Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Accepting Painful Reality. Alcoholic Spouse. The Most Helpful Thing a Wife Can Do.

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

Accepting a painful reality.How to control a rowdy bunch of 13 y/o.Dealing with an alcoholic spouse.When it clicks that you're on THE PATH.The most helpful thing a wife can do.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 21 with Echo and me, Jocko. And we had an event take place a couple, a week ago, I guess. A guy by the name of Jim Sarlsley, he was on podcast 200. Just an awesome guy. He was a Vietnam veteran. he was severely wounded in in 1969 about a month before he was done with his tour in Vietnam. He ended up as a triple amputee and lost both of his legs and lost one of his arms. And he just died.

He just died on May 30th. It's 2021 right now. And it obviously horrible. It was unexpected But his story When he came on the podcast and what he lived through There was some layers to it When he'd come home from Vietnam with this you know triple amputee

Went to rehab for nine months and You know he learned all the things that you have to learn when you lose both your legs in one arm How you know how are you going to get by? What are you going to do? What do you get around the house? How do you use a wheelchair? I an electric wheelchair, a regular wheelchair, how you're going to get in and out of that thing, what you need to be careful of, what you've got to do to keep yourself as healthy as you can. And he went to that thing for nine months,

and then he carried on. And he carried on with his life. He started a roofing company. He went to college. He started doing real estate. He ended up being the national commander of the disabled American veterans, you know, later in his life.

But he basically just carried on. and just an amazing, an amazing human, an amazing person and obviously, hugely inspirational for anybody because he's doing all that and he's doing it with these, with, as a guy with one arm.

And it was interesting because when we got done with that podcast, we were, we ended up sitting around and talking for a while and one of the things that he, brought up was he said, have you ever heard of a guy named Lewis Puller? And he obviously hadn't listened to the fact that we had done a podcast about Chesty Puller, the most iconic Marine of all time. And then we did a podcast about Lewis Puller, his son, who was also wounded in Vietnam, severely wounded in Vietnam. He lost both of his legs. He had massive damage. He had massive damage.

damage done to his hands Lewis Puller did this is Chessie Puller's son and he came home and eventually some well in 1993 Lewis Puller Jr. killed himself and and he wrote an incredible book and we covered the book on the podcast on podcast 122 the book is called Fortunate Son And so with that background, which Jim surly didn't know, he says, have you ever heard of a guy named Lewis Pillar? And I said, yes, sir, absolutely. I have. We did a podcast on him. I know about him.

And he said, you know, I was in rehab with Lewis Pillar, which was obviously very, I mean, a very interesting connection that. He was, he knew him. And then he made this point, Jim Sorosley made this point, that he said, Lewis Puller never accepted 100% in his heart what had happened to him. He said, look, he accepted it 98, maybe 99%, but he never accepted 100% what had happened and never, never accepted that. reality and moved on with it. And he said, and that's what killed him.

Is we have to be able to accept reality. And look, I'm not saying I could do it. I'm not making that claim. I mean, I'm saying Jim Serlesley did it, and he said he did it, and he's saying that Lewis Pollard, Jr. didn't do it. But we have to at least try and do that. You know, we did one of these a little time ago where I was talking about the fact that, you know,

everybody's a little bit insane, right? Everybody's a little bit crazy because we all paint our own reality because the actual definition, the clinical definition of someone that is insane is someone that doesn't, their reality doesn't match actual reality. Well, guess what? We all have different varying levels of what reality is.

Some of us are pretty close. Some of us are a little further up. I mean, you meet someone that's, they think they're in a better situation than they're in, or they think they're in a worse situation. They're like, their reality isn't quite matched up. And it goes all the way from people that are really closely aligned to what reality is. That's, I think, probably the best place to be to people that are definition, by the definition of insane, where their reality is totally different from actual reality.

But, you know, you meet some people that are like, oh, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to be a football player. And you're like, hmm, you know, like their reality isn't there. You know what I'm saying? Or whatever. You pick, you pick a thing that somebody thinks is happening or they think someone, they think someone cares about them. I know they care about me. It's like, that's not really the reality.

And they're just not there, right? They're not insane. They're not over on the far side of the spectrum where the reality totally doesn't match. But you can tell it's off a little bit. So we have the possibility of doing that as well when it comes to accepting reality and accepting where we're at 100%. And accepting things the way they unfolded 100%. And again, I'm not trying to say I could do this. I have no idea.

I've never been in a situation like that. But I'm going to say that we do have to look around. I've never been in that extreme of a situation, but I've been in some tough situations. And when you get in those tough situations, it doesn't help to keep that little 2%, 3%, 4%, 1% that's different from reality. It doesn't help. That little thing will eat away at you when you wish that this wouldn't have happened or you wish you would have made a different decision. You complain about it.

You blame other people. You blame the circumstances and you get eaten up by that stuff. Stop doing that. Stop doing that. It's not beneficial to you. It's not beneficial to me. This is a, this is really a tenet of extreme ownership, right?

I know I can't control everything, but I can control how we respond to it. I know bad things happened, and I could sit there and blame other people. I could wish that it didn't win a different way. I could wish that it would have never happened. I could wish I would. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing

on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jocco underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this. We're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control. And we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain as is free for all,

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Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.