Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Should You Improve Your Weakness? Or Capitalize on Your Strengths?

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

Should You Improve Your Weakness? Or Capitalize on Your Strengths?How to have hard / sensitive conversations with people. How to build relationships with people who are at odds with each other. Risking complacency with diffused / shared accountability. How to raise driven, uncommon, happy, great young men. How to motivate people with no monetary incentive. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 92 sitting here with Echo Charles. Here's a common question for us. And by us, I mean humans. Should I focus on capitalizing on my strengths or should I focus on improving my weaknesses? Like I said, common question. Actually, Echo Charles, you most recently asked me this common question. Sure. My answer is actually yes.

That's my answer to both. but I would say have a bias of focusing time on strength so if you've got strength and weaknesses which you do you should work on both you should bias towards working on your strengths in most cases

because well for one thing you have a compounding effect when you're good at something it allows other opportunities right other things open up allows you to do more Even that thing that you're good at, you can do it faster because you're good at it. You can do with more efficiency.

And that means you can see other things that are happening. So that's good. And it's usually some kind of an exponential growth when you're doing something that you're good at. So we want to focus on our strength for sure. But that doesn't mean abandon your weaknesses. You shouldn't give up on them. You should still work on them. But let's say you're great at right.

writing. No, let's say you aren't great. Let's say you're not good at writing. I think that's a little more common. Someone who's just not really good at writing, don't really like it, but you're really good at math. That doesn't mean, oh, I should go and try and become a journalist. Right.

So if you aren't great at writing, don't go to college to become a journalist. That's not a good move. Yeah. If you're good at math, not good at writing, go be an engineer. Go be a computer scientist. Do something that is going to capitalize on what you're good at. But don't just give up on writing. Don't just abandon it.

Take some of those classes. Take a creative writing class. Hell yeah. Take an English literature class. You know, write in your journal. So you can get better at it. Because it is a skill that you're going to need. Even if you're, even if you're just in a complete math-oriented world,

you're still going to have to write. You're still going to have to write. Even if you're writing, if you're a scientist, you're going to have to write an application to get a grant or whatever. I'm totally talking about things I don't know about. But I know that those people get grants. I know you've got to write an application to get a grant. So therefore you're writing.

So you should try and get good at it. Same thing. If you're naturally like a lean endurance athlete, if that's what you kind of naturally are, you shouldn't be like, oh, I'm going to now become a, my goal is become a power lifter. Because chances are you're going to top out and you're going against nature. Right?

You're naturally lean, naturally have slow twitch fibers. So that doesn't mean, so don't go try and become a power lifter, but that doesn't mean you should never lift, right? You should want to be strong. Now, listen, if you're an Olympic marathon. You're probably not going to be lifting a bunch at least not upper body right? I don't think they lift They don't look like they don't seem like yeah doesn't seem like they're lifting But my point is for a normal person you're oh you're naturally good runner cool Definitely keep running but that doesn't mean abandon lifting still want to be stronger that kind of thing

And there are also things That if you're not good at them They're so important that you actually have to do them anyways. So, for instance, the jiu-jitsu. Sure. Let's say you wrestled. And when you grow up, you're wrestling. So you hate being on the bottom.

You don't want to be in your back so you have no guard. That's not going to, there's going to be, here's the problem with that. There's someone out there that's a better wrestle than you. Period. End of story. Right. There's someone out there that's going to put you on your back. and it might be

you know if you wrestled in college well if you wrestled in a junior college well then the D1 colleges they're going to be all better wrestlers than you so they're going to put you on your back so you gotta just you know I had a fighter one time

and I said hey you know let's work your bottom game he's like I'm not going to the bottom and I said yeah but you should still have it and he didn't work on it and he got beat ground and pounded for three rounds. Taking down each round

and he was a guy that was really hard to hold down. I would have a hard time holding him down. You know, he had a good, you get feet on the hips and getting back to his feet and it was hard to take down too. But got taken down three rounds

and didn't have his timing, didn't have his, you know, you've learned some tricks down there of how you're going to get back up. So there are critical things. That's why I used writing as an example. Writing is actually kind of a really important skill to have in general in life. If you can't write well, you can't even really put together a good application to apply for a job. Never mind a grant. You can't explain things correctly

in the military. You're not good at writing evaluations. You're not good at writing awards. There's all kinds of problems. So writing is not a great example because writing actually is something that you should get good at. I had, I didn't really like being on the bottom very much in Jiu-Jitsu when I started. Yeah. Probably because I was like bigger and stronger. So when I was on top, I could like use my weight and strength to control people. And so what I did, I realized I didn't like it. And so I just ended up starting on the bottom for like a year straight. Yeah. And I got so confident on the bottom that I brought my game back up to speed. So that's a positive Because if you're not good on the bottom, what happens when you get put on the bottom?

You're going to get smashed. So you have to do that. Now, what's interesting about this is, you know, you think about what your weaknesses are. I think a lot of times you mistake your weaknesses for something that you lack the natural ability to do when the reality is you just haven't really worked on it. You know what I'm saying? Like, you, oh, this guy is not a good striker in fighting. Well, how much does he train striking? Of course, he's a black belt in jih Tzu,

and he trains seven days a week on the mats, but he doesn't really. So he's not a good striker. He hasn't trained every single day for 10 years in striking because he doesn't really like it that much. And why doesn't he like it that much? Because he doesn't do it very much. So when he does go spar, he kind of gets his ass kicked.

And so if there's something that, that you're not good at, chances are, it's not that you don't have the natural abilities, just that you haven't worked on it. And that's a problem. So sometimes people think, I don't wanna do that. They hide from it. And that's a bad thing to do,

especially from a leadership perspective. You know, if I come down and I see the troops are doing something at something I don't feel really comfortable with, so I just kind of like hide from it, not a good move. Instead be like, hey, can you guys walk me through this because I don't really know how to do it? Yeah. And then you realize, oh, it's just, oh, it's just

that I don't know how to do it yet, and say teach you, oh, you're gonna have to practice it a little bit, then you'll be better at it, okay, cool. But taking that step to go and get into something is important. This is a Mikey and the Dragon scenarios, by the way, right? Like when you're looking at, you know, when I say, hey, Echo, I want you to brief the sales team today.

And you're like, I don't, I don't, I'm not good at public speaking. Right. And I go, well, how much have you practiced? And you're like, well, I've never practiced. well, then you're not going to be good at it. So I think a lot of times we see our weaknesses as something we naturally aren't good at, but in reality, we don't see that we haven't worked at it and that other people have worked at it. You know, oh, how'd that person, oh, I'm not good at squats.

Well, how much you're squatting? Yeah. You know, oh, I don't have a good, you know, I don't have a good bench. How much bench press are you doing? So that's the reality. I'm not a good runner. How much you're running? What are you doing?

Now, listen, there's people that you're not going to be an exceptional runner. You're not going to have an exceptionally strong bench. You're not going to have an exceptionally strong squat. But just about everybody can be pretty good. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yep. How, I shouldn't say just about anybody with the right amount of work.

Yeah. You know what's interesting? I'm not good at anything. Yeah. I'm not good at anything. but I do an interesting thing that I do have is I have like good mobility in my squat position sure like there's a lot of people that can't go to ask the grass squat you know just I'm not I'm talking like no wait I'm just

talking sitting here oh just squat down all the way comfortably and and be able to sit there like that yeah I have I know people that are more flexible kind of universally than I am but they can't do that why because they don't ever get in that position. So if you get in that position and you sit there, you'll open up your hips, you'll improve your flexibility in your ankles, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. So I say, yes, work on both.

Both. That's my answer. Yeah, there's two. So the, this kind of, you, you're helping me make sense of it all because I kind of see it as. So certain things that you're naturally good at, there's kind of two little. categories in a way where it's like one that you're kind of just natural like let's say you're fast twitch muscles you're going to be better at certain physical activities than others right that's like

you're naturally good at it then there's another kind of natural ability that seems natural and technically it is but it's because you've been put in certain environments that sort of give you this proxy training for this certain thing so like you know let's say you're a farmer or someone who bales hay or lifts up a does a lot of physical stuff just through work and then you go do something else that's physical in a different way but similar you know some some overlap there or whatever and you're going to be ahead of like the normal person so it's like oh this came natural to him well because he spent freaking 15 years doing this other thing that's similar you know the really good obvious example that is water water yeah being comfortable in the water so anyone

that grew up in the water yeah whether they were lived by a lake lived by the ocean they surfed they were on the swim team they played water polo yeah those people people are comfortable in the water. Anybody that grew up where there's no water, they didn't swim, there are a disaster in the water. And it takes a lot of work for them to overcome that. And you see this all the time in basic seal training. People that grew up in the water, they don't have any problem with the water revolutions. Like literally no problem. It's a rest for them. There's some people that are panicking on every single time they go do a pool evolution. And the pool evolutions are challenging it's it's underwater not tying it's life saving it's 50

meter underwater swim and anyone that grew up in the water they they they consider those things to be a rest yeah they consider those things to be a rest easy around and just like any just about anyone that ran cross country yeah in high school or certainly in college they don't worry about those runs at all they're like oh oh we got a four mile time run today they run a four mile time run in 26 minutes 25 minutes the passing time is 32 minutes there's a bunch of people that fail those things yeah why because they're used to that environment yeah so yes you're right it may seem like oh this guy's naturally comfortable in the water yeah the dude played freaking water polo you know yeah of course he's gonna seem natural in the water yeah and there's other

dudes from iowa grew up on a farm yeah had never ever his face in the water yeah yeah yeah where you get like People who grow up in a big family, you know, and then for some reason, they're real, like, you know, they have certain personality traits that are, that are conducive to other environments. So, like, you know, you hear about people, for example, they're in a big family and they got to kind of fight for to be heard, you know? So they're real tenacious in that way, and that sort of sets them up for certain other situations, you know. So in a way, they got training. Yeah, yeah. But it's just by their natural life, you know, kind of the thing. So there's that going on.

And then there's the stuff that kind of like how you said. where you don't have any training. Actually, you don't have experience doing it. That's really what it is. You don't have any experience doing it, whether it be training or just in everyday life. And then those wind up usually or a lot of times being quote unquote weaknesses.

And then, okay, so then moving forward, again, this is just me trying to make sense of the whole thing, where these are going to be kind of more technical expressions. So there's training and then there's performance. So, you know, training is like, hey, you can practice your weaknesses, you can practice your strength, practice everything.

But if you can identify your weaknesses, that's the time where you can really focus on them. And it's like, cool, I can improve them slowly by slowly. But come performance time, unless they're at a certain level, bro, you want to avoid that stuff. You want to play to your strengths. Now, hopefully you brought your weaknesses up a little bit

so you can at least live or survive or, you know, whatever the case may be. But performance is not the time to start working on your weaknesses. No, you're right. In training. So hopefully you can kind of differentiate what are you doing right now?

Are you training or you performing? You know, kind of a thing? 100% right. You can kind of make sense of it. No, that's a great point. You don't, you know, you don't have good. 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 and subscribe.

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