Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: The Cure To Self Doubt. Exercise, New Baby, and Jocko is the New Chuck Norris.

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

Self doubt is helpful and hurtful.Exercise.Life with a new baby.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko underground podcast sitting here with EC echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. The open mind, which is good, and self-doubt, self-doubt. So people freak out a little bit about self-doubt. And sometimes it consumes them, right? Some people will try and discourage you from having any self-doubt. Like you got to believe in yourself, right? this is the Jocko underground podcast sitting here with EC echo Charles and me Jocko the open mind which is good and self self doubt self doubt so people freak out a little

bit about self doubt and sometimes it consumes them right some people will try and discourage you from having any self-doubt like you got to believe in your Right? For me, self-doubt is not only okay, but kind of good in a way. And I was listening to BJ Penn on Joe Rogan's podcast. And Rogan started talking about Mike Tyson, who was training with Custamato. And Custamato was, actually, that's a, that whole thing is crazy. You start that, I guess they're turning that into a movie right now.

I don't know how they're going to pull it off, but customato was, he guided Mike Tyson so, like, perfectly to become the champ by talking to him and by explaining things psychologically and kind of like hypnotizing him and just influencing him so, so powerfully, you know, that Mike Tyson was a machine, right? He turned into a machine. So one of the thing he said was, was, and again, this is a quote from Rogan, which is a quote from Gus to costumato. So who knows how it's perfect. I'm going to get it. But the basic quote is, fear is like fire. It can warm, it can warm and cook your food, warm you and it can cook your food or it can burn your house down. Right.

So this is also clearly a dichotomy, right? But I think it's the same with self doubt. because if you have some self-doubt, it's going to be good because you're pushing. You're like train a little extra. You're going to prepare a little bit more. But it can also, right? So if you're going in a jih Tjitsu tournament and you have self-doubt,

you're going to like train extra hard and do some cardio and you're going to lift weights and you're going to work on your wrestling. You're doing work. If you think you're going to go in there and dominate, you know, you're backing off. And it's the same thing with anything in life. But also you could not enter the. tournament, right? You could be so freaked out that you're not going to end it or you're not going to go for the job interview or you're not going to go talk to your boss about getting

a raise like none of that stuff's going to happen because you're doubting it and so you've got to find that balance but so now to kind of go a little tangential for me I have another kind of self-doubt which is also kind of positive in my opinion which is when someone pushes back against me when someone's got some other idea that I don't agree with I think to myself, okay, what do I, what do I not understand? So if I say, hey, Echo, here's the plan for what we're doing tonight. And you say, I don't like that plan. I don't think you're bad. I don't think you're an idiot. I think, what is it that I don't see? Why don't, why, why, why does Echo see something that I don't see? And this actually opens my mind. So for me,

self-doubt is a, is a state of mind that actually opens up. my mind and allows me to listen. Now here's the thing about having the open mind. I've been talking to a lot of people, a lot of clients about this. Your mind is the natural mode of operating for your mind is to close. That's the natural mode of operating.

Why? Because it's safer. Cause it's easier, because it's more comfortable. So the minute you have to open your mind up to someone else's ideas, it's going to get uncomfortable. The many you open up to your mind to someone else's ideas, things are gonna harder because you gotta take in what they're saying, you gotta do this calculus, just like bacteria, right?

We're afraid of bacteria, we're afraid of snakes. We stay away from them. That's what a new idea is. It's a snake that's gonna get in your head. So the natural thing to do is to close our minds. And so it's difficult to, go through life because if you don't pay attention, your mind's, your mind is constantly just trying

to get closed back up and trying not to let any other ideas in. And clearly this is a pandemic right now out in the world because people's minds are just boom, boom, closing, closing, closing. And it's, it's, you have to pay attention to it. So you actually have to detach to see that your mind is closed, right? You won't see it on your own. You won't see it if you're not thinking about it if you're not consciously trying to pull back and check where your brain is at where your mind is at is going to be closed and you can just be running around just not knowing that your mind is closed

How will you know it you won't know it? You won't know it. It's like there's no interference coming in to let you know hey Your mind is closed and occasionally you get rocked with some radical idea. I mean can you imagine the guys that we're doing like whatever traditional martial art in 1989 and how crazy it was for someone to come in and take them down and choke them with a jitschois. You know, like how crazy was it when they threw their magic strike

and they, it didn't work at all. And then this guy just grabbed them and hip tossed him or double-legged them and then all of a sudden they're getting choked. And they, and they, their mind is, so closed you know what they say immediately let's try that again you know many people I've had say that to me especially in the early days of jiu jitzu like I would roll with somebody and they let's try that again their mind couldn't couldn't even accept what's happened normally I don't know what

you found it would be like three to five submissions before someone actually understands that there's something going on here that they don't get before their mind even cracks barely open it takes them getting submitted three to five times before they even recognize this Yes? Makes sense. But yeah, I don't have a concrete number there. You've never, I mean, how many times did you have somebody look? Oh, let's see.

Yeah, the only, to be honest, the only time that's ever happened where someone would be like, oh, let's go again, like they didn't like believe it or they thought, oh, I just fell down in a bad spot or something or something. At a barbecue, that kind of. This counts, man. Yeah, yeah. Well, I would definitely end up in more, let's say, direct. Because, you know, I'm in the, I'm in the car. So we got everyone that's thinking that they know some stuff.

Same thing. Yeah, especially because I'm in the teams with guys that were, you know, 80s guys. Yeah. And 90s guys that are like, hey, we learned that if you do this, you're 100% going to go down. It's like, okay, do it to me. Yeah. Double leg, rear naked choke. Yeah.

But it takes. So you, you choke someone once, twice, three times their mind's not even open yet. They're still like that was, like you said, you just. just fell down, you got lucky. And it would take that multiple attacks and submissions before their mind even gets a little bit open. And then normally like a half an hour, like, let's go one more.

So they like, it closes back up again. So that happens to all of us. And it's, it's unnatural to keep your mind open. It's unnatural. It's not the human mode of operating to open up, to listen to what other people have to say. And yet, Yet, if you can do it, if you can go through life,

keeping that thing, like taking a stick and putting it in your mind so that the little hatches pride open and it's stuck open, you're going to have such a easier time understanding other people, understanding other ideas, and coming to a better conclusion. That's going to be, that's going to make everything in your life better.

Yeah. Yeah, just knowing that, I think, is the, because you forget, just like how you said, like your mind, even if, because even if you do open your mind for a second, be like, okay, I'll have an open mind on this one and then you accept the idea, then it close right back up. Even if you accept the idea. I was like, oh, yeah, I had an open mind. I accepted the idea. Well, I even changed my mind. Look, I'm mature. Look at my growth.

And then you just close your mind again. It's like a, it's an ongoing campaign. You got to kind of keep your mind open or begin the habit of keeping it open. Well, what's crazy now is, you know, when you watch the divisiveness. in the country. People are, people will get presented with quote facts and here's the thing. They'll like those facts.