Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Can you REALLY Learn Something From Anyone?

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

Is it true that everyone around you has something to teach?Can you forgive a child molester if he feels remorse?Does my size matter in joining a fighting force?What if you don't want to accept a promotion?I think I'm weak, but I still want to be a high-speed operator.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Underground Podcast, number 99, sitting here with EC. Echo Charles. You know, we kind of touched on this on the last podcast. At least I mentioned this idea, but the idea, and this is, it lined up with one of the recommendations, questions, suggestions of topics that you wanted to talk about. What's with the idea that everyone around you has something to teach? So this is kind of close to or in the same way. realm as that's you you're the product of the five people that you hang around that type of thing. They they brushed up against each other a little bit.

But this idea that everyone around you has something to teach, is that even true? For me, this is pretty straightforward. For me, this is a yes. I think that you can learn from just about every person that you meet. I know that I personally learned a lot, not only from good leaders that I worked for, and good operators that I worked with, but also I learned a lot from bad leaders that I worked with and bad operators that I worked with.

So, you know, I had a platoon commander that was bad, egotistical, ended up getting fired. I learned a lot from him. I learned a ton from him about what not to do, how not to act, learned about humility from him because he was not humble. I saw what that felt like.

I felt what that felt like. I saw how it impacted everybody. So I learned a lot from it. I think it's a little bit of a stretch sometimes. You can learn a lot from a white belt. Have you ever heard somebody say that? I think that's actually a little bit of a stretch. I might be wrong.

Have you ever truly learned something from a white belt? And actually you explaining that whole thing kind of open my brain thinking to maybe another level of what you might mean by learn. Like not like you know like if a higher belt when you're a white belt when you're a lower belt and they teach you something they're teaching you something directly in line with with what you're trying to learn consciously And then now you're talking about like you know learning how not to do something it's kind of like an incidental learning you know it's like me Which is a massive part of learning in fact that's most of the time the majority of learning what that thing is a majority for you know learn from a white belt you already kind of do because you were a white belt too right so you you You don't watch a white belt and go, whoa, he spazzed out. I don't, I shouldn't, but you already knew it. You don't look at a white belt and think, oh, he lifted up both of his hips and got the other person got both their feet trapped underneath it.

You already knew that. Like there's very little. So even when I've even said it, like, oh, I learned from white belts. It's actually, you know what you might learn from a white belt? You know what you might learn from a white belt? When they ask you a question. And they say, hold on a second. How do you get to, how do you keep their arm over there?

Yeah. And you go, and you really haven't thought about it. You go, well, I do this and you kind of explain it. And you actually learned by answering the question. Yeah. I mean, but what did you learn, though? Learned that actually technically what you're doing. This has actually happened to me a bunch.

Right, but don't you already know it? Now you just can articulate it more. But no, you might not know how you do it. Consciously. Consciously. Obviously, if you did it, you know how to do it. You know, kind of thing. And I get what you're saying.

It opens up another level of knowing or knowledge or whatever. Yeah. So that's learning technically speaking. And that's exactly, man, exactly right. And it's true. So in that case, yes, you learn a lot from a white belt, especially when you only train with black belt all the time and go train with a big athletic white belt.

He's going to be doing all this weird stuff, and it's less about giving you trouble. He's going to do unpredictable stuff. While you train with a black belt, even if he's way better than you, for the most part, it's all predictable stuff. Like he's going to defend in a number of ways that you're going to be like, okay, I see that.

It makes sense to me, you know? Meanwhile, this guy's turning his back and, like, bench pressing you off, and you're like, bro, you're all confused in a way, you know, because you're so used to this black belt, all these proceedings. So then they teach you that in that way as well, which in the same sense is just another level of, you know, acquired knowledge, you know. So yeah, I guess.

I was, went surfing when my son was a little kid, probably between, well, no, he must have been at least seven, seven or eight years old. Early morning, we go down to the parking lot. and we park and there's a freaking meth head tweaker getting rolled up by the cops and he's totally out of his mind he's yelling, screaming

the cops have to rough him up like get control of him and we're just sitting there watching this whole thing right? See this guy freaking out swearing going mental they finally tackle him they they cough him and they put a spit bag on his head

right as he's just yelling and screaming And I told my son, I was like, that guy uses drugs. That's what drugs does to you. And I'll tell you what, dude, that left the mark. I think that left the mark on my kid. But what I'm saying is, even from a meth head tweaker, criminal, like, criminally insane person that's doing wild stuff, can learn from it. Yeah.

All of this is only true if you have the right learning mindset. the Marine Corps has a manual called learning and it's just about the idea of learning. They have some key principles of learning. Know yourself and seek improvement. Be ready and willing to learn. Understand why you are learning. Provide and receive constructive feedback. Learning is purpose driven to develop professional competence.

I think a lot of that is based on being humble because if you're not humble, you're not learning from anybody. You're definitely not learning from white belts if you're not humble. You're definitely not learning from a meth head if you're not humble. You're definitely not learning from your peers if you're not humble. You're not even learning from anybody if you're not humble. So being humble, I believe is the key to the learning mindset. And I think if you have that mindset, you can indeed learn from everyone around you.

Yep. And that's not to, I mean, that's at the same time, or with that, like even, okay, learning from a white belt. Like, you know how you learn basic moves as a white belt? And then let's say you, you have not been a white belt since what, 30, 25 years ago. Like how, when were you, when did you get your blue belt? Got my blue belt. 1996. Okay.

So it's been a long time. Yeah. So the way you learned all those fundamentals and all those basics, do you think there's any additions to those? in 30 years? Absolutely. Yeah, exactly right. So what if this white belt is like, oh, I do it, I do it this way.

And then the way he learned it was like, there's all these additions, all these efficient like additions to it. And you'd be like, oh, huh, interesting. You watch Dean teach like an arm lock. You learn something every time. Yeah. I'll learn something today.

If he taught a straight arm lock that I learned when I was a white belt, actually, yeah. I was still going to learn like eight different things. Exactly right. So the chances of a new white belt kind of, maybe he's not taking charge of the class, I got something to teach.

It's not that. It's just like, oh, almost threw up maybe a question scenario. Like, hey, I did it this. What do you think about this? I did this. You'd be like, huh. Interesting. And it could have been a white belt.

So, yeah, you can learn from a white belt for sure. Many situations. But yeah, cool, man. All right. Let's get to some quash. Greetings. Echo and Jocko. I have a relative business and slash business partner who,

of who I just learned that over 20 years ago. 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

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