Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: When Your Disciplined Life Has Left You Lonely w/ No Social Connections

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< When your disciplined lifestyle has left you lonely and lacking social connections. Meeting The Standard To Be Prepared For Service And Life. What to do: I committed my life to a career I don't like. Establishing boundaries with parents and in-laws. Moving to up to the "Political" level in your job--Things to be aware of. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Janko underground podcast number 215 sitting here with Echo Charles. Yeah, sure. Do I get that right? Yes, sir. Thank you. And we have some questions from the field, from the front lines, from where the rubber meets the road. And we will offer some recommendations, some answers. And at a minimum, some courses of action you can take to proceed and find your way.

through the maze of life as some people like to as echo Charles refers to it the maze of life yep all poetic okay all right that's the best you could come up well well it is one of the one of the options for the face of life whatever bro the life life is sometimes the maze you don't know I'm just saying Okay, okay. Did you come up with that yourself? Did you consult with your ancestors or something? Is that chat GPT or something? Where'd that go from?

Did you get it in a dream? First question. Chaco, I recently graduated college where I was a Division I a student, a science major, and also in ROTC. My days were completely structured around academics, training, the gym, and preparation for the military. because of that, I missed out on a lot of the social side of college. Team hangouts, weekends, weekends out, etc. I don't regret the accomplishments, but now that I've graduated, commissioned, and started working full-time,

I feel like I have no close friends. I went from being around 30 teammates every day to suddenly feeling isolated. And while I try to keep in touch, it feels like they all got closer without me. And no one seems to reach out. How do I navigate life after college when I'm disciplined and accomplished but also feel lonely and disconnected? Love the podcast. Thank you. So I think a couple key points here. One key point is that you quote unquote recently graduated, which means you just showed up to your unit, your military unit, which means you don't know anyone and no one knows you.

And guess what? When you show up somewhere and you're new and you don't know anyone, you're. You're gonna feel a little bit of isolated, and you're a little bit left out. That's the way anybody feels when they show up. When my daughter, Coach Rana, started training in San Luis Obispo at Paragon. And she called me like after the first few days.

She's like, I don't know anyone, no one wants to train with me. And I go, oh yeah, just train for four more days and like someone will start training and then you'll be fine. And she's like, I don't know. And I was like, yep. And then she called me four days later.

And she's like, yeah, I met this really cool, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's all done. But she was, She's feeling the exact same way, isolated and lonely. Because you know, it's weird, dude. You go on the mat and like no one wants to roll with you because they don't know who you are or whatever.

Okay, so that's the way you feel. It takes a little bit of while, takes a little while. But there's no doubt you're in the military. No doubt in my military mind that you're going to form friendships with people at your unit, man, fellow officers, your troops, your senior enlisted. Like you're going to, that's the way it is. You're doing work with them. You're doing training with them.

You're going out in the field with them. That's you're going to, relationships will form and you will end up with some bros. And, you know, you played D1 athletics. I don't know which one. Maybe 30 teammates football. Does that sound right? No?

No. How many teammates would you have in football? 100. Damn. Okay. So maybe he's soccer, hockey. Could be anything, right? But you don't have that anymore.

Guess what? Go, you can probably guess my next bit of advice. Go to a jih Tjitsu gym and start training. And listen, if jih Tjitsu ain't your thing, okay, which should be. Number one, especially if you're in the military. You'll make friends there. And again, it'll take a week. You're not going to go in there and someone's going to go like, oh, Fred, welcome here.

Why don't you beat my bed? No, no, it doesn't work like that. But you're going to train with people and you're going to sweat and you're going to work hard and you're going to form relationships. You're going to go grab a dinner and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're going to watch the UFC at their house. That's what we're doing. So join a jitza gym or join a strength and conditioning gym or join a rock climbing gym.

Like there's just go and go out into the world. There's a whole, a whole social world of people to hang out with, especially that now that you have the time. You're not studying. You're not training for your specific sport. You're not conducting ROTC drills. You have a job. Cool. I get it.

The military's busy. You're a young officer. You're going to get tasked with up. But still, I guarantee you on a Saturday night or a Saturday morning you can go train some Jiu-jitsu and then after after let's call it four weekends of training you will know three people's names and one of them is gonna be like dude I saw your car outside is that a whatever and you're like yeah he's like dude I actually know how to over deba like and all of a sudden you'll be talking about stuff you know so just put yourself

out there in some places where there's people and so you can interact with people and you'll form bonds and you'll look back in a couple of years years probably actually in like six months you'll look back and be like kind of surprised that you even asked this question because it sounds like you kind of had ready made friends wherever you went because you had the sports you know that's just like ready made friends but military kind of has that too and you just knew but you'll be surprised that you asked this question uh meeting people and building those bonds is a great part of life so enjoy it's what we got yeah it's almost like a starting all starting over scenario

after call yeah that's true though you know ran a scenario or whatever with the with the oh no one wants to roll with me kind of lonely or whatever that's like that's to me that's almost like a hundred percent of the time almost when you go to a whole new place unless you go with your friends or something like this where it's like yeah it's okay you start all over which is fine and as long as you're open to it because I what he said was actually kind of real where he was like oh I'm so focused on freaking discipline and preparing for this and preparing for them because I've seen guys like that in college where you could tell they're just locked into college which sweet you know so and then but

they would never be hanging out so the social element I understand how some people can straight up just miss it and be like dang I kind of miss that whole thing you know so that's real but yeah it's just a matter being open open to it and not being like oh dang I suck this sucks you know and another like thing that is probably a real challenge for many many people is executing this right here. Hey, how's it going? My name's Fred. Yeah.

Like that's, that seems like, especially nowadays, because when you're standing in line at the DMV or you're standing in line at the grocery store, you don't look at anyone else. You just look at your phone. Oh, you're just listening to a podcast. You don't have to interact with anybody. You don't even say anything to a clerk at a store

because you just have it delivered to your house. Right. Right. And the guy, they have that thing. You like, leave it at my step. I don't want to talk to a person. So how is anyone, especially a young guy like this, going to be like, hey, how's it going? My name's Fred.

I never, I'm just, I'm just starting jih Tzu for the first time. Or I've never, I've never, uh, rock climb before. But I want to learn. Hey, can you tell me what kind of shoes you think I should get? Like that right there is like a huge barrier to some people. But the weird thing is when people do that to you, you don't think they're weird. You actually just think they're normal. Right.

When someone goes, hey, how's it going? And you go, oh, not bad. Yeah. And they go, where are you coming in from? And you go, I'm from San Diego. Oh, that's cool. What are you doing out here? Well, I'm actually out here for some work, but, you know, like to train.

Oh, cool. Boom. Like, it's not that big of a deal. You're not a freak. You're a human. And when you go and talk to other humans, they're humans too. That's true, huh? And Jiu Jitza makes your way, any group setting, really.

It's almost like a little soft approach, you know? Yeah, yeah, because there's a, yeah, like a soft lead. Yeah. Like a warm lead. Yeah, warmly. Like, you're in this room and I'm in this room. I'm in this room. And we both came to this room for a very specific reason, by the way.

Exactly, right. That was my echo Charles vernacular right there. Okay. For a very specific reason, by the way. Normally you point at me when you do that. You know, very specific reason, by the way. Hey, we gotta know. What's the purpose of, by the way?

Emphasis. Like, I'm trying to make this point over here and there's some additional stuff, you know, that might either back up the point or maybe part of a whole other point that I could go into, but I'm not going to, but I could. You could if you wanted to. If I wanted to, which would be very interesting, by the way, but I'm not going to do it. That's the way you use it is it's a subtle reinforcement of your main point.

Okay. You use it as a subtle. You'll throw in this other thing that you're not going to go into, by the way, but you could if you wanted to. Or I could start talking about how important that is for this story. I'm not good. I could, but I'm not good. It's sort of like a paper tiger. It's like a paper tiger.

It's like a paper target because it has like no one drills down on that thing that you just threw out there. We kind of just accept it, but you kind of lean on it like it could bite if it could. It could. It could. Hey, man. Hey, sometimes it enhances the clarity. No, someone puts together a compilation because I took that from you. And I'll throw it in there.

And I've always done it in a kind of a way where it's like a, it's like a quiet, a quiet nod to your style. Okay. Yeah. And I've done. And usually I do it a little, just a little bit over the top. Sure. I'll just do it a little bit over the top, you know.

I'll say, and that's a whole other book, by the way. You know, I'll kind of put a little stank on it. Sir. Yeah, yeah. Good, good. Yeah. So there we go. Now we know.

Now we know the deal. Yeah. Can't say like enough about jujitsu and the social part. of it which I understand that you understand. Yeah, you can definitely say a lot about that. To you that's 90% of the game. I'm here to tell you, bro. I'm here to tell you.

Because even that like, yeah, even if you're a shy person, people are gonna, you know, you partner up with someone, whether it be rolling or just drilling or whatever. When you partner up with someone, boom, there you go, temporary friend. It's up to you now, balls in your court. You know what I'm saying? Like for the time being, and it's up to you. And that's kind of like, probably you ever,

and not to go too deep into the social element, but we're gonna, a little bit. A little bit. You know what speed dating is? You know what that is? It's like you meet like 10 people. Yeah. Did you ever actually do that or just saw a TV show?

No. So at the night club I used to work at, we'd have speed dating on like Monday afternoon. Right, right when we open. Yeah. Is the better end still open? The bitter end is now called the tipsy crow. Okay. Yeah.

Nonetheless, they did have speed dating there. And I was like, what the hell is speed dating? Like, well, bro, what is this? And people come in and they, you know, it's, but it's like a dating kind of workshop almost kind of not a workshop you don't learn but it's like almost like a game you play and you have tables with people and you have like a minute or a certain fixed amount of time to just talk to someone and then you're then you're done off to the next table to talk to the next person you see what I'm saying and then if it's like if you kind of made a connection then you can

hang out afterwards yeah you know and buy drinks or whatever or go home whatever you want to do right and I remember thinking like oh that's kind of weird but I really kind of imagine like no you it's just like a little temporary I just meet some people hey I remember you know you can run into someone a week later and be like hey remember I met you at speed dating that was fun blah blah blah it's like you get a warm lead you know what I'm saying jiu jitzu is like speed dating if you ignore the jiu jitsu part of it is it is it is from a friend's standpoint not romantic yeah yeah yeah that's a very important part of it this situation very important distinction so that is a little excerpt of what we are

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