The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Special Forces Commander's Weird Trick For Overcoming Anxiety, "This Is The Reason People Quit", "Imposter Syndrome Is A Good Thing!"

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Learn how to attack life with the same intensity as a member of the world’s most elite fighting force Jocko Willink is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL officer and New York Times bestselling author, he is also the host of the Jocko Podcast, and co-founder of the leadership training organisation, Echelon Front. In this conversation Jocko and Steven discuss topics such as, why excuses are pointless, the core component that every Navy SEAL has, how to overcome hesitation and take action, and why you should ‘embrace the suck’. You can listen to the ‘Jocko Podcast’ and purchase Jocko’s products here: https://bit.ly/3Uk75hj Follow Jocko: Twitter - https://bit.ly/3UmcjJx Instagram - https://bit.ly/3w2zZsQ YouTube - https://bit.ly/4cY32i1 Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/3kxINCANKsb My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Sponsors: Whoop: https://join.whoop.com/en-uk/CEO

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly, to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened SEALs. Discipline. Drive. How to make decisions under pressure. Leadership, strategy, and tactics that you can apply to business and you can apply to your life as well. So, let's go. Jocko Willink is a former Navy SEALs officer. Who uses his decades of military training to help people become masters of discipline and master their lives. Your excuses will destroy you. Your default mode should be to take ownership because if these problems are because of me,

then I'm capable of fixing these problems. So what's step one? First of all, small steps can be painful. Even something as simple as going to the gym. If you're completely out of shape, sometimes that can be enough to make you say, I'm not doing it anymore. You need to envision a path of where this can lead you to.

Number two, most human instinct is to hesitate. But you see that problem over there, you got to go solve that problem. It's not going to go away. So if you're in the woods and you don't know where to go, start walking. And worst case scenario, you figure out that you walked the wrong direction.

Okay, now you can go walk in the other direction. But standing there not doing anything is just waiting to starve to death. And the next challenge, detach from your emotions. Good leaders have control of our emotions. If I have to yell at you to get my point across, I've made like 47 other mistakes. My goal is I don't have to say a word, and you already know what to do.

Is there anything else that you'd add to that list? Absolutely. In fact, people don't really talk about this, and this could apply to just about anything. So, if you're the type of person that doesn't, you're gonna struggle. Jocko, was there a hardest day while you were in the Navy SEALs? Yeah.

That was the lowest point of my life. Congratulations, Dario Vecchio gang. We've made some progress. 63% of you that listen to this podcast regularly don't subscribe, which is down from 69%. Our goal is 50%. So if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you know, and the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you and enjoy this episode. Jocko, surprisingly, I couldn't find an awful lot in your childhood that would indicate to me how you became the man that you are today. And I say that because there's a bit of a stereotype that someone like you who becomes a Navy SEAL must have some kind of traumatic early

event that shaped them to become some ultra resilient human being. When you look back on your childhood, what are the sort of dominoes that fell in that early chapter of your life that made you the man you are today? I wish I could positively identify the thing, the moment. The closest I've come is that I, a little kid, I was a little kid. I wanted to be some kind of soldier. I wanted to be some kind of commando. And so I collected little soldiers, little plastic soldiers. And one of the, I had different military units, like historical military units from around the world. And one of the historical military units that I had was the British commandos.

And so I had these tiny figurines and they had machine guns and they had kayaks and they had little boats, little inflatable boats. And I thought to myself, that's what I wanna do. I wanna do that. I wish I could do that. And then when I was probably around 12 or 13, I realized you actually could do that. You could actually get the job of being a commando.

And then it was just a matter of figuring out which one of the American branches had the closest thing to what I thought was a British commando. And the closest thing that I found was being a British commando. And the closest thing that I found was being in the Navy and being in the SEAL teams. And at 19 years old, you applied to be a Navy SEAL. Okay, so I have to ask a very dumb question here, which is what is a Navy SEAL? So there's special operations, which I guess, you know, from England, this is the SAS and the SBS. So those are the two sort of units that we get compared to the most. And so a Navy SEAL is a part of the Navy, but you're the special operations component of the Navy. And the term SEAL is actually an acronym,

which stands for Sea, Air, and Land. Because even though we're in the Navy, we are trained to operate in the sea, in the air. So in the sea, meaning we dive. In the air, meaning we parachute and rappel. And then on the land, meaning we conduct land warfare operations. And you take all those things, combine them together,

and that's what our job consists of. I was under the assumption that to become a Navy SEAL or to be in the SAS, you had to have 10, 20 years of military service. You had to have like an established military service, and then you get some like pop-up on your computer and it says, like, come to this building over here. And so to hear that you applied at 19 years old, I was like, oh, I didn't know teenagers could apply. Yeah, no, I was 18 years old when I joined the Navy and I joined on a contract that got me sent to SEAL training and it took a year to get through. So I was 19 when I finished that up.

But there's always debates about, well, don't you want someone that's more experienced? And I actually loved the fact that I was basically raised in the SEAL teams. It was just awesome. It was an awesome way to grow up. It was an awesome way to spend those years of your life learning the trade that you wanted to learn. And so I thought it was awesome. And I think it worked out pretty well. There is a, usually the percentage of people that make it through SEAL training is about 20%.

People that are under the age of 20, it goes down to about 5%. So, yeah, I was one of those small percentage of people that are very young but still make it through. And what is the characteristics that they're ultimately testing with the design of that training? What are they testing for? Will you keep going? In the face of? Whatever. Well, they call one of the weeks Hell Week, don't they?

So they try and simulate hell by the sounds of it. Yeah, they try and simulate hell. They actually were trying to simulate combat initially when they created that week. They wanted to take as much combat simulation from World War II at the time and put it into a very compressed schedule so they could create these frogmen to go overseas

and conduct operations because World War II was going on. And so they needed to compress the training cycle. So they compressed a bunch of that combat simulation into, it's about five and a half days, no sleep, lots of physical activity, lots of stress, lots of pain, and lots of people quit. How many people quit in that particular week? I would say most of the people that quit, probably 80% of the quitters quit in that week. It's been long discussed. I think there's a book called Grit where they discuss what it takes in terms of character traits to get through these kinds of endurance tasks. And people often think it's those that have the biggest muscles or that do the most, I don't know, cardiovascular exercise. But from what you've

observed, and this is maybe a broader point about adversity in life, is there any similarities in the people that are able to get themselves through adversity? There's some internal drive that you either have or you don't have. And if you have it, you won't quit. And if you don't have it, you're going to quit. And it breaks people. The other thing is you might be an exceptional swimmer and you might be exceptional upper body strength, but you're not that fast of a runner. They're going to find that out. Or you might be a fast runner, but a bad swimmer. They're going to find out what your weakness is. You might not like the cold. They're going to see it. You might not like the boat on your head. They're going to see it. They might see that you have a bad temper. They're going to find

that and they're going to pick at that thing to either make you come out the other side or make you quit. It's a pretty amazing thing. It's a pretty amazing thing. It's a pretty profound thing to look at from the outside and see it. Because when I was going through it, it was just sort of, I was young. I didn't care. I was going to do it. There was nothing that they were going to tell me that was going to make me quit. I never thought about quitting. If they told me to get back in the water again, let's go. They told me to put that log on my shoulder, let's go. Put the boat on my head, let's go. I didn't care.

Can you teach that? That let's go. We're going to jump back in the water, let's go. I think that's one of the few things that you learn in basic SEAL training is to shrug your shoulders and go forward. Like one of the things they do is they'll line you up on the ocean. And this is in California. And sometimes people think that California is nice, warm water, but it's not. It's 55 degrees. And I don't know what that translates to in centigrade, but it's cold. And one of the things

they do is they'll line you up and they say interlock arms and you get arm in arm with the guy next to you and they say forward march and you march in the water and they say take seats and you sit down and they leave you in there. And it's called surf torture and you just sit there and they'll, after a while, they'll pull you up out of the water, they'll line you up and the doctor will come down and see if anyone has hypothermia. And if no one has hypothermia or signs of hypothermia yet, get back in the water. And they just keep doing that. So yeah, what you learn to do is, okay, I'm going to go forward. I can't get out of this. I'm going to go forward.

I'm not going to quit. So I'm going to go forward, bring it on. And I think if there's anything that you learn, it's to keep pushing through things that suck. And I would love to say like, oh, keep pushing through adversity, but this isn't adversity. This is just things that suck. It's one level below adversity. Adversity is when you're having a challenge. This is just something that's going to suck and you're going to have to push through it. Because I'm asking myself if this is something I could teach, you know, or I could be taught. Because I look at someone like you, who's, you know, done all the things that you've done through your life.

And I go, did you have some kind of innate advantage? Or can we all become Jocko? If I had to guess, I would say no. I would say you can't teach it. I would say that you can grow it. If you've got the seed of some sort of fire, you could probably grow and you can get better at it. But same thing, you go back to like prison. If you ever met anyone that was a prisoner of war or people that went through like the baton death march, there's some people that had a will that they were not going to die. They did. I'm not going to die. I'm going to keep going. And, and the people that died, they, they did not have the will to live and think about how bad things have to be before you say, you know what, I'm just going to lay here and die. I'm going to keep going. And the people that died, they did not have the will to

live. And think about how bad things have to be before you say, you know what, I'm just going to lay here and die. And that can get to that point. I had a guy on my podcast that was, he was shot down in Vietnam and he was shot down in South Vietnam, captured. And so he had to do a seven-month trek through the jungle with his captors. And at one point, he's in a two-foot-tall bamboo cage in the jungle, and he's trying to fall asleep, but he can't sleep because the rats are gnawing at the wounds on his legs, and he's shackled. And he was with guys that did not have the intrinsic will to carry on. And if you didn't have that will to carry on, you die. You talked about the role that having a why plays.

And I was thinking about, you know, if I just lost my girlfriend or someone I'd gone through some severe rejection or someone in my life had died and my parting promise to them was I was going to do this. The role that having some kind of reason to carry on plays in how we handle adversity or things that suck. Have you seen any patterns in that? Is it important?

Because there's books behind me that literally say, start with your why and those kinds of things. Yeah. And, you know, that's a... Anything from, oh, my girlfriend dumped me and I'm going to prove her wrong to something that's much more significant, which is my girlfriend died and I told her I was going to do this and I'm going to do it for her. Both those things, depending on the human being, can be a strong enough why to get through.

And I have friends that were, I have one friend that was in Vietnam. He was in Vietnam. And when he showed up to SEAL training, he didn't know what it was. He thought he was volunteering to be like a diver, a diver that would do construction under boats. He thought that what it was. And so he showed up

and they're like, this is SEAL training. He's like, what's a SEAL? And they kind of explained it to him. And then he went and made it through. All that torture, all that mayhem. And why?

Because that was what they were telling him to do. And he was like, okay, that's what we're doing. Let's go. So again, I would love to be able to, you know, give you this profound anchor that people need to have. But it's like, oh, do you want to do this or not? Which is what I think a lot of it boils down to. Do you actually want to do this or not?

Do you actually want to do this or not? Do you actually want to do this or not? Because if you actually want to do it, what's going to stop you? Nothing. And if you don't really want to do it, what's going to stop you? Just about anything that comes up. Just about any obstacle that gets in your way becomes an excuse. It becomes a reason. It becomes a rationale for not proceeding down that path. And this is interesting too. When you talk to people that went to SEAL training that didn't make it, most of the time, it's some reason. There's a medical reason. There's a family problem. There's very few people that look at you and say, oh, I quit because it sucked. Which is what, by the way, which is what

happens to the vast majority of people. The vast majority of people that don't make it through SEAL training, and by this I mean 80, 90% of the people that don't make it through SEAL training, they didn't make it through because they quit. Then there's a small percentage that had a medical problem and then there's a small percentage

that got performance dropped, meaning they couldn't perform the runs, the swims, the technical aspects of the job, and they failed, and they get dropped. But the vast majority of people, they quit, but they don't usually say that. And even in their mind, they probably don't believe it. They probably believe, well, it was my leg, and once my leg was hurting, I knew I was going to have a hard time on the runs. I wasn't going to be able to make the runs. That's why I quit. But it wasn't really quitting. It was because of my leg.

So it's, like I said, it's a very strange and really kind of a mystical thing. Excuses. You're talking there about people making excuses. What have you come to learn about the nature of excuses? And if they are our friends, our enemies, if they're ever useful. Your excuses will destroy you and take everything that you ever wanted from you, if you let them. Doesn't sound like a friend. No, it's definitely not a friend. It's definitely not a friend. It can seem like a friend,

just like your friend that keeps feeding you drinks at the bar can seem like a friend. But are they really helping you in any way, shape or form? No, they're not. They're not. So when your excuses make you feel a little bit better about the fact that you didn't execute on what you needed to execute on, then they can make you feel better, but they're not helping you.

They're not helping you at all. Is that what you think when you think about extreme ownership, which is the title of this book here in front of me? Is our excuses the opposite? Excuses and blame, is that the opposite of extreme ownership? That is the opposite of extreme ownership.

Extreme ownership is this went wrong, this failed, didn't accomplish this, and it's not the fault of my boss, it's not the fault of my girlfriend, it's not the fault of my boss. It's not the fault of my girlfriend. It's not the fault of my parents. It's not the fault of the weather. It's my fault. And I'm going to take ownership of it and I'm going to fix it. That's what extreme ownership is. And this is a very difficult thing to do because it hurts. Because when you look around at your life and you look around at your job and your financial

situation and your relationship and your physical health, and when you look at all those things and all the problems that you may have with those things, and you say, the reason I have all those problems is because of me, that can hurt. That can sting. And a lot of times our ego rejects that and makes excuses and lies. And then we don't have to change anything. And then nothing changes.

If someone was on the extreme end of that disease of excuse and blame and all of those things, is there anything that you could do or you would advise them to do to kind of walk back from that, to get over the other side? Because I think we can all think of people in our lives and blame, and all of those things, is there anything that you could do, or you would advise them to do, to kind of walk back from that, to get over the other side? Because I think we can all think of people in our lives,

and maybe even ourselves at times, who have gotten into a chronic pattern of using excuses and blame as a form of self-defense, because we don't want to turn that mirror back at us and have to confront reality. I think sometimes, if I think about some of my closest friends, those that have the lowest self-esteem will use excuses and blame the most

because it's, you know, personal responsibility might not, in the short term at least, do anything for my already low self-esteem. So I'm going to blame the world as self-defense. What's step one to get out of that? Well, unfortunately, what happens a lot, and you may or may not have seen this,

but I would assume you've seen this at some point in your life. People, and this is a term, there's a term, it's rock bottom, right? This is a term that we hear for someone that's addicted, someone that's an alcoholic, someone that's physically let themselves go, someone that's put themselves into a situation with their finances or their work or whatever, where they reach rock bottom. And that rock bottom, what happens is you've, I believe what rock bottom is, is as you look around all the excuses that you've made,

they're not there anymore. And so now what rock bottom is, you realize that this problem, whether it's alcohol, whether it's your finances, the problem is you. And normally, or hopefully in the best case scenario, rock bottom is the beginning of the upward climb, the upward path. Sometimes rock bottom leads to disaster and complete abandonment of hope. But when the excuses all go away and people can actually confront the fact that this is all because of me, and this is, it hurts, but is also unbelievably empowering. Because if these problems are because of me, then I'm capable of fixing these problems. So even though extreme ownership hurts and is painful, it's also liberating because now you have control over your fate and over your destiny. And that is a glorious thing. Is that to you how you start to build

confidence? Confidence seems to be this really elusive thing. Confidence ultimately is a belief you have. And these beliefs are like instruction manuals for our life. You must have seen in all your years, some people really build their confidence. And I guess you've seen other people destroy their confidence. So what is the nature of how we build our own confidence? Yep. You're right. I have seen it and I've had to do it to people. I had to take people and build their confidence. And so how do you do that? If you're a young officer in the SEAL teams and you feel like maybe you kind of got here, you got lucky, you barely made it through training. And all of a sudden I'm saying, hey, you're in charge of this squad right here. And you don't

feel like you have the confidence to do it. And so it comes time to make a decision and you're sort of looking around and the guys are looking at you like, hey, you're going to make a call or what? And finally someone just steps on you and says, hey, I got it. Hey, everyone move over to this building. And now your confidence goes down even lower, which is the problem. So how am I going to build your confidence? Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you and I'll put you into a situation

that I know you can handle. I'm going to give you a task that I know you can do. Look, it's not going to be a total softball. It's not going to be a joke of a task, but let me give you something that I know you can handle, and I'm going to let you do that. And I might let you do that two, three, four, five times. I might say, hey, on this next operation, Steven, I want you to, you're going to hold the left flank with your squad. Everyone else is assaulting buildings. They're setting up external, you're just, hey, you just hold this. You just set your team up on this berm over here

and watch to the north. And look, this is a pretty easy job, all right? And so you go out there, you take your team, you get on the berm, you look to the north. You do a good job. Confidence goes up a little bit. Now, look, there was no pressure. You didn't have to make any decisions,

but you did what you were supposed to do. And I might have you do that two or three times. And then the next time I say, hey, you know what? Hey, good job out there. I'm going to build up your confidence a little bit. And then I'm going to say, hey, I need you to handle security to the north

and to the west. All right, so you're going to have two squads now. So I'm just going to give you small tasks that I know you can handle to build up your confidence. And over time, you will become more and more confident and you're going to hit some challenges and you'll overcome those challenges.

And if you do, great, your confidence, if you fail in a challenge, I might have to reset you a little bit. But this sounds like a big, long process, but it's actually usually not that long. It's actually people kind of nod their head. Oh, yeah, I can do this. Contrarily, sometimes I get a guy who's overconfident.

And I got Steven walking, you're like, you're doing right. I should be in charge. And what do I do with you? Because now you got an ego. You're not listening to people. Now I'm like, hey, Steven, since you're doing so awesome, why don't you run this whole assault team tonight? And you go, yeah, no problem. And then you get out there and you're not ready to lead a whole assault team. You're not ready for that chaos and that confusion and that mayhem. And so about

halfway through the assault, when you've completely lost control, I might walk in and say, hey, Steven, I'm sending chief down there to straighten you out. And you go, Roger, thank you. And you get humbled. So if someone's trying to build confidence from a work perspective, we do the same thing. Whether it's a business, a company,

give that person a task, a project that they can handle and help them build their confidence. Now, as far as you as an individual human being, it's a very similar process. Train, study, work, practice. Train, study, work, practice. Train, study, work, practice, and eventually you will increase your confidence. So in your book, you were talking about the fact that you didn't like speaking. You didn't like public speaking. So what did you do? Did you sign up to go talk in front of a thousand people tomorrow afternoon? No, you started small and you built a

little bit of confidence. And then you went a little bit bigger of an audience and the confidence grows a little bit more. A little bit bigger audience, confidence grows, and you get to a point where there's no audience that's going to stumble you in any way. So that's the same process. It's basically exposure therapy, right? It's basically exposure therapy where you expose yourself to a little bit. And this is, you know, you're talking about Jordan Peterson, exposure therapy. I give you a little bit.

I don't overwhelm you with it because if I overwhelm you with it, you're going to be scared of it. I mean, if you lack confidence and I put you in charge of something that you can't handle, your confidence is going to go back even further. So I need to give you enough exposure that you do well, increase your confidence, and you're going to do fine. Whenever we're swimming, I don't know, a couple of centimeters just outside of our depth in any regard, we have that thing that some people have dubbed imposter syndrome. The story we tell ourselves about this depth is that we're a fraud, we shouldn't be out this far, we're going to get found out. And that can sometimes, I think if

we tell ourselves that story about whatever depth we're swimming at, that lowers our performance. Sometimes it can make our confidence decrease. What is your take on this term imposter syndrome? Do you think it's a real thing? Yeah, I think it's a real thing and I don't think it's bad. I don't think it's bad because if, once again, if you're coming to work for me and you're like, I'm glad you hired me. I'm ready to take over this department. Look out. I'd be a little bit questioning the fact that you are so overconfident that you're going

to go in and do things that you might not really understand. Now, if you had a little imposter syndrome and you said, hey, Jocko, I really appreciate you hiring me. I haven't really done this type of work before. Can I ask you a couple of questions? I'd be thinking to myself, okay, he's humble. He's wanting to do a good job. He doesn't think he knows everything. I'd feel more comfortable with someone like that. So I don't think imposter syndrome is a bad thing. I think if you feel it, it's actually a good indication that you're humble and you have an open mind

and you're gonna listen to what people have to say. So that's number one. And number two, if you feel like you have imposter syndrome, if you're going to a meeting and you're gonna get assigned a project or you're gonna be discussing a project that you're really, wait, should I even be here?

Should I be put in charge of this project? What you do is you go into the meeting and you say, hey, everyone, I really appreciate everyone coming to the kickoff of this meeting. Hey, just so everyone knows, this is my first time running a project like this. I'm definitely gonna have some questions for some of you that done this before.

So if you see me going off track on something and you see a mistake that I'm making, please let me know because what I want is for the team to win. Okay, there it is, it's on the table. I don't know everything. I'm not that experienced in this particular thing, but I'm humble and willing to listen and I want the team to do well. No more imposter syndrome. Is that the same in the Navy SEALs? Because one would assume that you, as a leader, you've got to tell people what to do. That is wrong in the Navy SEALs, and that is not a good assumption.

In the SEAL teams, the good leaders in the SEAL teams absolutely have an open mind, want to hear other people's opinions on how to execute an operation, want to hear what shortfalls there are when a plan is presented that, hey, what about this and what about that? And a good leader is not going to impose plan. As in fact, my standard operating procedure was to have my subordinate leadership come up with plans instead of me trying to come up with the plans. In fact, that's the best way to operate. That means you asked them for the plan? 100%. Why? There's a multitude of reasons.

Number one, I want you to have the ownership of the plan, right? So if I'm imposing a plan on you, then that's not really your plan. I want you to come up with a plan. And I want you to go to your team and I want you to collectively come up with a plan that you all embrace and understand and buy into. So it's going to be a better plan from your perspective if you come up with it. Also, if I come up with a plan, I'm in the plan. So when I'm in the plan, I can't see the plan as well. I want to be outside the plan, looking at it from the outside, from a different perspective, where then I can see the holes in the plan and I can ask you some questions about the plan that you came up with. And finally, if I'm coming up with a plan, if I'm staring down at the map coming up with a plan, well, who's looking up and out? Who's looking at the follow-on operations? Who's

looking at where our other units are out in the battlefield? Who's checking on the intelligence that we're gathering about the enemy? If I'm looking down and in, I'm not looking up and out. If I'm coming up with a plan myself, I'm looking down and in. If I'm letting you come up with a plan, I can look up and out, you can look down and in, and we can have a lot more awareness of the battlefield. Often leaders and managers, we get, get i think caught up in in the proverbial trenches we get a little bit too close to the painting so we can't see the picture how important do you think it is to be the leader that's able to take a step back that is the job of a leader that is the job of a leader to take a step back, detach from the situation,

and see the entire picture of what is unfolding or what is being planned or what is happening. If you are in the problem, you won't see the solution to the problem. We will very rarely. So you have to be able to detach. And that's one of the main things that I tried to teach young leaders when I was in the SEAL teams. It's the same thing that I try and teach leaders now is to take a step back, detach from the chaos, detach from the mayhem, detach from your emotions, detach from your ego, and be able to assess the best way to execute and give, you know, the book is called Extreme Ownership that you referenced. That doesn't mean that I do everything myself. In fact,

what I want to do is I want you to take ownership. And how do I get you to take ownership? I give it to you. Hey, Steven, how do you want to run this project? And listen, what if you come up with a terrible plan? Let's say you come up with, let's say I come up with like, in my mind, I've got something that's gonna be a 95% solution. And I say, well, you know, I'm gonna delegate. So Steven, how do you wanna do this? And you come up with like an 80% solution.

Now, what should I do? I'll tell you. I'll still run with your plan. I'll be like, okay, Steven, sounds good. If you come to me with a 70% plan, I might say, hey, Steven, what about this? And you go, yeah, I'm going to make adjustment there. And all of a sudden we got it to a 78% plan and we're still good. If you come to me with a 20% plan, now I can ask you three or four questions before you say, hey, Jocko, I'll be back in a couple hours. I'm going to go reformulate this thing. And by the way, all that's training you, right? All those questions are training you. You coming

up with a plan is training for you. Because if I've got people that work for me and they can't come up with a plan by themselves, I'm a complete failure as a leader. So I'm going to train you so that you can come up with plans and I can look up and out. Takes a lot of patience, doesn't it? Because you know in many of those situations that you're not going to get from A to B as fast as you possibly could have. It's an investment in a long-term efficiency. Because even though I might have to invest a little bit more time right now, and I spent 10 minutes explaining to you

why this tactic would be better than that tactic, even though it's going to cost me 10 minutes right now, or maybe a half an hour, we look up in six months, and you're actually coming up with better plans than me. You know, I read throughout your books, you went from being that young teenager who passed training to really like leading the Navy SEALs

in many respects. Well, leading an element of SEALs. Yeah. That's, when you look back on that accomplishment, have you figured out what it is about you in particular that allowed you,

enabled you to do that? Is there something, is there a muscle you grew? I'm a hard worker. I, you know, I was never great at anything. Like as a kid, I wasn't the fastest. I wasn't the strongest. I wasn't the fastest. I wasn't the strongest. I wasn't the smartest. But I did know that I could work hard. I had to work hard. And I listened to people. I didn't

think I knew everything. Even sometimes I'll joke about, yeah, you know, when you're young and arrogant, even when I was young and arrogant, like we all are when we're 23 years old or 22 years old and you're young, you think you know everything. Even then I always had that little, like, you don't know everything. And I think that humility played a big role in me being able to be successful because I was never afraid to say, hey, I'm not a hundred percent sure what to do right now. What do you guys think to say, hey, I'm not 100% sure what to do right now. What do you guys think? Or hey, I feel like I've reached the limitations of my thought process.

I need some help. And so I think that's one of the main reasons that I was able to do a good job, to do a good job. When I meet someone like you, I wonder, I go, this guy must have seen so many things, so many things that the average human being will absolutely never see. You know, and because you were sent all around the world on some absolutely incredible, unimaginable missions

for 20 years. For the average person who has no idea what your eyes have seen, can you paint me a picture of some of those extremes? Well, it's war. So, it's war. It's people being wounded, people being killed. In Iraq, with the insurgents that we were fighting, it's them torturing people,

mutilating their bodies, raping, beheading people. Horror. beheading people, horror. But it's interesting when I talk to other people, when I meet people, I always think to myself, what you're saying that you think when you see me, I always think that when I see other people.

Because other people, we don't know what they've been through. You don't know what kind of childhood they'd had. You don't know what kind of horrors they've seen. You don't want to kind of abuse they've suffered. You don't want to kind of, you don't know what kind of trials and tribulations other people have faced. So I don't, I look at everyone and also the trials and tribulation that someone face, someone faces, that's profoundly difficult for them, regardless of what it was. Regardless of if they were a person that got injured really bad. When they were in high school, they're 15 years old and they broke their leg and they couldn't play their sport anymore. And now they're 17, but that was a traumatic thing for them. And yeah, so when I look at other people, when I talk to

other people, I always think every human faces challenges, and you don't know what they've been through. And they might have been through things that are worse than what I've been through. And I usually, my assumption is people have been through a lot of challenges and they persevered through it. And here they are. So I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. But humans aren't supposed to be exposed to those kinds of images. And I think if you spoke to a trauma psychologist,

they would class a lot of those things that you've seen as what they call like tall T traumas, like really, really traumatic events. How does someone like you go about processing those things to ensure that that trauma doesn't show up in later life? You know, we talk about soldiers coming back from war suffering with PTSD and things like that.

What have you done to sort of insulate yourself or at least help you understand some of the things you saw? There's evil in the world and there's evil people in the world and evil people are going to do heinous and atrocious things. And that's a reality and that's always been the reality. And that's always been the reality. And the best thing that I can do is, well, when I was in the military, do my best to stop that kind of atrocious behavior. And when I'm out of the military, try not to try and help people move away from those thoughts. I mean, when you're talking about like your, my family, like my family didn't, they, my wife wasn't tracking what was going on when I was overseas.

She didn't know what was happening most of the time. When my guys got wounded or my guys got killed, she knew. She went to the hospital to visit them. She went to their funerals. But I wasn't dragging her down to the depths of human nature. I took that. And same with my kids. I didn't share with them that these things happen. So I think from my perspective, it's like the reality of the world is, yeah, there's evil people in the world. I accept that reality. I understand that reality. There's also good people in the world is, yeah, there's evil people in the world. I accept that reality. I understand that reality. There's also good people in the world. And there's people that do amazing things. There's people that sacrifice their lives for their friends. And that's part of humanity. So I like to focus on that part of humanity rather than the dark side of humanity,

but if you really want to appreciate the light and the good, then you have to recognize that there's darkness and there's evil. Was there a hardest day while you were in the Navy SEALs? Is there a day you look back on and say that was the most sort of emotionally testing day? Yeah, losing guys in combat. And that stays with you? Oh, yeah. Always.

I just can't imagine. You know, I just can't. I've never lost a friend. I've got two older brothers. I've never lost my brothers. I just can't imagine. I can't imagine how difficult it is to go forward when you've lost, you know,

you refer to these people as your brothers. And I'm not unique. And the guys we were over in the Battle of Ramadi, when we were over there, the Army and the Marine Corps, they were losing guys every day. This is not unique. I'm not unique. There's guys that were in charge of units that lost 10, 12, 15 guys. And it's not unique for human beings either. Because even though you haven't lost any friends,

you haven't lost any of your brothers, you will. This is part of life. And so, this is part of life. People have, you know, everyone's died. And in combat, people have died. everyone's died and in combat people have died and people carried on and I know that my friends that died they would not want me to sit around and mourn and and

and break down and drink and and pop pills they wouldn't want me to do that at all. They'd want me to live. That's what they would want. They would want me to live. They wouldn't want me to go out and make things happen and drive on and enjoy and surf and play guitar and do jujitsu. That's what they'd want me to do.

A hundred percent, a hundred percent. In fact, they would be disgusted If what I did with the gift that they gave me was Piss it away They'd be disgusted And I won't do that Not a chance I'm gonna live

Like they would want me to In those moments like they would want me to. In those moments, that's certainly what logic tells you. But those moments, it's hard to be logical in those moments, right? Yeah. Yeah. I ended up with some pattern recognition

on this whole scenario. Unfortunately, because when you lose friends over and over and over again, you start to see what happens from an emotional perspective, from a spiritual perspective, from a physical perspective. And what I began to recognize as a pattern is, and the way that I explain this to people that go through loss like this, is you're not going to be in control of your emotions sometimes. So, and since you're 31 years old, you've had control, pretty good control over your emotions since you were seven years old or eight years old. Occasionally you'd break down, occasionally you'd lose your temper, but you've

gotten more and more in control the older you've gotten. So you're not used to not being in control of your emotions. We as adults are not used to losing control of our emotions. So what's going to happen, you lose one of your friends, you lose one of your family members, you're going to get hit with waves of emotion that you can't control. And this sometimes causes people to really overreact and think that they're in this terrible place because they think, oh my gosh, I've been able to control my emotions for the last 30 years and now I can't control my emotions. There's something wrong with me, is what I learned, is that those waves of emotion, they're going to roll back. And you're going to get control again. You take a breath. And then you're going to get hit with another storm, but it's going to go away. And you're going to get hit with another storm, but it's not going to be as strong. And then it's going to go away and you're going to get hit with another storm, but it's not going to be as strong. And then it's going to go

away and you're going to get hit with another storm, but it's going to be a longer period of time and it's not going to be as strong. And what this is, is this is you processing what happened. And eventually you do get, you regain control of your emotions. And there's still gonna be times. There's still gonna be times where you're gonna be three years, five years, 10 years down the road, you're gonna hit with a wave of emotion and you're gonna be caught off guard.

It's gonna catch you. I had a guy on my podcast that was in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. And so we talked about World War II where he was a young private soldier and then he was a little bit more senior when he was in Korea. And then in Vietnam, he was a battalion commander.

So he's in charge of 700 guys. And we were talking and I said something along the lines of, I asked him something about the casualties that he took in his battalion. And so now this is, he was in Vietnam in, I don't know, 1967 or 1968. So it's been 60 years. And I asked him about casualties that he took and he got choked up. Got choked up, lost control of his emotions for a second. And when I saw that, I felt so relieved. I felt so relieved because I thought, oh, it's always going to be like this. And that's okay.

It's okay. It's okay. It's normal. Lost your friends. Lost your brothers. Is it wrong that you get choked up when you talk about this? Nothing wrong with that. Here's a guy that lost some of his men 60 years ago, and he's getting choked up right now.

Why? Because he loved them. Because he wishes he could have brought them through that conflict, and he didn't. And he feels it. And he lived a normal life. Retired from the army, got follow-on jobs, and had another career. But he lost his friends, his brothers, his men, and that hurts. And it's not going to go away, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with you. Nothing wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with me. Do I get choked up sometimes? Sure. Yeah. I lost some of my best friends. Does that hurt? Yep. Do I wallow in that? No.

Do I dwell in those emotions? Nope, I don't. And they wouldn't want me to. And they'd be disappointed if I did. I think it's really important because as men we we don't we get conflicting messages about emotion and how to express it and what that looks like and if there's weakness to certain emotions or if you know but the it's the psychology seems to be pretty clear that the suppression of these emotions they're trying to hide them the total compartmentalizing of them doesn't actually make them go away. They just appear somewhere else in a bottle or in some kind of recreational drug or somewhere else.

And nor does suppressing them isn't going to help and nor is letting them run your life. So because you're sad, now you're going to make a bunch of bad decisions because you're sad. No, no, it doesn't work like that. It doesn't work like that. You're sad. Okay. You get emotional sometimes. Okay. Got it. Now get control of your emotions and carry on with your life. And sometimes you're going to get hit with those waves and that's okay. I think that's a big misconception and sort of relates to what you're saying.

Oh, I'm having an emotional moment right now. There's something wrong with me. No, there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. The other extreme is, oh, I'm letting my emotions run my life and I'm making a bunch of bad decisions. And my excuse is, well, you know, I lost some friends or I had this traumatic experience happen to me. That's why I'm doing, that's just an excuse. And it's a very easy excuse. And in society, the last thing I want to say to you is, well, you can't act like that. Oh, you lost one of your friends? Hey, that doesn't mean you can make excuse. You can't use that as an excuse. No, I go, hey man, okay.

It's what I say, right? I'm a polite person. I'm an empathetic person. You're sad. You're making bad decisions. You're saying it's because you lost your friend or you went through this traumatic thing. And I go, okay, how can I help? Instead of saying, hey man, yeah, guess what? It's time to carry on. Don't dwell on it. I've told a thousand veterans this. Remember, don't dwell. Remember, remember your friends. Don't dwell on the past though.

Remember, don't dwell. That's what we have to do. And the emotions, yes. Embrace those emotions, but don't let those emotions embrace you. Don't let those emotions run your life. There is a, because people say,

oh, suppressing your emotions is bad. Okay, so I'm just going to let all these emotions out and they're going to run my life now. No, no, no. At a certain point, you say, okay, my emotions are now leading me down the wrong path. I'm in control. I'm not going to allow my emotions to make my decisions. They're in the calculus. I'm not saying take your emotions out of the calculus,

but they have to be one component of your calculus, not the whole equation. The equation has to include emotions, yes. Logic, yes. Future, yes. Goals, yes. Family, yes. Work, yes. Finances, yes. All those things have to be in the calculus. Emotions has to be a part of that calculus. You can't pull them out of there or they'll bite you, but you can't make them the overwhelming denominator of everything that you do, or it's going to be problematic. I heard you tell a story, which I thought was really inspiring. Actually, I was just listening to it before you came about a friend of yours who was going through hardship in their life and your advice for them was to start walking.

Yeah. Yeah, it was a guy who was, yeah, going through hardship with his job, with his marriage. And the marriage was coming to an end. The job was going to come to an end as well. And he's out there and doesn't know what to do. And the analogy that I set up for him is if I'm in the woods, which is where you are right now, you're in the woods and you don't know where to go because the wife's not there anymore.

The job's not there anymore. You don't know where to go right now. So if you're in the woods and you don't know where to go, start walking. You've got to start walking because the perspective is not going to change. You have to start moving forward. You have to start taking steps in order to improve your vision, improve your perspective, change your perspective, make some kind of progress. And worst case scenario, you figure out that you walked the wrong direction. Okay, now you can go walk in the other direction. And that's going to be fine.

But standing there lost and not doing anything is just waiting to die, waiting to starve to death. Don't let that happen. It's overthinking. It's that anxiety. It's that ruminating that I think, I mean, I've done it multiple times in my life when the solution is I can't get to certainty on the problem. So I try and think my way out of the problem, which only seems to cause more harm than good. Yeah. There's definitely a level of risk conditioning that you get inside the military, because you're just not going to be certain about anything. And you have to be able to say, yep, I'm going to make this decision

right now, and here's what we're going to do. I'm going to make the smallest decision possible, going to take the smallest step possible, but I'm going to take a step, because I'm never going to know everything. And if I take the time to try and know everything, everything will have changed by the time I know it. So I'm going to absolutely take that step and take that action. I mean, that's a metaphor for life as well, because there's a lot of people trying to get to 100% certainty, whether to leave the job or the marriage or start the business. And they're struggling maybe at 60, 70, maybe 80, 90% certainty.

But for some reason, we seem to need certainty. That's why I use what I call the iterative decision-making process. I'm only going to take small steps. So am I trying to leave my... I don't like my job. I'm miserable there. Okay. Does that mean I walk in tomorrow morning and say,

hey, boss, I hate it here. I quit. No, it doesn't mean that. It means I say, okay, I'm going to start putting my resume together. I'm going to start checking out LinkedIn. I'm gonna start seeing what qualifications I might need that could improve my ability to get a new job. Once I've done that, I'm gonna start sending out my resume. I'm gonna start building some relationships with some people. And now I look up and I get another job offer. So I didn't make a crazy, short-term emotional decision. I made a slow, progressive, iterative decision-making process

that led me from a situation that I didn't like to an opportunity that seems more promising. And this could apply to just about anything. I see this a lot in businesses. I see that the real cost in business, I spent about 10 years working in marketing. So my job was to work with the CMO and the CEO, helping them to try and make certain marketing decisions, invest in this platform, do this thing, whatever. And I came to learn over time that the biggest cost wasn't making a bad decision it was the time you waste the nine months waiting for joanna to get back from annual leave so we can have a meeting with dave and procurement to get the invoice signed off

versus the ceos that i worked with that said let's do it now when the decision was quite clearly low cost relatively low cost or reversible. It was always speed that seemed to pretty much speed that seemed to win out because most decisions are either reversible or actually more inconsequential than you think. Very few decisions are final. Very few decisions are final. Even something like buying a house. Should I buy this house? Oh my gosh, it seems... If you buy a house and you decide it wasn't the house that you wanted, you sell the house. It's like, now look, could you get caught in a bad market and could... Yeah, that can absolutely happen. So you need to be smart about your decisions that you make.

But most things are not as final as they seem. Most things you're going to be able to... And look, you paid the realtor, so you lost 3% there. You paid the other realtor, you lost 3%. You had to pay the mortgage fees. So you're going to lose some money, but it's not like you buy a million dollar house

and then you decide you don't like it. You don't lose a million dollars. You lose 80 grand or whatever, you know? And it's okay, two years, three years, you get it back. So people think of decisions as being permanent. If you're in marketing and you approach me and you say, hey, listen, CEO, there's a new marketing opportunity that we'd like to get you into.

And I go, how much does it cost? And you say a million dollars. And I say, well, that's a lot of money. Can I try it for a shorter period of time? Well, yeah, but you won't get as much volume. And I say, okay, well, still, I don't want to invest that much because I'm not sure about it. Let's test it and see where it goes. And you say, okay, we'll try that. And here's 100 grand and let's see what feedback we get. And if it's good, it's good. If it's not, we go somewhere else. Do you think you're conditioned in some ways

to have this sort of bias towards taking action? Because if your background in the SEALs, there was often some kind of time urgency. There was some factor that's causing you to have to take a decision. Is that? Yeah. In business and life, there's not. There's not like, we're going to lose this,

or someone's going to die, or there's going to be an attack. In the business world, the consequences are prolonged and usually not as extreme. So you can get away with less action, even though eventually it will catch up with you. And you've got an example of that in your book. And the father-son deal, and one of them takes nine months to execute, and the other one executes immediately. And the one that executes immediately is successful. The one that doesn't takes nine months to execute, and the other one executes immediately, and the one that executes immediately is successful. The one that doesn't, takes nine months to execute, fails.

So eventually, inaction will cost you. And you say, interestingly, that, oh, in the SEAL teams, you must be conditioned to do this. I had to condition people to take action, even in the SEAL teams. Even a young SEAL leader, who you would think would be, by nature, aggressive and an action taker, you put them in a pressure situation where there's not a ton of information and they need to make a decision, they don't want to act either.

So one of the things that I would teach was that their default mode was to be aggressive. Their default mode was to take action. I would teach that. Same thing we just discussed. I wouldn't say, hey, look, that means mode was to take action. I would teach that. Same thing we just discussed. I wouldn't say, hey, look, that means you have to take action, but your default setting should be, I'm going to do something.

Because I'd have a young SEAL officer and there'd be some training mission and there'd be a problem in a building and there'd be a bunch of paintball flying around in there. And he wouldn't want to go solve that problem. He'd back away from that problem. And I would have to go like push him in the back and say, you see that problem over there? You got to go solve that problem. He'd back away from that problem. And I would have to go like push him in the back and say, you see that problem over there? You got to go solve that

problem. It's not going to go away. You got to be aggressive. That's got to be your default mode is to take action and make things happen. Because most human instinct is to wait. Most human instinct is to hesitate. Most human instinct is to let things go longer and stick with the status quo. And that seems to be on the front, the lowest risk in the situation is to not do anything. It usually appears to be the lowest risk. But just like the example that you gave in your book, it definitely seems lower risk. Oh, well, he wants money, he wants investment, new thing. I don't know. The lowest risk in that situation is to not do anything. And that's what many people do, whether they're in the SEAL teams or whether they're in business. So to train people to, oh, I need to take risk, some level of risk, take action,

because in the long run, I say seven out of 10. Seven out of 10 times, action is better than inaction. 70% of the time, there's definitely times where you got to hesitate. There's definitely times where you got to hold back. And that's the other book you got there. It's called The Dichotomy of Leadership. Because there's times, yes, absolutely, action, aggression. There's also times, the other end of the spectrum was like, now's not the time to make

a move. So it's definitely a dichotomy. But to me, 70% of the time, better take that action. That's got to be your default mode. I asked you what your hardest day in the SEALs were, and you said about losing friends. What was your proudest day? Is there a proudest day where you go, do you know what? I really showed up in a way that I, to a standard that I held myself to. And because I did, we accomplished something great together against the odds. There's a multitude of times where I was in Iraq, I was in a detached moment in time, moving down a street, sitting in a vehicle, maneuvering, and I was watching my guys. I could see my guys, and I could see what they were doing And I could see

One of the most beautiful things in the world Which was guys That were exceptional At their job Working together as a team Maneuvering, protecting each other, accomplishing the mission. And I got to see that many times. And that's always, it had nothing to do with me. It had to do with them. It had to do with being able to see,

look, were we perfect? No. But were there moments when you see an element cover and move for each other on the battlefield? A simple plan with the right priorities, with decentralized command? Was there times when I got to see all those things? Yes. That, without a doubt, those are the best days. There's something about, you know, and I think I've kind of seen this throughout your work, is you have a real focus on service, serving others as a path to, I guess, fulfilling yourself.

And we often think, I think many people think in life that the path to self-fulfillment is to serve yourself. But it seems that you've kind of figured out that the path is by serving others. Yeah, I think that's, there's an underlying core component

and belief and innate DNA in the SEAL teams. And that is you take care of your friends. And that's not... In fact, if you're the type of person that doesn't take care of your friends, you're not going to be a good SEAL. You're not going to be a good SEAL. If you put yourself before the team,

look, you can be a great shot. You can be strong. You can be fast, all those things. But no one's going to really want you in a platoon if you put yourself above them. And people don't really talk about that. No one ever told me that, but you feel it. And if you're not self-aware, you might slip into where you're looking out for yourself and it's a problem.

And this happens in life too. It happens in business where I see a guy that he's taking care of himself. And it's a smart guy and he usually thinks he's pretty smart and usually thinks he's a little bit smarter than everybody else. And usually thinks that no one else

is going to notice that he's taking care of himself. And everybody sees it. Yeah. And they dig themselves a grave. They dig themselves a grave. And I'm not saying they don't get away with it a little bit. Usually they get a couple of promotions,

you know, they get to a spot. But ultimately, people don't want to work with that person. And so they burn their relationships and they don't do as well as they should. And which is the kind of nice thing is if you take care of other people, they'll take care of you. If you screw over other people, you're going to get screwed over. So yeah, I think there's definitely that underlying theme in the SEAL teams

I've seen it now in business and it is it is going to if you look out for yourself all the time it's going to catch up with you I think everyone can relate if anyone's ever worked in a business

and they have colleagues I think everyone will be able to think about the colleague who is always seeking credit, is always, you know, being selfish in the way that they're showing up. And then they can also think about the colleague who's the complete opposite of that. And it's often, it's funny,

it was making me think as you were speaking that leadership is in fact, in many respects, it's given, it's not taken. I.e. the person that's showing up for other people, but also delivering on their own work is often kind of elected the leader of the group. This is, you know, we talk a lot in business. I think it was Steve Jobs that said the very, very best leaders in my organization were those that were so good at their job and they were never thinking about like being a leader, but that's the reason they ultimately became it. Yeah.

When people ask me, and I got a book I wrote called Leadership Strategy and Tactics, it's like how to get promoted. How do you get promoted? Don't worry about getting promoted. Focus on the team. Focus on the mission.

Focus on doing a good job. Focus on supporting your teammates. If you do those things, you're going to get promoted. And it takes, you'll have this, you know, the dark part of your personality will say, yeah, but they're not going to notice.

They need to see me now. And you'll raise your hand and say, I want credit for that. And the minute you do that, the minute you raise your hand and say, give me credit, your credit goes down. It's an unfortunate truth. The minute you ask for the accolades, your accolades are decreased. Because you're looking out for yourself and everyone can smell that. And they don't like it. Yeah, you're saying that I'm more important than the mission in some respects.

Terrible. Terrible. Did you have people like that in the services when you were out there? People that were clearly selfish in the sales? Absolutely. How did you deal with that? Well, if they were my boss, then I would make them look good.

Build a great relationship with them. If they were my peer, I'd make them look good, build a great relationship with them. If they worked for me, I'd make them look good, build a great relationship with them. If they worked for me, I'd make them look good, build a great relationship with them. I think that as you, you know, some people that have that kind of, you know, they've got some kind of, is it a defect? I think it's probably a little bit of a defect, but they just feel like they need that recognition. They feel like they need to take care of themselves. And again, going back

to what I was saying earlier, like what did they go through in their life that makes them think that they got to look out for themselves? And it'd be kind. And maybe I could help them transform from someone that doesn't trust that they're going to get the recognition that they need to, hey, there's good people out there and I'd like to be a part of this team. Were you ever successful in that transformation? I was successful. I was also unsuccessful. Some people, they have that defect and it's strong and they're going to look out for themselves. And there's very little you can do about it. And you try, try. But the ego is a very, very powerful thing. The ego is so powerful that there's countless cases of military history where a human being got himself and possibly his troops or his troops killed because of his ego.

So if you can die because of your ego, you can absolutely make some pretty dramatic mistakes in the business world because of your ego. And it happens all the time. It happens all the time. Leaving, leaving the military, I have this quote where you said, so I'd say if there's anything that I struggle with now, it's just that does anything else matter? And the answer is no. The answer is no. Nothing else matters. Nothing else is close.

So I have to deal with that. You said that on the Tim Ferriss podcast, talking about your time in the services, but also more specifically the Battle of Ramadi, Ramadia, as being the highlight of your life. How does one go through sort of 20 years of high intensity combat and all that adrenaline and all of the, you know, gosh, it's harder to think of many greater senses of like purpose and fulfillment and mission and then real life. yeah so number one as I mentioned earlier remember but don't dwell

and have you seen the movie Napoleon Dynamite no that's a bummer there's a character in the movie Napoleon Dynamite his name is Uncle Rico and Uncle Rico played football in high school and now Uncle Rico

lives in a van and sells cooking ware name is Uncle Rico. And Uncle Rico played football in high school. And now Uncle Rico lives in a van and sells cooking ware. He kind of peaked in high school. And he lives in the past. He's always talking about state championships. And if he would have had that extra point, and if coach would have put him got, he's living in the past. And so while that quote right there, no doubt that you just read from me is accurate. I mean, there will not be, I don't think anything in my life that will have as much intensity,

as much mission focus, as much meaning, as much opportunity, as much loss. Combat is like life, but amplified and intensified. So every emotion that you have, like you have an emotion when you formulate a new plan and when you sell a business or buy a business, you have emotions. That's like combat, but it's amplified, it's intensified, and it's a lot more. So that quote that you read is true.

Nothing will compare to that. It won't. But I don't want to be like Uncle Rico, living in the past, talking about how this is what it used to be like. And if only, yeah, there's my big game. I don't want to be like Uncle Rico, living in the past, talking about how this is what it used to be like. And if only, yeah, there's my big game. I don't want to do that. I want to, as I said earlier,

I want to remember, but I don't want to dwell on the past. Has it ever crossed your mind to go back? In any capacity? Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. Every time like a, every time a war breaks out somewhere,

you want to get your knife out, sharpen it up, and let's rock and roll, of course. Because, yeah, well, because of that quote right there, like this is it. Like that's it. I'm lucky that I got to do what I got to do. You know, like that's a blessing. It's what I wanted to do since I was a little kid. I got to do it.

And so if you asked me if I got the chance to do it again, would I? Yeah, I would. 100%. You could though, right? You could go be involved in some capacity in the SEALs. Yeah. There's ways, there's things that I could do to, you know, like be a gunslinger again and all that. But there's also, it's also not the same. So, you know, if I, because I retired from the Navy and, and so I'm not in the military anymore. I still work with the military. I still train the military, but to go and be a gunslinger again, now you're doing something different. Now you are a mercenary. Now it's a different situation. And that component that you talked about of mission,

brotherhood, is not going to be the same for me. And quite frankly, I think that I, part of me wants to not sour that memory and all those memories. I don't want to sour that memory. I have a beautiful, beautiful memory. And I don't want to tarnish it with me chasing around the past.

You know when fighters, they retire from fighting? And then they want to go back. They do it again, and it's just not the same. Anderson Silva was like that for me. He was Superman, and then he went back a couple of times. And I didn't want to watch him getting beat up. It was like... Yeah. That's how... I feel like that for me. He was Superman and then he went back a couple of times and I didn't want to watch him getting beat up. It was like, yeah. That's how, that's, that's a,

I feel like that. I feel like that. I don't think I could rematch my, my Anderson Silva, the spider championship run. I don't think I could rematch that. Discipline is freedom. The title of your,

your book here, Discipline Equals Freedom. Now that seems like it's untrue because when people think of discipline, they think of rigidity and taking away their freedom, having to be disciplined. Why does discipline equal freedom? Because the more discipline you have in your life, the more freedom you will end up with. So if you lack the discipline to exercise and eat healthy,

you will end up being a slave to disease. If you lack the discipline to work hard, save your money, you will end up a slave to finances. If you lack the discipline to manage your time correctly, you will end up with no free time. If you have self-discipline, if you have the discipline to save your money and work hard and invest your money properly, if you have the discipline to manage your time correctly and not waste a bunch of time, if you have the discipline to exercise and eat healthy, you will end up with freedom. And I know it's a counterintuitive, it's contrarian, but I've seen this over and over and over again. If you want freedom in your life, you have to have discipline. There's going to be some kid listening to this now. I always think about the personas that are listening and they are eating Doritos off their belly. Spit them out. Spit them out. Start now. Because if you're a kid right now and you're eating Doritos off your

belly, I know they taste good and there's some immediate gratification and I get that. But I'm going to tell you, it starts right now. Throw that bag of Doritos away. Get rid of it. Go do some pushups. Go spend $12 at the hardware store and hang up a pull-up bar in your room and start doing pull-ups. And if you can't do one pull-up, hang on that bar and you're going to start to get a little bit stronger. You just start to get a little bit healthier. You're going to start to get more focused. You're going to start to become more resilient and you're going to start to be able to do a pull-up and you're going to start to eat healthy all the time. And you're going to start to understand the world better and you're going to start to progress in every aspect of your life. And you'll see that if you have that kind of discipline right now,

you're going to end up with freedom. And if you don't have that kind of discipline and you keep eating those Doritos and you don't work hard and you don't exercise and you don't apply yourself, you're going to end up shackled. You end up shackled by a boss that you don't like, doing a job that you don't like to do, with sicknesses and diseases that you don't want, relying on people that you can't even count on. Alone. And you don't have to. But if you have discipline, if you have discipline,

you will attain freedom. And it starts with just spitting the Doritos out. Starts with spitting the Doritos out. Yes, indeed. How do you guys manage your stress? This month is Stress Awareness Month, and it's a topic that I'm super passionate about, and we talk about a lot on this podcast. I personally manage my stress by prioritizing my health and well-being. Going to the gym is my number one form of therapy, and I couldn't be without those two things. As you guys know, Whoop is a sponsor of this podcast,

and I'm an investor in the company as well. For those of you that don't know, Whoop actually created a stress monitor within this device. Not only does this help me to identify periods of high stress in real time throughout the day, but it also provides me with the tools I need to deal with stresses as they come up throughout the day. And it's based on scientifically backed breathing exercises

and research that's been developed by leading neuroscientists. It's a feature that has been game changing for me and I highly recommend. If you're someone that's looking to manage your stress levels then head over to join.whoop.com slash CEO where we'll give you 30 days risk-free and zero commitment to try Whoop. Let me know how you get on one of the things you do which is i mean you're super famous for it is this idea of waking up early now i'm not someone that wakes up early i know you no alarm clock and you're usually up by 11 well so no meetings before 11 okay so i i stay up quite late yep um what's the best case you could give me for changing that?

And do I need to change that? Because what I do is, I flew into LA, I'm jet lagged, I'm flying back in a couple of days, I'm going to be jet lagged when I land as well. So what I'm trying to do is just protect my sleep at all costs because I've come to learn that it's really the foundation of my performance.

So if I'm unslept and I show up at work, the chance that I'm not going to show up correctly in a variety of ways, emotionally, creatively, whatever, is high. And that for me is the greatest risk. So in the last year or two of my life, I've just said, okay, prioritize sleep, because then everything else seems to follow. But when I heard that you wake up sometimes at 4.45 or 4.30, like pretty much all the time, and I've literally seen you on social media upload your alarm clock day after day after day, I go, shit, maybe I should rethink.

No, I think if you've got a system that's working well for you, and then I wouldn't change anything, right? If you feel like you're performing well, you're physically healthy, you're getting all the work done that you need to do, you're naturally more of a late night, late morning type person, I'd run with it. If you were telling me, yeah, sometimes I get up, sometimes I don't, sometimes I work late, sometimes I don't, I don't work out every day,

you know, sometimes I feel groggy. If you were telling me that kind of thing, I'd say, okay, pick a time and start waking up at that time every day. It doesn't have to be 4.40. It could be eight o'clock. It could be seven o'clock. It doesn't matter. It could be 11 o'clock, but try and go to bed around the same time and try and wake up around the same time. And that's going to be a great foundation for everything that you're doing. And I would say when you wake up in the morning, do some kind of exercise. Because I think that is very helpful in getting your day started correctly. What are your non-negotiables in your life in terms of habits, routines, disciplines? I wake up early and I work out every day. That's kind of my, those are the minimum requirements in my life.

Train jujitsu. I don't get to train jujitsu every single day, but if I can train jujitsu, I'm going to train jujitsu. I'm going to work out every day. If I can surf, I'm going to surf. I obviously have to work every day. I work every day doing something.

You know, I've got a bunch of different companies. I got to write books, podcasts. So I work every day. Are you ever undisciplined? Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, chocolate chip cookies. They're a discipline lapse for me. Yeah, so yeah, I'm not a cyborg.

When people look at someone like you that's done all the things you've done, you've been a SEAL and you've written all these books and started these companies. And actually the drink I'm drinking now is one of your products, which is the, what's that in front of you?

Yeah, it's an energy drink called Go. Called Go. Delicious, by the way. Thank you. I think my mouth has been connected to my brain during this interview, so I think it's working. I understand there's misconceptions that people have of me because they assume, it's kind of like the halo effect.

We assume because someone's done something well, they do all things well. But there are so many things that I think would really liberate people and make them inspired if they could see how deficient I was in so many things in my life. You know, because they just assume that if you've done one thing well, you have a good podcast, you must be like, you know, the perfect picture. What are the big misconceptions generally,

moving away from this idea of imperfection, but just generally about Jocko? Because you realize you've become a bit of a character, right? You know, like Navy SEAL that comes with an identity package. Yeah, I think the biggest misconception, I think, and it's not just me, but it's really the military in general, is the misconception of this kind of authoritarian and even authoritarian dictatorship from a leadership perspective. And even when we were having this conversation, I said, I'm going to let my subordinates plan. And you kind of had a stunned look on your face. What are you talking about? Why would you let your subordinates plan? And so there's an idea and a misconception that the leader is going to stand up and bark all the orders.

So that's one misconception. Another one is I look like a Neanderthal. And so people think I'm going to scream and yell at everybody. And I never yell at anybody. You know, my business partner, Leif Babin, who's worked with me, he was in my task unit at SEAL Team 3 and deployed to Ramadi with me. And now we've written a couple books together. We have a business together.

And he was like my direct subordinate in Ramadi and during a workup and, you know, like I never yelled at him. And he likes to point out that he gave me plenty of reasons to yell at him, but never yelled at him because what good is that? And by the way, if I have to yell at somebody, what does that say? That means if I have to yell at you to get my point across as a leader, I've made like 47 other mistakes. My goal is that I don't even have to say anything. That's my goal as a leader. My goal is I don't have to say a word and you already know what to do and you make it happen. And I look at you and give you a thumbs up

and say, good job. That's my goal. So I think the biggest misconception is the idea of someone in the military or myself being a authoritarian leader, being very closed-minded. Like, you know, I got asked a question the other day about, you know, other day about, if China attacked Taiwan and

you were taking troops in there, what would you be focused on? And I said, I'd be focused on keeping an open mind. Because if you have a closed mind about what the mission is, about how it's going to happen, about what your troops are going to do, about what the enemy is going to do, if you have a closed mind about those things, you're going to get caught off guard. You have to have an open mind. You have to be accepting of the information that you're receiving. You have to be accepting of the other ideas

that other people have. And if you have a closed mind, you're going to fall apart. Kind of counterintuitive in some ways because the reason people often think they've been made the leader because they have loads of the correct ideas. So I think as people often climb in life, they go, well, I've been right so much that they've put me here as CEO. So now I need to

defend my righteousness at all costs, even when I'm not sure, because that's a weakness. Yeah. And you quoted Steve Jobs earlier. And I think actually it's from your book, which was, I don't hire people so I can tell them what to do. I hire good people so they can tell me what to do. So, yes, in a leadership position, you should be listening more than you should be talking. You were talking a second ago about shouting and aggression. It made me, as you're saying, I was thinking,

you know, there is a stereotype that a man is aggressive and he shouts and all those things. You know, there's a bit of a stereotype there. What I was actually thinking is, it's never been so unclear what a man is than in 2024 in the context of how a man's men show up. Are they meant to be masculine or feminine or somewhere in between or whatever?

And for many men, you are a man's man. You know, when we think of Navy SEALs, we go men. Do you know what I mean? So I was wondering, because it's never been as clear, I think, what a man should be. You know, when you're raising a kid that's a man or when you're being a man yourself, what do you think a man should be?

And I want to give a bit more context here. There's a lot of men struggling right now. There's a lot of men, if you know, I talk about it a lot, if you look at the stats around suicidality in the UK, the thing that's most likely to kill someone between the age of like 18 and 40 is themselves for a man. You know, there's a men are clearly struggling in some capacity with purpose or, or meaning or something. So I almost feel like,

you know, a lot of these sort of toxic influences of what a man should be have now emerged to offer answers. But I doubt those toxic influences. And I say there's got to be another role model, another sort of blueprint for what it is to show up as a man. Well, I was going to give you a real, I guess it would have been a real cheap answer of, I think it's Marcus Aurelius, stop discussing what it is to be a man and be one. I was going to walk out of here with that one. I'd be like, pretty good question avoidance there. But there's some merit to that, right? And I was almost thinking like, do we really not know? Do we really not know what it is to be a good man?

And I would go so far as to say to be a good human being, right? Because when a few years ago, there was these discussions going around about toxic masculinity, right? And you take these traditional masculine traits and people were saying this is toxic masculinity and they're bad. And I wrote a couple articles about it. If you take any trait of a human being and you take it to an extreme, masculine or feminine or otherwise, you take it to an extreme, it's going to be a problem.

It doesn't matter what it is. So if you take even a really positive trait like generosity, if you're a super generous person, that's wonderful. Is it possible to be too generous? Well, yes, it is. Now you're getting taken advantage of and now you end up in an abusive relationship. There's all kinds of problems that can happen. So when we talk about masculine traits and what's a man, well, what are

some of the traditional masculine traits? To be competitive. Now, is it bad to be hyper-competitive where you screw people over and you hurt your health because you want to win in this particular category? Is that bad? Yes, it is. Does that mean we have people that are not competitive at all and they don't care if they win or lose? No, that's not good either. So that's one trait. What's another good mask? Aggression. Aggression is a masculine trait. Is it good if I'm walking into a restaurant pushing the hostess out of my way? Of course, that's terrible. It's terrible.

Is it good if you and I are working together and I say, hey, shut up and do what I said? Is that good? Nope, it's not good. So can you take aggression too far? Yes, you absolutely can. Can you get to a point where you're not even asserting yourself at all and you're getting, yes, you can. Is that good? No, that's not good either. So there's a bunch of traits that we could run through that are considered traditional masculine traits.

And if you take any of those traits and you take them to an extreme, they're going to be bad. Stoicism, right? Being stoic, being unemotional. Is it good to have no emotions whatsoever? No, that's called a sociopath, right? Is that good? No. Is it good, like I was talking about earlier, to let your emotions run your life and make your decisions based on your emotions? No, that's not good either. What do we want to be as a human, as a man? We want to be balanced. We want to be balanced. You don't want to be extreme in any direction. Even when you ask me like, oh, Jocko, what are you undisciplined on? I told you chocolate chip cookies. I could have also said, yeah, sometimes I like to eat mint chocolate chip milkshakes. Sometimes I get lazy in a workout. I'm like, you know what? I freaking warmed up and this sucks and I'm leaving. Sometimes I'm

supposed to, I was going to write something and now I didn't write anything. I'm supposed to write a thousand words today. I didn't write any. And guess what? I didn't write any tomorrow. I'm a slacker. So if I was so disciplined that, you know, my wife was like, hey, I'd like to go out for dinner. I was like, no, I still got to write my thousand words. Is that good? No, it's not good. So any characteristic, if we take it to extreme, it's going to be a problem. And so we as people should be balanced. And I think what we need to be attuned to is it's much easier to be extreme. It's much easier to be extreme. It's much easier to say, oh, no emotions, cool, and turn them off.

That's easier than, or total emotion mayhem, that's easier. It's harder to find balance. It's harder to find balance in business. It's hard to find balance in life. It's harder to find balance. It's harder to find balance in business. It's harder to find balance in life. It's hard to find balance. And what we have to do is we have to be attuned to the feedback that we're getting. We have to be attuned to the feedback that we're getting. So if we're talking to our wife and she says, you're not going to be home for dinner again tonight for the ninth night in a row that you're going to stay late at work. Okay. You need to be paying attention enough to say, oh yeah, guess what? I'm a little too focused on work right now. And then the other end of that spectrum is my boss

says, hey, Jocko, you're leaving early again. Well, you know, it's wrestling season. My daughter's got a wrestling match, so I'm going to leave. Okay. I need to be attuned enough to say, yeah, if I focus 100% on my job, I'm going to lose my family. If I focus 100% on my family, I'm going to lose my job. We as humans are supposed to be balanced. And by the way, there's going to be some things that we don't control. Somebody asked me the other day, what did I learn about myself from the highs and lows of my life? The highest point of my life and the lowest point of my life, what did I learn about myself? And I said, I learned that I don't let the highs and lows affect me too much.

Because we're going to have wins, we're going to have losses. We're going to have successes, we're going to have wins. We're going to have losses. We're going to have successes. We're going to have failures. We're going to have good nights. We're going to have bad nights. We're going to have good relationships. We're going to have bad relationships. We're going to have good ideas and bad ideas. We're going to make money. We're going to lose money. All these things are going to happen. And if you oscillate emotionally up and down drastically, it's going to be problematic. So finding a good, stable, centered way to be and look at the world and take everything that you see with a little bit of a grain of salt and don't get swayed too drastically in one direction or the other, you're going to be okay. And if I was to try and sum up some of this idea about being a man or being a good human,

it's like those books, I wrote a book called Extreme Ownership. Number one, take responsibility for what you're doing. Take ownership of your world. Take ownership of your life. There's number one. Number two, the second book, Dichotomy of Leadership. Be balanced. Be balanced. Don't be extreme. Extreme. Look, do you have to sometimes get out there in the fringes a little bit? Occasionally, you probably had some business situations where you're like, all right, I got to let go half of my staff right now. That's an extreme move, but that's how we're going to start. Do you have to do that sometimes? Yes, you do. But don't let that be where you live.

Live in the center, live in a stable area, and then finally, discipline equals freedom. A couple of words you used throughout this conversation make me want to add some things to that list of what it takes to be a, maybe not a good man, but at least a happy and fulfilled man. One of the words you used is brotherhood. And I was thinking about all the things you got from your time in the SEALs. And it's almost a bit of like a microcosm of what I think a lot of men are looking for. You know, that sense of purpose, that brotherhood. And they find it these days in like video games and stuff, right? Which I, video games, I've got no, you know,

I cost no judgment on people that play video games. I've played video games my whole life. But it seems like there's a reason we're getting like increasingly addicted to these video games because they're giving us something that we're searching for in real life and not getting. You used the words brotherhood, purpose. These are things that the SEALs clearly have in huge amounts.

Is there anything else that you'd add to that list of what it takes to feel fulfilled? Yeah, jujitsu. It almost has become a joke amongst me, my friends, people that listen to me, is you got some kind of a problem in the world? You got some kind of problem in your life? Go train jujitsu. There's a reason why I say that. Because the things that you just mentioned, discipline. Guess what you need to go train

jujitsu when you're tired and you don't feel like it? Discipline. Guess how you feel when you're done? You feel awesome. You get a bunch of dopamine. Guess who you're there with? A bunch of dudes that you can relate to. And guess what you're going to do together? You're going to struggle. You're going to go through some hardship together. You're going to sweat. You're going to choke. You're going to get your arm broken. Like, these things are going to happen. Not going to get your arm broken, but you may, but you're going to, you're going to be with a little brotherhood. And by the way, women train jujitsu too. My daughter's all trained jujitsu. It's all good. It's all good. So yeah, jujitsu is one way. Now look, could you go to the rock climbing gym? Yes, you could. Could

you go to the CrossFit gym? Yes, you could. Could you go to the, to the, yeah, the soccer field, football field, whatever. Yeah, you can do that stuff. So the, to the, yeah, the soccer field, football field, whatever. Yeah, you can do that stuff. So yeah, go do that stuff. Go do that stuff. That's shared suffering together with a group on a regular basis, whether you want to or not. That's some, that's, those are all little components of being in the military, being

in the SEAL teams. That's what it is. That's what you're doing. What in the SEAL teams. That's what it is. That's what you're doing. What does a SEAL platoon do? They train to get ready for go to war. How do they do that? They go to the desert. They carry their guns. They run through little choreographed moves. They get hot. They carry weight. It's suffering. It's just shared suffering and they're working together and they're learning skills. That's what you're doing in a jiu-jitsu gym. That's what you're doing on the soccer field. So go out and do those things with other human beings

and it's going to make things better for sure. It made me think of business as well. Business should be that way. If you're in an organization, you're doing the exact same thing, right? We've got a problem. We need to solve it. We've got to allocate resources. We've got to come in late tonight. We got to make this thing happen. We got an emergency. Like that's what a business is too. That's the way it should be. It should be. We're working together to solve problems. And when we're successful, we get rewarded for that. So yes, this is called human interaction. I'm sorry that it looks like war is the best way to do it. It's not. I would much rather people start a business and create a product and create jobs.

I would much rather people do that. And you can find that same kind of camaraderie in business. In fact, it's interesting. You know, I have a consulting business and so we work with companies and companies that went through the 2008 economic downfall, they're so bonded because they went through

this traumatic experience together. Companies that kind of did well out of the gate, people are leaving and people are coming. But companies that went through some trauma together, they stick together. So yeah, if you frame things right in your life, if you frame things, if you frame a business challenge as an opportunity to build a stronger team, if you frame a personal challenge as an opportunity to overcome and improve yourself, these things that seem so horrible

are actually very positive components of your existence and they're going to make you better. As you said that, I thought, damn, I should take all of my teams. We should go do like a survival week. We run a program like that at Echelon Front where we teach people some basic tactics, and we have these high-speed laser tag guns, and we send them out on missions, and there's

explosions, and there's gunfire, and there's role players that are screaming and yelling, and it's mayhem. And those teams that go through that, they bond. They also learn how to make decisions under pressure. They also learn how to detach. They also learn the fundamental principles of combat leadership that you can apply not just to the battlefield, but you can apply to business and you can apply to your life as well. So yes, is that helpful? It absolutely is.

Struggle sucks. Depends on how you frame it. Right? Depends on how you frame it. Right? Depends on how you frame it. Because I'm thinking about you stood at the beach, you know, and they say, walk out, Jocko. Link arms and walk out. You described that as sucking.

Yeah. But what you're also saying is there's huge value in things that suck. On the other side of something that sucks is something worth cherishing. I would say not just huge value, but the value. The value.

You want to know if you're talking about young men that might not have any direction right now, go do something that's hard. Go try and accomplish something that's hard. You may win. You may lose. You may succeed. You may fail.

I'll tell you what, you'll be better. If you avoid those things that are hard, if you don't accept that challenge, if you don't step up and step into that cold water and you sit on your couch and eat Doritos, I can tell you this is not a good move. This is not a good move. Don't do that.

Don't do that. Just get up. Move towards that challenge, whatever that challenge is. Move towards that challenge and go attack it. And you may be successful and you may not be successful, but you will be better. And you may be successful and you may not be successful,

but you will be better. And the next challenge, you're going to be more prepared for. And the next challenge after that, you're going to be even more prepared for. And you're going to fail. And you're going to fail. And you're going to fail.

And you're going to fail. And then you're going to fail, and you're going to fail, and then you're going to win. And that's life. Life without those challenges, it's just existence. Don't just exist. Go live. You used the word balance a second ago. And from reading through your story,

it appears that when you were in the SEALs, you didn't have a whole lot of work-life balance in whatever way people will define work-life balance. I'm talking specifically here about your relationships, your family, your wife. I'm right in saying that you were out of balance through that season of life in terms of, you know. Yes, I was out of balance. I was out of balance. I was out of balance. But the ship was still moving in the right direction. So what does that mean?

That means that my wife picked up the slack. That's what she did. So I was out of balance. She recognized it. She recognized that I had a job and that that job was important. She recognized that I was going to war. I was taking guys to war. My decisions could mean the lives of these guys,

the deaths of these guys. My wife understood that. My wife understood that what I needed to focus on at that time was making sure that my guys and me were prepared for war. That has to be the focus. That has to be the focus That has to be the focus

To not focus on that Means I might not be coming home Means some of those guys might not be coming home She understood that She knew that She stepped up I was out of balance She was in balance

She pulled the family unit into balance. And I treated my wife like a princess. I mean, I gave my wife everything except for time. I could not always give her the time that she deserved. She never complained about it one time. That's legit. She knew. She knew that. She understood it. The team.

First law of combat leadership is cover and move. We work together as a team. While I was doing my job, while I was serving the country, she covered for me where I couldn't deliver on the home front. With three kids and then four kids, she covered the finances, the water heater that's broken,

the car tire that needs changing. She did all that stuff. I can see the emotion in your face when you say that. Where does that come from? What is that emotion? That's appreciation It's appreciation It's like

I'm gone And she's there She doesn't know what's going to happen to me She doesn't know if I'm coming home She's got three freaking kids running around Like she doesn't know what's going to happen to me. She doesn't know if I'm coming home. She's got three freaking kids running around. Like, and this is my wife. Guess what?

There's hundreds of thousands of military wives that did the same thing. And spouses as well. Because there's guys that are married to females that go on deployment as well. That hold the line and do the job on the home front. And they don't get the appreciation, the outward appreciation, the recognition that the people that are in the military get. But they deserve it. Do you think you could ever express the gratitude you have for her in words? Do you think it's possible for her to know how much you appreciate her for holding

the line and for covering you? Do I think I could express it in words? Probably not. Does she know? Yes, she does. Jocko, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. They leave it in this book.

Question that's been left for you. If you could bring someone back who's no longer with us and have a conversation with them, who would it be and what would that conversation entail? Well, I'd bring back

Mark Lee, Mikey Monsoor, and Ryan Jobe. And I'd tell them thank you. Thank you. What would you be thanking them for? Everything. Okay, thank you. Thank you for, I mean, the list is quite extensive, but thank you for putting your life on the line to make the world a better place. That's, I think, a level of gratitude and appreciation that we can't really express in words to people like you, that put your lives on the line and sometimes don't come back from war and put your families through it,

things that the average person, frankly, wouldn't be willing to do for the sake of an important cause. Thank you for that. Thank you on behalf of all of the people that will never be able to say it to you. Thank you for what you're doing in this chapter of your life because you are, maybe whether you know it or not, you are saving, improving and changing lives with everything you do with your incredible podcast, with all the books you've written. You've written this, you know, you're writing children's books as well now to try and help shift the mindset of people at the very, well, they're still seeds and they're formative. I think that's also going to change, improve lives. And thank you for all the inspiration you've given me over the years, because you'll never get to see all of the

people who hear a line that you say, the way that you say it, the stories that you tell. And for some of those people, it's just the subtle nudge that they need to take that first step, to spit the Dorito out and to change their lives. You know, when I think about my friendship circle, and I told some of my friends that are speaking to you today, those are young men and women

that can all pinpoint the moment where they encountered you and they can pinpoint how it moved their life forward in some way. You'll never meet these millions and millions of people. But I just want you to know for sure that they're there and they're watching now and they've been watching

and they'll continue to watch. So Jocko, thank you. It's been an honor. It was an honor to serve and thanks for having me on here. Appreciate it. Thank you.