Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: When You're Ready For a New Chapter | Battling Fatigue In Life

Episode Date: October 12, 2026

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< 00:00:00 – When You're Ready For a New Chapter?00:06:33 – Struggling with chronic fatigue syndrome?00:13:32 – Are leaders born with natural leadership abilities, or can leadership be learned?00:24:00 – How do I choose between multiple job offers, and what advice do you have for starting my career?00:43:28 – How do I recognize that I'm not good enough and need to improve without constantly beating myself up?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 232 sitting here with Echo Tronnels. We have some questions from the front lines, from the trenches, and we will provide answers and or courses of actions that you can take to navigate through this little maze of life. Let's get to it. All right, first question. Jocko, I'm 28 and have served 10 years in the military. Recently promoted to E7. I'm married, own a home, debt-free, financially secure, and proud to be.

a first generation American who served. But I feel ready for a new chapter. Everyone says leaving before retirement would be foolish, but part of me wants to bet on myself. I'm considering becoming a state trooper or physical therapist assistant. Staying offers security and retirement. But at 28, I wonder, do I follow the safe path or start over while I'm still young? Yeah.

You know, first of all, in this type of situation, You are the only person that knows the answer, right? You know the answer to this question. And you're going to have to do some soul searching to figure that out. That being said, here's some things to think about. The military and military retirement is kind of awesome. You have health care for life. You have family health care for life.

You have benefits for life. You have a paycheck for life. You have stability for life. So it's a pretty awesome thing. And I have known many people that got out at 10 years, 12 years, 14 years. Man, they look back and say, I wish I would have stayed. It's a long list of positives. That being said, if you are not passionate about it, we only have one life to live, right?

And you may want to take some risk. Now listen, if you've made E7 in 10 years, which is squared away, and you already own a house and you're debt-free and you're financially secure, that means you're squared away to me. You're a squared-away human, right? You don't have a bunch of debt. You're squared away. So you're probably going to win regardless of what you do to be quite honest with you. Now, that being said, look, there's people that lose all the time in the civilian sector.

But you're squared away, so you have a better chance of winning in the civilian sector. But here's the deal. I don't think you need to make a black or white choice. I think you can take an iterative step, right? You can start going to whatever schooling you would need to become a physical therapist. Like start that out, figure what that's all the while. Start the application process to become a state trooper. See what kind of qualifications you need.

See what the cutoff date is. See what those things are like in real life. Because the grass is always greener on the other side, right? You think, you know, there's so much bullshit we have to put up in the military. Believe me, there's bullshit as a physical therapist and there's bullshit as a state trooper. There's bullshit everywhere. I don't care where you work. I don't worry if you work at Google or on a construction site, there's bullshit to put up with.

So grass often looks greener. but if you do the schooling and you start the application process and then you talk to as many people as you possibly can that are in those roles they're going to give you some indications of what that job is actually like in real life not just the grass is greener view but what is it really like in real life and ask for the rough stuff ask for like the real the real deal now while you are doing all that you can also start to look at what the reserves are like for whatever branch of the military you're in. Whatever branch you're in,

they're going to have some kind of a reserve component. And usually you can stay in the reserves for as long as you want, really. So you could keep on active duty, do the application process, get some of the schooling, figure out what's going on with the reserves. And then if you still feel like, oh, being a state trooper is going to be awesome. Cool. You can stay in the reserves and go become a state trooper. Or you can stay in the reserves and become a physical therapist.

And you can continue to pursue those goals. and those careers, whichever one you decide on, and it turns out great and great. And, you know, you look up in 20 more years and you get your retirement from being a reservist and you still have your job career that you pursued. But if you end up not liking those jobs, you stayed in the reserves,

you roll back into active duty, you're good to go. GTG. So I think that's a pretty straightforward course of action. Learn more. Educate yourself. If everything looks good, go into the reserves. while you're in the reserves, pursue which one of those careers you decide on. If it goes great, great.

If it doesn't go great, roll back into active duty. That would be my recommendation. So if he goes in the reserves, he can keep his retirement. Well, yeah, you get it in a longer time. There's like some kind of calculus that they do. A year of reserves counts as such and such amount of time here. But more important, it keeps you in the game. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you don't lose it. You don't have to do the whole boot camp again. Like, you're kind of, what would it be the equivalent to in sports? It's like coming out of the game for like going to the bench as opposed to getting ejected from the game Yeah You don't want to get ejected from the game so in college is a thing called a red shirt Yeah, yeah usually it's the freshman you know just to kind of prepare him But you could take a red shirt year because you're eligible to be on the team for five years

You can only play four you can but you can take one for like a so maybe something like that is that yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty close yeah, yeah I was gonna my answer or I you know I I read these questions and I'm thinking what if I was in this situation what I do? Mine is slightly more black and white so yours is better best of both worlds I'd say where I would be like I would just look at it like hey if I if I switch careers now will I be glad that I did that or what is the what's a probability is that I'm going to feel I'm going to be happy that I did that in 10 years 20 years there's a you're 100% right and that's not a great answer because you don't actually know what that career you're like

yeah I'll be a state trooper I'll have all these benefits I'll be home all no no it's like you find out being a state trooper it doesn't have the pay that you want. You find out that you're deployed more. Like, so you got to do research. Yeah. So, and that's correct. And that's where kind of where my mind was at. I was leaning towards staying it. Only because, hey, you'll stay in. It's the job you know. You're, you know, you have some proficiency and all the tasks and stuff like this. And then, uh, you do you get your retirement. And then you can go be whatever else you want to be, assuming, you know, you still want to do that kind of a thing with no risk. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yeah, that best of both worlds approach to me.

seems like a way better answer. Sure. We'll go with it. Go with it. All right. Next question. Jocko, I've struggled with fatigue since I was 18. I'm now 35 and have recently been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.

After listening to the podcast, I started training jujitsu last year. Hell yeah. And absolutely love it. I see the benefits, but the fatigue hits hard and can last for days. I started training three times a week, then two, then one. and I've gone from having fun and feeling dialed in to just stepping on the mat to get beat up and seeing any progress. What would you do in my situation is rolling jiu-jitsu once a week enough if I can manage it or should I step back completely? How would you balance discipline and ownership while respecting the limitations of a condition like this?

obviously I'm not a doctor and I don't know that much about chronic fatigue syndrome I do know that it's difficult to root cause meaning they're not like oh here's the problem we can just solve it this way it could be anything for like any there's a whole bunch of things that it could be recovering from a viral or a bacterial infection it could be from physical or emotional stress it could be immune system dysregulation it could be genetic predisposition it could be cellular energy levels like there's there's a bunch of different things. So it's not like we can just say, oh, here's the problem. Go fix it. So you kind of have to live with it for a bit. But I do have a protocol, a recommended protocol for

when we hit health issues. And that protocol is do what you can. Do what you can. If you can train once a week, do it. If you can train three times a week, do it. If you can train twice a month, do it. Training once a week is better than nothing. And training once a month is better than nothing. So for chronic chronic fatigue syndrome, to me it's the same answer with injury, with illness, with time constraints, with family issues. With life in general, life does not cooperate with what we want. We don't get that. This life does not get scheduled around what we want. Right. So what we have to do is we have to adapt. We don't just abandon things. We freaking get after it. So to me, that is the plan. Do what you can. Now listen, obviously,

continue to do research and get second and third opinions and get, you know, other people's input about this chronic fatigue syndrome. Try different protocols. Try different diets. Try different workouts. Try different sleep patterns. Everyone's different and you might find a solution that works for you. And I've known many people that have tried. 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.

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