Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: You Are The Average Of The People You Hang Around With - Jocko's Take | Are Some Dreams Just Impossible for "Quitters"?

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

You are the average of the people you hang around with.Shooting for your dreams if you have a reputation of being a quitter.Meditation.Getting a family member out of a depression.Shunned by my religious family for leaving the religion.Building team cohesion.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Underground Podcast. Number 67, Echo Charles sitting across from me. So the expression, what do they say about these expressions? The expression is you are the average of the five people you hang around with the most. Do you know that expression? Yeah. Something along those lines. There's a couple different versions of it floating around.

But it's common. And the reason it's common is because there's some level of truth to it. I think we can agree on that. And as I'm thinking through that, I agree. There is true through it. And you can tell, you know,

what you see, remember in high school and you'd see a kid start to hang around with a new group that he wasn't involved with before, and he starts to act like that group. Did your school have like the jocks? Yeah.

The, the whatever, burnouts, right? Yeah. You probably had service. So you got these groups and you could see a kid that was not in that group goes in that group and starts to become like that group So we we've all seen that so there's there is a level of truth to this statement But it doesn't stop there because

It's not just who we're hanging around with but what are we allowing into our heads? Yeah What are we allowing to get in there? Because at a minimum We're highly influenced I know that's a little bit of a weird way of saying it at a minimum we're highly influenced but at a minimum We're definitely influenced by what we allow into our heads What kind of music we're listening to what kind of movies we're watching what kind of social media which is bizarre Because you can you can pull social media into your head all the time And these things have a real impact on you

Music for instance now we know I'm a big music fan I'm a big music listener music can reduce angiqs Music can reduce blood pressure. These are physiological things that can happen from music Music can reduce pain These are physiological things that can happen Music can improve sleep quality music can improve mood music can improve mental alertness Music can invert improve memory these are not I'm not just saying oh it I think it does no it does There's also research that some music can increase aggressive thoughts. So if you listen the kind of music I listen to,

maybe it can't. There's evidence that music encourages certain types of music encourage crime. Right? So there's good and bad going on, kind of like fire. Right? Fire can heat your house. It can burn your house to the ground. But it's something that we need to pay attention to. So we have to be selective

as to what we allow to get in our head. And we have to be selective as to who we're going to hang around with. And we have to be selective as to what we listen to. We have to be selective as to what we read. We have to be selective as to what we're going to allow into our heads. You've got to get rid of the junk at some point. And listen, you know, you have this argument. You can listen to, I listen to music with crazy lyrics, right?

Crazy lyrics that never impacted me. to do anything crazy, you know, whether it's lyrics about, you know, anti-social lyrics, anti-government lyrics, whatever, criminal, whatever it is. There's lyrics and I go, oh, I love that song. I wasn't like, hey, I'm going to follow the political beliefs in this song, right? So I'm not saying you got to just not listen to anything, right? or you've got to only listen to the stuff with the positive, but you got to pay attention to it.

You've got to increase the volume of constructive, pragmatic input to your brain, and you've got to limit the volume of negative, harmful, adverse things that you allow in your brain. Now, I also think this, I think if you're paying attention to it, it's not going to have that much of an impact. So if you're listening to some music that has real negative message to the lyrics, but you know that, I think you're going to be. be okay. If you don't know that or you're not paying attention to it, that's when it can catch

you off guard. Same thing with social media. If you're watching social media or looking at social media with a with a questioning eye, that's going to be a lot better than if you're looking at it with an unquestioning eye. And what's really scary right now, obviously, is that algorithm. The way that thing works, it's looking to give you the short term gratification. it's looking to put you into that echo chamber. It's what we need to pay attention to. So let's take the expression of you're the average of the five people you hang around with the most, which I think we can all anecdotally prove just from people you've known and you've watched them change.

And if we pay attention to that and we see how it works, then we see that everything we let in our brain, if you're not paying attention to it, Can move you. So watch out. Watch out. You listen to Ozzy Osbourne, yeah? Totally. So did you ever?

There was like this conspiracy theory. Hold on. Just to make this clear. The band Black Sabbath that Ozzy Osbourne was the lead singer of is my favorite band of all time. Okay. And I've seen them in concert. I've listened to all of their albums,

especially the years with Ozzy. And I still listened to them when they had Dio. But yes. I am completely and utterly engrossed in Black Sabbath, and I have been since a young child. And yes, I remember, I think so where I think we were going with Ozzy Osbourne, got sued in the 80s. He had a song called Suicide Solution.

And I don't have the, I don't remember the details, but he ended up going to court. But the weird thing about the song, The song wasn't saying suicide was a solution. It was actually not about that at all. You know, the one of the lyrics, the famous lyrics is, wine is fine, but whiskey's quicker. Suicide is slow with liquor, right?

So you're saying if you're drinking, you're killing himself. And look, this is coming from a guy that had drug problems and alcohol problems. So he was saying, I'm killing myself. Not I should kill myself. So what were you going to say before I interrupted you there? There was a conspiracy theory, and it might have just came out of this, that scenario, which I did know, did not know, that if you played, I forget, I don't know what song, if you play it backwards. Yeah, it's called backmasking. Yeah, and it's not just Aussie.

There's all kinds of. And the Beatles actually had that. So let me rephrase that. I'm pretty sure, because I used to play the Beatles records backwards looking for this stuff. Yeah. I think there's one that said Paul is dead, stuff like that. that they backmask into the lyrics. Yeah.

Yeah, they were like, oh, yeah, you play Ozzy backwards, and it's like devil worship, and then you end up killing yourself or something like that. I don't think that was a rumor at, you know, your high school or whatever. It was, straight up. Yeah. But there are, but the Beatles definitely backmack. I'm saying definitely.

I hate saying definitely. But I'm pretty sure that when I was a kid, we played, we played Beatles backwards. And you just put it up. on the record and you use your finger to rotate it backwards and it would be like, all is dead. You know, something like that. Which is just

random stuff to put in there. It's called backmasking. And yes, it's a thing. When you play it backwards, that's... When you put it in there, oh, you put some backmasking messages in there. Oh, when you record it or whatever. Oh, okay, damn. Yeah, I didn't know that. There's a movie called The Gate.

You ever watched that movie? No. Boy, it's back in those days, by the way. Where that was one of the, like, part of the premise of the movie like if you played this one thing backwards, it opened the gate to hell. It's actually a pretty fun movie than the last. So is this true about Ozzy Osbourne, where at one of his concert he bit the head off of a bat, was it?

So that's true? Yep. Oh, he was psycho then. And what it was, there's a couple different versions of it. And again, I apologize, my memories, you know, filled with half of the rumors and half of the lies and half of the truth. Whatever, that's three halves. I don't know how it's going to turn out.

Three halves. But yeah, because I heard him tell the story of he would, they had like rubber bats or something. And he would bite the head off all the wall like a big stage show, but then at some point someone threw him a real one. And he also in a record label meeting bit the head off of a dove or something. I think I remember hearing that story as well. But that's a wild guy, man. That's wild times. That's wild times.

Man, so Black Sabbath, Ozzy back in the day. Do you still listen to it? 100%. As a song called Ordinary Man. Yeah. It's pretty new. Pretty new. When the last few is pretty solid.

Oh, yeah. They're great. I mean, I think that Black Sabbath is the greatest rock and roll band of all time. What's the best song? Crazy Train. No, that's not even Black Sabbath. That's Ozzy. No.

Just the entire first like five. albums oh damn yeah and there's very few bands that have made album after album after album that were all good that were all awesome it's like you got black Sabbath lead zeppelin acdc metallica like they made because a lot of bands make a good album yeah and then that's what they got you know and the other ones are okay sometimes and other ones aren't that good. But to come out with that many really great albums is difficult to do and not many bands have pulled that off.

Yeah. Freaking Ozzy. The, who you hang with or whatever. And that totally makes sense. Or even like, you know how like you, I'll catch you talking pigeon every once in a while. Sometimes. Yeah.

And that's just so. But it's like, even if it's, I mean, they say it's like, just small time though. Just small. I get it. But even if you hang with one guy. You can, you'll probably like, if you just do a small little inventory, like, you'll see, like, all the little things that you do like them now kind of a thing and vice versa. So, bro, that makes total sense.

A lot of people like to say the, you know, the cool catchphrases like, oh, show me your network and I'll show you your net worth or like that kind of stuff. Which, you know, I think, I actually agree with you. I think there's some, a lot of truth to it a lot of the time. But it's, you know, it depends a lot of the time, especially the net worth part. But yeah, that's true. So be careful. right what you put in your head well in time i was hanging around with a uh guy that i knew was friends with part of my network but i was still in the navy and he was rolling in like a brand new mercedes

s class amg like like a 250 000 car maybe 200 000 car yeah and i had a 1997 dodge grand caravan the window didn't work so his net worth was wasn't a But the new is mine, bro. You know what I'm saying? That can be real too, for sure. But hey, that's the way it works. But watch out. And the modern, another modern, modern issue with what you let in your head.

And, you know, so essentially it's like be careful what you let in your head. It's up to you what you let in your head. Where, like, and you mentioned the algorithm. And I think that's a bigger thing than sometimes than what people realize. Because like, if you're like, okay, well, it depends on what you look at. But let's say you follow a certain person, right? Where you're like, oh, I like what they have to say. I don't know, Jordan Peterson or I don't know.

Andrew Tate is a hot one right now, whatever. So it doesn't matter who. I'm just saying like, you start to, the algorithm would be like, oh, you like this guy? Oh, here's more from this guy. Here's more from this guy. And then instead of when you originally liked just what they said, you start to like the person now. Now it doesn't matter what they say. They can say some weird stuff.

And you're just like, well, I like him. So hell, yeah, that's me too. You know, so you kind of sign on to all their stuff after a while. That can happen. Yeah, you better be careful of that. You got to be careful. But yeah, how are you saying? If you're always like, what do you call it, questioning?

Always question. Yep. You know what? I think, so we made an album. If you remember this, it was called Psychological Warfare. Yeah. And that album, really, a lot of people got it and still get it to this day. And what's interesting about that is that's doing exactly what this is talking about, putting good thoughts into your head.

Yeah. Right? I'm going to overcome this. You can see why that album has been so popular because people go, oh, if you listen that when you wake up in the morning, that's the first thing that's in your head. And then you take the whole thing like we talked about on the machete season, the machete season podcast where they talk about the power of radio

and the power of spoken word and how there's no filter. It goes right into your brain. You don't need to convert anything. And that's what psychological warfare is. It's it's help people overcome those moments of weakness and help people stay on the path. Why is that? Because they're putting something into their head that's moving them in the right direction. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like helping in the real world. Yeah. So, but then you got to be careful because like you just said, you can get on the gram and be like, oh, I'm going to go get some positivity from the gram. Next thing you know it. 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. So we are not subject to their control. And we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko 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 more control more interaction more direct connections better communications with us and to do that we are we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize

to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us so thank you it's jaco underground It costs $8.18 a month and if you can't afford to support us We can still support you just email assistance at jocco underground.com and we'll get you taken care of until then We will see you mobilized Underground.