Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: I Hope You Can Accept Reality.

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

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This is Jocko Underground Podcast, number 85, sitting here with Echo Charles. And I hope that people can accept reality. And what makes this necessary in life is you can't really make a plan or move in the right direction if you can't accept reality of what's happening. And if you talk to other human beings on a regular basis, you're going to see times where they do not. accept reality and it is the root one of the roots of the problems that they're having in their life look and this happens in all it can happen in all aspects of the world happens in combat where guys will ignore intel that's coming in or they'll ignore what the enemy is doing they'll ignore significant gunfire because they doesn't fit with

what they were wanting so they don't accept reality happens in business where People are looking at the market data. They're watching what the, you know, some obvious move that the competitor is making That they, it clearly it's going to have an impact on their business But they don't they don't accept that as reality They deny What's actually happening. So I think and I think it's a good thing to focus on focus on accepting reality Just focus on that's a good thing to focus on

There's a thing it's harder than you think it's going to be a to accept what reality is and that's because the reality that you think is what you think is reality. You see the little trick here, the little conundrum that we end up in? Yeah.

The reason you think is reality because you think it's reality. It's the freaking Truman show. Is that what it is? The Truman Show? He thinks that's real. Until he realizes it's not, until he sees the little hole,

he thinks it's real. And that's where you might be. In combat that's where you might be in business. That's where you might be in relationship you ever seen this is a real obvious one You know some guys going out with the girl Yeah, hell yeah and clearly to all parties This girl's not doing right by him maybe she's cheating on him maybe she's she's treating him disrespect There's all kinds of things she could be doing wrong and he doesn't see this as a reality Yeah, he's not dealing with reality

So there's a decent chance that whatever you think is reality is not you are lying to yourself or by the way you don't have to be actively lying to yourself you don't have to actively be lying to yourself you just might not see reality I mean imagine someone that is colorblind and they've never known it right like you get people that want to join the military and they go to take the screening test and they fail the colorblindness test and And they don't understand. What's wrong?

They didn't know that there was other colors out there. They didn't know that red and green were two distinct and separate colors. They didn't know that. To them, it kind of looked the same. Or someone that's near-sided or someone that's far-sided. You've seen the videos that they got now, the little, I guess they're not even clickbait. They're just, they're just algorithm magnets where they like put glasses on a little kid for the first time and they can see their mom's face.

Right. They didn't think that that wasn't reality. They thought that was reality. So that can happen to us where we just can't see. We're near-sighted or we're far-sighted or we're colorblind. So we have to pay attention to that. And in order to overcome that, what we have to do is open up our minds. We have to open up our minds.

You have to open up your minds, which is not easy because nature has trained you genetically and biologically to close your mind. That's what nature, that's what the world, that's what your instincts want you to do. Your instincts want you to close your mind because when you close your mind, you're safe. When you close your mind, you're secure. When you close your mind, you're protected. When you close your mind, you have control over what's happening. And you learn that at a young age and you learn it over and over and over again.

That there's risk to the open mind, that there's new ideas, that there's ideas that are content. to what you've thought, that there's danger. So on a short-term level, the open mind is harder because it's so much easier just to close the mind. That's why tactically speaking, we close our minds. And it seems like it's better. We seem like we win that tactical war when we just close our minds.

When the first time that someone that had been studying karate for 24 years, and got tapped out by a blue belt in jiu jitsu, the easiest thing to do was just to close the mind and say, yeah, but I'm never going to the ground. Or yeah,

but that's not many people. Yeah, but it takes forever. The easiest thing to do is close that off. Protect the ego short term. The hardest thing to do is, oh, there's something that I don't know

that I need to learn. I need to get on that path. That's the open mind. The closed mind in jiu jiu jitsu is 20 years ago, Oh, footlocks are disrespectful, right? Those aren't real attacks. That's a closed mind attitude. Instead of like, oh, I just got tapped out by someone that did something to my leg.

I should figure out what that is. That's what happened with John Donner, right? He sees that Dean Lisch. He sees Dean Lisch getting people to tap by doing something to their feet, doing something to their knees, doing something to their heels. And John Donahor, instead of saying, oh, we need to compete in tournaments where there's no footlocks, no leg locks, instead it's, oh, this is a part of the game that I did not understand. I need to open my mind. So it is a fight to keep your mind open.

You have to pry your mind open and you have to keep it open. Why? Because in the long term, in the strategic, the open mind is more adaptive. and the adaptive creature survives long term. Longer than a strong one. Look, it's stronger move short term to close my mind. It allows me to power through things. But the long term, the strong things that can adapt will lose.

It's the same thing with ideas. You can have a really strong idea, but if you don't adapt that idea over time, it's going to end up being a losing idea. Adaptation means survival. Open-mindedness means adaptation. So that's what we need to do. Pry our minds open and keep them open

so that we can see reality for what it really is. Or at least as close to reality as you can possibly get. And if you do that, if you open your mind, you'll be able to see reality and then you can make a plan you can move in the right direction so there you go yeah you really want to do that

because there's a so the expression reality check yeah reality check is essentially when and I'm not educating you probably you know this obviously but it's one of those things it comes from if you're not in touch with reality as much and then you're forced to be in touch with reality all at once one big thing that's a reality check we support reality checks

oh yeah when needed that's how but look if you're the receiver, you'd rather be in touch the whole time. So you don't suffer those checks. You don't want the check. Those checks kind of suck from time to time. I mean, they're useful, but you know what's more useful? Being in touch with reality the whole time. Keeping an open mind all the time. Yeah.

Not having your mind get opened up. Yeah. Forcefully or whatever. Forcefully, yes, by a reality check. Yeah. Good point. Good point. All right.

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