied to business situations where, you know, you want to hit your competition where they aren't expecting it. So that's a flank. So there is knowledge to be gained from tactics for sure. But what I am always more interested in

is the leadership and the human psychology, you know, and that's why I love battle battle leadership because that first chapter is battlefield psychology. And this is pre, you know, this is World War I. You know, there was no kind of foo, food, new age, hey, feelings and what are people? No, all that stuff didn't exist. And here's this guy talking about battlefield psychology. And, but that's what I'm always interested. And that's what I want to explore.

That's what I want to learn about. That's what I want to compare my experiences to. because and I've said this before leadership is the most challenging of all endeavors and and leading these human beings with all these variables is the most challenging and therefore the most rewarding so while the tactics are important and you and you can gain from them it's it's how the people react what they do where they go those are the things that that stand the test the time and that's always what I'm looking for. So, these kind of things are the things that allow you as a leader

of other people to look at those examples and learn from them and gain from them. And there will be little changes and little adjustments and you can see that there's changes over time but the basic principles no matter when you

can always learn from them. And it's the same thing with the tactics. Like, for instance, there was, you know, when we were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I did not fight in Afghanistan, but one of my good buddies that fought with me in Iraq, and, you know, we brought back a lot of tactics and learned a lot of lessons. And he said, after we went to Afghanistan, he said, that's the same thing. And people say, you know, it's not, it's a totally different war. And so he fought in both.

And he says, yeah, in Iraq, where we were in Ramadi, he goes in Ramadi, and in Iraq, it's streets and buildings. And, you know, you get the elevated positions on the buildings, and then you've got control over the streets. And he goes in, in Afghanistan, it's valleys and hills. And, you know, you get the elevated position on the hills. And it's pretty much the, you know, the same thing. Are there differences? Absolutely. You know, but I'm saying the basic principles that he learned, he was able to apply.

And again, not that I don't always keep an open mind that things can change and unexpected things will happen. But that's sort of where, you know, what I'm always looking for. So that's why there's a lot of war books that I love to read and read, but I don't take away the same types of lessons that I want to talk to people about. or that I think people want to talk to about it'd be a different program it would be a different program and maybe we should do a program that's that's aimed at you know military people that are that are concerned about tactics because that is definitely something that I that I kind of worship tactics you know I love tactics I love talking about tactics but but for the for normal people and and for military leaders learning about how people

react is to me kind of what's important and what I like to explore. Right, man. So interesting. A couple things about Napoleon. Everyone knows, you know, something about Napoleon. A couple cool facts about him, and this is going into this book here, which the book is actually called Roots of Strategy. It's got a bunch of different, bunch of different sections to it.

and it's different leaders, different historical leaders throughout time. And this section on Napoleon. Napoleon, going into the book here, Napoleon fought more battles than Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar combined. He is, beyond any doubt, the greatest of European soldiers. So, pretty good lead-in. We were talking about a guy with some knowledge. He astounded his opponents by the crushing rapidity of his battles.

He marched against the enemy and his plan of battle was a part of his plan of march. So he's a guy that used mobility and used the quickness and the pace to dictate how the battles were going to go. His tactical system or scheme of battle was based on a holding attack against the enemy's front to keep them occupied. A wide envelopment or turning movement on the enemy's rear with a small force to spread dismay and confusion. fusion in the defender's ranks and then the decisive blow. So that's what we just talked about. He was sort of a master of the flank. Hey, I'm going to do a good assault.

You're going to be paying attention to that. And then from the side or the rear or somewhere that you're not expecting, you're getting submitted. And that's what he did. Napoleon was the first great strategist of the Western world. His battles were the result of his strategical movements and were carefully calculated. Very, I would say that anyone that thinks of Napoleon thinks of him as a strategist and a great strategist. Now, this collection of his maxims was published in Paris in 1827 and almost immediately

was translated into German, English, Spanish, and Italian. Stonewall Jackson carried these maxims in his Haversack throughout his campaign. This little volume states Colonel Henderson, who is Jackson's biography, contains a fairly complete exposition in Napoleon's own words of the grand principles of war. And then the person that actually compiled the maxims. And this is actually this is a statement that is very soon. similar to what I started off talking about, you know, what I like to learn about. The art of war is susceptible of being considered under two titles, the one which rests entirely

on the knowledge and genius of the commander, the other on matters of detail. Now, they're going to break that down a little bit further. The first is the same for all time, for all peoples, whatever arms with which they fight. From this, it follows that the same principles have directed the great captains of all centuries. So that's what I like to read about. Those same principles that have directed the great captains of all centuries. Those basic principles, and a lot of those have to do with human nature. And then it goes on to say that the matters of detail, and what he's talking about matters of details,

he's talking about tactics. On the contrary, are subject to the influence of time, to the spirit of the people, and the character of armor. So, you know, that's when you change from having bow and arrows

to rifles, to machine guns, to whatever. And so there are drastic changes in those tactics. And that's why, while they interest me, and I always like to find a common thread in tactics and say, oh, that's the same thing that we do,

you know, that they did in World War I. We do that now. or whatever. You know, I'm always looking to find that thread, but sometimes it could be hard to find, and sometimes it doesn't exist to any great degree. Whereas the way people act, and the way human beings respond to combat situations,

it doesn't change as much. Yeah, you would think if you go deep enough or fundamental enough, that it's not surprising that it won't change because you're dealing with people in their needs and like almost on a biological level like psychologically a lot of times biologically you know preservation of life plays a big part

so yeah technology can advance even social stuff can advance but that those fundamental needs typically stay the same and you're right but if you think about this and we talked about this last time like with the World War I you know these basic needs for survival these men just threw them out the window. I mean, it's just absolutely crazy.

They disregarded that drive and just went over the top into hell and into machine gun fires. Does that kind of go along the lines with something that is still here in a big way where they kind of put their own personal needs, whether they, you know, their need to survive personally, they put the need for their mission

or their honor to survive. They put that in front of their need to survive personally. And doesn't that kind of translate even now? That's how like soldiers are. Yes. Yes. I mean, I guess if we say that that's a normal human trait, which I don't know if it is or not,

that I think it's something that gets learned. I don't think it's a inherent normal trait unless you say, look, people have an inherent trait to make their tribe, their family, survive, then maybe that's it. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That's exactly what I was going to say. So military culture, especially when you deal with the elite, where doing a good job, to put it lightly, doing a good job is very important. You would think that that culture cultivates that need to put the mission in front of my own personal stuff. So, and so deep into that that individual

that it does most of the time trump their need to personally survive. You know what? You're right. And that thread, actually we can go through all of history and find a thread of groups of people that sacrificed and put their, the mission or the group ahead of themselves. Right. Yes. Yes. I mean, like a Thermopylae with the 300 Spartans. I mean, that's a classic example.

Yeah. And even fought and died for their country. Yeah. And even people who aren't in the military, we understand that that's how, elite soldiers are. We understand that, oh yeah, that's an elite soldier, one who will put his life on the line for the mission, for the country.

We all understand that. And you use the term elite, but I will not use the term elite, because I've seen every soldier who wouldn't be considered elite. I've seen them all do that. Marines do that. And U.S. Army soldiers and you know the untrained reservist that doesn't really hasn't been through the kind of training that we have at all, but they will have that.

So it has nothing to do really with, which actually proves your point even more, is that it doesn't even have to do with your level of training or your so-called being elite. It has to do with your dedication to the mission and the people that are with you. Yeah. But yeah, I guess a better than, better word than elite would be, I guess just like a dedicated soldier or just a soldier in general. Yes. So back to the book here.

A plan, okay, now this is, now we're getting into the maxims. And I'm not, obviously didn't do all of them, but I picked out the ones that I kind of thought have the most talk about human nature. But at the same time, also talk about from a leadership perspective, planning, execution. If they are important and they are universal, then I put them in here. And this is kind of one that I just talked about with planning. plan of campaign should anticipate everything which the enemy can do and contain within itself the means of thwarting him. Plans of campaign may be infinitely modified according to the circumstances. This is exactly what we heard on battle leadership from Von Schell. So he just said, you know,

the plan should anticipate everything. But then he goes on to say plans of campaign may be infinitely modified according to the circumstances. The genius. of the commander, the quality of the troops, and the topography of the theater of war. So this is, again, a common thread that we hear all the time, and that is you've got to have adaptability. You've got to be, and one of the biggest hindrances to adaptability is ego, is when you saying, oh, you know what, my plan is awesome. My plan is the best, and I'm just going to ride my plan into the ground and take everyone

down with me because I don't have the humility to admit that my plan is the best. went wrong, to admit that the enemy did something I didn't expect, to admit that I have shortfalls with my troops or whatever the case may be, and say, you know what, I need to adapt. I'm going to do it now. Next one. All wars should be systematic. For every war should have an aim and be conducted in conformity with the principles and rules of the art.

War should be undertaken with forces corresponding to the magnitude of the obstacles that are to be anticipated. Now, what caught me about that one was recently I got asked a bunch of questions about the situation in Iraq and Syria. And one of the things people want to throw out there because it's a catchy buzzword or group of buzzwords. And that's, you know, boots on the ground. And, you know, I kept getting asked, well, how many boots on the ground do we need? how many troops do we need to put on the ground? And my answer was the same every time,

which is we put as many troops on the ground as it takes to win and to win decisively and without question. That's how you go to war. Now this is another little maxim, which I really like. At the commencement of a campaign, the question whether to advance or not requires careful deliberation. So before you go into war, you carefully deliberate.

And this is something that I've been talking about lately when people think that because I'm a soldier, because I'm a warrior, that I want to go to war and I want all my friends go to the war, which is just a ridiculous statement. If there's anybody that understands the impact of war, it's guys. that have been to war. So this careful deliberation before you commence a campaign is exactly what should be done. And then it goes on to say. But when you have once undertaken the offensive,

it should be maintained to the last extremity. Right? That's commitment. That is commitment. Now, I will say this, even on that, and that's a beautiful thing, you should maintain to the last extremity.

That's an extreme statement. And I would tell you that you've got to balance that. And you want to maintain that. But what I just said is that, you know, if your plan isn't working, you've got to put your ego in check and figure out a new plan. So, yeah, you want to maintain it to the last extremity. But just short of the last extremity is, okay, do an ego check and make sure you've got a good plan going. A retreat, however skillful the maneuvers may be, will always.

produce an injurious moral effect on the army since by losing chances of success yourself, you throw them into the hands of the enemy. Besides, retreats cost far more both in men and material than the most bloody engagements with this difference that in battle the enemy loses nearly much as you while in a retreat, the loss is all on your side. again, a common thread that we talk about with Von Schell, with Hackworth, and that is being on the offensive is good. Being on the offensive is always better than being on the defensive. This is another, I hope I don't end up saying this for every one of these maxims.

But these are, you know, and it's not surprising that you do say this before each one of these maxims. you go, wow, this is an impactful and this is important. I've heard this before. This is another way of reinstating the same topic that we say all the time. A general should say to himself many times a day, if the hostile army were to make its appearance in front on my right or on my left, what should I do? And if he is embarrassed, his arrangements are bad, there is something wrong. He must rectify his mistake.

So this is the humility of constantly asking yourself, okay, if I got hit from the flank right now, what would I do? How would I handle it? Am I ready for that? If I'm not ready for it, how do I make that change? So constantly assessing yourself, seeing where you're at, seeing how you're doing, that's a common thread. Not just for war, but for being a man and being a human, being a woman, being a person that's trying to be successful. are you looking around and you know things are I'm I'm always most nervous when things are going well when things are going well I'm always thinking okay what when is the bad thing going to come and hit me

you know how do I prepare for that how do I watch out for it how do I flank that thing before it happens to yeah a lot of times people will get in though in a way revel in the success right and they'll get used to it it'll get good to them they'll get used to it and then yeah one something does go bad or just different even a lot of time Decided. Yeah, they're just so into that success and immersing themselves in that success then. Yeah, they don't know what to do. I was, uh, we, my first deployment to Iraq, we were doing assaults and capturing bad guys. And we got a guy and then we went and got another guy right, right on, right on top of them. We interrogated that guy. We went to go. We broke down some cell. And my commanding officer at the time, he came to me, he said, hey, John. Those you know, I think it was four missions in a row within 24 hour period and He said hey those operations that that was awesome awesome work you know tell your platoon they did a great job Getting the information going back out there a quick planning cycle

It was just fantastic. You know those are very admirable and I just looked at him. I said Give us 24 hours and we'll screw it up and I just you know want to set expectations that's how that's how that's how to avoid what you were talking about, to avoid being like, that's right. You know, I said, no, hey, you know what, sir? Give us 24 hours and we'll screw it up. Right. Do you ever fear, like, in that particular case

that he could look at it as, dang, are you being negative? Because obviously, you're not, given what you're saying, you're not being negative. You're checking yourself the whole time. But do you fear that either your commanding officer or anyone would take that as, dang, this guy is a pass-in-in-master or something like that? No, I had a great relationship with all my commanding as officers. You know, I always say that's my responsibility is to have a great relationship with these guys.

And so he knew that I was just being humble and making sure that we're getting cocky, even though he was trying to fire me up. And, you know, he's probably trying to do that because everyone was kind of burned out. I mean, from staying awake for a long period of time and doing a bunch of ops. And he was just trying to, you know, give some compliments. And I just said, hey, sir, you know, let's not get crazy here. Yeah, yeah. Long deployment ahead of us still.

So you got to be careful of that. To operate upon lines remote from each other and without communications between them is a fault which ordinarily occasions a second. The detached column has orders only for the first day. Its operations for the second day may depend on what has happened to the main body. Thus, according to circumstances,

the column wastes its time in waiting for orders or it acts randomly. So what that means is you've got multiple elements out there and you've got the main element and whoever breaks off from that main element, they might know what to do the first day, but what do they do the second day? And this is just going into classic decentralized command

because in reality, in today's world, this rarely happens where we lose total communications. And in the business world, I mean, I'm a text away. You can literally talk to me instantaneously. But there's times in combat and in the business world and in life where instantaneously isn't fast enough. You know, it is not fast enough. When we talked about this with decentralized command, if, you know, you get ambushed and you don't know what you're supposed to do as a commander when you get ambushed, you don't have a plan, you don't have an overall strategy, then what are you going to do? call back to hire our headquarters and saying, hey, Jocko, we're getting ambushed right now.

What do you want me to do? No, I've, you got to be out there in the field with the, with the commander's intent that you know what's, what you're supposed to do. And you know that if you get ambushed, here's what you're going to do. You're going to break contact or you're going to, you know, flank the enemy or whatever the case may be, but you're going to know what to do. In a, in a business environment, it's the same thing. There's times where instant communication isn't fast enough.

I actually see this when we work with like sales people. And, you know, there'll be some hierarchy of, of adjusting product pricing. And, you know, a client will come in or a customer will come in. And if that person, if that frontline salesperson doesn't have the ability to make a pricing decision on the spot and say, you know what, sir, I see you, you know, you've shopped us around. And this is the deal you've got over there. I can do it here. I can take care of you. We can beat that price.

If he can't do that, he's going to lose. If he goes, let me check with my manager. Sure, he could hang on to him, but there's a chance he's going to lose him. So sometimes instantaneous

isn't fast enough. You know, it's got to be quicker. It's got to be able to happen with no communications. And that's what this is referring to. It ought, it ought then to be adopted as a principle

that the columns of an army should always be kept united so that when the enemy, me cannot thrust themselves between them. This is something that I always preached to my seal leadership. And that is that separating your forces, and sometimes you do have to do it. And it's a completely acceptable tactic. But it's always better to be unified.

It's always better to be unified. It's always better to be close enough that you can, in fact, you can be separate, but you always need to be close enough to each other to support each other. So if you know, you shouldn't be getting, you and your element shouldn't be getting any further away from me and my element, then we could be able to support you. So what's the range of my guns? What's the accurate range of my guns? You know, if I can shoot three or 400, 500 meters, you know, if you have eight guys and I have eight guys and now we're getting further than that apart, that means I really can't support you. So now we're alone.

And that's not how you want to be. So again, there's times where people have to take calculated risks, but we always, we always, would say, you know, keep that, keep together. Stay together as much as you can. And, and again, this is a, I'm talking tactics now. This is like for people that are in the military that are listening to this podcast, there's something to keep in the back of your mind. Stay where you can cover and move.

Stay where you can mutually support one another. They should move, oh, when for any reason this maxim is departed from, the detached core should be independent in their operations. They should move towards a fixed point at which they are to unite. They should march without hesitation and without new orders and should be exposed as little as possible to the danger of being attacked separately. This to me goes into contingencies where if we do get separated, you've got to know, okay, if I get separated and it's been an hour,

I'm going to this fixed point and we're going to make it happen. Yeah. Like when you're at the mall. I was just going to say, when you've got a family, this is something you actually have to legit. it come up with okay if we get separated here's we're gonna meet and here's what time and by the way if we don't make that muster for whatever reason the next one will be here and so you gotta have a little contingency planning with the fam make sure it's all good what does muster mean uh muster means

bring everyone together and yeah counts how many people you have i'm gonna say that next time yeah say muster is at so-and-so next one a well-established maximum of war is not to do anything what your enemy wishes and for the single reason that he does so wish. Okay, that is pretty self-explanatory. Don't do anything that your enemy wants you to do. You should therefore avoid a field of battle which he is reconnoitered and studied. You should still, you should be still more careful to avoid one which he has fortified and where he has entrenched himself. A corollary of this principle is never to attack in front a position which admits of being turned. So one of the, one of the biggest pieces that I take away from this and this is you should

still be more careful to avoid one which he has fortified and where he has entrenched himself. I used to give my guys warnings about this, about these fixed positions. that are entrenched and I wasn't talking about combat. You know what I was talking about? I was talking about debates. I was talking about debates because you, there's guys in the SEAL teams that would lure you into some kind of a debate about, let's say, the strategy that the SEAL teams

were using it, the strategy, the way things that they, the way they thought things should be done. and the thing is these guys would sit there and have this argument with amongst themselves and and with other people and so they would they would have these kind of fortified positions on them and you roll into it and you're like you've got your experience but you're not ready for a debate on it you're not ready for these fortified positions that they're going to throw at you so don't engage in these battles and you know it's like uh i was doing sam harrison podcast, you know, and I went up there and there was some things that I thought, well, you know,

he might ask me about some of these philosophical opinions on things. And of course, I mean, I was ready to have a discussion, but what I wasn't ready to do was like stand my ground on the topic of free will with Sam Harris, a guy that's literally written an entire book, which is called free will. And he has his own. So, for me to engage with him, it's an entrenched position. It's something that I'm not going to, I'm not going to win. And in fact, you know, it's not, it's not like Sam Harris is a pretty mellow guy. It's not like it goes, well, you're not getting an argument, but I wasn't even going to make any practical points, you know? And so I'm just always very cautious. And again, in the business world,

you get people that understand some part of their business so well. You have to be very careful. when you have to plan when you're going to engage with them because otherwise you're going to get just, you know, destroyed. Yeah, Sam Harris's position on free will is pretty fortified, I would say. Yeah, and it's, and the scary thing is, is that you can actually be right about something, but if you're going against someone that's got a fortified position, you can still lose the argument and look stupid.

Not that there's anything wrong with looking stupid, but you know you want to pick your battles. I mean, right. Yeah. Not that Sam Harris isn't right or anything like that. Yeah. You're just saying in general. Yeah, no.

No, I definitely wasn't talking specifically about Sam Harris. That's just a great example. Because, again, it's a guy that's literally written a book called free will. So if he wants to talk about it and I want to say, no, I don't agree with you, he's just ready for that. You know, just like if he said, you know what, hey, let's train Jiu-Jitsu. I'm ready for that. I've been in every position. That's going to happen in Jiu-Jitsu.

I've been in there a thousand more times than him. Yeah. Because I've been training for a really long time. So if we have that discussion about free will, it's going to be the same thing. I'm just not going to bring anything to the table. Is that kind of like the guys who are really into conspiracy theories, you know, and if they present it to you, they're going to have all this research and websites and documentaries that they went to in your, you know.

Yeah. Even if your facts are, like, stronger, they have so many other weapons and they're ready for that, war. They're retrenched and fortified, like how you're saying. Exactly right. Yeah. That's a hard war to win. Yeah. Because I'm not going to go, like we've talked about before, I'm not going to go and dig through the interwebs and watch video upon video about just to fight that war. Just to fight this war. It's not even necessarily to prove anything right or why. It's just, you've got to just to fight and win that war. Yeah. The passage from the defensive to the offensive is one of the most delicate operations of war.

and I actually have a note of what I think is the most difficult operation of war. And that is linking up under fire. And again, you know what? Now I'm talking tactically to people that are listening to the show that are currently serving in the military or the police. Linking up with other units, other friendly units under fire is one of the most difficult things to do because there's so much confusion, people are shooting. you're trying to bring friendly units together. There can be bad guys in between you.

And obviously if there's bad guys in between you and the other good guys and you have to shoot at the bad guys, that means you're shooting at good guys too. Your bullets can hit them. So it's a very, very, very challenging thing to do. So be careful when it comes time to link up under fire. And you know what I think of when I think of this, I think of when you see companies merge,

it's they're you know they're they're moving together and there's just it's very challenging there's confusion there's a disorder there's a there's a merging of the chain of commands of two different groups so it's it's very challenging and so anybody that's going into some kind of a merger scenario you've got to recognize out of the gate that this is one of the most hardest military operations and one of the hardest business operations to do. So you've got to be aggressive with it. You've got to plan it. You've got to be clear about it.

You've got to do it in a simple way. Don't think that you're just going to merge two companies together and it's going to be all good. It's a very challenging event to participate in. It is a violation of correct principles to cause cores to act separately without communication with each other in the face of a concentrated arm. me with easy communications. This is the same theme, this idea that you want to stay together. You want to work together.

You want to, and I'll fill this word out there in case people didn't catch it the first time I said it, the word mutually support, or the words mutually support. You want to mutually support each other. Now, what we find in the business world is you get different elements inside of a company that do not work together. They don't communicate with each other. And it's the same thing as being out on the battlefield and you got your platoon and I got my platoon

and if we're not talking, how are we helping each other? We're not. And if you try and hit the enemy and the enemy's bigger and stronger than you are alone, well, he's going to beat you. And then if I try and later, even if it's an hour later,

I try and hit him. Well, guess what? He's bigger and stronger than you and he's bigger and strong than me, he's going to beat me. We have to join together and work together. It's so obvious. I know it's obvious. And you know what?

You'd think it'd be obvious to people on the battlefield. And yet Napoleon himself felt the need to write that down as a maximum because people don't do it. And Laif and I, in our book, we have the law of combat called cover and move. And that's what it is. It's about mutual support. It's about working together. It's about teamwork. And it's about not having silos in your organization where one,

person just is going to be on their own or one elements on their own or another elements on their own. Are you talking about like just structurally where that's how you kind of run the business or are you talking about where they don't communicate because I don't really like that guy? It's both those. Oh, okay. Now what will structurally, I mean, you have to have things structurally. There will be separate elements structurally in the military. I mean, in the military, there's, you know, there's artillery. That's a separate element. There's, you know, logistics. That's. That's a separate element. You've got, then you've got the infantry companies.

And there'll be separate infantry companies, but they're all separate. But they have to work together. They have to mutually support. They have to communicate. They fail to do that. Well, in a business, you've got the same thing. You've got a sales branch. You've got an operational branch.

You've got an administrative branch. You've got a marketing branch. And all those branches, they have to work together too. Right. Yeah. So, on a personal level, let's say, you know, I don't like, Jenny from HR. I can't stand Jenny from HR.

Yeah, yeah. So we're not going to talk to her. We don't need her. We're just going to continue without her kind of attitude. Yes, that's a classic example. If anyone decides that for personal reasons or whatever, they're not going to work with someone else, that's exactly what I'm talking about. And it does happen in, it happens so often in businesses.

It's ridiculous. And it happens in the military too. It happens in seal-platoons. It happens in inter-services. And that's just a huge obstacle to overcome. And like I said, that's why Napoleon Bonaparte himself put it in his maxims. Another one. One battalion sometimes decides the issue of the day.

So which battalion is that going to be? We don't know. Which element is going to hit that critical situation? This to me is bringing it back to, you know, being prepared and giving, you know, making your teams strong, all of them, balancing them. Because one battalion or one element or one team or maybe even one person can decide the issue of the day. So balance is very important. I just couldn't help just going tactical with Napoleon on some of these. I really couldn't.

It's just great stuff. I understand. It should be adopted as a principle never to allow intervals through which the enemy can penetrate between the different cores forming the line of battle unless you have laid a snare into which it is your object to draw him. This is very simple for people that are in the military to understand and I just kind of talked about it. If you and I are the good guys and we have guns, just you and me, and we allow a bad guy to get in between. between you and me and he has a gun. Now, what is that? Do you understand what that does? If I want to shoot the guy and I miss by a quarter of an inch, who does it hit? Right. Potentially me. It hits you. Yeah. It hits you because it's Murphy's Law. Not even, potentially, it will hit you. It's Murphy's Law. So you want to always, again, this goes back to, you know, unity of command and having your elements working together and not allowing other elements to penetrate in between. your forces. Interesting how he added unless it's to snare him, like, unless that's like

you're baiting them into a trap kind of thing. That's interesting how he added that specifically. Like, that's kind of a dope little thing to do. Yeah, it is. I don't know if Napoleon would have said it was a dope little thing to do, but it kind of is, though, that's the thing. And this is the next one. Same theme. The camps of the same army. should always be so placed as to be able to sustain each other. Right? You always have to be able to mutually support. Mutually support.

As you would say, that is important. A good general, good officers, commissioned and non-commissioned, good organization, good instruction, and strict discipline make good troops independently of the cause for which they are fighting independently of the cause for which they are fighting a good general good officers commissioned and non-commissioned good organization good instruction and strict discipline make good troops independent of the cause for which they are fighting so you can actually just have a incredibly strong force that can operate at a high level regardless of the cause that they're fighting for just because they have those things.

Yeah, like kind of what I've told you before, where if you, you know, you were trained in discipline, trained in all these things all the way down to just, okay, for example, if you were trained in, by whatever means, you're trained to show up on time every single time, where, you know, never be late. Yes. To the point where being late could very well be the end of the world for you.

Like, train that hard in never being late. That's going to kick, for a certain situation. Like you're in the military, right? So you can never be late in the military. So now when you get out, when you show up for work, when you show up for drinks with your friend, chances are you're never going to be late. Of course. And that goes for, you know, the skills, the discipline and everything else you're trained in.

Yeah. The first quality, and this is, now we're just going to get after it. The first quality of a soldier is constancy in enduring fatigue and hardship. Courage is only the second. So the first quality of a soldier is constancy in enduring fatigue and hardship. This is Napoleon Bonaparte saying that the most important thing, the most important quality of a soldier is that they can endure fatigue and hardship. Courage is only second.

Poverty, privation, and want are the school of the good soldier. So now, when you look at any of the elite military training schools that those get, that people get put through, well, what is it about? It's about poverty, privation, and want. You know, it's about being hungry, cold, tired, miserable. That's what they do. You know, privation. I looked that word up, actually. A state in which things that are essential for human well-being are lacking.

And that's what they do. And, you know, for me, you know, I was talking about like, you know, I don't sleep a lot and wake up early. That's one of those things that it was pretty natural to me. Luckily, there's some biological. genetic reason or whatever but that was very helpful to me very helpful for me to not have to sleep a lot

and being able to suffer through that well was beneficial and you know there's a lot of guys that have that talent and people that don't have that talent have a rough time as you know as warriors in a real sense you should by all means

encourage the soldiers to continue in the service. This you can easily do by testifying great esteem for old soldiers. They do that very well in the military. You know, the older, more experienced veteran soldiers get a lot of respect. The pay should also be increased in proportion to the years in service. There was a great injustice in having no higher pay to a veteran than to a recruit. So that's good. Now, when I read this, this didn't particularly strike me as an important maxim to bring up,

but it reminded me of a story that always stuck with me. And so I was over in Ramadi, and I was working with a battalion called the First of the 506, Banda Brothers, Red Curry, just unbelievably awesome and heroic soldiers. And I went over there for a meeting with the commander of the battalion. And I showed up to the meeting early. Of course, I was meeting him in his office. And this guy was just an incredible leader and an incredible soldier and really an incredible man that I could not have any more respect for. and you know I'm not saying his name right now because I don't want to interrupt his privacy in his world

you know I don't know if he wants to have his name set on a podcast you know and we talk about him in the book and I don't put his name in there either and again this is out of respect for people's privacy and also out of you know security reasons you know he doesn't want to have the insurgents and terrorists of the world knowing that he was this guy so but I will tell you this the guy was just a fantastic And so I went to this meeting with him. There's just a one-on-one meeting. I forget what we were talking about But I showed up early and he's in there and I can hear him. You know, he's kind of talking to a soldier. I can't hear what he's saying and there's just a soldier and what's interesting about this is these the army seeing the seal teams when you go when you join a seal platoon for two years or whatever how however long it's going to be you stay in that seal platoon you do a workup cycle and then you go out on deployment and and the army does a little bit differently. The army,

you could be three months into a year-long deployment to Iraq and they will just leave. They'll be their time. Their time in the army is up and they'll go home. And then some new guy will show up and they'll be in the middle of deployment. And that's how they do it. The SEAL teams doesn't really do that.

You know, you kind of stick together for an entire straight six or seven month deployment. So I show up to this meeting. with the battalion commander and the soldier that was in before me walks out and The colonel I sat down. I said hey sir, how you doing good to see you? He's like hey good to see you frog man And he said you know that that right there's a soldier's getting out of the army and I said oh It's interesting how you guys do that and he said yeah and he and I said You know what do you say to these guys when they're getting out of the army and it's the middle of the deployment and

and he looked at me and he said, you know, when I deal with a soldier that's getting out of the army, he said a lot of people will say, you can't leave us now, you know, you got to stick it out with us, you got to stay here, we need you. And he said, when I deal with a soldier that's getting out of the army, I look at them and I shake their hands and I say thank you for, your service. And that to me was just awesome. To have a totally different attitude.

Because the SEAL teams is like that as well. If someone's going to get out of the SEAL teams, they're not going to be on the middle deployment. But when you get back, they're, oh, yeah, I'm getting out. And everyone says, oh, you're a quitter, blah, blah, blah. And it's just a different attitude. And what does that tell you about your community when you say, hey, you know what, I'm going to move on, I'm going to take care of my family.

I got to, you know, I got whatever, going to. on in my life and I'm going to get out of the seal teams and people are like oh you're a quitter and that's normal and they do that in every branch it's not just the seal teams and here was this guy and his attitude was he's going to say thank you for your service appreciate everything you've done

and I wish you the best luck that guy is more willing to change his mind because he's like wow I'm working for an incredible leader the army's awesome right and that that story always stuck with me about about how to treat people

about how to treat people. This is a guy that put his life on the line for months on end. And all he did was just say, thank you for your service. That's a leader right there. Next one. It is not by harangues

at the moment of engaging. Soldiers are rendered brave. Veterans hardly listen to them and recruits forget them at the first discharge of a canon. If speeches and arguments aren't any time useful, it is during the course of the campaign by counteracting false reports and causes of discontent, maintaining proper spirit in the camp and furnishing subjects of conversations in Bivouac's. These several objects may be attained by the

printed orders of the day. And so this is, again, as a leader, in a leadership position, this he's basically saying look at the moment of combat all you're yelling and screaming and trying to motivate people is too late the veterans like the veterans aren't going to listen to you and the recruits once the canning goes off they're not hearing you either so your main focus needs to be you know during the the non-firefight scenarios that's when you get people with the mindset that's going to drive them through these bad situations if you're trying to do this trying to encourage people during the during the firefight you're late theme of the night nothing is more important in war than unity in command when therefore you are carrying on hostilities against a single power only

you should have but one army acting on one line and led by one commander does that even need explanation not really unity of command there are certain things in war

of which the commander alone comprehends the importance. Nothing but his superior firmness and ability can subdue and surmount all difficulties. This is the burden of command. This is recognizing when you're in a command position, when you're in a leadership position, there are some things that are yours alone. And you have to drive from the top.

And I talk all the time about leadership being at every level and how the lowest ranking guy is. a leader and the person above him is leader all the way through the whole chain of command. But this statement, which I agree with, as much as I know that leadership throughout the chain of command is infinitely important, it is important as a leader to understand that there's some things that you and you alone are going to understand and it's your responsibility to ensure that that piece of the battle is handled correctly. This one's a little bit long.

I'm going to read it anyways. To authorize generals and officers to lay down their arms by virtue of a special capitulation under any other circumstances than when they constitute the garrison of a fortified place would unquestionably be attended with dangerous consequences. To open this door to cowards to men wanting an energy or even misguided brave men is to destroy the military spirit of a nation from Napoleon. There can be no surrender. An extraordinary situation requires extraordinary resolution.

Hmm. Note taken. Underlined in red. An extraordinary situation requires extraordinary resolution. How many things apparently impossible have nevertheless been performed by resolute men who had no alternative but death. Strong words.

Very strong words. And we could go throughout military history and find case upon case where I would tell you, yes, absolutely that commander made a wise decision to surrender. And, you know, there are situations where that happens. But I think the main point of this

is that to have that out there to have that as a thing right right is not smart is not smart and you know going in with mhmai fighters and telling them like listen if you get caught in submission don't tap let it break if you get put to choke go to sleep just there's no submission you're not tapping now i've said that to guys and i've had some guys get out of some crazy submissions that they should have tapped and maybe they got a little bit injured but they got out and I've also had guys get caught in like some devastating submissions and been like oh you know what okay I'm gonna tap because but the fact that that attitude wasn't out there right okay that like like okay you know what if you get caught

you know what just tap I mean you're not going to say to a fighter okay look if you get caught in a bad arm lock you know just tap no no if you're getting out in a bad arm lock get out of it yeah in competition Let it break. Like an MMA fight. Yeah. I mean, obviously not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

No, yeah. In training, sorry, folks. If you're in training, tap early and tapped off. Yeah. Okay, so when you say having that be a thing that's out there,

meaning there's almost, I don't want to say a shame, but almost like etiquette is to not surrender. That's etiquette. And it's so much of etiquette where it's here, you don't surrender.

Here it is. It's in plain English, don't surrender. Right, right. And it's not even etiquette. There's a better, a word for it. There's a word, I don't know what it is, but it's not etiquette. It's, it's our ethos. Right. Right. That's what it is. It's our ethos is do not surrender. Right. So when someone does

surrender, when it's a good move, how you say, like every once in a while there is, it's like, man, there was literally no other option that could be conceived. Yeah, yeah. But to not have it out there, you know that that commander took it to the nth degree and said, you know what? All of my man are going to die for no reason now if I continue on with us. So therefore, we are going to surrender and hopefully we'll come back to fight another day. Yeah. Otherwise, yeah, it's, if, you know, if, I don't know, someone even has this much mental weakness going in, he could get, and that could kick in at a whole other time. Yes.

And now he's under this certain kind of mindset that, man, I could look for the easiest way out right here. You're not real tired. Or, man, my shoulder got hurt. on that last one. Yeah. So maybe I'll just, you know, but if he's in that mindset that don't give up,

you just can't surrender, he won't even consider that. That wouldn't even enter his mind. That's what I'm talking about. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Such conduct, such conduct ought to be prescribed, pronounced, infamous,

and punishable with death. The generals, officers, and soldiers who in battle have saved their lives by capitulating ought to be decimated. He who commands the arms to be surrendered, and those who obey him are alike traitors

and deserve capital punishment. They're saying if you give up, you should... You give up, you die. That's exactly what they're saying. That's exactly what they're saying. Now we're going to get in a little bit of something that we now refer to as extreme ownership. A general in chief

cannot exonerate himself from responsibility for his faults by pleading an order of his sovereign or the minister when the individual from whom it proceeds is at a distance from the field of operations and but partially or not at all acquainted with the actual conditions of things. So if I tell you to do something and it doesn't go well for you, you're out in the field and I told you, hey, charge this machine gun nest and you do it and everyone dies and you come back and say, hey, it wasn't my fault, it was Jocko's fault. The point is here, no.

Doesn't work that way. Does not work that way. Hence, it follows that every general and chief who undertakes to execute a plan, which he knows to be bad is culpable. So, if I tell you to go attack that machine gun nest and you know it's a bad plan and you execute it anyways, your fault. That's kind of like, I mean, that whole idea is, you take responsibility for your direct actions, right?

So it's kind of like, if you do the opposite of that, it's like, okay, I, you know, I was speeding. I got caught, right? I got speeding. I got a ticket. Is that my fault? Because, yes, it's my fault. But in a way, if I don't want to exercise with this concept, in a way, it's my parents' fault for having me. Or maybe not teaching me the value of following traffic laws.

I'm not going to have this discussion with you. That's just completely ridiculous. It's the same thing, though. You can't blame your parents for your speeding at GoCharles. That's what I'm saying. I'm not going to let you do that. That's the point. That's the point.

And the point here is that if you're doing something, this is even more of an extreme point. This is if your parents tell you to speed and you go out and get caught speeding and pulled over, you go, hey, my parents tell me to speed. Right. Even more direct. That's what I'm saying is you knew it was wrong. You knew you shouldn't be doing it. And what Napoleon is saying is, it's your fault. You're culpable.

Gotcha. Period. Period. Would you suggest? Let's say... Period. You knew it was wrong. Would a better plan of action be expressed that you know that the mission or whatever is wrong?

Yeah, you should be like, hey, I'm not doing this. Oh, in fact, he goes on. He should communicate his reasons, insist on a change of plan, and finally resign his commission, rather than become the instrument of his army's ruin. This is probably the most powerful thing we're going to talk about tonight. I'm going to read it again. A general and chief cannot exonerate himself from responsibility for his faults by pleading an order of his sovereign or the minister. When the individual from whom it proceeds is at a distance from the field of operations,

and but partially or not at all acquainted with the actual condition of things. So this is an order that's coming on high from somebody that doesn't know. Hence it follows that every general and chief who undertake, to execute a plan which he knows to be bad is culpable. He should communicate his reasons, insist on a change of plan, and finally resign his commission. So quit his job rather than become an instrument of his army's ruin.

Every general in chief who in consequence of orders from his superiors gives battle with the certainty of defeat is equally culpable. This is ownership. This is, hey, I got told to do something. I don't agree with it. Hey, boss, you got to listen to me here. This is not the way we need to execute this. Here's a better plan.

Here's another plan. Here's an alternative. Because if you give battle with the certainty of defeat, you're culpable, regardless of who told you to do what. Individual responsibility. And this is especially important to have this concept coming from somebody that was as egotistical. and expected so much discipline from his troops

to have Napoleon himself saying this. Like, if it's a bad order, you shouldn't do it. This is Napoleon saying this. So that's how important it is to have this culture in your organization, to make sure that everybody knows, regardless of what you get told, you've got to do the right thing. And it's everyone's individual responsibility

to take extreme ownership of everything. that's happening and not just say, you know what, I'm going to point my finger up the chain of command. Blame them when something goes wrong. I've talked about this before. You know how many times I blame my bosses for things that went wrong? Zero. Never blame my bosses.

How could it ever be their fault? I was in charge. And if they told me to do something that was stupid, I would tell them, look, I'm not doing that. Here's why. Let's find a better way. The first qualification of a general and chief is to possess a cool. head so that things may appear to him in their true proportions and as they really are. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful statement. Possess a cool head so that things may appear to him

in their true proportions and as they really are. He should not suffer himself to be unduly affected by good or bad news. The impressions which are made upon his mind successively or simultaneously in the course of a day should be so classified in his memory that each shall occupy its proper place. For sound reasoning and judgment result from first examining each of these varied impressions by itself and then comparing them all with one another. So you're going to hear all these things, all these different impressions you're going to get, rumors, gossip, reports. Probably heard this the first report in war is always wrong.

You can hear all that stuff and you got to detach from it. You can't get emotional. You got to categorize them. And then once you hear them all, you can look at them and assess them all in their own light. There are some men who, from their physical and moral constitution, deck everything in the colors of imagination. With whatever knowledge, talents, courage, or other good qualities, these men, be endowed, nature has not fitted them for the command of armies and the direction of the

great operations of war. So anybody that gets emotional, that hears something and lets it cloud their decisions, that gets too close to problems, they're not cut out to lead in war. And I 100% agree with that. And they're not cut out to lead in any situation. To be familiar with the geography and topography of the country, to be skillful in making reconnaissance, to be attentive to the dispatch of orders, to be capable of exhibiting with simplicity the most complicated movements of an army. These are qualifications that should distinguish the officer called to the station of chief of staff. And my favorite of those is to be capable of exhibiting with simplicity the most complicated movements of the army. I talk about this all the time.

it's one of our laws of combat. It's a chapter and extreme ownership that we wrote about in simplicity. And a lot of times we talk about giving clear, concise orders, simple, clear, and concise orders. So that's another mark of someone that can lead well is someone that can take complex ideas,

simplify them, and communicate them in a simple manner. Is that like, you know, how in jiu-jitsu, you'll, like, people name, moves. Yes. They'll give moves name,

but each move will have like, you know, four, five, six, ten parts to that move, details that are important to make the moves.

You name it one move. You learn that whole move. So it takes these complex orders or moves and simplifies it. Yes. Especially when you're communicating, you know,

do this. Yes. And there are, I mean, there are definitely our coaches that can take complex moves and break them down very simply.

and that is that is what makes a good instructor right that is what makes a good instructor is someone that can explain to you exactly what you do with your weight exactly where you put your forearm exactly and then and then explain to you that you know what this might be a little bit different from you for you because you're a different human but here's exactly what I do and here's the effect that I'm looking for when I do it very simple that's what we're looking for the first principle of a general in chief is to calculate what he must do, to see if he has all the means to surmount the obstacles with which the enemy can oppose him, and when he has made his decision to do everything to overcome them. Again, that's to me is about commitment. Next, war is composed

of nothing but accidents. And although holding to general principles, a general should never lose sight of everything to enable him to profit from these accidents. That is the mark of a genius. In war, there is but one favorable moment. The great art is to seize it. It's a business, obviously. Jiu-jitsu, obviously, fighting, obviously. That's just, there's moments.

There's opportunity. There's opportunity. and when you when you have that opportunity the art is to seize it very simply defensive war does not exclude attacking just as offensive war does not exclude

defending although its aim may be to force the frontier and invade the enemy's country I just think it's important to not only think about hey you should be attacking and defending at the same time and defending and attacking at the same time.

But also, we got to remember the contradiction in the fact that he's a guy that talks about offense, offense, offense, but even he has to balance that with defense. Even Napoleon has to balance things. And I'm going to do the last one, a doubtful general who acts without principles and without plan, even though he lead, even though he lead an army numerically,

superior to that of the enemy, almost always finds himself inferior to the latter on the field of battle. Fumblings, the middle course, lose all in war. And I just like the fact that he's talking about principled leadership. And I would say that principled leadership, not just in a leadership position, but as a person. What are your principles as a person? And if you have principles as a human and you stand by those principles, you're going to be successful. You're going to win. Whereas if you take the middle course and you waver or you just don't have principles on which to stand, then you fall apart.

and I think that everybody should look to define what their principles are. Yeah. Actually define them. I can tell you that I would love to tell you that when I was, you know, 19 years old, I sat down and wrote down Jocco's principles of life. I didn't do that. I wish I would have. And I can tell you that as I grew up in the SEAL teams,

there I probably added principles. And I added some bad ones and I added some good ones. And I think that those principles, though, when you get to a point where you know that your principles are solid. And honestly, to me, the best or the biggest thing I've done to define the principles that I live by is really the book that Laef and I wrote, Extreme Ownership. That was the culmination of 20 years in the SEAL teams. And putting together the principles that I live by and survive by. So I think it's just very important to think about what your principles are as a person, what you're trying to achieve and have those principles like a guiding strategy underneath

everything that you're doing. And that's one thing that's good about these podcasts is that, you know, I'm, I've been lucky enough to capture some of these. You know, like the letters that we read last time, these counseling letters, I'm talking about my personal principles in those. Those were my principles on how to lead. And so I think it's important to come up with those principles and define them and let those principles reflect, you know, who you are as a person and what you want to be. And I wish that I would have been told to do that when I was 13 years old.

Yeah. Because I think it is that important as a person. Yeah. And it seems like, anyway, that defining your principles, it seems like that's a, that's kind of an ongoing process. Yes. Because it's one of those things where you think you have your principles, you know? But, I don't know, for example, you could have just heard it on some speech that really resonated with you.

So, oh, dang, you think you have, these specific principles now, but you haven't really defined them. You just kind of liked how that sounded and you maybe thought of one, two, three situations where, dang, that applies to me. And let me tell you what you're talking about right now. Your number one principle should be free your mind and have humility to never say the principles that I'm standing upon are never going to change because I know everything right now. And we've talked about this before.

Yes. I know I would if I look at myself 10 years ago I know nothing compared to what I know now. Yeah. If I looked at myself 20 years ago, I know even less. I'm just a lost animal out in the woods.

So you have to, you know, build these principles. And like you said, and I think there's a difference between being a flip-flopper. Like, you know, you hear politicians get, you know, oh, you're a flip-flopper because you said you don't support control and now you,

And now you do support it now you don't support or whatever or you do support Bringing in refugees or not so and people get called a flip-flopper and and I actually I think there's some core principles that shouldn't change even for a politician and even for a person But there's a lot of peripheral You know I think there's peripheral principles that do evolve and do change and you do end up with different priorities in your life and I think that's okay You know there was a large portion of my life and where the SEAL teams was absolutely the most important thing and nothing else was even a close second, including things like my personal health, including things like my own family, including things like my future. Everything was just completely unimportant compared to the SEAL teams.

and while that makes for a fired up seal and I wouldn't trade that I wouldn't even want to change that principle I mean that that's what I needed at the time to do a good job but you know at some point I had to say okay I need to think about something else

I need to evolve as a human and you know little things like I need to take care of my family you know I need to actually pay attention to them and not just pay attention to my seal platoon or my seal task you know or the guys I'm working with. So I think it's okay to evolve your principles, but I think more important is that you need to define your principles

and where you are. And that also is a way to check your growth and see what course you're on. You know, this is one thing that I talk about. When I was in the SEAL teams, I used to talk about this. The most important piece of information on the battlefield. What do you think the most important piece?

piece of information on the battlefield is Echo. Echo has no idea. I can come up with an idea, but it'll take a little bit. Yeah. So I used to ask that question to everybody, to senior guys, junior guys, and they'd all kinds of, you know, where the bad guys are, what, you know, where the target is. I mean, everyone would have different answers. And there's actually only one answer.

The most important piece of information that you can have on the battlefield is where you are, is to know where you are on the battle. field. Do you know where you're at? If you don't know where you're at, does it really matter if you know where the enemy is? No, because you don't even know where you are. If you don't know where you're at, can you even navigate correctly? No, because you don't even know where you are. If you don't know where you're at, can you get close air support? Can you call for aircraft to come in and drop bombs? No, you don't even know where you are. So that piece of datum, when you apply that to life,

How do you know where you are if you're not tracking what your principles are? Right. The answer is you're not. You're not going to know where you are and you're not going to see how you evolve. And when I work with businesses, I use the same principles. Businesses will go out and operate off of instinct. Now, you have to trust your instinct and you have to understand it, but you also have to track what the facts are. You know, I'd say, like, where are your metrics?

How do you know what you did last year this time in profitability? How do you know what you did in sales? How do you know what you did in product development? If you're not tracking it, you don't know where you are on the battlefield. And if you don't know where you are on the battlefield, you're lost. So your principles kind of just continue to be more and more informed. You know how like you talk about when you're 13 or 16, however old, where you think you have these principles because I don't know,

you listen to Henry Rollins and there they are. But as you conduct yourself through, life with an open mind and all these you're offered all these different perspectives that start to solidify your principles. So you talk about the difference between a flip-flopper and someone who's just simply open-minded and evolves. Yeah, the difference is that someone who continuously evolves will have an open mind at the same time have pretty concrete principles.

Yes. So when they're offered something significant that is simply a difference in perspective, that is going to essentially in a fundamental way align with their principles. If their principles are fairness and these things that are inarguably good as far as being part of your principles, they're going to evolve when these separate perspectives get presented to them and thus solidifying their principles even more. Yes. And Echo just used the word thus.

And I like that. I like that. No, it's true. And I think that's, uh, I think this is a good, good thing to keep in mind as, you know, people move forward is what are your principles? How are they evolving? How are they improving? Have they gotten better? Those are great questions for every individual to ask me.

Those are questions I'm asking myself right now on the Jocko podcast. Live. It's happening. So speaking of which, we got some questions. Speaking of questions. Speaking of questions. Speaking of questions. The first question.

In episode five, you mentioned treating people with a blank slate. How do you deal with misjudging a person in the event of you misjudging? Yeah. So that was, you know, in reference to a person that we went through a counseling sheet on. And the fact was that I'd heard some bad stuff about him, you know, bad hit a bad reputation, et cetera. and so I was saying that, hey, you know, I treat everyone like a blank slate. And so first of all, I talked about this before, is I set low expectations for people. I don't have a super high expectations of what they're going to do and how well they're going to deliver.

And actually somebody hit me on Twitter today and said something along the lines of, I like the fact that everyone with you starts at zero. Right. And he said, I'm the same way. He was the same way. And I think that's a pretty good attitude to have. Like everyone starts at zero, you know. And that's a better way to put it, in my opinion, than low expectations.

Yeah. Like, okay, you have a zero. And again, I don't mean to sound like a negative person, but I just don't set high expectations. I set them at zero. Right. Like, you show me who you are. I'm not going to predict one way or the other. I understand that people do crazy things.

And people are crazy in many ways. their ego, their personality, their issues. I mean, people, their emotions, people do crazy things. So I don't, that's another thing that keeps me from giving people all kinds of credit out of the gate. And I do weigh what other people say. You know, I take it into account, but I definitely am careful to use my own judgment and not cloud my vision with what somebody else said about so-and-so. So, you know, how do I deal with misjudging a person? It's kind of what we were just talking about.

I don't set permanent judgment on someone and say, echo's bad and I don't like him and I don't trust him. That's not a permanent thing, you know, I'm going to build from zero. And I'm going to say, oh, you know what? Actually, hey, he did a good job with that or, hey, he had my back on that. So I'm not stuck in my ways and I don't hold grudges against people and say this person is never going to change. That being said, man, it's hard to change the spots of the leopard, you know. People are who they are and it's a very difficult, yes, sir, some people can grow and change and evolve and that's great.

But a lot of people, they are who they are. And so you have to take that in account as well. Right. Yeah, when you say, like trusting someone, when let's say someone burns you in whatever way, And then, you know, a week later, whatever, they had your back in a way that was really unexpected compared to, you know, that action that they did. So basically what that does is help paint an overall picture of what kind of person this is to you. So where it's like, okay, maybe I can trust them in this type of situation when these benefits and detriments are in play. And these other situations, I can't.

So it's kind of this. And then as you have more and more experience with people, they paint more of a picture. Yeah. So trust, even saying trust, that's such a broad brush. certain incentives are involved involved you can't trust a certain person to do or not do certain things but offer up different incentives and you know you can trust them yeah and so i think the same thing that you're just saying is what i'm saying is i don't i'm not going to misjudge someone because my judgment is not a permanent all all powerful statement of one time yeah i'm constantly looking at people

and like you said, learning impressions of their whole, their whole entity, what they're all about. Next. So, starting out in Jiu-Jitsu, how do you find a good gym in your area? Okay. So this is actually a question, you know, we plucked one out of many of people that have hit us up on Twitter about where to find a good Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Jim because people, I think people have heard us talking about Jiu-Jitsu, and they heard me talking about it

with Joe Rogan, you know, heard me talking about with Tim Ferriss. I mean, it's something that I talk about, something that is definitely a big part of my life. I know it's a big part of your life as well. And so people think, you know, I'd like to check that out. And I think that's awesome. And if you're out there and you're going to ask me

if you should start Jiu-Jitsu and you're going to give me a whole bunch of quantifiers that you're old or you work a lot, or you, you've been sick or you've been injured or whatever you're going to tell me. And I can tell you 99.99% of the time, my answer is going to be yes, you should start Jiu-Jitsu. Except if your sickness is contagious. Except if your sickness is contagious or if you're a bully or you're a sadist.

If you're an evil person that's hungry for power, I'm going to tell you don't start Jiu-Jitsu because you're going to use it for bad things. Yeah, and even before that, I think you might get it turned on you. You know how like, because it's really easy to, depends on the school, but for the most part, it's really easy to spot a bully when it comes into the gym. And it doesn't fare well. It doesn't feel well. It'll maybe farewell for a day or even maybe one five-minute match or something like that. But man, it doesn't.

Yeah, jiu-jitsu is a self-regulating scene. Yeah, for the most part, yes. As self-regulating scene, very few people can maintain. And most people with bullying attitudes don't have the humility to continue in Jiu-Jitsu for a long time anyways. Yes, yes. So that's another way that it's self-polices. So how do you find a good Jiu-Jitsu gym? Obviously, you start with Google, you find out some locations.

To me, proximity is very important. So you want a place that's, you know, on your way to work, on your way home from work, close to your house. So it's somewhere that you're going to get in there and train. because you don't want to sign up for a gym and never go because it's too far, too out of the way. So proximity is definitely a factor. Then you're going to ask yourself, what are you looking for?

Because Jiu Jitsu gyms vary tremendously in how they're set up, how they're run, and all those things. I mean, there's really super traditional Brazilian jiu jitsu gyms where you bow before you get on the mat. You bow after you're, you bow to the instructor

when you're going to talk to them, they're very strict with uniforms. You know, only a white uniform. You have to have this certain patch on your uniform to represent the school. That's one type of atmosphere that you could have. Then you can have a very loose atmosphere where it's like, you know, you're going to come in,

you're going to train. There's no bowing. There's handshakes and there's respect, but it's not as overt and not as imposed as it would be in a more traditional. Brazilian jiu jitza school. So what are you looking for? You know, for me, I always, you know, and if you come to my gym, it's a very, it's a very relaxed atmosphere in terms of traditionally imposed discipline. But when you roll, there will be discipline imposed.

But it's pretty dynamic, though. Like we have such a big group of people that to go in there and to get a non-competitive role is you can easily. do that. Yep, that's true. In fact, you, it's easy to choose. It's easy to be like, okay, I know let's roll with this group and it's going to, it's going to be some heat. I'm going to go over here with this crew today and they're going to bring it. Or, you know what, I'm going to chill with these guys over here and we're going to work on some technique and maybe I can ask this guy about that. Yeah, so that's, that's good. That is good. You know, there's also, hey, are you going to go to a school that's very focused on sport jujitsu? Right. Which is, hey, we're going to compete. We're going to learn the techniques that are very,

applicable to competing in Jiu-Jitsu? Or am I going to do something that's more towards self-defense and-or M-M-A? And a classic example I think of that is the 50-50 guard

where it's a position in Jiu-Jitsu if you don't know Jiu-Jitsu where if you're in a no-rule situation, you're very vulnerable to a devastating submission called a heel hook. And so it's,

It's, but there's certain competition rules that don't allow for heel hooks in that position. So depending on what kind of school you're at, one of them, you're going to get, you're going to be in a different situation in that one position. And, and, you know, actually at our school, we do, we do both. But do you want to do MMA focus? Do you want to do GEE or no Ghee? And again, there's benefits to both those and they're both fun. And I like training both. So you kind of kind of think about what you're looking for

And then and then bring that into the school And then go try some classes You know take some classes at a school and see what they're like What are the other students like? You know what kind of atmosphere is it? Do they have like the similar goals? If you want to compete if that's your goal Then are the other people that you talk to?

Are they like yeah, I compete all the time There's a tournament coming up or are they like yeah you know We compete sometimes or actually Actually, I don't care about competing because there's plenty of people that train Jiu-Jitsu do. They don't care about competing. Is there, you know, what's the attitude? What's, is their egos?

Are people rolling with you trying to kill you, which 99% of the time in a jiu-jitsu school is not going to happen, but it can happen. It can happen. So what, and then it's like, what was the instructor like? Is the instructor personal? Is the, is the instructor, you know, what we were talking about earlier? Is he clear? Is he concise?

Is he understand? Can you understand him? can you understand the way he's explaining? moves. Now there's a, you've got to give a little leeway there. If you jump into a class that's an advanced class, you're not going to understand everything, you know? And people ask me how to get started on jiu-jitsu, and I tell them, go immersion training, just like a language. Just get in there and start training, and you're going to get destroyed at first. And then you're going to slowly learn, and the next thing, you know, that's the fastest way to learn a language is

to get immersed in it and do the same thing with jiu-jitsu. Is the instructor having fun? Is the guy having fun or the girl? Are they having fun teaching? Is it a fun thing? Because you want Jiu-Jitsu to be fun and you want the instructor to be having fun because if the instructor's not having fun, well, then what are they going to be like in six months?

If they're not having fun today, then what are they going to be like in six months? So that's another important piece. Yeah, when you talk about what you're looking for, you know, in Jiu-Jitsu, And in my experience, there's so many elements of it to look for. Like if, you know, when you, if you say, okay, am I, do I want to learn MMA? Learning MMA or fighting is the sport of fighting compared to, like, for example, the Gracie Academy

Torrance, their Jiu-Jitsu self-defense in regards to fighting, getting into a fight or if someone attacks you in a fight. That's way different than training in MMA. Training in MMA is a sport of MMA. You're going to learn a lot of moves. that you're probably not going to learn things that a quote unquote an attacker. I mean, you will, but it's not focused on that. You're not going to learn stuff that an attacker is going to do to you.

So even that differentiation is just the fighting part alone. It's not to mention the competition part. The ghee, the no-gui, all these dynamic moves. Like if you go 10th planet, 10th planet compared to like Gracie Academy Torrance are almost like... Two different sports. Almost, yeah. They are. But at the same time, you're going to get...

you're going to get jujitsu. That's exactly what I mean. And you're going to get jujitsu. And that's the important thing. I agree. Yes. And just like we talked about the evolution of your principles, let your, you know, your game should evolve as well. And almost

everybody that's never done jih Tutsu before, if you said, well, why do you want to take Jiu Jitsu? 90% of them are going to say, of self-defense, right? And so because, you know, people say, I want to learn to defend myself. There's not too many people that are going to be saying, you know what, I really have become interested in cerebral aspect of jihitsu, which maybe some people that listen to us talk about it,

or listen to Joe Rogan talk about it, you know, they'll say, oh, that guy's talking about this thing as if it's a very cerebral experience. So maybe someone, but most people, yeah, I want to learn how to defend myself. I want to make sure. So, but you're going to evolve past that. Because after six months of training, you can handle yourself in the street, regardless of you went to 10th planner, you went to the Gracie Academy, you're going to be able to handle yourself in the street. And so then it becomes, an obsession of how did that move happen. So that's what you got to,

that's what you got to be ready to evolve. And when you're at that point, if you go to school A versus if you went to school B, your experience is going to be a lot different. And it's going to depend on what you were looking for in the beginning. But nonetheless, yeah, if it is, obviously, if it's a jiu-jitsu school, yeah, that part's not really going to change. Yeah, you're going to learn jiu-jitsu, which is a beautiful thing.

the other thing that I got to say is you got to jiu jitsu as much as I love it jiu jitsu is not a religion and you know the black belt instructor at the school does not have contact or direct communications with God right

so just I think keep that in mind it's a person that is trained in a sport for longer than you. Okay. So just keep that in mind. It's not a cult. There should be an open atmosphere.

In my opinion, you should be looking for a jiu-jitsu school that has an open atmosphere, not a cult-controlling atmosphere. You know, that being said, and I said this already, respect. Yes, absolutely. You should respect the people that are there and respect your training partners and respect your, Instructors for sure, but you shouldn't be worshipping them and they shouldn't be expecting you to worship them. So just be advised because jiu-jitsu, it should be fun, it should be friendly, it should be engaging, the atmosphere should be good, and it should be competitive without being cutthroat.

You know, you should want to go without fear of having a death match every single night unless that's what you're looking for. And you just said that echo. I mean, like, I go in every night looking for a death match against Dean. against you, against Andy, you know, against Craig or Greg. I mean, our crew of murderers, I'm going in for a death match every night. And even when I don't want a death match, I give it to them. Because that's how I'm getting better. And that's part of my own personal will to say, you know what, regardless,

I'm in there to put it on the line and throw it out there. And if they get the best of me, cool. So be it. I learned. I got better. and I definitely got better than I would if I was either A, sitting on the side of the mat, B, rolling with someone that's not as good, or C, staying at home. Right.

So. Yeah, that's so interesting how it really does accommodate who you are like you, when you go in looking for a death match every night. That totally makes sense because of who you are and who I understand you to be. But at the same time, in the same gym, on the same mat. Yeah, yeah. You can have. Palchilling and rolling. Ben, who's, you know, he's, you know, ends up getting his black belt a bunch of knowledge,

but he is not going for any death match. He's, you know, older guy. That's what's so, in my opinion, good about it. So it accommodates who you are so much. Like me, I do both. Like some days, death match, sure, but most days. You do death match like once every two weeks. Once every two weeks, we get the death match from that going.

So, yeah, go out there, enjoy Jiu-Jitsu. but make sure you don't fall into a cult. Next. Do you eat fruit and it's so? How often? And if not, why not? No. So, okay, do I eat fruit?

Sometimes I eat fruit. But if you were to ask me if you should eat fruit, I would basically say no. I don't recommend it. And again, this is just if you talk to Dom Daghistino, who's a doctor or or Mr. Palio himself, Rob Wolf. If you go and listen to his podcast

or Dr. Peter Attia, you know, who I've talked about before, these guys, they know what they're talking about and they will tell you what I'm telling you. And these guys will back it up with science upon science upon science. So fruit, carbohydrates, spike your insulin level, just not good for you. again am I an extremist no have some blueberries get your blueberries on get your blackberries on

that's awesome but take a bunch of fruit and put it with some apple juice and mix it up in a blender and eat you know 400 grams of carbohydrate in one shot no don't do that it's not good for you have you ever eaten and I'm not saying when you're on the program so to speak Have you ever eaten the whole box of donuts? Negative. Have you ever eaten the donuts? I ate a bag of Hershey's kisses one time. Then it did not make,

did not work out good. So when you say you don't eat fruit, that's more of like when you're on the program. Yeah. And did you want to know when I'm on the program? Yeah, when are you on the program? Now.

But yeah, I, I, when you're trying to eat clean, which you should be trying to eat clean, which you should be trying to eat clean, 80% of the time, as anyone will tell you, you know, keep it clean and keep it to, you know, fat and protein if you can do it. A little bit of a subject change. When, if ever, is it a good time to blow up at someone to lose your temper?

Well, blow up at someone and lose your temper are two different things, right? I think, is it good to look? I think most people would think that they are the same thing, losing your temper and blowing up at someone. And I can tell you that is almost never good to do that. And when I say almost never, I mean, never with the tiniest caveat of there is some possible scenarios where it might need to happen. So if you lose your temper, you blow up at somebody, what are you showing? You're showing that you can't control your temper. And if you can't control your temper, then what can you control? right that the and I'm not saying you should show no emotions because if you show no emotions and you're a

robot and robots can't lead people and people don't follow robots so there's some obviously some level of showing emotions is needed but if you're losing your temper you're not thinking clearly and if you're not thinking clearly because you've lost your temper you can't even read their reactions to what you're saying and you're the fact that you're blowing up is is clouding your own vision. The fact that you're losing your temper is clouding your own vision. And so you've got to detach

in order to be observant in order to watch what your actions are. So if you do have to blow up and when, okay, so when is this almost never happened, if you were working for me and you did something wrong, and I said echo.

And it was grievous. It was like pretty grievous. Like it could have got someone hurt. And I said, echo, hey, this was bad. This is what happened. I don't know what I did wrong that thought that made you think that would be okay. But whatever image I gave you that made you think this was okay, this is the worst mistake I've ever made. We can never let this happen again. Okay. And you're like, yeah, okay. And then four days later, you do it again. And I'd come at the same approach, maybe a little bit different like, hey, echo, I, I, I don't know if there's anything I could do to make this more clear than I did. What can I do to make you understand?

So we might go three or four or five iterations, maybe one more iteration, I should say. Three iterations of you not, you failing to do what you're supposed to do and getting someone hurt or almost getting someone hurt. So now I go, okay, he hasn't listened to the indirect approach. He hasn't listened to the direct approach. He hasn't, I've taken ownership of it. He hasn't taken any yet. I need to come out of a different angle.

Okay, I need to lose my temper with him. And it's going to be a calculation. And I won't actually lose my temper with him. But I will raise my voice. I will get loud. I will point. And I will make damn sure that you understand that this infraction that you have committed is severe and grievous and can never happen again.

And that's the situation where I would quote unquote blow up. at somebody. It is so rare that it's so rare that in my military career, off the top of my head, I can remember one and only one incident of this, where I actually said, you know what, this was a bad mistake. I could see where these guys think they might be able to get away with this again in the future, and I'm going to make sure that they realize that. Was it the kind where they, it's not like they made the same mistake.

it was more like they chose to do something a certain way. And in my, my assessment of it was that they would do it again if I didn't make it perfectly clear that this could never happen again. And so I raised my voice. I pointed in the face and, you know, gave them 20 seconds of intensity.

and the situation never happened again and they apologized. But overall. Not a good thing. Don't lose your temper, people. Don't do it. Yeah, I would say losing your temper, not blowing up at someone,

losing your temper, like for real losing it, it's going to be hard, it's going to be hard to think of a situation where that's cool. Yeah, okay, and I'll tell you, want to know when I lose my temper? I do lose my temper. It happens once every six months,

and it is almost always with inanimate objects, namely objects that print or copy or compute in some way. You know, electronics. Sometimes I get angry. Yeah. You probably want to keep that in private areas, right? You don't want people to see that. Yeah.

Like, my wife will hear me once every six months. you know, and she'll come in and she'll be like a printer. And oh, yeah. She says, you're stupid. I go, I know. She goes, it doesn't care if you yell at it. You know, I say, yeah, I know. In my experience that, I found the same thing.

Looking, we're looking, okay, here's the next question. Your specific lifting workout, your weekly training schedule, including Jiu-Jitsu. This is a big question. And for those of you that do Jiu-Jitsu out there in the world, this is like when someone says, hey, hey, Jocco, how do I pass your guard? Because I have a good guard. And so, you know, someone that is a blue belt will say, you know, hey, how do I pass your guard?

You know, and literally, I have guys at the gym that are brown belts and black belts that pass my guard once every six months, you know? So my guard is good. And, you know, here's a blue belt like, hey, how do I pass your guard? So this question kind of reminds me of that a little bit. Specific lifting workout and weekly training schedule on Jiu-Jitsu. So this is a big ask. And here's the problem that I have with this. I'm an individual.

And I have strength and weaknesses. I have whatever little injury thing that I'm working through at a particular time. I have things that I like to do. and I have things that I don't like to do, I have, I'm an individual. And my workout is for me. And I've taken, and I've, you know, sometimes people, I'll go on a trip

and there'll be a guy that's an athlete and he'll say, oh, do I wanna, I wanna go through one of your workouts with you. And I say, okay. And I've done that and I've had guys like almost hospitalized from going through one of my workouts. And that's not good. And then I've had other guys, like there's guys out there that will just crush me in a workout, you know?

And especially, you know, there's workouts that I have that I could beat most of the world in, you know? There's workouts that I have that I could crush anybody in. And then there's workouts that some, you know, yoga instructor could put me through that would crush me, right? So my point is that you get some people that would die doing one of my workouts and you get some people that would It'd be my one of my workouts is no impact because they're an incredible athlete And so why would either one of them want to do my workout? It doesn't make any sense that they would want to do that So what I've been trying to think is I get asked all the time What's your workout? What's your workout? What's your workout? What's your workout?

And so what I've been trying to figure out is how to do this? How do I? How do I communicate? What I'm doing and what I've what I've been kind of going through the idea in my head is putting together a like an e-book and I actually put this out on Twitter I was like oh yeah I'll do an e-book and people like e-book yeah do it do it so it's an idea that's already been floated out there unfortunately there's not been a lot of time to be writing e-books but what what the focus would be yeah like the types of exercise that I do yes but and and you know kind of the numbers of I do of them. But more importantly, going to a, from a leadership perspective is, what is the intent?

What is the commander's intent of my workout? What am I trying to accomplish? Because for you and me to accomplish the same thing is going to be a different, a very different workout, right? If, if I want to, if I want to take myself to a, to, to an anaerobic threshold for a total of 15 minutes. What I would do to get there is very different

from what you would do to get there. It just is. If I wanted to destroy my legs with heavy squats, it would be very different between what you would do and what I would do. So what's important

is not the actual exercises that I'm doing. It's the intent and am I achieving that intent. Am I achieving that intent? I can do a deal decent amount of pull-ups, right? And in one of my pull-up workouts, I might do 500 pull-ups or 300 pull-ups.

There's a lot of people that can't do 100 pull-ups. So... Oh, just in the workout. Right, not 300 pull-ups. Yeah, no, I can't do 300 pull-ups in a row now. I wish I could. But my intent is to, you know, do a number of maximum sets of pull-ups and then do a number of slow, you know,

very good form maximum sets. And the intent is to get stronger at pull-ups by doing, you know, a high number of maximum sets. And I think that intent to give to people would say, okay, so that way if Echo is not good at pull-ups and you go, okay, well, I'm going to go in and I know what the intent is. I'm trying to get to a point of failure even on one single pull-up. And it might take you only 15 minutes to do that and 30 pull-ups, you know,

or whatever the case may be. And for someone that's really good, a rock climber, it might take them, you know, 45 minutes, and they might be 600 pull-ups deep before they get there. And so that's kind of the idea I'm batting around. I don't know if people are that really interested in that. I think a lot of times people want a formula. And I don't think I'm going to give out a formula because the formula is going to be different for different people at different times in their lives and ages and body.

weights and you know male or female there's just all so many variables yeah but I think if I can give out what the intent of my workouts are then we're in the right place yeah but those those different variables and stuff that that could very well be the reason that people want your workout because there's two things there's probably more than two but two big things that kind of come along with wanting your specific workout and one would be just to kind of immerse myself into what you go through in a workout. And how does that feel? And how do I kind of measure up, you know?

And then, so those two things. Like, what does it feel like to do a jaco workout? Like, how hard is it? You know, he's going to do, you know, 600 pull-ups in a workout limit, you know, like, how does that feel? You know, is that the hardest thing I've ever done? Or, you know, is that just, oh, this, you know, these workouts are that hard. Jocco's a punk.

Right. Well, that's the second part. How do I measure up? If he does 20 sets of squats with whatever weight, how do I measure up? Can I get all those 20 sets or can I get that weight for 20 cents? So those two things. One, they just want to immerse himself in your world as far as workouts go. And the second one is how do I measure up?

I know that's kind of what I think when someone's like, oh, here's, here's our workout, like those CrossFit workouts. Some of those, just mentally, I do that. Like, okay, this guy's doing 20 pull-ups in a row. Like, how many can I do? You know, I measure it. And then at the same time, it's like this is, you get to understand what these cross-fitters do. You know, and then, like I said, they go back and forth, that those two things.

And I think that that is interesting. Like, if you were to tell me what you did this morning for a workout, like, I'd be interested. On top of the fact that, oh, maybe I want to do. that workout for me, for results for myself. Right. And yeah, you're right. I'll probably have different results. Even if I do that the same workout as you for, you know, six months,

I might have different results. But that part about measuring up and just knowing who you are and kind of what you stand for and this is the workout that you do, just understanding that, I think that's significant too. Yeah. I would love to tell you that I'm some, you know, physical specimen, but I'm not. I'm actually not the strongest guy. I'm not the fastest guy.

I'm not the most flexible guy. I try hard. And I also am a result of my physical aptitude is like a, is like a brownish gray paint. Because I mix up so much stuff in there that I'm the result of, you know, I'm not bright red. right right I'm not bright blue because those two things you know the strength has been mixed with

endurance has been mixed with flexibility has been mixed with all these things have been mixed together and I don't want to get too much of any of them yeah because then I'm losing something else and so I'm kind of this this this kind of average in many categories and and my numbers in very few of them would impress anybody you're pretty sure strong though. Yeah, and, and, and, and, you know, like, but I'm not one of those people that's on the math that you go, man, that guy is just freaking strong, you know, at least, it's hard for me to judge, but I know that, uh, I guess people say, oh, you're strong. Yeah, sometimes, I think that. Okay. You're like that guy on the, you know, you ever play video games? No.

Okay, so let's say you play, uh, I don't know, football, you play football. So when you analyze your players, it'll have all. these attributes, speed, hands, acceleration, right? And it's like, I don't know, zero to ten. So you're the guy who has all like eights. Yeah. Instead of the guy with two tens and then a three, you know? Yeah, yeah.

But like anybody that's listening to this podcast can beat me in a bunch of categories. Yeah. You know, they got tens and some stuff. Right, right, yeah. And I don't. I don't have any tens in anything. That's okay. Not everyone can have tens.

Yeah. Next question. Next question, yeah. Um, would you talk more about how you view aggression, positives and negatives? Well, like everything in life and in leadership and in your personality, it has to be balanced. Aggression has to be balanced. And, you know, one of the things from, from the book is, you know, you've got to be aggressive, but not overbearing.

So, yeah, you've got to be aggressive to be a leader. you've got to be because if you're going to make things happen you've got to be aggressive to make things happen you have to make things happen you know I always say to people like oh they want to make money I'm like oh you used to make money you have to take you have to take that money

it doesn't gonna fall into your house in your lap it's not going to make itself you have to take it if that's what your goal is in jujitsu you're not going to get better just by being you have to take the progression you have to take it and make it happen and that's the same thing with anything in life.

So aggression definitely comes into play. But for instance, in a leadership position, if you're completely aggressive all the time, your subordinates will not want to communicate with you. They won't want to debate with you. They won't want to say, hey, boss, I don't agree with what you're saying here because they're afraid you're going to go,

hey, you don't know what you're talking about. We're going to go my way or the highway. That's what they're going to expect. So you can't be overbearing. You know, on the mat, you can't exhaust yourself with aggression. And that's one of the things, you know, that I think from purple to brown belt, which is, you know, your six to eight years in the game is where people start to calm down and realize that that aggression needs to be tampered and control and people have to have action. And in combat, obviously being aggressive and being aggressively decisive is important. but if you go too far with that,

you're running to your death. So you have to modulate your aggression. You have to modulate your aggression. You can't abuse it. You've got to use it, but you can't abuse it. And I don't want to discount aggression in any way because, you know, I always say that your default mode should be aggression.

Like when you, when you hit the reset button on your brain, you should come out of that reset being aggressive. Because be aggressive, be proactive, make things happen. Be on offense. You know, not sitting back and waiting to be attacked or waiting for a situation to occur. No, make that situation occur. Go.

So that's my view of aggression. And it just has to be balanced. And there are also times. where, you know, if you meet aggression with aggression, it's actually not good. You know, you see this in jitza. You see this in escalating when you're either in a confrontation of some kind to somebody, aggressively escalating something might be a good choice and it might be a bad choice.

You know, there's always the bully that as soon as you say, hey, you know what? I'd love to fight. In fact, fighting is my favorite thing to do. Let's go. A guy that's like, no, man, I was just kidding. So aggression will win there. or, you know, if someone's really being aggressive and you just knock them out, well, then that's, that's a better handling of the situation. But there's also times where there's, you know, maybe there's multiple attackers or there's someone that's, you know, you're in the street.

It's always better in the street to avoid the confrontation, you know. Does that person have a knife? Does that person have a gun? Does that person have a communicable disease? Does that person have friends around the corner? Is that person a lawyer who's going to sue you? I mean, there's all these reasons to get into, to not get into a fight in the street. So aggressively meeting aggression with aggression is probably not that smart. It's probably better to avoid the scenario.

And the more time you spend in, you know, in combat sports, boxing and doing jiu-jitsu, the more likely you are to be able to be like, you know what, I don't need to prove anything to this guy. It means nothing to me. I prove myself on the mat every single day. I got nothing to prove to Joe drunk idiot over here. So I think that, again, I think your default mode should be aggressive,

but make sure that you maintain enough detachment of the situation that you can see if you're being overly aggressive and it's leading you to a bad scenario. Okay, last question. You talk about mind control. Can you expand your thoughts on that subject? mind control. You know, when people think of the word mind control, they think of controlling other people's minds.

And when I think about mind control, I think about controlling your own mind. Because, you know, while I am obviously a physical person and we spend a lot of this podcast tonight talking about physical culture and I embrace physical. but we are our minds and I'm not going to be you know going into a Sam Harris philosophical rant on what it means and where the you actually is and whether there's a soul or a brain or whatever your heart or some other conjured up place this is what I know is that you your mind the thing that is listening and comprehending these words right now, that is you. And that thing, that mind, you can control. You are the machine and you can control the machine. And people ask me, how do I get tougher?

Be tougher. They asked me, how can I wake up earlier in the morning? The answer is wake up earlier in the morning. How can I work out consistently every single day? Work out consistently every single day. How can I stop from eating sugar? Stop eating sugar. What about the emotions?

How can I stop missing that girl or that guy who whoever broke up with me? How can I stop missing them? Stop missing them. That is mind control. You have that ability. You just have to assert it. You have to decide that you're going to be in control

and that you are going to do what you want to do. Weakness doesn't get a vote. Laziness, they don't get a vote. Sadness. No, no vote. Frustration, no vote. Negativity. You don't get a vote.

I don't even give my temper a vote. So the next time that you're feeling weak or you're feeling lazy or you're feeling soft or you're feeling emotional, tell them that they don't get a vote. Tell them you are declaring martial law on your mind. You're declaring mind control. and impose what you want on your brain. Impose the discipline and the power and the positivity and the will. And use that mind control to move your life where you want it to be.

It's the things I always say get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven. don't let your mind control you control your mind and once you control your mind then you can set it free and i think we'll close with that for today yeah that's about all of god right there and you know if you're out there and you want to communicate with us you want to carry on this conversation you want to continue down this path. You can do so on Twitter. I'm at Jocko Willink, and Echo is at Echo Charles. I want to thank everyone for listening.

I want to thank you for subscribing to this podcast, for placing reviews on this podcast, for spreading the word about this podcast. And most of all, I want to thank you for getting after it. This is Jocko and Echo, and until next time, out.