Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Your Life Is Here To Live... Don't F**k It Up. Opportunity, Attitude, and Gratitude. Don't F**k It Up.

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

Simple Message: Don't fuck it up.Making the best of it.Is it your business? Family member's way of raising his kids.Leading a team with no objective.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko underground podcast number 15 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, echo. Good evening. Also joining us tonight, Daryl Cooper. Good evening, Daryl. Good evening. So I'm in task unit bruiser and I am the commander of task unit bruiser, which is a sounds like a real arrogant thing to say. But I was the guy that was in charge and we deployed.

We did a workup. We deployed. We came back. when we came back, Leif, so there's two platoon commanders, Laif and Seth, Laif, when we got back, he went to the junior officer training course

and he started running that. I moved into the training detachment and started running the training for seals, getting ready to, for the seal platoons and task units getting ready to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan. And then Seth actually stepped up and took my job as task unit commander.

And so he took over task unit bruiser in a way, but actually in a way he didn't because they, they split up task unit bruiser. When we got back, they took all those, as many guys as they could, and they spread them into other task units because it was just too, it was just too much. It was too much, like force.

to have all these guys. So, you know, Seth kept some of the guys, but it was mostly new guys. So they didn't even really call themselves task unit bruiser. There was maybe a little semblance left over. But Seth took my job. So in the SEAL teams, we have this thing, I don't want to make it like it's that big of a thing.

But we had this thing called a, we called it. We called it. And what it is is basically a magnet board. And there's one at the whole command. and the whole command they have on this magnet board. Of everyone that's at the command, they have a little magnet that has your picture on it,

your name, your rank, and maybe what qualifications you have. And there's one of those in the Master Chief's office that's huge, like a big blackboard in school with whatever, 200 people on it. But then in a task unit, you'll have one too. And so we had one in the task unit. We had the Ouija board.

and when I was the task unit commander when we got home I was the top of the I was the top of the Ouija board and then when Seth stepped up and became the task unit commander well he moved up to the top and but he didn't take me off what he did with me was he kind of slid my picture over to the right he was actually put it above him and then he put a little he put like a little cartoon I think they call a little cartoon call out so it looked like I was saying so there was words coming out of my mouth just had me giving him some simple instruction and that simple instruction was don't fuck it up and it was something that I had said to him you know he was he was going out while he was working for me when I was the tasking of commander he's working for me and he was going out we were doing some training and he had like a A smaller mission to go out on pretty early on. And it was something that was, it was like going to be a challenge, but it was pretty simple and pretty straightforward.

And he looked like he was, you know, maybe could use a little confidence boost. And I was like, dude, this is no factor. You got this. And then he kind of like had, you know, in a split second had a little overconfident look in his face. And so I said, don't fuck it up. And you brought him back down. And he went and did it. You know, we laughed about it.

But it's true. It's actually true. And it was true on the Ouija board. And he knew that it was true on the Ouija board. And the Ouija board is literally sitting in front of his desk. So when he would look up from his desk, he sees the Ouija board. He sees all of his troops. And he sees me and that little call out saying, don't fuck it up.

And he knew it was the truth. Because it's the best job in the world. Best job in the world being in a seal platoon or being in a SEAL task unit. being in a leadership role as an honor to be in that situation. You got all these, you got all these guys that are actually relying on you to do a good job and make the right decisions and to not fuck it up. And he didn't, he didn't.

He did a great job as a task unit commander. And when he went overseas, another interesting thing was, you know, he was pretty, the, the the deployment to Ramadi was freaking hard and he did I don't know how many operations but it was a shit ton and you know had a bunch of guys wounded right before we came home you know he had he had Mikey killed and it was rough and so when he was getting ready to when we got back he wasn't quite sure what he was going to do and I said listen man do the task unit commander I go that things are chilling out You'll go over there.

It's not going to be a big deal. I'm in charge of training. It'll be fun. And, you know, once you get overseas, you know, it'll just be no factor. There's not, the war is going to be settled down. It's a year and a half away. Well, sure enough, he gets over there expecting to have this mellow deployment. And when some of the army leadership found out that there was guys from task unit

bruiser back in country, they sent out a request. for forces but it was very specific it was like we would like to have approximately this many seals with this kind of experience and they might as well have said you know six foot one blonde hair shaved head blue-eyed commander of that unit like wanting stoner so but that's what happened and they they put together a crew and went into executed a bunch of operations in Sodder City in Baghdad that were that was they were extremely effective operations and the insurgent leadership inside solder city

Satter City had been a total disaster for the entire war up until that was 2008 so for five straight years Sauter City had been really horrible and his task unit rolled in there and and they killed a lot of bad guys and the insurgent leaders I think it was about six weeks of operations that they did they killed a hundreds of bad guys and then the insurgent leadership in there surrendered they basically surrendered they're all right we're good so that was it so then he finished that eventually came home and you know he continued on with his career I retired and and fast forward a few years actually you fast forward from 2008 to 2017 so almost a decade and Seth got killed in a in a

parachute accident and and so I no longer you know have the ability to offer him any advice or anything like that and I don't have the opportunity to tell him to not fuck things up but it's it's interesting because I was thinking about this the other day and it's like the roles have been reversed and now I think probably Seth is looking down on me and he sees me. He sees my life. He sees the freedom that that I have, that we have, the opportunity that we all have, the opportunity to do more and make ourselves better and help more people and have an impact on the world. And I can imagine and I do imagine that he's sitting there, looking down on me.

And he's saying the same thing. He's telling me the same thing that I told him. Which is don't fuck it up. And why am I saying this? Why am I, why am I reciting this story? It's because it's actually really good advice. It's actually really good advice for us all to take. It's simple.

It's straightforward. And it actually makes sense when, You are making decisions if you think through what you're doing and you overlay the simple principle of not fucking it up. You'll see that life's filled with all kinds of opportunities and chances and things are going to get hard. 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 Jocko Underground. 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're doing this so that we can support the

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