Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: What Should I Do With My Professional Life?

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

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This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 154 sitting here with Echo Charles, and we have some questions from the troopers at this time. Yep. Let's get into it. All right. First one. I'm a 28-year-old married male. For a long time, I've been trying to figure out what to do with my life career-wise.

My current job is intrinsically meaningful, but I feel it's not for me. I sit at a desk all day, and a big part of me feels I should be doing something more physical, a more physical job. I mean, I'm in great shape and would like to be in a career where I can be more active and problem solved. My dad is a retired cop and my brother is a former Marine. I've considered a career in law enforcement for a long time. The sense of duty, camaraderie, and mission are attractive to me, but each time I get ready to pursue it, I have a bunch of mental roadblocks. Fears of how the day-to-day will affect me and my eventual family.

The shift work, dangers, et cetera, all enter my mind. I've thought about this for years and I can't tell if I'm coming out with excuses, holding myself back, or if that particular career is really not for me. I've struggled with accepting not having a quote-unquote badass job and find myself envious of those who pursue things like military, police, fire, etc. But I wonder if that is more of a fantasy I've created or if I need to stop with excuses and get after it. Any thoughts you and echo have would be greatly appreciated. So one thing I want to say is like we you don't hear a lot of information about for instance police that are perfectly fine. You know what I mean like PTSD look do you please get PTSD?

Yep they do I did some quick you know research 35% of police get PTSD right now normally it's only 7% of the population so there's an increased chance. But there's also a bunch of police that don't get PTSD. You know what I'm saying? There's like 10% higher levels of stress and whatever problems are associated with stress, mental stress and what that does to your health. So there's like a 10% higher when you're for a police officer. But there's a lot of police officers that are totally freaking normal.

There's a lot of police officers that are like, yeah, oh yeah, someone got shot today. It's what my job is. I did my best to process through it. We got the person that. You know what I mean? Like there's people that get away with it or not or get, on with it. There's people that have squared away family lives that are police officers.

A lot. Divorce rate is 2% lower than the national average for police officers. There you go. You always hear like the police are getting, okay, okay, just a little reality check. So the percentages of some of those are, look, the PTSD thing is definitely higher, but also like PTSD doesn't necessarily mean you have like a ruined life. It just means you got some stuff you got to work through, you know? Like you might get, you know, you get some kind of a little injury.

You got to, oh, I can't do this a certain part of the exercise. I got to work my range of motion a little bit. I got to warm up more, whatever. It's like you just, it doesn't ruin your life because you got a bum elbow. You know, you can't lock out your bench press. Okay. Can't go as heavy as you used to, but you're still doing bad. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah. So we have to call it like it's the worst thing in the world. We figure out, police, military, learn how to work through that stuff. Um, now like, like, so here's my, my point here. Um, surfers, people that surf account for 38% of all shark attacks on the West Coast. 11% are swimmers, 46% are divers and 5% are kayakers. Now, I surf, I swim, I dive and I kayak. I do all those things. Look, do I kayak a lot? No, but I have a kayak at my house and I will go out. I try not to dive anymore, but do I go out snorkeling and, yeah, with my mask and fins? Yes, I do.

Swim? Do I swim a lot? No, but do I swim? Yeah. So I do all the surf, of course. So I do all the things. I do all the things. So even though there's a risk, 36% chance or a much higher risk for all the water activities

I do of getting eaten by a shark, I don't care. And I still do it. Knock on wood. hopefully I don't but you see what I'm saying there's risking anything you do like you could you know jujitsu what are they I should have looked this up too like what are the what are the injury rates in jiu jitsu there's injury rates in jiu jitsu guess what else there's injury rates in pick up basketball games you know it's a huge uh you know it's a huge injury causing sport right now pickle ball pickle ball yeah huge injury causing sport right now a sport that's designed not to injure you

Little tiny court. They can't run very much, not much of a bunch of lateral movement. But these people that haven't exercised very much, they're freaking getting agro with their pickleball and they're getting injured. Yeah. So regardless of what you do,

there's some kind of risk. There's always going to be some kind of like, quote unquote, downside. Yeah. But then what are the upsides, right? You can look at that. So here's what I'd do if I were you.

I would weigh the risks a little bit. And one of the ways I would take a iterative step is go become a reserve police officer or go become a volunteer firefighter or join the Army Reserves or join the National Guard and see what you think of it. You're only 28 years old. You had all kinds of,

you know, not all kinds of time, but you have time to go, oh, let me see what it's like being an Army reservist. Let me go to boot camp this summer. Let me go to AIT. Or maybe he has a degree. Maybe you can get some kind of a reserve officer commissioning, right?

So do something or volunteer firefighter. I was a volunteer firefighter when I was a little kid, putting on Indian tanks and walking up and fighting and brush fires. You get a feel for it. You can become a reserve police officer in some states. Cool.

Go figure that out. Go do a bunch of ride-alongs. Like, go, go check it out. And then see what you really think. Because that's what essentially this question is. Am I being like, do I really want it or not? Well, go see what it's really like, get closer to it and figure it out. And I think that's a good iterative step.

go learn more. And then once you learn more and you go, oh, dang, I really like that volunteer firefighter. I really like doing that. Okay, cool. Maybe you like being a police, you try the police thing, try doing a couple ride-alongs. You're like, I didn't really like that.

Or you do a firefighting thing and you go out and you do a bunch of ambulance runs for, you know, morbidly obese drug addicts that are throwing up all over themselves. You're like, well, I didn't really like that job as much as I thought I would. Or maybe you get to put out a car fire and you're like, yo, that was cool. That was cool. Maybe you watch these firefighters go out and get after it in a building. Like they saved Victory MMA. Went out and fought that fire.

So maybe you'll get fired up or maybe you'll join the army reserves and you'll go and be like, dude, I'm glad I'm only reservists because I don't want to do that for a living. Or maybe you're like, I'm ready to go active duty. So that's what I would do. I would also train jihitsu. Just saying it doesn't sound like you trained jihitsu. And the last thing is, I would say this. if you don't like what you're doing as a job, I would find an exit strategy.

Like, you're 20 years old, don't spend the rest of your life, eight hours a day, five days a week, doing something that you don't like. To me, that doesn't sound like a good plan. You say it's intrinsically meaningful,

and if that's good enough, okay, cool. If it's something that like, oh, as you get older, you can pick up some hobbies on the outside and you'll still enjoy it and you still get to, you know, let's say your desk job

as you're finding, helping raise money for kids that are sick. Like, okay, you're doing that from a desk job, but you're doing something really cool and that's great and it makes you feel like you're accomplishing something. Keep doing it and go figure some physical stuff on the part time. But if you actually don't like your job, don't, don't keep doing it, man. Don't keep doing it. That's what I got. It doesn't sound like he has a family either. Because he said something about future family, right? Don't have a family yet. Take some risks why you don't have a family? Why you don't have a mortgage

to pay and malice to feed? That's my. That's my. Yep, no family yet. He, uh, he's married. So, okay. But yeah. Do you think, and because I feel like this natural, but do you think that this and kind of it being a common thing where it's like, you know, the whole, uh, the grass is always greener kind of a thing.

Oh yeah. So grass is always greener. That, I'll feel, I'll feel like that everyone. So, okay, we're doing a video shoot the other day, right? You know, you were part of this video shoot down town. Yeah, yeah. I'm driving home from the video shoot and remember Casey Ryan, Spider-Monkey? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he's a cop now by the way. Oh, is he really? Yes. Oh, that's cool. So you don't want to get rolled out. You know, actually you do want to get rolled up by him. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. Very capable. Yeah, physically and very nice guy, you know, in my experience. So anyway, I'm driving home. I see a bunch of cops handling business.

Casey Ryan's there. No kidding. Yeah, I see him. Right. First time I see him in uniform. So I'm like, okay, cool. You know, obviously I don't like bother or nothing. But I've seen them in there just, you know, that just that look, that whole scene.

You know, it's like, bro, those are handling business. I'm coming from a silly video shoot. Look, it was a great video shoot. I get it. But when you kind of compare in the moment, you start to see like, oh, my gosh, that job, what Casey, Ryan and all his freaking colleagues are doing is way more meaningful than my video shoot that I just did. You know, it's like you feel that in the moment. So it's like, that's an example of like the, in the moment, the grass is always.

he's greener like they're doing something way more cool way better they're solving problems and crimes and stuff and i'm over here pressing freaking record on a thing you know it's like different but at the same time it's like you kind of got to look at the big picture a lot of the time you know and i think i think that this guy might be doing that only because he says it's intrinsically meaningful and then he's looking at the badassness of something else you know and and whatever yeah but that is kind of a bummer if you don't ever get to experience that other thing Yeah, if that, I could see that. That could be, that could end up being a bummer.

I have, when my son was like little, and when I say little, I mean between the ages of like six and 18. Sure. If there was something going on in the hood, in our neighborhood, like ambulances, fire trucks, whatever. Yeah. Like, he was getting on his bike to go check it out. And I was going with him, right? Yeah, yeah. And guess what?

He's gone. Like, he's, you know, he doesn't live at home anymore. fire trucks, ambulances happen, I'm on my bike, go to check it out. I'm a grown man. I'm 53 years old. 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 and subscribe. And we're doing this.

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