Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Society, Advertising, etc, Appeals to Our Desire For Immediate Gratification. How to Stay Ambitious.

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

Society, Advertising, etc appeals to our weakest desires of immediate gratification.Getting better at oral exams.Labor shortages.Stepping up to lead in a toxic environment.Questionable Jiu Jitsu places?How to stay ambitious.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground Podcasts with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. And okay, we are a part of society. No way to get around that, right? Even if you're living out in the middle of nowhere, you are going to have to brush up against society. So we've got this thing going on right now, probably at a scale that's never gone on before, in my opinion. and that is the world of advertising right now, just constantly trying to capitalize on human beings' desire for immediate gratification. And what can we do to protect ourselves, our friends, the people we know,

against this onslaught of just onslaught of advertising and attention seeking that's out there for us. I'm going to go ahead and start off. This is one of the, tell us the story for the 474th time about the book, Mind Games. Oh, yeah, Mind Games. And how it made you feel like you shouldn't lose your temper and the kind of trick you played on yourself because I think this is a similar thing. Yeah, okay.

Mind Games, Mike Powell, by the way, is the author. So it's not a book like what you'd think, just to clarify. It's not like this, it's like a book with these teeny tiny short chapters that are some are just little puzzles, some are this, and then some are little explanations stuff. Anyway, one of them was anger management or losing your temper, something like that. I forget. which chapter was, but it was about anger management.

And in there, it said a lot of things, but one of the main things was that, like, people with a short temper or get people who get angry really easily, usually comes from low self-esteem in that. And that was always like a shameful thing growing up. Just, you know, in school they teach you self-esteem or whatever. And I always thought to myself, how can someone have low self-esteem?

That's kind of embarrassing to, like, have low self-esteem. I didn't even know really what it was. just sounded real bad. So for whatever reason that was ingrained in me, where it's like, if you can avoid displaying that you have low self-esteem, you should avoid that. I've always thought that or whatever.

So, yeah, when it said that, I was like, huh, and it made sense too. And it explains why. No, never. I never had a bad temper. You used to get angry. You used to show anger?

Yeah, more loosely. So, I mean, no. So why was this a big deal? Because it said the word self-esteem. So it's, So to me, I overkilled it. And I was like, anytime you get angry, you just have low-level steam. Got it, got it.

And I went back to work just preaching it, preaching it to everybody, like all the bouncers or whatever, like, where it's like, yeah, man, if you get, and think about it, because they explain it. It doesn't just say that and then move on. It explains everything, whatever. Talking about controlling your environment and, like, all this stuff, right? So it just hit me real hard. And to me, I took it as, hey, if you get mad, even though it says in there, anger is

a natural part of life, you know, all this stuff. I took it as like, yeah, if you. You get mad and openly display your anger, you have low self-esteem. That's how it landed on my brain. The way you've told me that story before is like you played a trick on yourself of like, oh, if I get angry, that means I have low self-esteem and I'm not going to be that guy. Exactly right. So I think here this is an opportunity for us to play a trick on ourselves,

kinds of or use that same methodology to say, oh, if I'm actually allowing this stuff to influence me, I have a weak mind. Yeah, right? Like that's what it is. If you can't get off your phone, if you can't put down the stop scrolling, if you can't do that, your freaking mind is weak. And it's being invaded. It's being invaded by someone that's smarter and stronger than you and is taking advantage of your weakness. Playing you for a sucker.

Playing you for a sucker, as we used to say. So I think that's what you got to do. You got to take a step back. You got to recognize what's happening. and you got to realize you can't let it happen. You've got to get some control back and not allow these. I mean, to me, when we talk about advertising, we're just talking about social media now.

I mean, have you ever watched a show in the last, well, when's the last time you watched a show where you had to watch a commercial? Like the Super Bowl maybe? Yeah. Right, because everyone does streaming or on demand. On demand. So it's not like the old days

where you kind of subject. When I was a little kid, you were subjected to advertisements because you were watching a show. You were freaking addicted to that little TV set, Saturday morning cartoons and they were going to play the whatever advertisement on there to get you to buy whatever. But it was involuntary. Yeah. You were subjected to it. Now, I mean, I even have YouTube Red or YouTube Premium. Premium, sure.

And when I go on someone that doesn't have YouTube Premium, I get mad. Brutal. Like, I think, I don't get mad, but I think you're, you're, this is ridiculous. I think YouTube premium is 10 bucks a month. Actually, I think it was 9.99 when I signed, but they jacked that price out now. It's like 13 bucks now. But so I'm not even subjected to advertisements on YouTube. By the way, that's amazing.

You have no advertisements on YouTube. People, it's, when I, when I suffer through someone else's YouTube right now. Yeah. And they click on a video to watch it and they got to watch a 30 second ad or whatever. I think, what are you doing? What a waste of time? What are you doing? So I'm not subjected to it there.

So really, the place you get subjected to it is social media. You click on this thing or the thing pops up. And it just happens to be algorithmically connected to something that you searched yesterday. And it's just, isn't that strange? You'll search for something. And then it just pops up all day. All related stuff too. So what do you need to do?

Detach. take a step back, see that you're being tricked, and don't allow yourself to be tricked. That's the way I look at it. Yep, straight up tricked. And here's the thing. I mean, good. Thank you for that advice.

But as most things, bro, it's, it goes deep. It goes deep. And it goes so deep that it's not all bad. Like, appropriate advertising is good for you and your goals. Like, if I want to, if I like watching YouTube commercials. Sometimes, yeah. Issues. I like sometimes watching.

My daughter is a. same way where well here's the thing and that's another trick too by the way but it's not a trick against me it's a trick for me in a way where if you notice commercials now are like they're fun to watch like they're clever commercials it's not like old school back in the day commercials where it's like oh freaking buy this sponge you know but it's different now now they're entertaining now they're entertaining. Now they got celebrities in there. Now they got jokes. Now they got humor. They got special effects. They got like,

brad's entertaining. Commercials are entertaining now. I realize not right now that you're talking about your own commercials for Jock Fuel. Sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes. I'm just saying that's part of the game now. That's the entertaining commercials of which you speak. Hell yeah. I think so. Nonetheless.

None the less. That's how it is nowadays. And then what is? Advertising versus I like watching your commercials too. Thanks, Chaco. Thanks, Chaco. A.D. That's assistant director.

I don't know if there's a difference. Advertising and marketing. I don't know what's what, but nonetheless, we'll just. I don't know. K dogs over here, non-and-is-et. Like, you just struck the old. It's different. I don't know the difference.

So let's just say marketing, because really that's kind of essentially what we're talking about. Where in there, it's ever sure. An actual advertisement will be played on this and there and you click here and whatever. but that's an actual advertisement, but marketing is freaking deep, and it goes super deep. So, like, if you, if I see you wearing a XYZ shirt

and I like you and I look up to you, you just marketed that XYZ shirt to me. Even though you just wore it because it was comfortable and you didn't even know anyone was going to see you that day, but that's marketing already because it influenced me

to see value in that shirt because I look up to you. If it's good enough for you, it's damn for sure, good enough for me. Is you what I'm saying? Effective marketing, right there. And that's just like a branding kind of situation, but you can go like, look, if I'm

looking for freaking books on how to improve my tricking archery, right? And one is like talking about the trigger or I don't know, I'm just making up these terms. Shut up and bow and arrow the other day. Anyway, and I find a book and I'm like, cool, this is a good one. And then I go online again and it shows me another book because I it obviously the algorithm you know determined that I'm obviously looking for books to improve my archery it's going to show me another one that helps me with my goal like it helps me so advertising can help of course the companies that are advertising whatever but it helps me too so you got to kind of discern like what's helping me and what's just luring me and using me as a pawn overall you know so it's like yeah how you said like yeah it plays

off your immediate gratification sure yes it does and those are the ones you want to like avoid. You know how they they'll get the perfectly manicured hamburger with the glistening and it's CGI by the way. It's not even a real hamburger. It's like the computer hamburger. But it looks so good, you know. And they'll show it to you at a certain time

you know like right before lunch. 11 a.m., something like this because they know they know lunch is coming up. You know what I'm saying? Or they'll put certain colors on certain advertisements that like are proven apparently.

I don't know. But apparently they're to make you more hungry. Like I guess red and yellow, it's like makes you more hungry. Like Tiger Stripe. No, bro. No. Red and yellow apparently makes you more hungry.

Bro, that's what I heard. Nonetheless, it goes deep. But I'm saying it's advertising not all bad. That's the hard part. So you've got to navigate. I think you should definitely set up some filters in your brain. Yeah. And try not to click on things.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. But yours is super simple because you're like, function straight up yeah anything after that is all extricated I was looking at one of my kids my kids grams sure and they had advertisements every third or fourth scroll do you know what I'm saying so every third or fourth thing that they would scroll paths was an advertisement and that was when you said your kids that was that that was on my daughter's phone okay and I was I was like damn because I don't have barely any advertisements on mine barely any

I wonder why that is. I think it's because I never click on anything. I don't click like. I don't like anybody's thing. I don't share anything. I'm just like I'm like a damn monk on Instagram. Instagram monk over here. I'm not sending out them little hearts.

And I think that must be, it must have something to do with it. Yeah, I would imagine. So, because yeah, that's true because all like. How many advertisements do you get? All right. I'm not bombarded with them, but they're part of my experience every single time for sure. I'm actually surprised when I see one.

I'll be like, oh, there's one. I'll be like, oh, what's that? Oh, it's a sponsored thing. Because it always looks weird to me anyways, because it's something that I'm not, I think the algorithm has a hard time figuring me out anyways. It sort of doesn't know what to send my way. Yeah. Because it would make sense, and I don't know how these algorithms work specifically, but it would make sense where like, you know how you're scrolling, you know? And after a while, like, especially when you're not like, oh, all.

into it you're just scrolling for something that really catches your eye for whatever reason so I wonder it has to be monitoring how much like it does monitor and then you pause on one yeah yeah it monitors all that stuff every little movie you make it's monitoring and I wish I could think of this I I clicked on a YouTube video the other day and you got to remember for me that's nothing there's no investment whatsoever because I don't have to watch an advertisement so I clicked on a YouTube video and it was something so stupid I can't remember what it is but the freaking top 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 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 interaction more direct connections better communications with us and to do that we are we're building a

website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us so thank you it's jaco undergris It costs $8.18 a month and if you can't afford to support us We can still support you just email assistance at jocco underground.com and we'll get you taken care of Until then we will see you mobilized underground