Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: The Protocol In Your Head Is Probably Wrong

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

Having the correct protocol for dealing with stressers. Doing good but unfulfilled as a young man. How to recover from making a terrible impression. Follow the money? Or follow the passion?Dealing with an environment full of gossip. How to raise your kids to be confident and self-assured. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground Podcast number 97 is sitting here with Echo Charles. I was talking with my daughters, my middle and youngest daughter. And we were talking about the fact that, and I was explaining to them, quite frankly, that you create a path in your head of how you are going to deal with stress and challenges. you kind of create like a protocol in your head you don't know this you've never thought of this about this one time in your life echo you've not thought about this one time in your life that you oh you feel stress it's possible that you've never thought about this before but you have you've created a protocol when you're in a stressful situation when there's a challenge in front of

you created some kind of an internal protocol that you go through to deal with that challenge or deal with that stress or deal with that issue And the more you recognize that, the better that protocol can become. And it's something that you have to pay attention to because you can create a protocol on your head that like, oh, I'm going to go through something right now. I know it's going to hurt. But here's where I need to go mentally to get through it. And once I get through it, it's going to make me feel this way.

So you have a whole pathway that's traveled, well traveled. It's going to be easy for you to get down that path. You're all in this bad situation again. Okay, cool. I know what I need to do. I know the mindset I need to get and I can move forward. You can also develop a pathway that's bad. Like you know something's going to be hard and you immediately go, oh, this is going to be hard.

It's going to be terrible. And you start thinking about why it's so bad and thinking about what's going to happen if it goes wrong and think about how long it's going to last. And you focus on the negative. And you can develop a path like that. And you see people in life that develop. that develop a path like that, anything bad, and you also see people like, oh, go, right?

They have two different directions that you can go. These paths have protocols in your head. Do you ever do sauna activities? You ever do like aggressive, hostile sauna? I would never call any of my sauna sessions, hostile nor aggressive. Okay. I do some pretty hostile, aggressive sauna things

where, you know, The temperature's max, you're pouring on the water. It's painful. If you have the wrong mindset, it's a nightmare. If you have a good mindset, it's fine. Yeah, I did it. Almost to the point where you think, you're like, wait, what's the temperature? You almost think it's cooler.

You almost think it's shorter. Like, if you weren't following the protocol, the sauna protocol or the lifting protocol or the whatever. Like, if you're, it squats. Yeah. You can get caught. in a bad place. You know what I mean? I've had conversations with myself.

Yes. Where I've literally said, I don't care if I'm strong. I don't care anymore. I just want to stop this. That's a voice in the head. Oh, yeah. You get a power through that. But your protocol, you can go down that path where you stop.

You can develop a habit of like, okay, well, it's hard. So I'm just going to get off this. Stop the sauna. Stop the squatting. Stop the whatever. I think that you probably did this with claustrophobia. Did you? You figured out that like, oh, this is going to end.

Hang on. Don't freak out. Don't get caught in a negative place because you used to freak out. Seven years ago maybe? Yeah, yeah. You would get like, you would tap. You actually would tap. Yeah.

Like submit and quit. Because someone like me was cross-sight on you. I don't remember anyone else ever doing that. Oh, okay. That's side from you. Okay. Well, that's one. There you go.

It's true, though. Yes. But yeah, and you couldn't deal with it. Like, you hated it. Right. And then you got used to it. You actually found a different path in your head. You did what I'm talking about here.

You went from like, look, whoa, and talk, it's never going to get out. It's going to suck. He's going to sweat on my eye. Like, this is terrible. I can't breathe. You took all that and you said, you know what, he's not, I can't die. Right. I'm not going to die.

He can't put any more weight on me than he's putting on me. It's not going to get, he can't get any heavier in the next three minutes. He's not submitting me. So he's not really winning. He's just putting pressure. The pressure can only get so much. And if I can hang on, he's going to have to try something else. You figured that out.

You can carve out this other path. So once you realize that you, you have these paths and your protocol in your head, once you recognize them, you can adjust them. And if you have a good path that you can go down, you can actually go, oh, I see what's happening right now. And you can, you can say, oh, left turn, right turn, go 60 miles an hour, press the brakes. All right, now I'm through it. You can actually do that.

These are things. And by the way, if you have a bad path, you can say, oh, hold on a second. The right turn doesn't get me anywhere. Good. Stop. Go left. The straightaway, don't go down the straightaway. It seems real easy, but it's not the place to go.

Take that left exit. Get off the straightaway. Take the left exit. Come to a stop sign. Take a right at the light. You can adjust your path so you're getting somewhere good. Some people, they have like the freeway that goes straight to hell, right? They hit challenges.

We don't want to do that. No, no, no. So if you recognize that, you can change it. You can inherently develop it over time. And then when the stress hits, you can get better at it. Right? You can recognize that. And that's a positive thing.

So you see that the stress is increasing, the emotions are increasing, the negative thoughts are running wild, you can take a step back, you can breathe, you can think through the worst case scenarios, you can make adjustments, you can pre-plan these things, you can think through them, what is the protocol going to be in a challenging situation? You can figure out a protocol for yourself. And then you can resort to the protocol. You can resort to the protocol. It's like shooting.

When you have a jam on your weapon, you don't think about it. You just resort to the protocol. That's what you do. And then once you figure out what your protocol is going to be, put it to some kind of test. And there's a lot of good ways to test at Jiu-Jitsu, by the way. It was a good way to test stressful situations. hard exercise competition trying things that are new some people whatever you're afraid of you're afraid of speaking go speak so you have a lot of control over the

your reactions to things probably a lot more control than you think you have over reactions to things and if you recognize that you can take even more control over it you can implement some positive protocols train around those protocols and you can become a better human being so what these paths of protocols that that you kind of formulate in your head you're talking like subconsciously most automatic of course we've you develop like habits yeah yeah like just habitual ways of dealing and what you can tell is like with a with a kid that whatever they experienced when they were young and the way they handled it was to

start crying or curl up in a ball or use their temper or they develop and guess what when they lost their temper their mom backed off and they kind of got what they wanted it worked in one way or not worked in one way or the other it stopped the stressful situation yeah maybe it was because they quit right yeah maybe it's because they quit and they just don't have to deal with it anymore you're correct so these things get developed we we learn like up we learn a method of to deal with stress. I feel very lucky because I feel like when I was a kid, I just whatever stress I came across, I figured out a way kind of through it. And then in the, you know, I didn't think about this. I didn't think about this until three days ago. Like going through

seal training, why do people quit? It's because their protocol is like, oh, this is going to suck. I don't know how long it's going to last. I don't want to do this anymore and they quit. For me, I was like, oh, this is going to end someday. Like whatever, I want to do this, so let's go. I can't even tell you what my protocol was, but my protocol was something along the lines of, I don't care, bring it. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Yeah. Well, you, okay, so you're different, and this is so beneficial and so you're you, and you've always come off like this to me. I don't know, I can't read your mind, but this is what it seems like that you're kind of almost like, that's part of your sense of pride, like the more stress you can just

put on yourself to endure you. It's almost like you're, you, it's like a, it's like a, sense of like value almost kind of like the more extreme something is on yourself the more you're you're kind of like happy with it you know kind of the thing i will say this i like and this is a this is a be careful what you wish for yeah i like when things are chaotic and crazy yeah and i'm not talking about self-induced i'm talking about like when the world when there's mayhem i kind of like it. Yeah. And that and that, and that, you've always seemed like that in this way where, and not in a psychopathic way, nothing like this, but like, yeah, yeah. That's the thing. I don't be like, oh, like I want to jump into the fire because I, I want, you know, that's not what I'm

yeah, it's not masochistic. Yeah, it's not masochistic. It just seems like you're always into, and you, by your own admission, like into hardcore. Like, you know, like you're hardcore me like hardcore. Like that's pretty extreme. That's extreme. And it's like you embrace that part of things like as in as like an internal interest almost. You know, so you kind of. So you kind of bring it on yourself and it's kind of like part of or normal people not like that so but i think that formulated itself to be like such this strong asset when because it's so useful in way in like outlasting enduring certain things which is a necessity for certain types of success or pretty much all kinds of success pretty much but but a normal person i would say you know in one

way another this it feels like this is kind of the the formula in your head where stress comes and you and you recognize stress as being a bad thing and then you just start reaching for the relief, like reaching for the relief of that stress. Like, you know, you think of a little kid where, I don't know, the kid gets in trouble or he gets embarrassed or whatever. And his protocol will say is to run in the closet and lock the door or something like that, right? Where that's his first reaction that he might have done other stuff before, but that was the first one that found just a little bit of relief from that stress.

So, oh, that's what we're doing. And it gets like cemented in their little brain back there. And it just sort of builds, you know. and whatever. It's like a weird little mutated version of like evolution in the back of your. But the mistake is there's a greater, like if you can endure certain types of stress, it'll give you a greater payoff than that one. Just in giving up and quitting is a big, big part of it, whether it be Jiu-Jitsu or the

be SEAL training, whatever, where it's like, hey, endure this stress. Yeah, you feel like you want to quit. You feel you want the relief from the stress for sure. But if you endure it, that relief is going to come way, way more. you'll have more of a payoff than that one little short-term one. See what I'm saying so but in your little protocol that little subconscious protocol doesn't work like that you got to train it to work like that And that's in the I thought they was clear as day when you're describing my little claustrophobia thing which is exactly what happened by the way Where that was that's what was going to my like I'm thinking to myself why the freaking like first off other people don't have this problem like this that I can see I'm sure they do

And by the way Jocko hasn't killed anyone by being cross side. Yeah. No one's died. Yeah. So why am I letting myself believe that I'm going to die? Because really, that's kind of the feeling of claustophobia. Like you'll never. The thing is, bro, I'm not stuck here. I have the, it's complete.

Why do I feel like this? So you logic, just like how you mapped out right there. You logically go through it. Like, what do I think? Like, Djaku's not going to smash my ribs right now and injure me. I'm not going to die. It's jujitsu. You like, you know, it's like you walk through it consciously.

And then over time, you start. slowly start to train yourself out of that weird pattern, you know, into the new pattern. That's good. There you go. I'm going to do it. Something for everyone to learn. You have patterns developed. You have habits.

And you need to pay. 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

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