Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Finding No Joy and No Relief In Life. This is How You Find It.

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

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This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 155 sitting here with Echo Charles, and we are here to answer your questions. We've got some good ones this week. What do we got? Let's send it. First question, Jocco, when I was 15, a mountain biking accident before football caused me to have cognitive issues. Now during football, when I put on my helmet, I have excruciating headaches that will get worse over time. I continued to play, but things slowly got worse and worse. Now at age 19, I can't even surf without nearly blacking out.

I love football, martial arts, and dreamed of being an army ranger, but those goals are gone. In high school, I worked different industries and started businesses, but now as a college freshman, I struggle to find purpose. If I have hope for recovery, I'd be grateful for the mental toughness I've gained, but my condition keeps getting worse. How do I move forward and find good in life when nothing brings joy or relief? Should I accept a joyless life and focus on helping others or is there a way to change my situation? Well, first of all, I would definitely, and I don't know, you don't mention any in this question, you don't mention the efforts that you've made to figure out what is wrong, right? What is going on? So mountain biking accident, right? I'm assuming some

kind of concussion. Then football, which I got a really bad concussion one time and I was told not to spar for six months. And I didn't follow that advice. I should have. But it took me so long to where I could take a punch. Like I used to walk in, you know what I mean? Walk into punches like, just whatever. Like I don't care. After that bad concussion, it was years before I walked into punches again without and felt confident. So I'm wondering what's going on. I'm wondering what kind of damage happened. What kind of, you know, have you gotten cat scans? Have you gotten somebody to get, what's MRI? You know, what kind of tests have you gotten so we can figure out what's going on? Because do we have a lot of medical advances right now and figure out, you know, what a neurologist would say,

figure out what other kind of Western and Eastern medicines to try. What can we do here? So I would make sure that I consult with multiple people, with multiple opinions. Now, don't chase, sometimes people chase the easy solution. You know, they ask for doctors and they take the one that seems like the one that they like the most. I'm not saying to do that. I'm saying get different second third opinion. If someone tells you, oh, you're just good.

We don't know what's wrong. This is, you know, you're screwed. Say, okay, thank you. And go check with someone else. And keep doing that until someone can help you. I've told the story before. I had dizziness. I went to a bunch of different doctors.

And it was Doc Parsley who was like, oh, you might have this thing. And he kind of like barely remembered it. And it was benign vertigo or some name for it. And he goes, do this silly thing. And I did it. And it was healed after years. Yeah. So I would go get a second, third, fourth, fifth opinion.

Find out what's going on. Did you get some kind of a concussion? Do you have some kind of a swelling? Do you look like, what's happening? Is there some kind of medication you can take? Is there some kind of surgery you can get? Like, what's going on? So let's find that out, number one.

In the meantime, okay, you got what you got. Like you could, you, you, You're in a situation where you can't do certain things that you used to like to be able to do. So I think you got to, you got to accept that, right? Okay, this is where I'm at. And again, I would focus on what can I do? What can I do? Not the things I can't do, but what can I do?

Can you play guitar? So it's at my list, right? But can you play guitar? If you really like physical things, guitar is kind of physical things. But, you know, can you, what physical thing can you do? Maybe you can't take impact anymore. Maybe it's time to do some running. Maybe it's time to do some endurance running.

Maybe it's time to get into endurance cycling. Maybe it's time to, you see what I'm saying? Like, what can you do? Oh, it's too much impact when you run? Maybe it's cycling. Oh, you don't want to risk falling off a bike. Okay. Maybe it's some other form of cardiovascular effort.

So I would see, I would focus on what I can do, not on what I can't do. And then you talk about a joyless life and focusing on helping other people. Bro, that's actually you're 19 years old. And this is why that feels that way. I'm going to tell you as you get older. the most joy you will have in your life won't be from winning yourself. It'll be from helping other people. So there's someone that is in way worse shape than you are.

There's someone that's having a more difficult time. There's a kid that needs help. There's all kinds of things that are happening in the world, all kind of people that you can help out. So yes, you should focus on helping other people, but no, that does not mean it will be a joyless life. You just got to find joy in different places, man. And you will. You will. 100%. That would be my recommendation. That would be my recommendation. It's surprising how there's different doctors that know different things. You know, and like Doc Parsley, great. But it's not like Doc Parsley, it's not like I went to, you know, some, what is it?

I didn't go to the senior neurologist at Harvard Medical. No. I went to the senior neurologist at Balboa Hospital. I went to the senior neurosurgeon at Balboa Hospital. I went to a bunch of people. And Doc Parsley was just like, oh, it might be this. So, and I think he, you know, he just had, he'd heard about it or something. So people that are doctors, they have different experiences.

They have different skill levels. They have different open-mindedness. And I think going and seeing other people and hearing what they have to say will be very helpful in this scenario. Yeah. And you know, you got what you got, man. Like that's the other part of it is you got you got to figure out what you can do. Got to figure out what you can do. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave a speech the other day when he was made the

Secretary of Health and Human Services and it's something that he said on this podcast as well, which is healthy people have a thousand goals, sick people have one, or sorry, dreams. Healthy people have a thousand dreams, sick people have one, one dream and that's to be healthy. So they get focused on that one thing. Now if you got something like this, where it's inhibiting your ability to do things that you want to do, you've got to expand those dreams. And that's kind of where you're at. Yeah, that part that you always say like focus on what you can do.

It's like that has such a broad utility, if you will. So it's like, because we, it's like you follow the stories, kind of you tell yourself, you know, like if you're like, oh my gosh, I'm, you know, I suck or it's so hard for me. If you keep, if you tell yourself that, like, bro, you, you, Yeah, it'll be hard, you know. And so it's like, however you want to frame it to yourself, whatever story you tell yourself, you know? So just like, and that was kind of the little trigger there when he's like a joyless life, you know? Yeah.

Like should I accept a joyless life? It's like, oh, that's a broad brush you just painted on your whole thing. You might want to go tune to tune into Travis Mills. Yeah. You know, who has no arms and no legs. He has no arms and no legs. He is completely filled with joy all day every day. It's a lot of joy.

Rob Jones. What does he have for legs? Nothing. He got his legs blown off. Guess what? Filled with joy. Has a good time all day every day. So you got some cognitive issues.

You got some issues, some headaches. 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 jaco underground.com. 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're doing this so that we can support the jocco podcast which will remain as is free for all as long as we can keep it that way but we but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors and we're doing it so we can give you more control more

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