Modern Wisdom - #949 - Jocko Willink - How To Build Unstoppable Confidence

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Jocko Willink is a retired United States Navy officer in SEAL Team 3, an author and a podcaster. In a world overflowing with choices, we often confuse freedom with indulgence. But real freedom—the kind that builds confidence, resilience, and leadership—comes from discipline. From forging inner strength alone to leading elite teams of Navy SEALs, Jocko's life proves that discipline is the foundation for true autonomy. Expect to learn how people can be more confident with their decision making, the best tactics to overcome fear, what it’s actually like to be in a firefight, what people misunderstand about what ‘Discipline equals freedom’ actually means, what a disciplined like looks like to Jocko, how to train mental toughness, Jocko’s thoughts on the new administration and military recruitment numbers, if we’re close to a major conflict, how men can be better about handling their emotions, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I know that you're a fan of the Thomas Sowell quote, there are no solutions, only trade-offs. What's that mean to you? That you're never going to completely solve anything in your life or in the world, and there's always going to be compromises that you have to make. And if you aren't willing to make those compromises

or you don't keep your mind open for those compromises, you're going to run into some real problems. But if you look at it and the fact that, you know, you might put a little more effort over here and it's going to take away from some effort over there. You can't just do everything at once. So yeah, no solutions, only trade-offs. How do you deal with the tension of feeling that other thing pull away from you?

Right. You know that you need to focus and you know that by focusing on one thing, another thing is going to start to drop away. But the classic overachiever mindset is, well, everything needs to be growing at all times. So there's an emotional pain of watching something stagnate or watching something fall behind. How do you try and navigate that? You just have to figure out what the priority is. And at certain times, you know, certain things might be a higher priority right now than

it is at some other point. And something else picks up and sometimes the family needs to be the priority. Sometimes the business, sometimes the other business, sometimes the health, like you're just going to have to weigh those things out and recognize it. You can't do them all simultaneously at the same time, all the time. It's just, it's not going to work. So you've got to figure out where you make some compromises. We're going to make some trade-offs.

Yeah. The, uh, the sentence, you can be anything you want, but you can't be everything you want is so good for that. And especially if you like novelty, like doing lots of different things. Oh, this is interesting to me. I'm curious. I want to, you got, yeah, okay, dude, but there is a limit, right? And when you start to, it's the most obvious thing in the world.

If you spread yourself too thinly across lots of different things, you can't be that great at all of them. You can't be really that great at right? And when you start to, it's the most obvious thing in the world. If you spread yourself too thinly across lots of different things, you can't be that great at all of them. You can't be really that great at any of them after you start to spin it up after a while. Yeah. Yeah. And it's one of those laws of combat that I teach and used to teach in seal teams, and now I teach the businesses prioritize and execute.

Like you've got to figure out what the priorities are and then execute on those things. But you've got to figure out what the, what the biggest priority is at any given time. Like I said, whether it's this business or your family or your health, at certain times you've got to say, all right, I've got to pay attention to my family right now. I can feel things are getting a little bit sketchy over there. Or all right, my family seems solid right now.

I've got to focus on this part of the business and then within the business, this particular section of the business. So you go right on down the line. How do you think about, uh, moving between planning and execution in that way? Is it something that you can do at the same time, or is it really important to sort of step back, give yourself that perspective and then go back in to actually enact the strategies? If you end up executing things yourself, you can only do so much at one time. Right?

I mean, if you're, if you've got something going on with your family, well, hopefully your spouse is going to be able to take some action on that, whatever that thing is. And then you've got businesses, well, you've got departments inside your business and you, you know, assign some plan to someone inside the business that's going to step up and take charge of that thing and run with it. So that's deep. That's the fourth law of combat leadership with which is decentralized command, meaning you can't do everything yourself. You need to allow your subordinate leaders to step up and lead and make things happen. So that's a it's it's mandatory to do that. If

you're going to if you're going to execute on more more than one thing in life. What about when it comes to working out what your priority should be for yourself? It seems like even that, not being able to see the wood for the trees, I'm currently in the midst of this thing, but I need to actually, is this the best place for my attention to be spent right now?

Yeah, I think, first of all, you've got to be able to detach a little bit and take a step back and take a look at what's going on in step back and take a look at what's going on in the world and take a look at what's going on in your world to go, oh, you know what? It seems like this might not be the best thing because that's, I think what happens is if you don't

take a step back and you don't detach, then you're not gonna recognize what's happening, what's going on. And that's how someone can work until they have no family left or pay so much attention to their family that they lose their job, go in the wrong direction. So you need to be able to take a step back and actually assess what's going on, and you can't get drawn down into the weeds

of any particular thing for too long, right? Like you can do it for a little while, you can do it depending on the thing, you can do it for a day or a week or a month sometimes, but then after that you gotta say, all right, I gotta take a step back and have a look. Well, sometimes. But then after that, you got to say, all right, I've got to take a step back and have a look around. Well, the same thing goes for health, right?

If you're going to launch a new business, probably not going to be in the best condition you've ever been in. So I'm just going to take over. Maybe I'll get a push pull leg session in across the week or something like that. You go, okay, if I really want to find my future husband or wife, you know, that I, I imagine that my sleep's going to suffer. You know, I'm going to have to go out more. I'm going to have to be more social. Maybe I'm going to have to go to restaurants and like pretend to eat like a normal person. It is a lesson that I think you can only learn with experience.

It's very difficult to tell somebody you need to do this. It's really something that you learn through pain. You go, I let my foot off the gas with this one particular thing. Yep. Look at what happened. Didn't go well. Didn't go well. Didn't go well. Didn't go well. Didn's really something that you learn through pain. You go, I let my foot off the gas with this one particular thing. Yep. Look at what happened.

Didn't go well. I'd better not do that again. I'd better not let my health get to the stage where I haven't slept properly for three weeks at a time and that was when I got sick. Yeah. And I think that actually health is one that you, you don't want to totally walk away from health at any time. And I think that's one of the reasons that I feel like

I'm doing pretty good right now is I never, I probably haven't taken more than, you know, two or three days off from working out in decades. You know what I mean? So yeah, I mean, okay. I had a surgery on my neck. So, okay. That was, I took some time after that, but even after that, like after three days, I was in my garage gym, walking around in circles, like just trying to make something happen.

But I think when people completely abandoned their health for a month or two months, I think that can be, I think that's where injuries start coming into play and you, you lose, you really go backwards. It's foundational, right? Yeah. The other stuff that you're trying to do is built on top of that. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, I guess actually using you as an example for sleep might not be a particularly good, a good idea there. Uh, what's your advice for how people can be more confident in their decisions in life? Where does confidence come from in your opinion? I think confidence comes from. I think, well, clearly some of it comes from experience, but I think one of the, one of the most profound things that you can do to become more confident is to become okay with saying, yeah, I'm not exactly sure what to do right now.

And if you can say that, all of a sudden, the world becomes just a lot easier. And if we're in a meeting and we've got some project that we're gonna get started on, and it's something I've never done before, and I'm the boss and I say Hey Chris I'm not really sure what to do right now. Well, that's okay and you go

Well, actually I got my old company we did the same thing So let's make this move and I go, okay That sounds like a good place to start anyways, and so now we get started Whereas if I come in and I'm like, I don't want Chris to know that I don't know how to do this I'm not sure of myself right now or I'm lacking confidence. So I'm gonna pretend I don't want Chris to know that I don't know how to do this or I'm not sure of myself right now, or I'm lacking confidence. So I'm going to pretend to be confident. I think that's problematic. So I think, look, no one knows everything.

No one makes all perfect decisions. No one is, understands every element of the world. So I think a good way to gain confidence quickly is to admit the fact that you don't know everything and just be okay with saying, yeah, I'm not really sure what to do here. Does that lower the pressure, lowers the bar of self-expectation? Absolutely.

I think it, I think it lowers the bar of self-expectation, not to a negative point where it's like, Oh, I've got low expectations of myself, but if I was to be coming up here to, to sit down with you and have this talk and I was thinking What if he asked me about something? I don't know about What am I gonna do and I'd be a little bit panicked and then you'd ask me about Car racing Formula One racing right which we were talking about before we started this and now all of a a sudden you said, well, hey, in Formula One, the drivers do this. What do you think of that protocol? And I was like trying to formulate in my head,

pretend like I know what I'm talking about when I don't. So instead I just say, oh yeah, I don't know anything about car racing. So you tell me. And that means the whole drive up here to come and sit down with you and get interviewed by you, instead of me being paranoid that you might ask something I don't know about and my confidence is now shaken, instead I'm rolling in here like,

oh yeah, if he asked me some stuff I don't know about, I can say, oh yeah, I'm not really a hundred percent sure about that. What do you know? Or what's your opinion? It's liberating. I think it's very liberating. Is that sort of humility? That's, I, yes, I think that is humility.

Yep. And it is something that you get, you know, when you're in the military, you know, you can be in charge of people that have more experience than you. And if that makes you uncomfortable, oftentimes people flex to try and act like they know more than they do when it's like, oh yeah, you've run these kinds of operations before Chris, why don't you take lead on this? Okay. I'm, I'm the senior guy, I'm the boss, but I say, hey Chris, you've already run

these types of operations, why don't you take lead on this? No big deal. That's does your respect for me go down or does it go up? It goes up. Exactly. As opposed to me saying, uh, here's what we're going to do, Chris. And I don't know what I'm talking about. And you can clearly see this because you've done it 25 times and I'm an idiot.

So yeah, I would say be more humble and you'll be more confident. It's really interesting to think where you're lowering the stakes. There's, there's no, in that definition of confidence, there's no such thing as not having enough confidence. There is just being yourself.

And then if you are yourself and you meet the limits of whatever your confidence is, So in that definition of confidence, there's no such thing as not having enough confidence. There is just being yourself. And then if you are yourself and you meet the limits of whatever your competence is, your understanding, hand it off to someone else or say, Hey, does no one, Oh, brilliant. No one here knows what to do. Uh, you know, the good example of this, the first ever cinema production that we did, so this is our cinema series, fancy cameras and big team of people and stuff. Uh, the first one we ever did was in San Antonio.

We did it in the Alamo with Jordan Peterson. And we're setting up, we've got the cameras here. And it's the first time we've done anything like this. So the production's a little bit more spit and sawdust, let's say. And we're about to get started. And the guys do the sound check like we did before, where you started screaming.

And they could hear on the background. They were like, someone's speaking. There's someone speaking on the channel. What the fuck is that? They're like, is that it's a local FM radio station. How the fuck are we picking up? It was two mics plugged into a couple of inline, uh, amps and a How can we pick it up? It was two mics plugged into a couple of inline amps and a

fucking recording device. And we're trying to work out, is it the power? Is there a radio station inside of the building and it's somehow sending radio signals through the socket in the wall or whatever it was and no one knew. And this is, this is actually a rule for life. If you have a problem and I get chat GPT would probably be a really good solution for this now because it's good at searching lots of stuff but if you just put the problem that you have in and then the

word read it afterward almost always so sure enough one of the guys did and what it turned out to be was if you've got very long XLR cables that attach to these microphones and they cross they they turn into an antenna. And sure enough, took them out, put shorter ones in, made sure they didn't cross, went away. Holy fuck. But no one in there, I've seen this before. Listen to me. It's like, uh, uh, just everyone's searching different shit, like unplugging

stuff, trying to change things around. Yeah. Right. There's a sense of humility in the fact that, Hey, I don't know what to do. I'm going to go on the web and Google what to do. Yeah. No factor. Yeah.

Yeah. I, um, I liked that idea that. Unconfidence comes from you positioning, uh, your level of expertise higher than it actually is. Yeah. And there's, there's like a whole cycle too, because it's almost like a circular thing because if you want to be confident, you got to be humble. And then when you're humble, then you are more confident because

you're okay with not knowing. You know, I had some guy asked me, um, it was about, it was about meeting girls. Like it was a guy wanting to go out and meet girls and he was lacking confidence. And, and he's like, you know, I'm 27 years old or whatever it was. I really want to meet my mate and I'm searching and I'm going out. And I said, well, first of all, if you walk up to a girl with the expectation in your mind that this could be the one, I mean, imagine the crazy pressure you're putting on yourself. A little bit of performance anxiety there.

Yeah, told you're going to act like an idiot. And I said, man, just instead, just go up and expect that what she's going to say is like, when you say hi to her, hopefully she'll say hi back and maybe she won't. And if she doesn't, no big deal. Like that's where you set the bar. And that's going to make you, it's going to make you perform a lot better in that scenario. You know, there's another, another interesting thing I was talking about lately and we were just talking about bow hunting. And I had this thing where somebody asked me about like how to actually execute in the moment and get your mind right

when you have to perform. And I didn't never really thought about this before and I actually thought through my whole life and what my attitude was and If you need to perform You need to be very very humble and like if I've got an event that I've got to do I've got a mission that I've got to do. I've got a train. I've got to prepare I've got a mission that I've got to do I've got a train I've got to prepare I've got a plan and that whole all of that is driven from humility, right? I I don't think I'm ready. So I'm gonna I'm gonna prepare more. I'm gonna rehearse more I don't I'm not thinking clearly about what the enemy will do So I need to come up with a better plan

like I'm gonna be very humble and I'm gonna therefore prepare very hard and very extensively. But at the moment I put my night vision goggles on and I, and I, I lowered them down over my eyes. There's like a switch that goes off that I am 100% going to win. And where the, the, the reason this ties into bow hunting is I was up at one of the, one of the total archery challenges. If you haven't been to one of those, go to one of those. They're really cool. They set up all these

3d targets all over usually ski mountains and you shoot and it's cool. It's a lot of fun bunch of awesome people there and I had just gone through this answer to somebody about how to actually execute in the moment And I realized you go up to take a a, like first of all, going to tack or going hunting, you're training all the time because you don't want to miss the shot, you've got to be humble. You know how hard it is.

You're going to be out of breath. The pressure is going to be on. And so you've got to train, train, train, train, prepare, prepare, prepare. But when you get up there and you like, knock your, your arrow onto your bow, you've just got to be like, I'm going to slay this right now. And I started consciously thinking about that attack and tax really, they set up courses that are shots that are totally ridiculous.

And you can lose five, eight, 10 arrows hitting rocks and trees and everything else. Yeah. And I went up with that attitude and I shot the whole course with one arrow, which is, look, is there luck involved? Yes, there's luck involved, but still it's like that attitude of, Hey, I'm walking up. I've trained, but now I'm going to just go slay this thing.

And all that performance anxiety is gone. You go up, get confident. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to punch this thing right through that target. No factor. And you do it. And I think that's a good thing going to, I'm going to punch this thing right through that target, no factor and you do it. And I think that's a good thing to think about when it comes to execution.

Like, yes, be humble, be prepared. But when you knock that arrow or you put your night vision goggles on, or you step into that meeting to do that presentation, you should be like, I'm about to slay this right now. How do you avoid the humbleness and the humility turning into performance doubt? Because I think it has to be a conscious decision that you make that when you go in there,

and for me, again, it was very, almost like getting into character, right? Like I'm getting, I'm knocking this arrow or I'm putting my night vision goggles down. That's the switch, I'm going. You know, you go on stage now, right? putting my night vision goggles down, that's the switch, I'm going. You go on stage now, right? So, hey, do you prepare prior to? Yeah, you're like, oh, I gotta do my notes

and get everything set up. But when you walk out on stage, like when you put that mic on, you should be like, all right, it's go time. And I'm gonna slay this situation that I'm going into. I wonder whether this is part of the advantage of, uh, Beyonce's got an alter ego for on stage, uh, Kobe alter ego for on the court. Oh, a hundred percent.

And I wonder whether that allows the humility and practice, uh, sort of godliness in, in performance. Have you ever seen the, uh, Facebook post that Kobe put after he ruptured his Achilles? I'm going to read this. It's so fucking good. This is such BS. All the training and sacrifice just flew out of the window with one step that I've done millions of times.

The frustration is unbearable. The anger is rage. Why the hell did this happen? Makes no damn sense. Now I'm supposed to come back from this and be the same player or better at 35? How in the world am I supposed to do that? I have no clue. Do I have the consistent will to overcome this thing?

Maybe I should break out of this rocking chair and reminisce on the career that was. Maybe this is how my book ends. Maybe Father Time has defeated me. Then again, maybe not. It's 3.30am. My foot feels like a dead weight. My head is spinning from the pain meds and I'm wide awake.

Forgive my venting, but what's the purpose of social media? If I won't bring this to you, no real image. Feels good to vent, let it out, to feel as if this was the worst thing ever. Because after all the venting, the real perspective sets in. There are far greater issues and challenges in the world than a torn Achilles. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, find the silver lining and get to work with the same belief, same drive and same conviction as ever. One day the beginning of a new career journey will commence.

Today is not that day. If you see me in a fight with a bear, pray for the bear. I've always loved that quote. That's Mamba mentality. We don't quit, we don't cower. We don't run. We endure and conquer. I know it's a long post, but I'm Facebook venting. Lol. Maybe now I can actually get some sleep and be excited for surgery tomorrow.

First step of a new challenge. Thank you for all your prayers and support. Much love always. Mamba out. Kobe Bryant, 13th of April, 2013. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

And I bet again, he's a great example. He wasn't walking around arrogant thinking, Hey, I'm so good that I don't need to practice No, he was the opposite practicing more than anybody else and That way again going into the game Give me the ball, you know, give me the ball. It's caught it's clutch time. It's go time. Give me the ball I'm gonna make this and that's the same with Jordan same with Larry Bird. Like you look at the greats, they all practiced insane. They were insane when it came to practice. They tried to beat everyone to practice. They'd stay after practice.

And when game time came, they would first of all talk smack, right? Larry Bird was famous for talking smack, but give me the ball because they know that they can make the shot. This episode is brought to you by Nomadic. Summer is here and travel season is in full swing, but let's be honest, Give me the ball, because they know that they can make the shot. This episode is brought to you by Nomatic. Summer is here and travel season is in full swing, but let's be honest, your backpack was probably built for a school field trip, not international adventures, which is where Nomatic comes in.

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Right now you can get a 20% discount and see everything that I use and recommend by going to the link in the description below or heading to nomadic.com slash modern wisdom. That's nomadic.com slash modern wisdom. You spend a good bit of your career in situations that would cause most people to feel a ton of fear. I think that fear is related to this confidence conviction in my decisions. What have you learned about how to deal with and overcome fear? Go. Go. Yep.

It's you when all that, all that, all that fear that's in your head, all the what ifs and the scenarios that you create inside your own mind that are way worse than anything that is actually going to happen, they all disappear when you go. So just, just take action and start moving forward. And it, that is the, that is the moment that can last a million years is waiting to go. And I found, I'm pretty good at it now, where, oh, I'm like, oh, yeah, I know what that is, and I'm going.

And that's it. And once you go, you know, driving, even, you know, speaking of being in combat, if we were driving to a target, and you're, you know, speaking of in being in combat, if we were driving to a target and you're, you know, so you're going to go hit a target somewhere and driving to the target, the closer you get, you're thinking about all the things that go wrong, all the bad things that are going to happen, all this stuff. When one of my guys gets wounded, what if they have IEDs in the yard? Like there's a bunch of things going through your mind. Once you like stop, get out of the vehicle, all those things go away. Yep. And you're doing, get out of the vehicle, all those things go

away. Yep. And you're doing the thing and you're not worried about it anymore. And so let's just go. That's the answer. Action is an antidote to anxiety. Man, actions is an antidote to all kinds of problems. Yeah. You know, I was, I ski and I was up in Big Sky, Montana, and they've got this challenging trail and I was at the top of it. And you're thinking, oh, well, this could be the end of my ACL and like all these stupid things are going through my mind.

And I'm like, as soon as I got there, just boom, just going, just go. Is that something you always had? What? That I feel fear immediately lean into it. How trained is that versus how innate is that? I think it's, I think it's trained because you go through, you go through situations and it's interesting, you know, in the military, they're probably doing it to you on purpose or maybe it's just the way it is, but okay, you're going to go repelling, right? Repelling is

relatively, it doesn't feel that crazy. Well, then you're going to fast rope, which is a little bit of a step up. And then you're going to fast. If you're going to repel off of a building, right. And then you're going to repel out of a helicopter, then you're going to fast rope out of a tower. And then you're going to fast rope out of a helicopter. And then you're going to parachute and then you're going to free fall parachute

and all those things are all things that you can be afraid of even going back to like the obstacle course, which I think the tallest obstacle in the obstacle course might be the, the, the cargo net, which is a cargo net that you climb up. It's probably, I don't know how tall it is, but it's tall enough that you are not going to be in good shape if you fall and you have to climb up the cargo net. And then you have to go over the top of it and then climb back down the other side. But even that, if you're freaked out or you're scared, you're going to get stuck

there and there's guys that do get stuck. They don't climb over the top of it. Not a lot, but there's occasionally guys that they, yeah, this it's, they're not, it's not happening. So the longer that you sit, you hang on and look and stare and contemplate the chances of you falling off, it doesn't get any better. So eventually you just throw your leg over

and get over that damn thing. So I think I probably just experienced it enough and was cognizant enough to recognize that at some point, oh yeah, this feeling of caution and fear and all that stuff in the back of my head. Yeah, I just need to get rid of all that and just go. It seems to go away when I move toward it. Yeah, it does go away.

100% goes away. There's gotta be something that you do that makes you a little bit scared. What? What's the stuff? Going out on stage is one of those, three and a half thousand people in London, this big event that we've been building up to for six months.

And my least, my two favorite bits of it, three favorite bits of it, half an hour before I'm about to go on as I go on. And then just as I finish it, as I come off, one minute before I go on is fucking awful. And it's the, in the Humvee driving to the target with the people thinking about the things. Like, just, you know, but you see, uh, Greyhounds in the traps before they get set off. It's the exact same. And that's a really, really good way to put it. The fact that the fear of the thing is only present when the thing hasn't started.

I wrote a kid's book called Mikey and the Dragons. The fear of the thing is only present when the thing hasn't started. I wrote a kid's book called Mikey and the Dragons and the story is, spoiler alert, the kid, his dad is the king, his dad dies, the kid now has to defend the village from the dragons. And he's scared because he's only a little kid and he can't pick up the sword and he can't pick up the shield, it's too heavy. But he's the kid, he's scared because he's only a little kid and he can't pick up the sword and he can't pick up the shield.

It's too heavy, but he's the kid. He's the son of the king. He's the prince. He's got to go fight the dragons. And he gets a note from his dad that says, Hey, stand up, go attack the dragons. You'll see that there's nothing to be afraid of. And he gets up there and enters the dragon cave.

And guess what? The dragons are little tiny, cute dragons. And, but his fear is the same fear that we all build up for whatever that thing is, whether it's going on stage or whether it's jumping out of an airplane or whether it's taking risk with some kind of a business situation. Well, the more you sit there and think about it,

the worse it's going to get in your own head. So good. Uh, I wonder how much of it as well is fear of the unknown versus fear of the thing. It's like the story that I've told myself. It's the fact that there's uncertainty on the other side of this and I like control that here is order and there is chaos. And I don't want to lose some of this beautiful order by stepping into the

care, but as you do, you realize that it's not that you, uh, that that merges with you, it's that you push this out of the way, you know, kind of like how, uh, a little reality distortion sphere moves through and you locally. So this is, it was my Twitter bio for ages to quote from Navali says, uh, I locally reverse entropy. I fucking love that idea. You know, you've got this entire universe entropy, this force that is going to destroy everything. The only thing that is not going to survive entropy, or that is

going to survive entropy, right? This permanent decline all the way down. And you think, yeah, briefly for my time on this planet, for however many decades I'm going to be here, I actually locally reverse entropy, the fucking entire power of the universe bearing down on me. It's like, yeah, not while I'm here. I really love that. I think it's a cool, like, uh, cosmic middle finger. Yeah. And it's just the fact that you can control a lot more than you think. And the world is happening and if you let the world happen to you, it's

going to happen to you, but if you want to make something happen, the world, you can do that as well. It's a choice you get to make. going to happen to you, but if you want to make something happen in the world, you can do that as well. It's a choice you get to make. Does being in firefights and driving in Humvees up to scary missions, does that make everything else seem less fear inducing? I'm trying to work out how much carryover you get from a career of doing what you do

to now. Is it permanently sort of reset a baseline of that? Yeah, it kind of is man, like what is the worst case scenario that's going to happen? And really the, when the fear that I had in combat, which was a deep, horrible one that you feel in your stomach, knots, is you fear that one of your guys is gonna get wounded or killed. And you know, fear of me getting killed, I didn't really care. You know, I was over that. I accepted it. That's what could happen. That's like my job and not just my job, like, Oh, this is what I signed up for. But that's kind of what I always felt like that was just who I was, but I'm okay

with taking that responsibility for myself, but you know, putting that responsibility on your friends is not something that feels good. friends is not something that feels good. And so that gut wrenching, horrible feeling is not something that I don't think you're going to experience that in a normal job and even with businesses. You know, I, and I've, look, I've had things go wrong at my businesses. We've had, you know, made mistakes that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. And, you know, I've had my team saying like reporting to me and telling me about this negative thing that happened.

And I could see, you know, because I got great people that they're really disappointed and they really feel terrible, but I'm like, Hey, no one's going to die and we're going to recover from this. And everything's gonna be cool. Like we're it's all right. Rogan's got this insight. The worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. Absolutely true.

And if the worst thing that's ever happened to you is a fucking firefight in Fallujah, uh, or if the worst thing that's ever happened to you is accidentally spending 10 grand on the wrong business credit card, both of those things, you don't get, there's no Uber surcharge discount or whatever for the worst thing that ever happened to you being less bad than the worst thing that ever happened to somebody else. And where I really learned that was with kids, because as kids are in sixth grade and someone, you know, throws a rotten orange at them and everyone laughs at them, that is horrible for that kid. And when the kid comes home and they're crying and they say, and you go, what happened? They do that, I got hit in the head and they called me orange head.

And you go, I don't worry about it, it's funny. That doesn't work. Like you have to learn to, you have to learn to understand. Deal with them as if they've just been in a firefight. Exactly, exactly. And you can help them get through it. You know, you can help them because it helps, it will help them when they see that perspective as well.

Just like when I was talking to my team, it's like, oh, we had this horrible thing happen. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to the team collectively. Okay. Me sharing the perspective of like, hey guys, no one's dead. We're gonna be okay.

We're gonna, you know, no one's getting their bonus this quarter, but okay, me included, but that's all right. We're gonna get through this and we're gonna grow and we learn from it and we're gonna carry on. So giving people perspective can help them, but you can't just say, oh, your problem isn't really a problem.

You can't say that. That doesn't work. Yeah. Denying, saying to somebody the way that you feel isn't valid is not a constructive way. It's not going to work out well. Not with your partner that comes home and says, you said that you were going to do this thing. It's like, no, with your partner that comes home and says, you, you, you said that you were going to do this thing. It's like, no, I didn't. It's like, well, in their world, you said that they, they, they, and even the denial of that, it's like, look, I, uh, how about I go and do it anyway, even though, well, you know, there's just a million different ways of communicating like that.

Uh, I want to know just on the firefight topic. Um, I've been spending a good bit of time reading more, like military history and, and, and trying to get a bit more of an understanding of there's a great book called Atrocetology, which is the hundred greatest human atrocities across time, ranked by the number of people that were killed. I've been sort of trying to think about that level of fear, that level of sort of kinetic engagement between people. What is it that normal people don't understand

about what a modern firefight is like? What is it that they don't get about what it's actually like to be there? I think the chaos of it and the not knowing what's... So here's an example. We would, in training, when I was running training, we would have guys shoot paintball at like really high speed paintball guns.

And so if you were a SEAL platoon commander, you're a SEAL platoon commander, Chris, and I would have my SE my seals in the training detachment going out with paintball and shooting your guys. And you had paintball too and you could shoot back. So I remember guys would come to me and they'd say, well, you know, we'd be in an, in an urban environment, right? So like a fake city that we have,

it's concrete buildings, but it's a fake city. And the platoon commander, Chris comes back to me and is like, Hey, Jocko, this is not realistic. Oh, why isn't it realistic? Well, we can't tell where your guys are shooting from because the paintball, the paint guns don't have muzzle flash and they don't make a bang. Yep. So we can't tell where the shots are coming from. And it's like, guess what?

You're not going to know where you're getting shot at from. I mean, it's very similar to a paintball. Actually, it's like, guess what? You're not going to know where you're getting shot at from. I mean, it's very similar to a paintball, actually. It's like, you ever been in a city and you hear a siren over your left shoulder, and you start looking over your left shoulder, and all of a sudden it comes from the right, because of the way sound dynamics work?

So that's like one tiny example of how confusing and chaotic it can be. And so I think seeing in the movies, some, some, they're doing it better and better. Now, uh, the movie just came out called warfare, which was, was directed and written by a seal, a guy named Ray Mendoza, who actually was the group of guys that came and took our, my place and my guy's place in Ramadi in 2006. He came and took, his guys took our place. And so a few weeks later they had a, they got hit on an operation and they had two guys get really badly wounded. But it was a really, and a couple

of their Iraqi soldiers, their friendly Iraqi soldiers got killed. It was just a very vicious situation. But when you see the movie and they, he made it very realistic and it's chaos. It's chaos and confusion and guys are not know what's happening, screaming, wounded guys just screaming. And so I think that level of chaos and confusion is, is what gets missed out on. And then what the leader needs to do is take a step back from that chaos and confusion, figure out what's happening and make decisions. So yeah, that's it.

It's not as slick or sexy as it's been portrayed in movies traditionally, but people are now catching up. Yeah, I think people are catching up now. Um, I think people, I think, and this movie warfare is a great example of, oh, there's total chaos. It's not neat. Yeah, it's not neat. And, and by the way, human beings with an incredible

amount of training are still going to like do things that you don't expect them to do. And that that's, that's real. So it's, it's a good, it's the Hollywood is starting to catch up with that. I'm just trying to think back of, you know, saving private Ryan did a pretty good job. You know, that opening scene on the beach, there

was definitely a world war two veterans that were that sat through that D-Day veterans that sat through that and said, whoa, like that you guys got it. And some of the, some of the effects that they did even in Save It Private, in Saving Private Ryan, where Tom Hanks is, they're getting shot at and he's sort of like the, it gets quiet and slow motion type stuff. And he's just kind of detached from the whole thing. He's just out of body experience. And then someone shakes him, Hey, you know, captain, you gotta get, and he kind of gets back in it.

And that's kind of an, uh, leading indicator of what they're starting to get better and better at. Is that a common, uh, emotion to feel that? Yeah. Like, and even earlier, we were talking about, um, like noise. and better at. Is that a common emotion to feel that? Yeah. Like even earlier, we were talking about, um, like noise and when you're in it was shooting your gun in a gunfight, shooting your gun is freaking

loud, but you're shooting your gun in a gunfight. You don't, you don't go out. That's loud. Now you might start to catch a glimpse of that sometimes where you're like, Oh, my machine gunner is right here and he's dumping rounds. Now, you might start to catch a glimpse of that sometimes, where you're like, oh, my machine gunner's right here and he's dumping rounds. And you go, that's really loud right now. I'm getting hit with Blink, by the way, which hurts.

So you, there's just these, these things that are happening that there's a lot going on. And yeah, sometimes your adrenaline's going and you start to slow down and see things moving in a slower manner. Time kind of slows down sometimes. You start hearing some things that you might not have heard or not hearing things that you would hear. Another big thing is in modern days, we have these radios and we have headphones with noise canceling headphones and guys would start to pass radio traffic on the radio. So if I needed you, hey Chris,

come down to the first floor of this building. I need you to set security for me. And I would say that on the radio to you. Hey Chris, you know, hey Chris, come down to the first floor. I need you to set. Meanwhile, you're up there on your machine gun. You don't hear a damn word that I say.

And so what I have to do is I have to password verbally like Chris and Chris Chris. And it like wakes you up because everything that's going on the headphone just goes- Oh wow. You got a pattern interrupt. Yes. Yes. So- It's just background. It's ambient fucking Lyft music. Yes.

That's crazy. Yeah. I mean, what about dealing with the level of adrenaline sort of during and after, because you know, you you hear about, um, I was talking to a friend. And the Brown belt in BJJ, but fought in Muay Thai for a long time, went out to Thailand to fight, and we were watching, uh, Chris Eubank Jr. versus Connor Ben boxing fight that happened the other week in the UK. Probably one of the biggest, you know, uh, the two sons of two very famous boxers who had a huge rivalry and now they're doing it. And it's sort of been this build up and all this stuff. It was super epic. I mean,

and it was one of those walkouts that takes five minutes to happen. And there's a, the dance bits and both of the dads are with the sons. So it was, you know, real sort of hairs on the back of your neck stuff. Um, but I asked Josh, uh, Hey man, would you want to be first or do you want to be second in terms of walkout? And he said, well, typically the, the, uh, champion would come out second. But I was like, yeah, I get that. I've always seen that, but which one do you want to be? Do you want to get into the ring and sort of get a sense of the space?

Or do you want to come out second? And he was like, dude, you always want to be second because you're stood in the ring, the adrenaline's already been at its peak and you're just getting cold, slow, the adrenaline's not there. You've already had your moment. Now you're watching this dickhead have his moment. Um, so I wondered the same when it comes to how long can you sustain adrenaline for through a, a, a combat mission and what happens when you got, we

have a five minutes where we regroup at one corner and then you're like, okay, fuck, I've got to, here we go. We go back up again. It is like a roller coaster, but what, what you were just saying and what we talked about previously walk out second. Cause then the guy that walked out first gets to spend an extra four and a half minutes contemplating what's about to happen and living in his own fear. Right. He's running through that fear loop and freaking out,

whereas you haven't even walked out yet. So let him sit out there on the big stage and let him freak out about it. I'm sure that they take their time as well. It's like your walkout's five minutes. It's like, yeah, we're gonna start, you know, 90 seconds late. It's like Musashi showing up four hours

or three hours late to a sword fight. Like, oh yeah, you and I are gonna fight. Cool, I'll be there at noon. Show up at 2 or 3. Yeah, do you just sit there and freak out? So it's a good plan. But yeah, that adrenaline, that up and down of that adrenaline, how did you manage that? Well, what's interesting about that is you would think, like if I said to you, all right, Chris, you're going to go down on a patrol right now and someone, there's going to be enemy trying to kill you. You'd think to yourself, like, okay, well, I'm going to be freaking locked on for this whole

two hours, right? Like, I'm going to be three hours, I'm going to be freaking locked on for this whole two hours, right? Like I'm going to be three hours. I'm going to be totally locked on. Well, after an hour and a half and nothing's happened yet and you're hot and you're tired and you're sweaty and you're carrying a hundred pounds worth of 60 pounds worth of gear, you start to go, dude, do I really want to take a knee at this corner? Do I really need to take a knee at this corner? Do I really need to take a knee at this corner right now?

Meaning you're going to stop and you'd like to lower your profile a little bit. But after an hour and a half, maybe you'll just stand and hold that thing. So it's interesting, we talk about complacency and how you can't get complacent, right? Well, and people say, well, in combat, of course, you'd never get complacent. No, absolutely. People get complacent, right? Well, and people say, well, you know, in combat, of course you'd never get complacent. No, absolutely. People get complacent in combat. So when that adrenaline runs out, you have to have the discipline to say,

oh, I'm getting my corner. I need to take a knee to lower my profile, period, end of story. I gotta follow the protocols no matter what. Does that suggest that different roles within military units, different people have disposed to different roles? I mean, this is obvious that certain people go toward spotting, sniping, being the door kickers, being the people that sit back and do more planning,

people that drive, fly drones, people, you know, all the medics, all the rest, whatever it might be. But I have to imagine that within that, uh, you may find when somebody gets into operations that actually I'm perfectly competent to all of the skills, but my nervous system just does not agree with this. So I'm going to have to adapt over time. And maybe I do need to be somebody that's sat up top and needs to hold sustained focus at a sort of a lower, uh, rate for a longer period of time. Or maybe I'm the sort of person I can't hold it.

I I'm good in bursts. I'm like the Usain Bolt of the fucking special forces. I can kick a door down, do a thing. And then, all right, we go again. Um, I imagine that that must be something that happens during training and, uh and during operations too. Yeah, and you're gonna find, like you mentioned being a sniper, being a sniper is a job of patience.

And so if you're a person that's freaking hyperactive and you don't like to sit still for a long time, being a sniper is gonna be a horrible job for you. Whereas being a breacher, where you're gonna walk up to a door, someone's gonna say, breach her up, and you're gonna go kick that thing in or blow it up in the next 14 seconds. That's a job for shortest short attention span, Chris.

But if long attention span, Chris, patient Chris will, you know, will guide you as a seal to be a sniper as opposed. And then, and then also like you've got joint tactical air control, which is the guy that's got multiple aircraft overhead. And he's got stuff going on in the ground, but he's got to take, he's got to detach from that and he's got to put these aircraft, he's got to stack them in the proper way, keep them, uh, out of each other's way in the air. And then he's got to find targets on the ground and direct various aircraft. So there's a lot of cerebral processing that has to happen.

So depending on who you are, you're gonna sort of get guided to a job that is suitable for you. Yes, I've been thinking about this after a cool genetic testing that I did that looks at all of the different alleles that you've got and then maps them to what they're predictive for. So some of them are to do with dopamine response. Others are to do with how you process vitamin B12.

Some of them, for me, to do with how you process cortisol and adrenaline. And one of the jobs that it said would not be good for me would be something with huge peaks and troughs. So as long as I can sustain focus, I could be someone that was holding it for a long period of time, but if you've got these massively intense periods

and then these big dips, my nervous system isn't built to come back into land very quickly like that. I would love, I knew that we had this episode. I'd love to see what your results would be with that. My ability to clear adrenaline, cortisol, not so good. I have to guess that you and the rest of the guys that you were with would be,

uh, whatever the equivalent of like a super, super spreader event for being able to bring that back into land. Fascinating. And there's no genetic test on that thing to get in the SEAL teams. So we end up with guys and you can see them. Like you can see a guy that gets really, I don't know if this is the same thing, but you have people that get really emotional about things and then some people that don't and everything in between.

So I think some of that has to, I mean, certainly I would think that if your adrenaline is pumping, your emotions are heightened, right? And then if your adrenaline is not pumping, then you're more emotionally calm. I would think that that would be accurate. So you get, you end up with both people in the SEAL teams. And yeah, like someone that's super hyper emotional is probably not going to be ideal sniper. Not that they're not, cause there are guys

that are emotional that are good, great snipers too. But you know, if you've got someone that, as you grow, right, as you get older, you must learn to regulate some of that stuff too. I'm, I'm assuming so that you are harder to disrupt. Knock off base. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I mean, that's the fascinating thing that you realize when you see the building blocks of who you are, which are, you know, this 20,000 pairs of alleles or whatever it might be. And it's like, huh, I always wondered why fucking like gluten didn't agree with me. Oh, huh. I always wondered why I struggled to sleep after something exciting happened on a nighttime. Oh, I always wondered why, you know, whatever. Uh, I would like to run another experiment where we, like, you give me, I give you this test and

then I just make stuff up and tell you, cause I hear about people who do like whoop strap and they get told in the morning, you didn't get good sleep last night. And then they start feeling like, oh man, I'm really dragging today. And then they get told, oh, you slept great last night. And they feel like they have more energy and pretty soon they go, wait a second. I got told I didn't sleep well, but I had an awesome day and I did,

you know, I perform well in my stuff. So I'd be interested to tell you like, Oh, you're, you're emotionally just locked on and see if you were like, Oh yeah, there's a, a great book called the expectation effect by David Robson, just popular science book. It's about four years old now. And, uh, he looked at a study where they did exactly this. So they gave a cohort of people, two different groups. One group has a particular genetic predisposition that allows them to blow off CO2 more efficiently. And that means that for VO2 max work, they

have, they're much more effective. Other group does not have this mutation. They mixed them up and split them into two parts. So each group had equal proportions of people with and people without. You can see where I'm going to go. They told group one, Hey, you've got this genetic mutation. Remembering 50% of them don't. You're going to, you're going to crush this.

It's going to be amazing. Group two, you don't have this genetic mutation. It may be a little bit more tough for you to do the remembering 50% of them do the group that were told that they did, but didn't have it outperformed the group that did have it, but we're told that they didn't. And he came up with this synopsis, which is

your expectations are even more powerful than your genes. Have you ever heard of the monster experiment? No. So they see the exact same thing, except for it was with kids with speech impediments. So what they did is they said, Hey Chris, listen, you know how occasionally when you're talking, you kind of like stutter a little bit. And of course everyone stutters a little bit sometimes.

So I say, Hey Chris, that's because you're a stutterer and it's probably going to get worse as you get older. And sure enough, when they told kids that they developed stutters and had it get worse. And then other kids, they were, they said, oh yeah, you've got the kids with actual stutters. They say, Hey, you got a little bit of stutter right now, but it's no factors. It's just, you're going through the face and they would come out of it.

And this turned into a big, giant lawsuit because it gave kids like permanent speech impediments, which is just awful. Yeah. That's a hence they call it monster. Uh, which is just awful. Yeah, that's a, hence they call it monster. Uh, which is interesting because there's also that thing, which I have heard and read, which is when a kid does something good, you don't, you don't compliment them on their talent.

You compliment them on their hard work. Yeah. Which this is a little bit of the opposite, right? If I say, Hey, you know, Chris, you did a great job because you're so talented, then you're like, Oh cool. I don't have to work that hard. But there's a little bit of the opposite, right? Little bit of the opposite.

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guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to live momentous.com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout that's L I V E M O M E N T O U S dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. What do most people misunderstand about discipline equals freedom? Um, I don't know. I think it was pretty simple to understand. I agree, but I, I it's with simplicity comes an awful lot of opportunity for people to. Yeah.

I guess there's always people that, you know, as they're trying to fish for a contrarian thing to say, which I think you kind of have to fish for it. I think you have to work for it to get with that statement. But, oh, there's such a thing as too much discipline. And if you have too much discipline in your life, then you won't be enjoying your life. And cool, yep.

If you are so disciplined that you never go out and you never eat a pizza, cool, you might be bummed out. Yep, you can go too far with it. But generally speaking, if you have an occasional pizza, cause they taste really good and once a month or whatever, you go down to the pizza place and you get a pizza, cool, good for you, that's gonna be awesome.

That's the reward for freedom. But I think it's pretty straightforward. I guess if I was to fish a little bit more, I would say that the idea that discipline is natural or it's, uh, innate, and actually my middle daughter, who's a jujitsu player. She was, she was actually speaking the other day. And one of the things that she said was she was speaking about discipline.

And she said, you know, I was, I was training my dad and I, we went to the gym the other day and we were, we were both training and I was training with, you know, the, the, the guys that I train with and she was training with the people she trains with and it's a Sunday and we're training, we're both like really tired when we're done and we get done. We're kind of sitting up on the mats and we're talking and, and I look at it. I said, I was, I said, uh, not one part of me wanted to come train today, like 0% of me wanted to come train today. And I'm so, so glad I came in trend.

Cause you know, you always feel great when you get done training. But so my daughter went and spoke to this group and she said, you know, my dad, you know, Mr. Discipline who's been on this path for however many decades, my dad didn't want to train. And he had to go, Hey, doesn't matter whether you want to do or not. You got to have the discipline, go do it. And, and he did, and he got done with it. So, and I think that's a good thing to remember that discipline isn't just,

Oh, this person is quote more disciplined than, than this other person. It's like, no, this person is choosing discipline, this person is not. That's the way it is. So I think that's an important thing to remember. You have the option of being disciplined. You, you don't have the option of being born six, four, right? You don't have that option.

You either are or you're not, but you do have the option of choosing discipline or not. So discipline, not necessarily something that you're born with. I don't think so at all. I think maybe there's some small percentage of it. Maybe this person's a little bit more innately disciplined than this other person, but I think it's a choice. Well, how much of its habit as well?

And momentum, you know, as you said, I think this is one of the vicious cycles that people get into. And it's also why you see people that have unbelievably outsized results in life and those who kind of have consistently bad results in life, because each positive experience is self-reinforcing. It tells you a story about the sort of person you are and you start to build on good habits and these good habits show you more good habits, and you get a little bit more confidence, and you get a little bit more, and you say, well, this is part of my identity now, actually. I can push myself a little bit, so, and you're like, holy fuck, like, the 1% per day increase, and you end up at some unbelievably big number

by the end of the year, but you also see the opposite. And this is how you get, you know, very diverging outcomes from people that started at relatively similar places. Certainly. And this is something that I've said for a while and is discipline begets discipline, right? If you make a bad decision in the morning and you decide you're not going to get out of bed, you decide you're not going to work out when you get to the office, the donuts are that much more tempting

and you're probably gonna eat one. Whereas if you woke up early, you worked out, you got a little bit of work done before you even showed up to work, you show up to work and now there's donuts, you're like, I don't need those right now. You just make better decisions. And that's-

On the front foot today or on the back foot? Yeah, exactly. And yeah, the compounding thing for sure. And you make one good little decision that leads to another good little opportunity. And, and, you know, I'm sure you have friends like this too. I have friends that made just small decision after small, bad decision after small, bad decision, and they end up in terrible, terrible places.

Yeah. Which is awful to see. An interesting pivot on the make one good decision, but gets another good decision is when you've got a difficult conversation to have, my friend's Alex says, uh, the life that you want is on the other side of the difficult conversations you're unprepared to have. And he uses this analogy of when, you know, you work up to it for ages and the stress and the, you know, you're in the Humvee,

metaphorically driving up to the conversation and you finally do it and you go, I feel amazing. And then immediately, like a psychopath, like a serial killer, you look around and you go, what are the bad conversations can I have? And you're like seeking out targets for you. Like, well, I need to ring my mom and tell her that she did that thing. You know, I've got that guy that didn't deliver the Amazon parcel correctly. I need to speak to this supplier, blah, Oh, I need to ring my mom and tell her that she did that thing. And I, you know, I've got that guy that didn't deliver the Amazon parcel correctly. And I need to speak to this supplier and blah, blah, blah. But, uh, you, it's the same with that. And this sort of momentum thing is a big deal.

And it's why. In that vein, when I don't feel like going to train jujitsu, I don't feel like waking up or I don't feel like working out, whatever that thing is, that feeling that I mentioned to my daughter of like, I'm so happy I came in train today. I know that feeling so well that it just totally overrides the. Oh, so you're projecting yourself. Yeah.

I'm like, Oh yeah, I know how much better I'm going to feel in an hour and an hour and a half. I know that feeling so well. And I also know the other feeling, which is, man, I didn't train today. You know, I do the Sunday and I decided I needed to do the office. Like, no train. I know that. And I think that is very helpful.

What's still driving you now from a disciplined perspective? Well, I mean, in jujitsu, it's just, I love jujitsu. Hey, you know, and again, if you want to do something, how much discipline does it take? You know what I mean? I love jujitsu. It literally takes more discipline to not do the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like you get injured and your arms, you know, you can tell that your arm, every time you train, it's getting a little bit worse. It takes more discipline to be like, all right, I need to take a day off. You would deny it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I mean, I enjoy doing these things. I enjoy working out.

Do I enjoy working out every single day? Nope. And that's when it's like, oh yeah, but I know the results of the long run. And I think that's an important thing that I've talked about. And again, talked about this with my daughter is like, Oh yeah, but I know the results of the long run. And I think that's a, that's an important thing that I've talked about. And again, talked about this with my, with my daughter is like, if you. Give up a little bit today, like you can't get it back. Like if you skip a workout today, you can't, you, there's no possible way.

To get that back. When you let something go, it's gone and Rome wasn't built in the day, but There's no possible way to get that back. When you let something go, it's gone. And Rome wasn't built in the day, but Rome didn't fall apart on the day either. It didn't fall apart because of one thing. It falls apart just a little bit at a time. Nobody gets fit overnight, nobody gets fat overnight.

Exactly. And so you can't submit. know, you can't submit. You can't submit. You have to, you have to get in there and keep it going. And I know the results of not doing the thing are not good. And I enjoy doing the thing. So in order to keep doing the thing, you got to do the thing. Yes, it is.

It's this endless fucking infinite regress of doing the thing. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of get the sense as well, that story about not wanting to go to the gym. I do think that that's the difference between discipline and motivation, right?

Motivation. I didn't want to do the thing. Discipline. I did the thing in spite of not wanting to do the thing. Yep. Yep. And look, I've said it many times, you can't count on motivation. Like it's not going to be there for you.

Yeah. Or it may, but it may not be. And it's lovely when it comes along. If you wait for it to be there, it's, you might be waiting more than you should. On the other end of that, you know, the person who is going through a string of, can I have one of those? You want to spell one?

I want a DracoGolf, please. Thank you. What's the name of this? This is iced tea lemonade. Okay. You're still pasteurizing these, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

That's hardcore. Yeah, that's good. That's coming from a Brit, you know, a tea drinker. I know, look. It's not the same sort of tea. It's not the same sort of tea. This isn't a fucking Earl Grey. No, I appreciate what you guys did with tea. This isn't a fucking Earl gray.

Uh, no, I appreciate what you guys did with this. We also did it with Newtonic. I really appreciate the fact that you didn't go heavy on the carbonation, you know, if you're going to have this before a workout, the last thing you want is like, yeah, well, just throughout it. So no, yeah, that's lovely. Uh, you have a sour apple one.

Could we do? Yeah. That's my favorite one. It's a good one. Yeah, it's lovely. Uh, you have a sour apple one. Could we do? Yeah, that's my favorite one. It's a good one. Yeah, it's awesome. It's a popular one. Um, I imagine it's all well and good saying good decisions beget good decisions. You've got this infinite domino tumble that helps you to keep the momentum up. that helps you to keep the momentum up.

And yes, it is your responsibility to deal with the repercussions of the decisions that you've made, including the string of bad ones for the last quite a long time, if that's the situation that you're in, but it's not particularly reassuring or comforting, I don't think to somebody who's in the shit. So what would you say to someone who's going through a bad month or a string of bad months and doesn't see any light at the end of the tunnel? What are your options? You know, like, okay, you're upside down financially. You relationship went back, went south, you

got whatever those things are, your credit card debt is up, you, you got fired from your job. Okay. You're in a terrible situation. What are your options? What you have to do is, well, you kind of have to prioritize and execute, right? Like, okay, I got all these bad things going on in my life. What is my biggest problem right now?

And you got to say, okay, I got to start with solving that problem. And you got to start to going back to the, I think it was the initial thing that we talked about, take action. You got to take action and move forward. And if you don't, the downward spiral doesn't end. And if you allow it to continue to go down, that's where it's going to end up. And so you just have to, what are my options? Abandon the whole thing? Like, no, that's not the option.

That is not the option. What can I make better right now and start to reassemble things and putting them back together. Small steps. I remember, uh, advice to a friend that was going through a period of low mood and was feeling bad about not being able to get out of bed and wasn't able to show up and all of this stuff. I was like, dude, you need to literally see every single micro step. Like you're in bed, you have gone to the bathroom a couple of times, you haven't seen sunlight in a few days. You've been ordering Uber Eats to the door and like, you know, sort of looking at the

floor as the the delivery guy rides. Like you need to think about getting out of bed in the most rudimentary steps possible. So what's the first thing you need to do? You need to pull the covers off you. It's like, that is a step. Okay, hey, like, I mean, that's, you know, that's better than it was before. One foot out of the bed, two foot out of the bed,

stand up, get a glass of water, put your shoe, you know, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, slow, slow, slow. You know, there's something too. So people ask me about Jjitsu and, and they, they don't like to fight. They don't like the idea of it. They don't like the physical, uh, close contact, whatever the case may be. Like, and they'll say, I don't like it. How long, you know, how long do I have to do it for?

And one of the things that I say is you have to do jujitsu until you submit someone while you're training with them. And the reason I say that is because if you can train long enough that you submit someone, all of a sudden you go, Oh, wow. I made progress. Yes. I see the, I see the reward. And so with, yeah, do those little things, but do those little things until at the

end of the day, you go, that was a pretty good day. Like don't, cause if you just get up and okay, well, I got out of bed and Chris said, get out of the bed, but I still freaking don't like, yeah, I still feel like crap, right? Okay. Well, get out and do a little bit more and do a little bit more and do a little bit more and do a little bit more. And you can stop when you get to the end of the day and you go, okay, you know what?

Today was a pretty freaking cool day. And I feel good. Then if you want to go back to living in the hole and ordering Uber eats, go ahead. back to living in the hole and ordering uber eats. Go ahead. But at least give me, at least give me the effort to ha to make yourself have a good day. You know, the, uh, idea around you do BJJ until you're able to submit someone that shows that

you've been there for long enough to have made some progress friend made this point to me. It's such a fucking smart point that I've never thought of, despite the fact I've lifted weights for like 20 years. Going to the gym, but muscular training in the gym is one of the only pursuits in life where during the act of doing the thing, you see the future progress of where you will be if you keep doing the thing. So if I'm trying to learn Italian with you and we're on Duolingo or whatever

the fuck the app is. If I'm trying to learn Italian with you and we're on Duolingo or whatever the fuck the app is, at no point during the process of learning Italian, do I understand what it would be like in six months time to be proficient in Italian. But if you go to the gym and you get a pump, you go, Hey, if I keep doing this for six months, this is what I'll look like flat in a little while. And I think that that it's such an under spoken about, uh, dynamic of training. I really think that that is one of the biggest feedback loop mechanisms of why it happened.

I mean, I guess in BJJ, if you just learned, um, a particular movement and you've drilled it and drilled it and drilled it, and then you get into rolling and you're like, huh, I've still got it, but next week you're like, where the fuck does my arm? Like, I can't remember how they think. So maybe a tiny bit like that, but there's, I don't think there's anything else. You don't get a pump preview anywhere else on the planet, except for in the gym.

And I think that that's a underspoken about dynamic about why people love it. Yeah. That's that being said, you don't see much progress, you know, the next day, you know? Yeah. You get a pump and depending on your physical makeup, like if you're, if you're overweight, you don't see a pump, you know, the next day, you know, yeah, you get a pump and it's depending on your physical makeup. Like if you're, if you're overweight, you don't see a pump, you know, which

is a bummer and so if you're overweight, you're not going to get any gratification going to the gym external, you're not going to see anything. So you got to keep going. You got to keep going until you start making some progress, pull, you know, until you can do a pull up once you can finally do a pullup. Once you can finally do a pull-up, okay. I've heard once that there's, you can't be overweight and do a pull-up. Like it's not possible.

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to www.drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. That's www.drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. That's a really good point. Fuck, do you see Truett Haynes do the 10,001, 10,002 pull ups? Yeah. He's, I had Cam on the show last week and I'm just, I'm like completely blown away by what his kids have done. One of them's a ranger. Yeah.

Yeah. And, yeah. And Truett's Truett. Correct. Yeah. It's absurd, dude. I was, I found that really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and yeah. And true. It's true. It correct. Um, yeah, it's absurd, dude.

I was, I found that quite really interesting. Cam, it was, he sort of really beautifully opened up in a way that I haven't heard him do it before and he was like, I don't know how I feel about pushing my boys that hard. And when they were kids, you know, he's like, I regret in some ways doing the meat. He told me this story. Um, his son that's a Ranger, I think was maybe, uh, um, prison warden or something like that. And how do you know good, stable, steady job contributing law enforcement, eat stuff. And, uh, he came home and said to his dad, it was like, I'm going to apply to Ranger school. I'm going to become a Ranger. And he's like, well, what, you know, you've got, it's all well and good.

Cam telling his kids when they're kids, we don't settle for average. You're going to be an overachiever. You're going to work harder than everybody else. We're going to be elite. So on and so forth. But when you're faced with, you're going to maybe enter a kinetic future. Uh, the rubber really meets the road with your principles then, right? Because it's your flesh and blood that's on the line.

And he asked why and his son said his own words back to him and said, well, you know, we're Hanes, we don't settle for average. We don't, you know, agree with mediocrity. I'm going to be special. You're elite. And Cam had this sort of moment where he was like, fuck, like maybe I've pushed my kids too far. Maybe I've pushed my kids too far. Maybe I've pushed them so far that they didn't feel happy or

content with a normal, a good normal job. And what if my son goes off to war and gets fucking killed or injured over there? Because I've put them in this place. And it was a really interesting, I've been fascinated for a very long time at the price that you need to pay to be somebody that you admire, you know, to be somebody that is an

extreme performer, uh, that, that is, um, in a position that most people would find enviable. And this is another one of those things. You don't understand what it is that drives people to do the things that they do. Now, some people have a beautiful balance. You know, they, they do it from a place of self love and wanting to maximize their time on this planet and it's this, you know, wonderful, uh, upward trajectory toward a goal that they believe in.

But for a lot of people, it's running away from something that they fear insufficiency and need for validation, uh, uh, comfort control, um running away from something that they fear, insufficiency and need for validation, comfort control, recognition from the teachers that didn't believe in them, the bullies that got them in school, the parents that didn't give them enough attention, whatever it is. And I think it's just a really lovely redress for most people to think, okay, I think I want this

thing, and as we said at the very, very beginning, what's the price that I need to pay in order to be a really lovely redress for most people to think, okay, I think I want this thing. And as we said at the very, very beginning, what's the price that I need to pay in order to be able to get this thing? Do I want to pay that? Do I want to pay that price to be true at Haynes? What do I need to do? Why I need to have a childhood where I'm made to carry a rock up a fucking hill every night after school for like 10 years.

Do I want that? Like, do I want to be working so hard that my hands are three times as his hands are the size of your hands? Um, you know, that's where I need to be. Um, I just, it was, it was really, really interesting from camp, you know, somebody who is an extreme performer, somebody whose sons are also extreme performers to just look at, okay. It was really, really interesting reflection.

Yeah. What, what, one thing that's very interesting when you look at like a basic seal training, right? So basic seal training, it has something around an 80% attrition rate. And it is a, it is a tough course of training. And one, one thing that is just completely makes no sense whatsoever is in a seal class, you'll have a kid from, you know, Massachusetts, who's both parents went to Harvard. He went to Harvard and he, you know, spent his

summers on the Cape in their third home because the other one's in Vermont, the whole nine yards and he makes it through seal train. And then there'll be another kid from New York state who is also equivalently, you know, a Princeton kid and he played whatever sport at Princeton and he'll quit. So you have two silver spoon kids. One of them will make it. One will not go to the complete other end of the spectrum. And you have two silver spoon kids, one of them will make it, one will not. Go to the complete other end of the spectrum and you have some kid that was raised in the barrio in LA that grew up, you know, a gangbanger or at least gangbanger adjacent and he'll make it through training. And then another guy that's LA,

gang banger or gang banger adjacent, he'll quit. So it's really bizarre. And by the way, then there's the entire spectrum in between of what you just said. You know, oh, I'm gonna make it. My girlfriend that dumped me, she said I could never be a SEAL, cool. And he's gonna make it. Or my girlfriend who dumped me, she said I could never be a SEAL, cool. And he's gonna make it.

Or my girlfriend who dumped me, who said I'd never be a SEAL, she's right, I'm quitting. Like it makes no sense whatsoever. And so trying to figure out like who's gonna make it and who's not gonna make it is really, really difficult. That's why you need to test. That's why you can't just do the genetic thing before and be like, you know, what was that movie where they could predict whether people

were going to commit crimes or not? Yeah. I, I don't remember the name of the movie, but. What? Minority report. Thank you. Um, uh, you know, minority report for the seals. We don't even need the test.

It's like, we know that you're going to pass. We know that you're going to fail, but you don't know that and the entire reason for the test is to see what happens when it all comes crashing down. Yep. On that point, you know, you spoke about the person that's everything is going well for them. We've also talked about the infinite

regress of good dominoes. After a while, I think a lot of people that have consistent success for a long period of time, reach a little bit of escape velocity and sort of floating out here. Maybe my life is very different to the one that I was used to before. How, especially given that, you know, big trajectory for yourself as well. How have you learned to keep your foot on the gas when things are going well, not when things are going badly?

I think it's just exploring new arenas. So, you know, you're doing some stuff and there's something that looks like it might be interesting to me and I'll go try that thing out and don't always win, but I'll give it a crack and see what happens. And I'm not, you know, I'm very, I'm very much an iterative decision maker, meaning I make very small decisions at a time. I don't go all in on some chance. You know, I'm a little bit more methodical

than that. And so, yeah, I see something that seems like it's a good opportunity or something that I'm interested in. I'll go give it a crack and if it works, then cool, I'll do more of it. And if it doesn't work, then well, maybe I'll back off. Right.

So by not making huge commitments, at least upfront, it allows you to experiment with ideas that play around with different things. Yep. It's just essentially it's maneuver warfare, which is you look at the enemy situation and you probe for areas of weakness. And once you find an area of weakness, you put more resources behind that area and assaulting that area. And if you continue to get good results, you put more resources and you continue to do well. And, and if you hit a, uh,

a wall and it's interesting that the terms that they use is surfaces and gaps. So like surfaces, I hit it's like defenses. So if I hit no penetration, no penetration, if I hit a gap, I'm going to exploit more. And that's pretty much what I'm doing and what I've been doing for a long time. Okay. So exploring first and then exploiting after and exploring first and then exploiting after. Yeah.

I mean, certainly one of the lessons from today so far is this. I'm, I'm not going to set the bar so unreasonably high that it's intimidating, that it means that it's hard to make the first move, that it's chaotic, that it's an irreversible door, you know, that I go through it and I'm like, well, if I've put all of my money into this business, there is no more money to put into any other business. It's the equivalent of that, but for confidence, for momentum, for continuing going with good and bad momentum. So that's a, yeah, I think the small decisions is, um, like a lovely

little framework on that. One of the other common areas, I think that people are struggling with young men, very directionless at the moment. What's your advice? You speak to a lot of young men, train a lot of young men, very directionless at the moment. What's your advice? You speak to a lot of young men, train a lot of young men. What's your advice to young men that are struggling with direction in life? It's interesting because when I hear this, I'm, I'm always a little bit puzzled about who these young men are that are directionless Cause I work with a lot of different companies.

I have a leadership consulting company. I work with all different kinds of companies and you know, whether it's construction companies, energy companies, software companies, finance companies. Like they're a bunch of young men out there and they are getting after it. Whether they're linemen, whether they're on oil rigs, whether they're software developers, like there's all kinds of people that are out there crushing. And so when I hear about people that, what'd you say,

are lost or? Directionless. Directionless? Yeah. I mean, what do you want to do with your life? Okay. I guess that's my question. What do you want to do with your life? I guess that's my question.

What do you want to do with your life? Because you got one life. It's, it's going by quickly. And this is something that years ago, I've, I spent a good chunk of my, I guess it was my thirties training MMA fighters. And, you know, we had a jujitsu gym, we had an MMA gym. MMA fighters and you know, we had a jujitsu gym, we had an MMA gym. And so in the beginning, when a dude, when a potential fighter would come in and they'd be 22 years old and I'd say, Hey, how old are you?

And they'd say, I'm 22. And they say, you know, I want to fight. I want to, there's a fight card coming up. I want to be on it. And I was like, I'd tell them, listen, you've got plenty of time, like get better, train up your skills. And I said that for probably three or four years. And then after three or four years, when guys would come in, I would start telling them the opposite, which is you need to get on it.

You need to be in here every day. The deer, you're almost out of time. You're 22. You're late. Because I realized I saw a lot of people that didn't have any sense of urgency in their life, and when you don't have a sense of urgency, things aren't gonna happen.

You need to make things happen, as we already discussed. They're not just gonna happen for you. You're not going to become a good fighter unless you make it happen. And you're not gonna do anything in life unless you make it happen. So if you not going to do anything in life, unless you make it happen. So if you feel like right now you're looking around with, and you're lost or directionless, I would take about 15 minutes and figure out what the hell you want to do with your life.

And I would start getting after it. So that's, that's my advice. Take 15 minutes and figure out something that you're into and go crush that thing and, and, and make it happen. Yeah. I mean, it's a better or worse life is really short and it's this ridiculous irony that you only see in retrospect how short it is, right? It doesn't feel short at the time, but I bet when you get to your eighties

and you look back, you think, holy fuck, that went by in no time at all. Yeah. I had that conversation with my, with my mom a couple of years ago and, you know, she said, you know, I was like, oh, how's it going talking on the phone? And she said, Oh, it's been a pretty rough couple of months because this person died, this person died, this person died, this person died. And you know, you know, she's almost 80 or something like that.

And so people die. And I kind of, I said to her, you know, mom, all those people that you're talking about that are 80, 85, 87 years old, like they've had a full run at it. I'm like, I buried my friends that are 27 years old, 30 years old, 31 years old. Like that's horrible. And so people that got this full run, man, be thankful that they got that full run. And right now, if you're a dude and you're 22 years old and you feel like you're directionless,

get your shit together, man, and, and go start making things happen. Yeah. That sense of urgency is such an interesting one. You know, we, we are prepared, prepared to sort of waste years trying to work out what would take us days to do. You know, we, we are prepared, prepared to sort of waste years trying to work out what would take us days to do. It's, it is, I understand why some people have degrees of regret around that because they think, fuck, like I don't know where that time went.

I wish I'd known this thing sooner. But again, if action's the antidote to anxiety, the only way that you can work out what it is that you need to do is by hurrying up and doing it. And again, if the fear of failure, the fear of the unknown is worse than the actual thing, you know, it all ties together, I think, everything that we've spoken about.

And by the way, Phil, like, yeah, you're gonna blow some stuff, you're gonna make some bad decisions, you're gonna screw some things up. Yeah, that's kind of cool. Like that does, those make for good stories, man. Go, go get them, go make them happen. Don't sit around being afraid that you might screw something up. You're going to screw something up.

That's guaranteed. Go do it. Get a good story out of it. And also prove to yourself that you're not made of glass. This was the first thing that I learned in striking. story out of it. And also prove to yourself that you're not made of glass. This was the first thing that I learned in striking. I'm sure that you at some point when you'd first started learned as well, which is the, probably as a newcomer to any striking sport, the most important

day that you have is the day when you stop doing that. And when a fist comes towards your face, because you realize, oh, actually, if this happens, it's okay. And it's that, uh, symbolically for your life, right? If I get punched on the nose, my life continues and my nose is still that. Yeah. Go get yourself punched in the face a few times. It's going to be good for you.

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So you can go to the link in the description below or head to function health.com slash modern wisdom. That's function health.com slash modern wisdom. I've heard you say as well, comfort is a slow death. How do you balance the need for rest and recovery, uh, without letting comfort weaken you in that way. Yeah. Again, this is a good lesson I took away from training MMA fighters,

which is you're in a fight camp. You're in a fight camp for 10 weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks, varies depending on when the call comes, whatever, but you get a guy, okay. And Chris, you're my fighter and Chris, you know, we start your camp and you don't come into camp a slouch, right? You're in decent shape, but now we step it up. And now, cause now it's really about your skills should be in the bank. We're going to hone some of the skills.

We're going to make them a little bit, uh, focused for this particular opponent. But now we're just really getting you in good condition to fight. So we got 10 weeks where we start, you know, we're doing two days. We're sparring, we're doing conditioning workouts. And, you know, you've got your three training partners that you're sparring with, sometimes you're grappling, sometimes you're punching, sometimes you're doing a combo, we used to call it shoot boxing or box wrestling. Like you're going to do the whole thing.

And four weeks into it, five weeks into it, you come into, you know, you come into the gym and I'm watching you and the grappling guy that you normally tear up, he gets the best of you. And then we time you on the sprints and you lose to your sprint time by eight seconds. And I look at you and I go, hey man, tomorrow, day off, go eat steaks.

And I might even say take two days off, depending on how rough you look. So it's very obvious. It's so obvious when someone is over-training, anyone can see it. You don't have to be a genius. And so it's the same thing with like life. If you start going backwards in life,

you're probably trying to take on too much stuff and you could use a breather. So take a breather. Interesting that our ability to objectively look at the performance of somebody else compared with our ability to objectively look at our own performance. And also, you know, the, do I know if I'm selling myself short and if this is a moment where I need to push through versus I've gone too hard and it's actually time for me to rest and recover. I think this internal, the balance between having an internal, uh,

Jocko and an internal tyrant, um, I think is, is a delicate one. And it's one where you go, fuck, like, is this, how, how close to the red line am I here? Do I deserve the time off or do I not? I think is, is a delicate one. And it's one where you go, fuck, like, is this, how, how close to the red line? Am I here? Do I deserve the time off or do I not? That's another one of my rules is, uh, Oh, you need it today off today. You can't take a day. You can take it tomorrow.

So if you wake up tomorrow today and you're like, Oh, I feel like crap today. Cool. Feel like crap today. Go do what you're supposed to do. If you wake up the next day and you go, yeah, I'm really, I'm, I'm hurting. Cool. Take that day off. Because you can get through today, even if you need a day off,

but if you really truly need a day off and you plan and you take it tomorrow, I'm okay with it. That's a sick idea. James Clear, this is the best idea around habits, which is basically the inverse of what you're talking about. He says, never miss two days in a row. That one missed day is a mistake. Two missed days is the start of a new habit.

Mm. And, uh, it's just, it is one of the best ways, even with, you know, it just stops anything spiraling. All that we've talked about this compounding down compounding, it stops that from happening. Uh. Yeah. Two days off, not allowed.

It stops that from happening. Uh, yeah. Two days off, not allowed. I think trying to just be a little bit more objective with that. You're able to see the numbers of your guys, the sprint numbers. They're not that you ever do a way. Do you ever, did you ever have to do a, like a hard weight cut for anything or did you always fight it? Super no, I, I, I would like my actual competition days in jujitsu, there was the open class.

And then there was like the heavyweight and it was like two 12 to 13 was the weight. And so I would have to cut like maybe eight pounds, 10 pounds to get down to two 13. But I was never a guy that was cutting, you know, 25 pounds. Now I had to do that with my kids, because my kids all wrestle, and I've done it with a million different fighters as well. So, yeah, I've been through a lot of weight cuts. Just not heavy ones.

Yeah, the most I've ever cut was probably like 12, 10 pounds. Right. Yeah, I, uh... Every single time that there's a UFC card on and some of the fighters have got a big YouTube presence, invariably the most played videos of watching them go through the weight cut. Like people just like watching suffering. Yeah.

Right. And, um, yeah, I, I don't know what it is. That's so compelling about that. It's the same re if you watched the tour de France, unchanged documentary on Netflix, bro, I'll check it out. It is so fucking good. So it's like drive to survive the Formula One thing, but it's about the tour. And the beautiful thing about that is it's protracted suffering, right? It's protracted, uh, storyline and narrative and the stage, I don't know,

25 stages or something like that, the tour de France, tons of them. Some of them are speed stages. Some of them are Hills. Some of them are, you know, and you get to see the ups and downs. There's this sort of permanent risk of injury. There's the permanent risk of crashes. There's always some catastrophes, especially that start at the very, very beginning. And you get to see, it's not like in power.

This is why there'll never be an amazing powerlifting documentary because the sport is done in three seconds. It's like you went down and you went up and you went down an amazing powerlifting documentary because the sport is done in three seconds. It's like you went down, you came back up, do you, well done. Oh, you didn't. Right. And either way it's over. We like seeing the same as the weight cut.

You know, you're going to check in one hour and you're going to check in two hours and you're going to check in three hours and get back in the sauna, get back on the bike, get back in the bath, but the towels back on you, wrap the fucking thing around your head here, have some ice, spit it back out into the, you know, all the way along. And we love to see that narrative as it goes. I wonder what would happen. I mean, they do those BJJ matches that are no time limit. Right.

And some of those go for three, four hours, which to me is awesome. It is. of those go for three, four hours. Which to me is awesome. It is. It's like that's the ultra endurance race. It's also the, that's kind of, there is no excuses, right? There's no, it's just you and another person. There's no time limit. And I think those are very good way to do it. Yeah.

Interesting stat that I found out the U S army's recruitment numbers just hit the highest levels in 15 years. What do you think's driving that? I think probably the new administration coming in. So I think you've got a administration and, and you know, the, that is very pro-American and patriotic. And I think that that's definitely helping those numbers. What do you make of Pete Hegseth and everything that's going on there?

I think Pete is, I think people are, I think establishment people inside that, inside that world are scared because he is a change agent and I think he's bringing change and I think he's aggressively bringing change, which, hey, when you aggressively do things, sometimes some things are going to get like, there's going to be some collateral damage and that's one of those things that I think he has decided is worth it. And so I think he's making aggressive change and I think some people don't like it and that's the way it is. Yeah.

There's some report thing that I saw the 120 high ranking roles. Oh yeah. I think he got rid of a bunch of flag officers, admirals and generals. Yeah. Nine, four star general positions and 81, two and three star roles. Check. That sounds like a lot.

Do you know, I mean, I don't know if they have this information readily available, but I remember when, uh, in World War II, in World War II, I think we had less generals and admirals than we have right now. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So that's ridiculous. Yeah. And you've got this increasingly top heavy. Yes. And, and, and it's every, everyone, you know, the military is an org, is a human organization. And so when you have the ability, when people's human nature takes over, and I wanna build my organization to be a little bit bigger than someone else's organization

because it's gonna benefit us and it's gonna make me better and it's gonna make our chain of command higher than people do that. And they've been doing it for a long time. Yeah, it says the goal of reducing salary expenses by streamlining upper ranks, reallocating leadership responsibilities to lower ranking officers. Army is expected to absorb a significant share of the reductions while the Marine

Corps and Space Force will see minimal impact due to their already lean leadership structures. Yeah, the Marine Corps stays lean. I'm not, I don't know too much about Space Force. The Army and the Navy probably have excessive, you know, jet flag and general officers. And again, he's right. You shouldn't have, you should have junior people

in charge of things that are commensurate to their level of responsibility. It doesn't take an Admiral or a general to do certain jobs that, you know, a Lieutenant Colonel or a, or a major, if you look at what the majors did in World War II, it's like insane compared to what, uh, what level is a major at an oh four. Right. So that's like the first field grade officer in the army or the Marine Corps in the Navy would be called a Lieutenant Commander.

That's what I was. I was a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy. But if you look at what those guys did in the Navy would be called a Lieutenant Commander. That's what I was. I was a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy. But if you look at what those guys did in World War II, it's like insane. And we, you know, we, we just, I think it's a good job getting back to that. I think it's awesome. Bring things closer back down toward the

battlefield as well, presumably. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder, I wonder how much of it is just this difficulty, this inevitable bloat that comes along with any organization that's been around for ages. Yeah, 100%. What are you gonna do, like fire this person?

Oh, there's no role for us to elevate you into? You remember when Elon Musk took over Twitter? Everyone remembers, and he fired, what did he fire? Two thirds, three quarters of the force? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was like three quarters of the people. Him and 10 Asian guys running the entire company. And people freaked out, like, oh, it's never going to survive.

I mean, obviously it survived and it, in many aspects got better, but you're right. When Jack Dorsey started Twitter, there was probably three employees, right? And then over time it grew and he hired engineers, I'm sure in the beginning and software engineers and programmers. And eventually, eventually, he hired someone that was in charge of something that didn't really matter. And then that person hired a team, and then that person hired five more people.

And so, yes, it's bureaucratic bloat that happens. And has it happened in the Department of Defense? Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, Pete Hegseth comes in and says, yeah, yeah, we're not doing it anymore. Which is very contrary to what a normal bureaucrat would do. Because a normal bureaucrat would say,

oh, you're putting me in charge of something? Cool, I'm going to make that something as big as I possibly can and bring as much money as I can. He invited Doge to come in there and have a look, tell me where we can save money. And if you don't think there's money that can be saved in the department of defense, you're crazy. Like, of course there is.

How many billions of dollars are unaccounted for every single year, it's insane. Totally insane, it's totally insane. So I think seeing that attitude, and I think is what's helping the recruiting a lot. The funny thing about the Elon pivot that maybe even relates to this and to the level of recruitment as well. I remember Elon put some job listing out saying,

um, if you want to work harder than you ever have at anything, the most difficult problems, 18 hour days, et cetera, et cetera, uh, apply here, twitter.com slash jobs or whatever. And the responses were this is, uh, in difficult problems, 18 hour days, et cetera, et cetera, apply here, twitter.com slash jobs or whatever. And the responses were this is a industrial revolution era style, tyranny, there is no respect for workers and all the rest of this stuff. And I was like, Hey, look, I, not everybody is built to do that.

And if you're not built to do that, then I imagine that this looks like a threat to you. But you don't understand what it's like to be in the top 0.1% of coders on the planet to whom, if you were to say you're not allowed to do this, you would be robbing them of a source of real wellbeing and pleasure. There are people who live to do that. They want to sleep under their desk. They want to be able to work on the hardest problems that he's so on and so forth.

And you get to attract that kind of talent, but you never get to attract that kind of talent who are the most efficient, who are going to come up with the best kind of ideas for as long as there's all of this fucking bloat and bureaucratic red tape and bullshit. Yeah. Yeah.

And the fact that you're thinking, okay, Twitter, maybe it's important, maybe it's not. I think we can all agree that fucking national defense is pretty important, right? So if there is a place where you should not be allowing bureaucratic fuckery and bloat and unnecessary roles to be in there, it's probably in the Department of Defense. Yeah. And like I said, there's gonna be some collateral damage and people will freak out about the collateral damage. But when something happens and you,

oh yeah, we got rid of this program and it turns out that program was actually something that looks like we should keep. Okay, cool, we'll bring it back. It's not that big of a deal. And it passed the test by the way, because everyone, ah, let's not get rid of that program. Okay, cool. You're right. Show me the numbers. ah, let's not get rid of that program. Okay, cool. Yep, you're right.

Show me the numbers. Yep, let's bring that program back in. So I think that it's something, you know, it's revolutionary what's happening in the government. And yeah, I think it's gonna go well. What do you think the future of warfare is going to look like? Someone who's spent a lot of time on the ground

in kinetic situations, but are we on the verge of some new revolution with how this sort of war is going to be fought? Uh, yeah, absolutely. And if you watch what's going on in Ukraine right now, it's new. It's a new form of warfare. And so, you know, the drones, have you heard about the drones over there? Have you heard about these drones that are powered by fiber optic cables? Or they're not powered, but that's how they're controlled, because the radio

signals can be disrupted. And so you have to have a direct line. And they're using fiber optic lines. So when the drone flies, it's dragging like a fiber optic cable behind it. But it's tiny. It's like the size of a, of a hair. Oh, and so there's on the battlefield, there's just all these spider webs everywhere. But this is just, things are going to advance. They're going to advance very rapidly and we'll see what happens.

You know, I've called it for a long time that we weren't going to need manned fighter, manned fighter aircraft anymore, but we're still making them. You know, I've called it for a long time that we weren't going to need manned fighter, manned fighter aircraft anymore, but we're still making them, but I mean, that, that just can't last that much longer. And then you go to ground warfare, like, okay, we're going to have some robots that are coming. And then you have drones on top of robots. I mean, drones are drones, our robots are, it's

weird that making something fly is so much easier than making a walker cron along the ground. So yeah, it's drones and they'll make drones that it's, it's going to be a new form of warfare. And so what we need to do is the most important thing is keep an open mind and not get the same thing I said about iterative decision making. Right. Like you can't go all in on some specific type of drone

right now because that drone is gonna be obsolete when they figure out a way to eliminate the fiber optic cables or whatever the case may be. And I would, you know, in the back of my mind, I always think that ultimately, like you are going to need a human with boots and a gun that's going to go and secure and hold a place, right? I still think you have to have that capability at some juncture when the

robots are done or when the, when they figure out the defense for the drones and the defense for the robots and they figure out an EMP that disrupts all the digital and all those things just flop over and die or whatever the case may be. So you've got to train that, uh, soldier to be able to be on the ground and go and make things happen. But as time goes on, I am definitely seeing less and less probability of that, something you still need to prepare for, but less and less probability, the robots are coming.

I wonder, you're apparently one of them, I wonder whether this next 10, 20 years or so is gonna be an exciting time to be behind the scenes in the military because we had, what, from, you could probably tell me better, but I would imagine something like from 1950 to 2000, maybe sort of mid 2000s, largely slowly iterative technology, similar kind of battle formations. You're making small adjustments here and there. Look at me mansplaining to you. And then 2020 to 2025,

a fucking whole world of change. And you think, huh, I know a lot of the previous plans are out of the window, which means that you need new tactics, you need new strategies, new approaches. And I wonder, I wonder who is the person that's in charge of coming up with those new tactics? Because yeah, I mean, experience like yours that understands what's going on, how applicable is

that now moving forward? Where are the principles that you can use? And where are the ones where you think, that's, we're in a different world now. Yeah. Well, as I look at it, you know, we're in a different world now? Yeah. Well, as I look at it, you know, again, the principles that I talk about and the principles that I teach, they're all still applicable. They're, they're a hundred percent applicable, but you're applying them

with the new technology, which is what always happens. Like you, the principles of warfare don't change just like human nature doesn't change, like it, it doesn't change. Like it doesn't change. Warfare is based on humans and humans apply human nature to everything that they're doing. So, but I think one of the most important things that we have to do is, like I said, keep an open mind because things are gonna change so rapidly.

And if you get caught in one idea of warfare, you're gonna miss the one that flanks you. Right, okay, you're gonna over commit the one that, that flanks you. Right. Okay. Cause you're going to overcommit. There's something that doesn't end up being. Yeah. Yeah, dude.

It is a, it's fucking why I had, um, Joe Lonsdale part of Anderil. Okay. I was also part of Palantir and, um, I had him on and he was talking about. These fucking bullets from space. It's like bullets that can be fired, these rods that can be fired from space now. And that, you know, like it's this weird blend between ground warfare and space warfare.

And it's, it's insane. So yeah, I, between the evolution that you've seen of these tanks are worth millions of dollars. These drones with a little coconut C4, yeah, are worth less than a grand. And there's particular weakness vector spots on the tank. So the drones find those, then the tanks patch that up. Then the drones get better. Then the tanks put nets on the front.

Then the drones have little blades that cut through them. You know, it's, uh, it's like watching the evolution of a predator and a prey, but happening month by month, you know, change in a change in a change in a change in a change. And if you think, you know, everything or anything, you've got the problem solved, you're going to get caught. So keep an open mind. Interesting.

You know, people always talk about this, how war drives forward innovation, because there's real mortal consequences. Like, I want to fly. That's nice. It's like, we need to protect the skies. That's slightly different. You know, if fucking the Wright brothers were around only a couple of years later when World War One had started, it's like, maybe they would have gotten a bit, I mean, they went pretty quick. Um, but yeah, I, and you're seeing now exactly why that's the case because people are coming up with all manner of garage solutions made with sellotape and cable ties to fix really, really, what was it that they were talking about?

Uh, a javelin is a million dollar, uh, missile meant to shoot down a $500 drone. That's it. It's not a good way to win wars. No, but these EMP things, uh, missile meant to shoot down a $500 drone. That's it. It's not a good way to win wars. No, but these EMP things, uh, the Joe was telling me about, I can't remember what it's like gadolinium or this special type of, um, um, element that's inside of this super high frequency capacitor that deploys a really targeted pulse and it can shoot these things. Like this is fucking insane.

Uh, so yeah, you know, it's not been that long since you were on the. And to your point, like I would, I will watch the world war two movie or a Vietnam movie. And I'm like, oh yeah, I see what's happening. You're like, I, I'd done something like that right there, you know? And, and now you go, well, I didn't have that happening. I didn't have a freaking drone flying over me, trying to drop a grenade on me. Or it's just, just the advances are so rapid. Yeah.

Or a guy I would imagine now that in some of the special forces, at some point in the not too distant future, there'll be a fucking head of robot operations or something, there'll be a guy who's got a fucking suit and a laptop and a drone and he can deploy all shit out of a Batman belt. And, and, and honestly, I mean, when I think about this, I always wished that instead of creating space force, they created a cyber force, like a

totally separate cyber warfare, because basically we're talking about the conflict of ideas, right? That's what's happening in war is essentially the physical manifestation of a conflict of ideas. And so what does that mean? That means information. And now we have your information versus my information. So what does that boil down to in this day and age?

It boils down to cyber warfare and information operations. You know, uh, how can I make the people on your team believe the ideas that I have instead of your ideas? That's media propaganda, cyber, internet, that's what it is. And so I wish that we would have started an arm of that instead of Space Force. And, but people get really scared because when I say, Hey, Chris, what I want to do is I want to develop a weapon system that changes the way you think or the way your people think, or the way the enemy think, that makes people

really nervous. You're more comfortable. most people are more comfortable if I want to make a weapon system that will, you know, massacre a bunch of you in a brutal way. Fire bullets from space, yeah. Yeah, I want to fire bullets from space that will take out whole neighborhoods or whatever. People are more comfortable with that than me saying,

I want to develop something that is going to change the way you think and change the ideas in your head. That, for some reason, makes people more scared, but in my opinion, that should be what the focus is rather than just upping the physical, mechanical massacre of each other. You're looking to get sort of further up the stack. Preemptive the whole thing.

Take Tulsi, tell her, I'm sure she can fucking find a few billion dollars. Tulsi's working on it. Yeah. No, no, no. Text Tulsi, tell her, I'm sure she can fucking find a few billion dollars. Tulsi's working on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, but no, you, CyberForce is, I mean, I have to assume that this has contributed to through, uh, uh, every different agency at the moment has little wings that are onto this, but you're right that it is a war of ideas that starts a war of bullets. And if you can try and cut off at the knees, and this is a point to do with. Cut off at the knees. When you think about, are there aliens in space?

One of two answers. One is no, there aren't. And the other is yes, there are. So either we're completely alone or there's others out there. Both answers are equally terrifying. One is no, there aren't. And the other is, yes, there are. So either we're completely alone or there's others out there. Both answers are equally terrifying. And I think when you look at some of the Western anti-Westernism, and I have to assume that we are able to create Eastern anti-Easternism and Russian anti-Russianism as well, there's one of two answers for that.

One is this is because of foreign actors that are encouraging us to think badly of ourselves and to fight among our own group. And the other is we're doing this to ourselves. And the same as the aliens thing, both answers are equally terrifying. Holy shit. We're either being puppeted or we're turning around and kicking the ball into our own goal over and over and over again. And, uh, something that is able to step, I mean, fuck me, was it Hitler had

Goebbels that was his, you know, this is not new, but the is able to step. I mean, fuck me. Was it Hitler had gobbles? That was his, you know, this is not new, but the technology is. Yeah. That's, you know, what, what success would Hitler have had if he wasn't, if he didn't have gobbles, if he wasn't so good with propaganda, if he wasn't so good with media, if he didn't have control over all that, well, he wouldn't have had near the success that he had. So I would recommend we, and again, that sounds terrible, right?

Well, Hitler did it, it works. Right? Yeah. It's like, well, that type of warfare is how he had a massive amount of success. It was psychological warfare that he's using inside of his own country to convince people to think a certain way. Hearts and minds. How long is it? people to think a certain way hearts and minds How long is it this cliche of winning hearts and minds?

It's not just hearts and minds of your own people, but it's you know, decreasing the hearts and minds of the enemy Oh, maybe should we be doing this? Is this actually what we should I mean? You know, it's a really really good point to bring up because the two main conflicts that we've got going on at the moment Ukraine and the Middle East Ukraine and the Middle East, nobody can agree on what's happening. Nobody can agree on why it's happened. This great idea, it's called knowingness. So a lot of the time issues of belief and dogmatism in the modern world are laid at the feet of misinformation.

So poor information is the reason for this being there. So what, if only, if the problem is misinformation, the solution is better information, right? If you understand something that isn't correct, we just need to give you something that corrects that misbelief and away we go. But knowingness, which is believing that you have an answer to the question before the question has been asked, it's like an anti-intellectual curiosity. It sort of insulates you from updating your knowledge of the It's believing that you have an answer to the question before the question has been asked. It's like an anti-intellectual curiosity.

It sort of insulates you from updating your beliefs. So way bigger problem than misinformation, because if it's misinformation, you can fix it with new, better information. But if it's knowingness, you're completely, you're completely averse. You know, there's no penetration.

There's no way that I can get through to you. completely a verse, you know, there's no penetration. There's no way that I can get through to you. And this is the, I think the, the odd realization when people are so fucking ardent, we know that the fact is settled around this, that we know the fact is settled around the middle East. And this is what happened. And we know the fact is settled around the Ukraine. It's like, Hey dude, you're saying that you know, the fact is settled.

No one can agree on the facts. How the fuck can the facts be set? You think that your fact is settled. Somebody else has a different set. I mean, even people talk about like, what do we mean by facts? We're in like a post truth era. It's insane. It's insane.

It is. And it doesn't surprise me. Maybe even that, I don't know what to believe. Maybe apathy, confusion, nihilism, uncertainty. Maybe that's the outcome. Maybe the outcome isn't even to give you some sort of narrative that you're supposed to believe. Maybe the outcome that you're trying to get to is,

I don't know any narrative to believe. And that makes you more malleable and more manipulative down the line. Yeah, well, I think in this case, case is just trying to have an open mind about what you see happening and not, not completely buying into any narrative and just kind of seeing what's happening and understanding that that's the way things are going to go. Like we're going to have people killing each other. This is the unfortunate, horrible aspect of mankind is that we have wars and we

kill each other and we we've been doing it the whole time. So that's a beautiful, horrible thing. When the, yeah, horrible thing. When the, yeah, it is. But when, when the, uh, collateral damages broadcasts to the world, you know, I get, even Vietnam, we would have got, uh, a McNamara, the McNamara fallacy, the entire point, the problem with that was looking at the wrong numbers, but people were seeing the numbers, right? Now you're seeing every civilian casualty, every building that was hit accidentally or on purpose or is, you know, a tactic and, oh, they didn't

send the message that said that you need to leave 10 minutes before, or they used a particular size of armament that wasn't permitted for this area, you get into this tied up in red tape and legalese about what the specific, and it's just, you're drowning in information and you're seeing, I guess, for the first time ever, you're seeing collateral damage, which I have to assume is a byproduct of every kinetic conflict in human history.

Yeah. You're seeing that. The big, I mean, all kinds of mistakes to talk about in Vietnam, but one of the things was the battle of the Ai Drang Valley, um, which was like the first major like, like engagement 1965, U S military against the, the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese.

And when we got done with that battle, we had killed like a thousand of them and they had killed a hundred of us. And what McNamara and his, what was their crew called? Anyways, the nerds, they had some name for them. Anyways, what those guys calculated was, okay, see, we can kill a thousand them, they only killed a hundred of us so we can beat them.

And what they didn't realize is that you kill one American and we are devastated. And the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese and the communist were like, Oh, you killed a hundred of ours. Cool. We have a hundred more. And so we were, we had different, a different datum to start with. We had a different premise of what we were willing to sacrifice. And so this is what we're seeing around the world is like, what is, what are these various sides willing to sacrifice for their cause. And we in America look at it and we have a totally different perception of what it is on any sides. We have a hard time comprehending other people's conflicts.

And we've gone into, you know, we go into countries, Oh, of course, everyone's going to want this. Everyone's going to want this outcome. We don't understand their perspective. And so we don't understand what outcome they actually want. And when you go in and try and impose your outcome on people, they don't like it. That doesn't work with your kids. It doesn't work with your employees and it doesn't work when you

try and do it to hold nations. So you have to consider that as you make moves. You know, he should have on the show, a guy called John Lyle. So he wrote a book called the dirty tricks department. It was a book about the founding of the OSS and the insane tactics that they used in world war two to try and stop world war two. So one of my favorites was they found the gardener who grew the

vegetables that were eaten by Hitler at the eagle's nest. And there was a psychological profile done of Hitler saying that he had a fragile hold on his masculinity. So they tried to get this gardener to inject the vegetables with female sex hormones so that they Hitler's mustache would fall off and his voice would go soprano and he would lose his mind and then they would win the war. So that was one of them. Um, I didn't realize that, uh, I think it's foxes in Japan are a symbol of foreboding, so they wanted to create glow in the dark foxes and put them onto the shores of Japan

so that they would demoralize the Japanese, but they couldn't get a hold of the foxes. So they like use raccoons instead. They're like, okay, we're going to get these raccoons and we're going to paint them with luminous paint like foxes. But then they put them in the sea and all the paint washed off. So then they got a PA system and a huge fox head on the side of a ship and they were broadcasting. So it's just so good, but he's got another one coming out, which is the OSS came into the CIA and then I think this one is the transitions through that. So interesting. But when you think about all of the different strategies

psychologically that have been tried to be, okay, we're going to try and interject here. We're going to try and interject. And I certainly prefer, prefer those over, I prefer painted raccoons over bombs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they might be the same. Jocko did.

You're awesome, man. I appreciate the heck out of you. Good to see you. Thank you for coming in. Thank you. What have you got coming up next? What can people expect? You've got Chris Pratt doing, starring as the dramatized version of one of your books.

Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. Is that a filmed finish? So I filmed. Yep. So we already filmed it. Um, we filmed it in August, September, October. We filmed it up actually around here in LA and, uh, Pomona area. And yeah, we, we filmed it, um, where it's in the editing process now.

It's and it's, you know, so I've seen like the, it's gonna be awesome. It's gonna, it's gonna help a lot of kids. Andy Seale, dad, executive producer, Hollywood. The triple threat. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, dude, I can't wait to see that. It's awesome. Chris is great.

And I appreciate the fuck out of you for coming in. So thank you. Thanks brother. Good seeing you, man. I get asked all the time for book suggestions. People want to get into reading fiction or nonfiction or real life stories. And that's why I made a list of 100 of the most interesting and impactful books that I've ever read. These are the most life-changing reads that I've ever found. And there's descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them.

And it's completely free. And you can get it right now by going to chriswillx.com slash books. That's chriswillx.com slash books.